Oludele Idowu on Ben Nwabueze; Undiluted Nastiness!

 By Tony Eluemunor

Which infernal forces seized Mr. Oludele Idowu when he poured scorn on  late Prof Ben Nwabueze, a man well-respected whether in life or death, an author of over 30 books, the second Nigerian to have a PhD based on his publications and the second Nigerian academic to become a SAN based simply on his publications?

*Prof Nwabueze 

It is a testimony to the nasty times in Nigeria that a man could disdain verifiable facts, and actually not feel ashamed that his name should be associated with crass untruths, and actually publish such nastiness to further bury the concept of unity in Nigeria. 

It is a testimony to the lack of due regards for high achievers that anyone with the brain of a flea, would be passing judgment a giant of academics and jurisprudence in Nigeria, while dealing in matters totally beyond his level of understanding. That he is totally incapable of even understanding what makes an intellectual great or flawed didn’t matter to him.

It is a testimony of how far Nigeria has degenerated to the abysmal level where a man or woman would be judged in Nigeria through tribal spectacles and his track records would be muddied by commentators belonging to other ethnic groups. But if ethnicity is all that matters, does it not hold true that even our national anthem, which talks of THE LABOURS OF OUR HEREOS PAST is a lie, because different ethnic groups that make up Nigeria NOW have different HEREOS?

It is terrible that Mr. Oludele Idowu chose to advertise the worst in Nigerians and himself when in his article, “Ben Nwabueze: The Man Died”, he betrayed both ignorance indifference – and the indifferent person is doomed because he is opposed to correcting himself. Mr. Idowu even achieved more than that in his bid to earn the title of the DUNCIAD of Nigeria, when he showed he never understood both the title and the message of Wole Soyinka’s book from which he borrowed his own title: The Man Died.

Who would tell Mr. Oludele Idowu that the central message in that book is that “the man dies in him who keeps quite in the face of tyranny”? So, how on earth could he have been misled by his puny academic exertions to apply a part of that quotation to the late Dr. Ben Nwabueze, the giant of courage who stood up like a resolute high tower to dictators, both civilian and military, that have muddied up Nigeria’s political history?

To show the level of his depravity, Idowu wrote that Ben Nwabueze was “Abacha’s Minister of Education who presided over the 9-month strike in which our universities were shut without any payments and had to return back to job with shame”. First, may we please interrogate Mr. Idowu’s terrible English usage here. Who returned “back to job without shame”? the “universities” or the lecturers?

Idowu’s sentence exhibits nasty and unintelligent construction. Actually, Mr. Idowu could be Nigeria’s Dunciad. In the fourth book of Alexander Popes poem, stupidity finally wins out. In the last lines, Cibber lets out a colossal yawn and condemns the Universe to an eternity of darkness and ignorance. Oludele Idowu did exactly that in his rumbustious essay, which reminds the reader of the “a tale told by an idiot” Shakespearean phrase.

Second, who will tell Oludele Idowu that Prof Ben Nwabueze never served as Education Minister during Abacha’s regime.

Third, although Ben Nwabueze was Education Minister in Gen. Ibrahim Babangida’s administration, he served from January 1993 to August 1993. So, from where in the devil’s calendar did Oludele Idowu come about the nine months he wrote about? Every primary school child knows that August is the eight month of the year. Well, facts and details mean nothing to Dunciads.

Surprisingly, Mr. Oludele Idowu blames Ben Nwabueze for bringing ideas that hurt Nigeria immensely without ever presenting a single documentary evidence – not from a newspaper report of that or later era, not from an interview given by, or a book written by, a direct participant in the action under reference. And when he uncharacteristically mentioned a book, Prof Omo Omoruyi’s The Story of June 12, he behaved like a stark illiterate by failing to quote even a single letter, word or line from that book.

If we have to blame a minster and not the President in whose administration he served, then Nigerians will daily excoriate the highly respected Prof Babs Fafunwa, Gen Ibrahim Babangida’s Education Minister -1990 to 1992 for under Fafunwa’s tenure as Education minister, IBB outlawed the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). But before you blame Fafunwa, you had to read his memos to IBB to know his stance.

The same standard of judgment applies to Nwabueze though imbeciles and tribalists may not recognize that. That makes Idowu’s article on Ben Nwabueze a testament to the strongly emerging futility of the Nigerian project, to his own lack of wisdom, insight, common sense and his being Nigeria’s Dunciad. Lastly, I wonder what would stop a gnat from respecting an eagle? Stupidity or nastiness or both?

*Eluemunor is a commentator on public issues