​AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SPEAKER OF THE FLC 

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By Segun Ogunlade

 

Dear Rt. Honourable John Izuchukwu, my people would say, “Ibi to ye ka ti ba ogbón, ti a ba ba ago n’ibe, o ma n dunni”. This could be interpreted to mean that when a person you expect to be knowledgeable openly displays an unbridled lack of knowledge, one would be disappointed. I have always thought you are a smart man but you are beginning to disappoint me with some of your recent actions.

After consistently watching your activities on the floor of the house as its number one member, this is the best time for me to write you this letter. This letter is borne out of goodwill and its intention should not be misjudged by you or other persons within your circle that might want to see this as an open attack against your person. No party gains anything by publicly shaming the other. Besides, we are partners in progress. Thus, having set the intention straight, let me delve into my message. My points are three and I will try to explicate them through this letter.

Sir, you mentioned at the last sitting of the Faculty Legislative Council on the 19th of October that you were a pressman but your judgement about the press night leaves me curious. If truly you were a pressman as you claimed, you would have carved a niche for yourself in journalism here on the campus or we would have heard about your exploits outside here. Hastily, you blew your history as a pressman without any reconciliatory record. It would have been more apt for you to describe yourself as a writer, maybe a song writer, due to your field of study than a journalist. If it is true that you were a pressman but without an attachment to any press organization, it is pathetic that you do not know what press night is about and its importance to an election like ours. Perhaps you do but only feigned ignorance in your usual way of playing down other organs so as to exalt the FLC.

Verily, you are right to say that the press night is not a party where we call every Tom, Dick and Harry to come and eat. If truly you are a pressman, you would know that no reputable press organization like AFAS Press organises a press night with only ten men or women. The press is a reputable organization and it will not lose that because of your shallow knowledge about what a press night is all about. Unlike your FLC where room is not oftentimes given to intellectual debates because of your superfluous magnanimity, we are people who ask questions. We do not hold out press night with dumb and deaf pressmen. Contrary to what you made other honourable members believe, we do not have observing pressmen during the press night. Each participating pressman engages aspirants intellectually. There are no ten people that would sit at the high table and twenty or thirty others that would come to watch and listen to what questions would be asked like most of our honourable members do. As a result, your claim about being a pressman is hereby challenged.

About the One thousand naira that you have approved for the press night, you should know that it is only an association of beggars that would accept everything that the FLC throws at it. Perhaps you never thought that it would be termed irrationality for a man to engage about forty to fifty men and women in an intellectual work and give them a meagre thousand naira for over two hours. Even if we both agree to use the money to cater for those that would be on the high table, what about those we would be inviting for the event?  If you invite people to your house, would you not at least offer them something to eat or drink even when if all they had come to do is idle talk? Nonetheless, ours is not a gathering of men and women ‘lazying’ around for idle talks. As an organization with elegance, let it be noted that AFAS Press would not take a thousand naira to put a press night together. This is not a foul cry but an attempt to point out an error from people who are supposed to know but do not know. With the way you carry out your duties on the floor, you would soon confirm my worries about you being an ignoramus. However, I am not surprised, it is on the same floor of your hallowed authority that an honourable had questioned the usefulness of AFAS REVIEW.

Sir, it would be bad for me to write without addressing your olori ebi system of presiding over the affairs of the FLC. I know you are a man of tradition, but when that tradition begins to collude with sheer rationality, it is a problem. In recent times, you are fond of exhorting the ‘magnanimity’ of the house in a way that makes it seems as if the FLC is doing other organs of the association a favour by approving certain amount for them when the reason is readily justified. Through your traditional village style of meeting, where members of the family always try to obey the family head by listening to his advice and not arguing with him, you have turned the FLC to a family meeting where honourable members come to listen to your tales of magnanimity. You have relegated the activities of the house to a mere child play where you dole out instructions on every matter and your voice is always the loudest at every debate, even those you were ignorant of. As an advice for you, always endeavour not get in the way of proper debate with your incessant cry about magnanimity. You are not doing anybody a favour by being the Speaker of the FLC. Therefore, you should not make members of other organs feel like a child begging his father for his school fees by making decisions that make people question your rationality and lack of discretion. As you and others always say on the floor of the house, posterity will judge all of us.

It takes a few word for a wise man to learn and change his ways. So that it would not be said that this is a foul cry, a rejoinder to this will be appreciated to refute any of the above claim. After all, you are a self-acclaimed pressman and that should not be too hard for you. You are a good man and I trust you to pick one or two things from this letter. But if you choose not to and continue in your old ways, remember that a king whose tenure was peaceful would be remembered, likewise the one whose reign was despotic. To whom brain is given sense is expected.

Shalom!

4 thoughts on “​AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SPEAKER OF THE FLC 

  1. I’m amazed, I have to admit. Seldom do I come across
    a blog that’s both educative and interesting, and let me tell you, you have hit the nail on the head.
    The problem is something which not enough folks are speaking intelligently about.
    Now i’m very happy that I found this in my hunt for something
    relating to this.

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