What a gruelling experience for Uniben students and staff this past week! What a time, what a hell of a time, passed through them this past week many of them will remember for a pretty long time that will be longer than a pretty long time in their memories that were kept on edge by an experience that was more than an experience that was fatally bad and hot, hurtful and rough! And how I tilted my head left and right and right and left when I was admitted into the knowledge of the event(s).

What am I talking about?
I am trying to dwell on the recently recent soldiers’ invasion of the great University of Benin, our one and only Uniben the Unibest of the Unibest, one of the best places to come to for learning that is learning in this part of our globe. But don’t expect much from me. Our disciplined soldiers’ invasion of our great citadel of learning blew my mind and mind-set to a state of off-road bewilderment. The unruly soldiers that we must from time to time praise for their unruly behaviour that contributed a great deal to where we are now as rudderless Nigerians went to the territory of our scholars, students and working staff to commandeer hell and chaos to fall from their abodes because they are bloody soldiers who must teach the bloody civilians a lesson and a lesson and further lessons on how to behave when one disciplined soldier happens to be in their midst anytime he hops from his ramshackle barracks that those who are their lords and cohorts in power and authority have turned into an institution of worthless abode that has emasculated their sanity and humanity.

Freud and Carl Jung must be invoked with distinction if we attempt to do an essay on the psychology of Nigerian soldiers and politics in modern Nigeria. Is this what I am about to make my concern now in my endeavour to tackle the collective psyche of the bloody soldiers who invaded University of Benin last week?

Don’t get me wrong. The present fuel problem everywhere in the land and the fatally bitter frustration as a result of the inhuman deprivation of everyone from accessing their monies in our banks that are more or less in a kind of financial lockdown imposed on them and us all by those the soldiers are protecting and guarding against all norms of military decency and discipline, have turned our uniformed men into human beings who are really lacking in qualities that their profession ought to instil in them.

As we all know, in the past dreary days that have really been dire all our banks that operate Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) have lost steam, so to say. Each ATM place or centre was always full and more than full to the brim. In the majority of them hungry and angry and haggard money-not-in-pockets or money-not-in-bags compatriots would line up in disciplined and at times not disciplined queues to access their money. Many a time no wads would roll out after the long, long wait. At times, the early birds would exhaust all the wads loaded in the machines.

Each person or personage of status would be status-less on the queues. Take your turn or simply push yourself under the bus. This apparently was the scenario on that blessedly fateful and faithless day that our soldiers who we cater for with our citizens’ taxes came to the University of Benin to show their bigmanism and soldier’s power when they surfaced at one of the ATMs on the university campus. Of course, I am getting it wrong.

They came twice. On the first occasion they had their way without qualms. The students on the queue allowed the almighty men in uniform to have their way. The next day, the story went, the chaps of power came again to intimidate the bloody civilians. The students, great Nigerian students, this time patriotically turned themselves into Uniben Resistance Brigade, the kind we need in Nigeria to inculcate real discipline in the land and which the soldiers and their officers, their gentlemen officers, should transport to ASO ROCK. Or are they happy with the rotten rottenness about us now?

I want to write a patriotic poem entitled “In praise of Nigerian soldiers.” But that is if only they can invade our fuel stations and banks and markets and energy distributors called discos and instil discipline that is discipline in all of them. The other day I saw a picture of a whole man, a whole agbalagba, married with children in complete nudity crying and weeping like a baby uncontrollably in a banking hall because he was denied access to his money in the bank where he was popularizing his sorrowful sorrow.

The video was pathetically and traumatically real. I am deviating… The columnist is ruminating and deviating… Is he arousing you? He is ruminating and deviating…
The pictures of the assault, brutalisation, lawlessness and all what-not, indecency-wise, that happened in Uniben and the respective statements and counter-statements from those who issued them, especially from outside the university, told me one thing, among other things.

When our universities were under lock for eight months and our lecturers and professors were denied (and are still being denied) their salaries solidly for the period because they resisted the brutes in power and authority for the everlasting good and benefit of the university system and the professions, including that of the military, where were the soldiers? And why must the students who similarly suffered with their teachers be the victims of the invading soldiers’ frustration?

Why must the invading soldiers not give to NANS and ASUU what are NANS’ and ASUU’s? NANS have spoken. ASUU people, at my time of writing (on Sunday, February 4, 2023), were yet to speak. But whatever ASUU Uniben would come out with must not be without the mustered seed of courage that courageously must call the soldiers’ invasion of Uniben by its rightful name.

ASUU should join me to praise the lily-livered soldiers who invaded our foremost citadel of knowledge and scholarship. ASUU should tell them, as I am telling them, to go abroad from their Supply and Transport Barracks (S and T Barracks) and join their fellows elsewhere to do their disciplined duty patriotically for their fatherland my fatherland our fatherland. I dearly want to write “In praise of soldiers’ invasion of Uniben.” And what an epic it will turn out to be? The picto-graphic rendering of the invasion is classically professional! But whether or not ASUU heeds me, I will write what I must write at the appointed time.

For now, I salute the gallantry of the greatest of the greatest, boys and girls, men and women, academic and non-academic staff, including the security personnel who stood and are still standing tall to maintain their rightful human rights in their territory against the invaders. Swine. I have deviated again. But what does it matter? In any case, deviation is not an exercise in failure. After all, deviation can be and, as a matter of fact, is a kind of hyperbolic hyperbole. Maybe Jonathan Swift will endorse me whether or not what I mean is what I mean or is not what I mean – even if the swine say nay.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.