The worst tragedy to befall a man is when that man lies to himself. It means that the person is irredeemable. That’s why it is also said that those who go to equity must go with clean hands. But some staff of Abia state college of Education, Technical,Arochukwu, who were recently disengaged from service on account of redundancy and reorganization have decided to lie to themselves and in the process damaged their case irretrievably.
Among the staff affected is the chairman of the local chapter of the College of Education Academic Staff Union,COEASU, KELVIN EGESI. Instead of accepting his self inflicted fate, he is going about spreading false information that he was victimized because he was fighting for the rights of workers. What bumkum! What a self serving lie from the pit of hell!
First of all, Kelvin,a low level academic who was wrongly converted from a non academic staff from a former provost of the college,Dr Nwamuo was never s threat to the current management headed by the cerebral academic,Dr Phillips Nto. Secondly, Kelvin has not been positively vibrant in unionism like his predecessor,Dr Joseph Kanu. Dr Kanu led academic staff to many successful industrial actions under the same Dr Phillips Nto. Yet he was never victimized. He was never sacked. Again, under Dr Nwamuo, COEASU was not paid any check off dues, but under Dr Nto, the union receives check off dues promptly whenever salaries are paid.
But what does Kevin do with the money,he squanders it under frivolous frequent travels to Abuja in the guise of attending union meetings. But in reality,the money is spent on his girlfriends. Before he was sacked, many academic staff had written to management requesting that they should be excused from payment of check off dues on account of lack of transparency and accountability. In other words,even his colleagues were dissatisfied with his lame and inept leadership.
Now to the real reasons Kelvin was sacked. Simple, he couldn’t hold down his job. Faced with dearth of students as a result of people’s preference for University degrees as against national certificate in education, the management designed a strategy of taking campaigns to secondary schools and communities to seek students. Kelvin was one of those who impugned the idea. As far as he was concerned, students should fly down from heaven. But sooner than expected, the chicken came home to roost. Why? Since lecturers didn’t have students to teach, automatically, they had no jobs! Kelvin was affected because in his department and the course he taught, students population was not up to five.
Before then, however, Kelvin Egesi had a deluge of petition against him by students who complained about his academic deficiency including bad grammar. Although he was previously a non academic staff, Kelvin was expected to improve himself, but lo and behold ,he preferred politics and gave his full attention to it, leading to his downfall.
Last three years,scores of academic staff who didn’t have higher degrees other than first degrees were asked to go. Kelvin submitted a paper that he was undergoing masters degree programme . Since then, he is yet to graduate. It means he was lying to himself. Twice,he was persuaded to apply for TETFUND sponsorship for higher degrees studies either in Nigeria or abroad,and twice his application were rejected on account of poor presentation of proposals and sheer incompetence. That was how he became a victim of his own contrivance.
So next time Kelvin runs to the social and electronic media to accuse management of victimization,ignore him. He was relieved of his job on account of redundancy and inability to improve himself academically as required by law. Kelvin was not employed as a union leader. He was employed first as a non academic staff and later converted to an academic staff. His inability to discharge his responsibility led to his present predicament. So he should stop lying to himself.