SHORT LETTER TO HIS EXCELLENCY DR. ( PASTOR ) SAMUEL ORTOM THE NUMBER ONE CITIZEN OF BENUE STATE, NIGERIA. BY: ECHEKWU E. SUNDAY ON THE 23RD MAY, 2017. WITH DUE RESPECT SIR, WE HAVE HONOURED YOU ENOUGH AND IT IS TIME TO CRY OUT LOUD AS YOU WANTED.

A Celebration of Sadism: A Response to Prof. Dennis A. Ityavyar A Celebration of Sadism: A Response to Prof. Dennis A. Ityavyar Professor Pita Agbese Let me, right from the outset of this short piece, express my utter dismay at your open paean to Samuel Ortom, titled, “Gov. Samuel Ortom: The Glory of Courage” in which you poured all sorts of encomiums on Ortom, describing him as “the man with uncommon courage, Lover of Humanity, Human Rights Advocate, Ranch establishment Crusader...the leader of people, defender of the Benue valley and the man Africa is proud to have.” I had to hold myself from puking at the last line, “the man Africa is proud to have.” I never thought that an intellectual of your repute and caliber would cheapen himself by joining the motley crowd of hungry sycophants in paying nauseating obeisance to Ortom, the man who has caused so much untold suffering in Benue State. I stopped myself from throwing up convinced that you did not really mean a word of what you wrote. This is evident in the curious capitalization of some of the letters of the words used in your write-up. For example, the letter l in lover was capitalized and so was the r in ranch as well as the h, r, and a in human, rights and advocate, respectively. You ordinarily write well and I cannot attribute these to sloppiness. Instead, they reflected your attempt to emphasize what you know does not actually exist. I think the weight of your conscience that you were describing someone with attributes which he does not possess, unconsciously must have forced you to capitalize those letters. I understand. Not all clapping or an ovation signifies approval. I’d like to believe that the capitalization of those letters reflected how uncomfortable you felt about the encomiums you were pouring on Ortom. Anyway, your hagiographic homage to Ortom is not even why I am responding to you. I am writing because of my profound disappointment in how you have discharged your responsibilities as the Commissioner of Education, Benue State. That disappointment was however compounded by the fact that you found time to be writing a public commendation of Ortom. Under you as commissioner of education, teachers in the state went an entire year without salaries and other benefits. An entire year. 2019 ends in ten days and yet, Benue teachers have not received a single salary for the year. Mercifully, they got paid the November 2018 salary just yesterday (on the 20th of December, 2019). In other words, teachers in a state where Yu serve as the highest official in the Ministry of Education, were paid more than one year after they should have been paid. At this rate, they will receive their 2019 salaries in 2020 and 2020 salaries in 2021, and so on, until you and Ortom leave office in 2023. By the time you leave officer as education commissioner, Benue State would still be owing teachers their salaries for that entire year. Prof. Ityavyar, why? I do not know if as a commissioner, Ortom is owing you salaries for a whole year. If so, you have my deepest sympathies. If you have been paid while teachers under you have been starved of their incomes, I would say that you have earned my scorn. Being a teacher, I would have thought that you knew the importance of education in the 21st Century. Knowledge and skills are more important to economic development and the improvement in people’s standards of living than endowments in natural resources. Yet, under you as commissioner of education, schools in Benue are in dilapidated and deplorable conditions with pupils sitting under trees to receive knowledge. The teachers that you have placed the care of the pupils in their hands, have been dehumanized beyond measure. Not only have the teachers been treated so badly, some of the schools that Benue pupils attend are plainly very dangerous to their health and safety. I am sure that if you have a dog, you are not likely to let your dog stay in some of those schools in the state. I am aware that some of the schools are being renovated. There are two major problems with this. First, only very few of the schools are slated for renovation or have undergone what was called renovation. Secondly, even the work of renovation being done is done so shoddily and sloppily that some of the roofs that were supposed to have been repaired began leaking rain water again just in the first rainy season. There is no indication that all the schools that require renovation will be fixed by the time you leave office in 2023. Prof. Ityavyar, this is unacceptable. Under you as commissioner of education, teachers have not been promoted, their leave allowances have not been paid, and yet you expect to get quality education from a people so demoralized? I would have expected that you would feel very uncomfortable in your role as the principal adviser to Ortom on education. I have no idea what you advice him on and if Ortom throws your advice in the waste-paper basket but I can assure you that many of us, your colleagues in the universities, are baffled at how ineffectual you have been and why you would not honorably resign from a government that has so much contempt for education and educators. I know you have been very busy composing odes of appreciation in flowery words to Ortom and might not have had much time left to visit other states in the federation but if you go to a place like Borno State with state of the art schools, you will hide your face in shame. New schools in Borno have beautiful buildings. They are air-conditioned and they are equipped with modern audio-visual teaching materials, including computers. Why can’t Benue schools be like those? I recently read of a little girl who fell into a stream and drowned while going to school because there was no bridge, but just a piece of log on the stream that she and other pupils in her village must cross to go to school. Other pupils run the same risk of drowning. Were you aware of this incident? Would you take steps to build a new school so that other children do not drown in an attempt to get some education? Gender imbalance as a deadweight on development and ensuring the well-being of vulnerable populations have been major concerns in your career. Why have they now become silent rather than salient issues in your new role when you have the power to bring them to the center stage? I know that constructing bridges is not part of the schedule of your duties as the commissioner of education. I was tempted to write that writing open letters of praises to Ortom is not in your schedule of duties, either, but I will refrain myself from saying that. Under you, public tertiary institutions have been priced out of the reach of many Benue students. Every semester, Benue states return to their schools late because they have to scramble to pay the high fees. This is particularly pathetic since fees were increased even Ortom refuses to pay parents and guardians their salaries. You must also have heard the outcry by students that the scholarships that they were promised just before the elections have not materialized. Some of the students are even uncharitably saying that they have lost the 500 Naira application fees they paid for the scholarships. If the money promised the students is no longer available, the decent thing to do would be to at least refund them the money, with accumulated interests, of course. Prof. Ityavyar, I’d like you to succeed in your mission to help establish a high quality educational system for our Benue children, so let me offer you a few suggestions. These suggestions, if implemented, I am sure , would help to redeem your image which has been badly tarnished under Ortom’s disastrous leadership. Now that the Supreme Court has re-established the autonomy of local governments, let Ortom send an executive bill to the House of Assembly transferring all responsibilities for education to the local councils. Each local council would be responsible for running all public schools in its jurisdiction. Benue State would however give block grants on education to the local councils. For example, these grants would be based on a per pupil basis. You can hold discussions with relevant parties to establish the amount of the block grants. For example, it could be 20,000 Naira per pupil or any amount sufficient to provide quality public education throughout Benue. Each local council can decide how much it would spend on capital projects, including the building of new schools and the renovation of existing ones. It can also decide how much it would pay teachers subject to the establishment of a minimum salary base level for teachers throughout the state. At each local government, the schools would be run by elected school boards. To avoid unnecessary expenditures, these boards will have members who would receive only sitting allowances and the number of sittings could be pegged at twice a quarter. Recruitment of teachers, disciplinary actions against teachers and other personnel matters would be the responsibilities of the board. A school superintendent in-charge of the day to day administration of schools in the council area would be appointed by the board. If these suggestions are not workable, then Prof. Ityavyar, please ask “the man Africa is proud to have” to please pay teachers their salaries. Teachers form a sizeable proportion of Benue retirees who are dying in large numbers partly due to their poverty. If the situation of non-payment of salaries persists, I am afraid, Ortom will become the man Africa is thoroughly ashamed and embarrassed to have. It would be a shame for fingers to be pointed at you as the commissioner of education under such a man’s leadership. Have a merry Christmas and a new year in 2023. A year, I hope, teachers will not spit on the ground at the mention of either your name or Ortom’s name. Re-publised by ECHEKWU SUNDAY