El-Rufai, “Prince Dr” and their failed stunts -By Festus Adedayo

Kaduna State governor, Nasir el-Rufai, must be very disconsolate at the moment. His governmental stunt of attracting applauses for enrolling his son in a Kaduna public primary school last week was shredded by a very irascible and irreverent social media crowd which so  made little the stature of the stunt that you would wish you could add a cubit to el-Rufai’s social media height. You would think a hyena had shredded it. They began by asking why, if it wasn’t a plan to score unearned cheap political point, el-Rufai had to mobilize a full complement of Kaduna media to a movie which even an Ayo Fayose, years back as governor, directed without awaking Ekiti Government House dogs taking their siesta. El-Rufai’s arch-enemy, Shehu Sani, was to later reveal that, preparatory to the stunt, el-Rufai had spent almost N200 billion to renovate this self-same school, making it more worthy of enrolling one’s ward than any private school in Kaduna State. One of the pictures of his son sitting on a chair with other pupils captured one of the kid’s pensive disquiet at this stunt. It would make you conclude that it fell face flat even before the magician began pulling the magic stick.

In Ogun State, the Prince Dr. Governor also pulled his own stunt. Ogun, according to the governor, at a one-day stakeholders’ forum held in Abeokuta last week, said his government had concluded plans to establish two more universities in the two geo-political zones of the state.

 “We have been able to settle the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic (MAPOLY) issue. It is a win – win for everybody. If the people of Ogun Central still want a University, they will have it and if the people of Ogun West say they want a university, university they will have. But we are going to take it one step at a time and also consider the financial position of the State,” he said.

As we speak, I am not aware of any state in Nigeria that has the number of higher institutions in Ogun’s kitty. It has two state-owned universities, OOU and TASUED and one polytechnic, with each of the state universities having a college each in each of the old four divisions of the three senatorial zones; four mono-technics in the four divisions of the three senatorial zones of the state; three federal institutions; 13 private universities; a state polytechnic, a degree-awarding federal college of education and a federal polytechnic. Upon coming into government, the governor lamented what he called paucity of funds to work with and there have been media reports that virtually all the institutions are presently gasping for breath as their funding is meager. Why then does the “Prince Dr.” want to add to the educational woes in Ogun by building two more universities rather than properly funding existing ones?

I reckon that the missing link is the absence of the spirit of the university at Oke Mosan. It is the kind of feeling that jumps on you when a man introduces self to you as “Pastor,” “Imam,” “Dr.,” “Prince.” “Professor” or any of those allied nonsenses. You are immediately alert that a fraud is afoot. In most instances, there is no doctor, nor is there a monarchy for any Princedom. It is what you see when you face Kaduna, formerly the Liberal State,  the State that prides itself as Centre of Learning under the grips of el-Rufai son’s learning in a “public” school.