Yesterday, my alma mater, the Abia State University held a combined Convocation Ceremony for three graduating sets.
One of the high points of the event was the pronouncement by the Visitor to the University, Governor Alex Otti that all First Class graduates of the University and Best Graduating Students of every department will get automatic employment as Graduate Assistants in the University, subject to their acceptance of the offer.
That announcement hit me in a very very profound way.
Why?
Come with me.
I am a product of the Law Faculty of the University. That faculty had a long standing tradition of retaining their Best Graduating Students each year as Graduate Assistants. That was how Professor Nnamdi Obiaraeri became a law lecturer way way back. Same too for Professor Uchefula Chukwumaeze, SAN (Zumbe) who is the current Vice Chancellor of the Imo State University who started his career as a law lecturer at the faculty. He was best in his set of 1992. He was my teacher.
Same for the now late Professor Innocent Okoronye and John Kennedy Onyemere. Then, you didn’t need to know anyone. Just become the best in your set and it’s a done deal.
When I gained admission into the faculty of law, I told myself I wanted to be a law lecturer just like Zumbe. I worked hard and emerged the Best Graduating Student of the Law Faculty in 2001. I went to the Law School and hit a very decent result too and I was sure of being retained by the Law Faculty.
From what I gathered then, you didn’t need to do anything. The Faculty would contact you and ask you to proceed to formalize and process your already secured employment. So I waited. No one spoke to me. No one contacted me.
When I made inquiries from the then Dean of the Faculty, I started hearing stories that things seem to have changed. Professor Ogwo was the Vice Chancellor then and all my attempts to reach him then failed.
I was told that a certain woman who lived at Nweke Street Aba was now in charge. She called the shots then and decided who will be hired and we heard stories of people who went there to peel melons. I didn’t understand the link between being a law lecturer and going to the house of one woman at Nweke Street. My young mind was troubled.
What made my case even more worrisome was that in that same 2001, as a final year student, I had represented the Law Faculty and the University at the All Africa Human Rights Moot Court Competition held at the University of Pretoria in South Africa where I won a prize for the Faculty. That selection was done strictly on merit that time by the Faculty Board.
I remember discussing this my matter with Professor Ernest Ojukwu, SAN who was then the Deputy Director General of the Nigerian Law School and Head of the Enugu Campus. I was doing my NYSC then under him at the Law School. He was so sure that the Faculty will send for me. They never did! That was how that dream fizzled away and died quietly. I consoled myself and moved on.
Two years later, I had started life as a young lawyer in Aba when I heard that the Abia State Polytechnic Aba was hiring law lecturers to teach at their Departments of Business.One of their law lecturers died and they wanted to hire two new ones. It was an open thing and they called for applications from qualified lawyers. I applied and was invited for a test. That day, many lawyers came. We wrote tests and later did orals and at the end of the exercise, two lawyers were chosen in order of performance. The first was one Isuochi guy who came from Enugu and myself. We were asked to come back and start our documentation.
Then, boom! It happened again! We heard that the same woman from Nweke Street showed up again. She cancelled the entire process and chose other people who never even came for the interview and gave them the jobs! The Registrar then simply started avoiding us. He didn’t know how to convey such nasty information to us. We came several times and just stopped coming after some time.
I became very frustrated and chose to bury that ambition to become a law lecturer. How cruel can it be to see what you are ordinarily entitled to, taken away from you because you don’t know anyone.
This one at ABSU happened in 2004…22 years ago! If I had joined then as a Graduate Assistant, I would definitely…most definitely have become a Professor today. I would have worked very hard as usual. But they killed that dream! I bore those pains in my heart for a long time.
I must point out that when I had my first meeting with the immediate past Governor, Dr Okezie Ikpeazu in Lagos in early 2016 while I was at Samsung, that my missed chance at ABSU came up again and he asked if I was still interested in the job, so he could give it to me instantly, I said No. Things had changed. Too much water had passed under the bridge and that interest was dead! That meeting that night at Ikeja Protea Hotel was the beginning of a process that led to my return from Lagos to join his administration. I didn’t know him personally. He simply heard of me and sent for me.
For the records and for the umpteenth time, I must reemphasize that Dr Ikpeazu treated me with a lot of kindness and I will forever remain grateful to him. This is a fact!
So yesterday’s pronouncement by Governor Otti took me down memory lane. I felt bad, yet again. I remembered my initial dreams…to live in Aba, practice law in Aba and teach law at the Abia State University, grow from there and go global. That was all I wanted. I had all it took. But they killed that dream. My only offense was that my surname didn’t ring a bell. My parents knew no one! Nothing more!
God willing, my own children won’t be deprived of their due because their dad knows no one!
Thank you, Governor Otti for restoring hopes of these top brains. Thank you for giving them a start in life. Believe me Sir, you hit the right spot. You have planted seeds that will grow into a mighty academic trees tomorrow. Future Professors will come from these young people. They didn’t need to know anyone!
In my own case, on our convocation day, apart from my name appearing in the Convocation Brochure as Best Graduating Student from the Law Faculty, all I got were two handshakes from Professor Ogwo, the VC then and late Ambassador Matthew Tawo Mbu, the then Chancellor of the University.
Nnaemeka Onyeka Obiaraeri was the Best that year from Banking and Finance.
Your Excellency, I am happy, proud and grateful that I work for you…a man whose driving force is excellence and merit. God willling, with the standards you are setting, never and never again will our state deprive her own citizens of what is due to them because they know no one. Imagine if you were Governor by that time?
It is well.
God will keep you for us, Sir.
Ururu Aja
