Kola Ibrahim & Ayo Ademiluyi
3 July 2009
(Page 2 of 2)
What is more is that these cult groups are averse to genuine mass-based students' unionism that will adopt collectivism in tackling the security challenge of these campuses. This fact is strengthened with the brutal execution of Yemi Iwilade and other four students on 10 July 1999 by cult members in the wee hours of that day. Afrika, as Iwilade was commonly known, had been at the forefront of anti-cultism struggle and agitation against mismanagement of the then university authorities, whose top officials were fingered in the cult attacks. It took this act of martyrdom for the monster of cultism to be sacked from the terrain of that campus then.
To paint the sepulchre of cultism white by claiming that fraternal orders in Western societies are organisations with positive inclinations is celebrating neo-fascism. The rise of the hawkish ex-US President George Bush has been traced to such cult groups. It cannot be generalised that only presidents that had cultic youthful lives are hawkish or imperialist, although most American presidents are - including the present one. But it should be stated that using confraternities to gain privileges, even if not a violent manner as in Nigeria, is a sign of a sick nation no matter the tag of industrialised or developed given to such nation.
To forward the argument that confraternities should be legalised is giving license to vampires in human skins. Notably, the Nigerian bourgeoisie depends largely on the neo-fascist elements to vent their rage on their political opponents and dislodge genuine students' and workers' activists.
In fact, several government officials including governors from southern Nigeria have been fingered in criminal connivance with and use of cultic elements from campuses to sustain their economic and political interests. Also, many university managements have been reported to be using cultists to attack active union leaders, or even sponsor cultists to take over student unions. What can be deduced from this is that the Nigerian society has not changed from its terrible past of the military jackboot absolutism and political bankruptcy. This is not unexpected in a society where despite over US$280 billion that had accrued to the nation's purse since the emergence of civilian rule in 1999, nothing tangible has come the way of the poor. Unemployment rises by leaps daily, while the already rich few, many of whom participated actively or passively in the dethroned military rule, are becoming fatter in both physical size and bank accounts. With governments' (federal, state and local) commitment to neo-liberal policies of privatisation, commercialisation, deregulation, retrenchment, etc, which are necessary ingredients for pervasive poverty and misery of the majority, the trend of cultism is easily predictable forward.
What is needed to tame the monster of cultism across the campuses is to build a genuine mass based student movement that will be a counterweight to cultism. In this regard, the ban and proscription of student unions on many campuses is a deliberate attempt by the authorities of the tertiary institutions to give a free hand to cult groups which are controlled by them to strafe off genuine student activists. This is why campaign against attack on democratic student unionism must be championed by students across campuses.
However, the building of mass based student movement as against the current degenerate NANS, which will call for the lift of ban on proscribed unions, reinstatement of victimised activists and the democratisation of decision-making organs on campuses will thwart such neo-fascist attempts.
It will provide a platform for students to resist cult elements and fight collectively for better welfare conditions and society where secure jobs will be provided, education massively funded and democratically managed at all levels, among others.
Thus, a genuine student movement will have to join forces with the working class organisations to agitate for the formation of a genuine, mass based working people's party that will throw overboard the present neo-colonial, neo-liberal, anti-poor capitalist system and its operators, which is in a neck-deep connivance through policies and action with cultism. Such a working class party, while it will fight for immediate social, economic and political demands, will also have to struggle to form a government committed to the public and common ownership of the nation's resources under the democratic control of the working and poor people themselves, unlike the present rotten system where the economy is monopolised, which engenders racketeering and lays the material basis for cultism to germinate. This is the challenge before the current generation of conscious youth and students.
Kola Ibrahim and Ayo Ademiluyi are at Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
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