Adamu Adamu is the current minister of education of the Federation – as everybody who is conversant with our education problems knows. And anyone who tried a little to follow his mind since he became the minister of education would not find it impossible to regard him as a reticent polished peasant in that ministry that should be run by the super-cultivated mind of one who is not a stranger to extraordinary labour of articulation and great technical and scholarly accomplishment. In fact, a peculiar ministry that is responsible for the processes of society which constitute education for everyone ranging from the ordinary man to the extraordinary fellow should be under the positive administration and control of the super-cultivated man of honour and of peculiar honesty.
Our central education ministry is not under the firm grip of such a fellow. The question of the circumstances that concurred to permit Adamu Adamu to be appointed into the education ministry as its premier minister is the circumstances that define his limitations. The trouble-and-problem tertiary institutions and universities in particular have been having derives from the person of Adamu Adamu who invents himself in the image of “Mallam” and wants the world to see and recognize him as such. But a “Mallam” in the strictest usage or application or meaning of the term is a well-endowed teacher and scholar and personage of honour, and whose every word or action is devoid of deceit. Even his silence or reticence is always and at all times viewed or must or ought to be viewed and seen and interpreted positively as something of honour.
So “Mallam” (like” Mr.”) is a title of honour used before the name of a man of honour – like Mallam Aminu Kano – under normal usage. Ironically today, every fellow wants to be referred to as “Mallam” or “Mr.”! Now Adamu Adamu wants us to see and call him “Mallam Adamu Adamu” which he relishes even though this former peasant from backwater Daura who has been treating ASUU maliciously underground, that is, clandestinely, pretends to be the union’s admirer and leading supporter! His reticence all the while until very, very recently was misinterpreted in several circles as positive reticence. But I had on a number of occasions hinted and told some ASUU personages and central negotiators that the “Mallam’s” reticence was choleric reticence.
Sooner or later he would show his hidden nature. His choleric reticence sold the world the dummy that Chris Ngige was the real demon against ASUU. At a time the impression as created was that even Emeka Nwajiuba, the former minister of state in the education ministry, was a proper dim-witted spokesman who was an incorrigible lambaster of ASUU. Why could the chap not be a healthy controller of his own big mouth? Could he not borrow a leaf from his own master called “Mallam” Adamu Adamu? As a humble junior minister who was not a humble junior minister, did he not have another social or political career open to him? The young chap read our minds and disappeared from the “Mallam’s” clutches when the chance to do so opened before him. He entered it and fled and flew! But I am digressing. I know, dear, dear readers.
How did the “Mallam” of choleric reticence become a minister who is today our universities’ most malicious destroyer and demolisher? I will offer my readers only a tiny bit of all I know. The “Mallam” swept the northern intelligentsia, particularly the university-based group and ASUU-diehards in a particular north west university, with his much referred to 2013 essay in Daily Trust. In the essay, he vigorously engraved his peasant polish and self on the consciousness of the goodness and patriotism of the highly educated and intellectual community especially of the north-west university that I am deliberately with-holding its identity because I respect its right of anonymousness.
*Culled from www.guardian.ng*