Lautech Student Protest: People's Champion, The Conquering Governor...

People's Champion – the conquering governor, can I have a word with you before you raise your glass in celebration?

Your Excellency, that was low! Kicking a man that is down is the tactic of a man without class. That tactic is underarm, a punch below the belt, a dirty punch to the gentlemanly code of ethics, a show of shame and desperation of a man who will always have to play dirty to be in charge. On social media, and in the court of public opinion, the scripts have been written in verbatim the way you planned it. The headlines are planned to put smiles of a champion on your face. You just won a challenge with kids old enough to be your grandchildren. Honestly, you deserve the wry smile. These kids are poor and corrupt!

Permit me to remind you, sir, that these poor and corrupt kids are your creations; these are the supposed heirs of today that fate promised to be the leaders of tomorrow. That the students lost their head when they considered taking money from you is unbecoming and unfortunate, but that you offered them was undeserving of a visitor to a tertiary institution, where knowledge and character are meant to be moulded. Sir, I think you showed your hand quickly in this one, and you are caught complicit!

I have read commentaries of “good people” who are so much in a hurry to cast the first stone; people who are quick to create a reasonable distance to the guilty, and ally with saints. The commentaries of the students compromising the “struggle” and selling their consciences to the beast have become a fast-selling sentiment, forgetting that the giver of the bribe too is complicit and culpable of the same crime. To take away education from them, short-change their parents and guardians in a bid to enslave their minds, for me, is a tactic of the weak. Yes! Like the “good people” rightly opined, history is unforgiving of a felon (you inclusive sir), but it has a way of grading the actors judging who took the lead role from the minor considering the extent of their culpability. We will soon forget the protesters; after all, they are kids!

In this entire episode, there was an alumnus – a special assistant to the governor, who encouraged these kids, with a smile, to walk into the governor’s trap. He was a general in the struggle, who, by antecedence, is condemned to be on the side of the struggle. He cannot feign ignorance of the tactic of his paymaster. Judas did not just take the shekels of gold, he masterminded the plot; the betrayal with a kiss was all his idea....

Written By Emperor Felix Fapohunda