By Clem Oluwole
(First published on December 29, 2013).
When I wrote about the existence of Corruption and Allied Crimes University (CACU), Nigerian Campus, in this space on January 13, 2012, most readers might have thought that my imagination had run riot. So I thought too until the huge drama of sleaze began to unfold at one of the nation’s first generation universities – the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN).
Before I go any further, I want you to answer this simple quiz: Who is the most heavily remunerated secretary in Nigeria?
(a) Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF).
(b) Secretary to a State Government (SSG).
(c) Secretary to the Vice Chancellor, UNN.
Senator Anyim Pius Anyim is Nigeria’s prime scribe and number three man in the Federal Executive Council hierachy. Secretary to a state government is also a tempting answer. Pick any of the two and you get a wrong answer. The correct answer is (c), the secretary to the Vice Chancellor, UNN.
The poser is why should the secretary to a Nigerian vice chancellor be earning higher pay than, say, the massively built SGF, Senator Anyim? Or even the registrar who is the chief scribe of the institution? The take home pay of the vice chancellor’s scribe is put at a whooping N2.3m per month. Whereas the take home pay of a Nigerian professor is a miserable N2.4m per annum. A simple calculation shows that the secretary earns in 30 days what a professor takes home in 360 days!
The scribe’s jumbo pay is one of the accusations of impunity the vice chancellor is currently being tarred with and the entire university community is seething with rage. According to media reports, the storm was triggered off when the pro-chancellor of the institution sought to checkmate the alleged financial excesses and recklessness of the head of the highly respected ivory tower in collusion with the SGF. To checkmate the checkmater, the supervising minister of education ( also in collusion the SGF?), not the Visitor to the university, was said to have sacked the nosy pro-chancellor and replaced him with his Port Harcourt-based personal lawyer.
The leadership of the university’s alumni association is in the vanguard of the battle against the alleged impunity that has held the institution captive. And they are calling on the Visitor to the university, who is also the president and commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, to intervene in the grave matter of monumental sleaze and reinstate the sacked anti-corruption pro-chancellor. If the president is truly committed to fighting corruption as he pontificated in his response to the salvos from Baba Otta, then he should act fast on this UNNgate.
The heartbeat of CACU – Department of Unethical Practices and Embezzlement (DUPE) – stands out in the drama that is playing out at the UNN. How ethical is it, as alleged by the vice chancellor’s traducers, to have a secretary earning obscene pay higher than a professor. How much is the vice chancellor’s take home pay per month? Is the secretary earning more than the oga VC? That secretary must be a woman. Only female secretary get such special treatment from the oga at the top for obvious reasons.
I am always suspicious of a female secretary anywhere I sight one. She is like the alternate madam to the married oga at the top…. the standby alternate madam of the big boss. They are good psychologists. They watch out for the sad side of their bosses and will go to any length to happify them. I used to know a chief executive officer in Jos who was in the habit of changing his secretaries on quarterly basis. It took me time to understand that he was using the position to recruit girlfriends and whenever he was done with them working under him (if you understand what I mean), he would just replace them as you change worn-out motor parts.
Women are most suited for the secretary job even though they are tempters by nature. Some female secretaries are so desperate and dangerous to the extent that they philtre the foods and drinks of their bosses so that they can have them under their thumbs in the manner that the tail would wag the dog. A friend once joked that only a gay boss would be comfortable having a fellow man as his secretary. I too engaged female secretaries when I set up a private business in Jos some years back. But for my principle of turning the blind eye, I would have fallen on them as most bosses are wont to do. Esther and Sikira were two secretaries that worked under me. Please do not mis(under)stand me. Both of them were endowed with seduceable statistics. Even a monk would turn if they passed him by! Anytime they entered my office, I always recited the relevant portion of the Lord’s Prayer: “…Lord, deliver me from this evil. As for the temptation, I have already been led to it”.
However, not all female secretaries are morally bankrupt. There was this female secretary to a Pentecostal pastor I knew in Jos. One night after a mid-week service, the pastor’s phallus ran riot. He delayed the secretary until every worshipper had left. Summoning her to his office, he asked her to bolt the door because he did not want anyone to interrupt their discussion. In her innocence, she obeyed. No sooner had she secured the door than her boss rushed her from behind and seized her tempting bumbum. The secretary was taken aback. Nevertheless, she fought to rescue her arse from the boss’s grip but the unholy hands stuck to it like a leech and pleaded with her to understand. When she eventually liberated her arse, she turned around and dealt a heavy slap on her boss’s chubby cheek that sounded like a thunder clap. Abashed by the response he got, the pastor staggered back, dazed. He must have seen a million stars spinning around him. The disgusted secretary bolted from captivity before the stars disappeared. So, anytime I hear the popular Pestecostal tune “I can see everything turning around, everything turning around, everything turning around…. for my favour”, I remember that late night drama. The UNNgate should not go the way of Uduahgate. President Jonathan should seize this opportunity to reassure us and the international community that the anti-corruption war has not been totally lost. We just need one fat scapegoat to be sacrificed on the altar of probity and you won’t believe the domino effect it would have on the cesspool of corruption.
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