By Paul Mamza
Power in Africa is a veritable instrument for the primitive accumulation of public wealth and coercion. Nigeria mirrored the rhetorical image of the giant of the black continent in that the very act that haunts the continent by a way of its peculiar undoing is playing magic struck in Nigeria, haunting its people but keeping the system moving on a crashing disorientations.
The country moved swiftly from the institutionalization of corruption to the internationalization of corruption in recent times. Material worships had eaten deep into the fabric of the society not because Nigerians are the poorest but because their hearts are traumatic effects of greed, avarice, and easy virtues, while the descriptions of power is vested in a person rather than the people. Immorality rules the roost in the Nigerian system and credibility of conduct both at public and private levels are at its lowest ebb.
To most Nigerians ethics is the innovative power of deception, fraud and kleptomania. Mercilessness garbed as a the crudest form of irresponsible leadership had presented a kind of odd heroism supplying the expectations and demands of an already corrupt society, corruption being the language of understanding of most Nigerians.
Based on these crooking infiltrations into the fiber of the Nigerian society, the moral crises had also tendered a lack of appreciation of the core value systems that make a society achieve efficiency, progress, and accuracy in public service, transparency, and justice in governance. For a long time, the values are thrown to the winds, at present buried in the graveyard of mindless irresponsibility and there’s little hope that Nigeria would rise again and imbibe the verifiable qualities of humanism and civility in the near future.
The fact is that Nigeria is not an empire lasso for radical changes due to the ailing-class dominance and its pervaded mindset against humanity. It is easier to summarize that the leadership in Nigeria had planted a demystifying apocalypse in some recklessness of an act.
If the truth must be told, it requires a radical tormenting physical to uproot the very basis of the country’s prevailing catastrophe. No country in the world had been so deceived, cajoled, and subdued in a ranking negative like Nigeria. That is why men of due honor hardly make it to the end in the contest of the squeezing realities or immortalized because their valuable images are anti-dote to the sustenance and growth of corruption.
Professor, Ishaya Shuaibu Audu is one personality that had lived a life full of devotion to the service of mankind and selfless leadership. Born on the 1st of March 1927 in Anchau, Ikara Local Government Area of Kaduna State.
Professor Audu was a personal physician to the Premier of Northern Nigeria, the 1st indigenous Vice-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University Zaria (1966-1975), an Honourable Minister of External Affairs of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1980-1983), and Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Nigeria to the United Nations, New York (1983) among the many positions and appointments, he held but had only his integrity and humility as its product.
When will Doguwa stop the selective spread of federal opportunities to constituents?
In an era when even a Local Government councilor can secure overwhelming access to public treasury for personal enrichments as mansions, streams of choice cars, etc, Professor Audu’s held about ten national assignments, even at an era of the oil-boom, at the tender age of 39 as the Vice-chancellor with his school mate and brother, General Yakubu Gowon as the Head of State he would have enriched himself for the nine years, in the Second Republic he was a Minister of prominence that would have prepared him for the rainy days especially when there was a national feast of public funds.
Before his death, he was the Chairman National Health Insurance Scheme. But here was a man who could not sponsor himself for medical treatment abroad! Here was a man who established a Clinic (Savannah Polyclinic) and a Church (Charity and Faith Mission inc.) with his meager resources just for the service of humanity.
His great contributions to the development, peace, and progress of Nigeria as a whole stand him out amongst the likes of few eminent Nigerians”. Amongst his contemporaries, one can hardly count ten Nigerians that had the leadership qualities of Professor Ishaya Audu. Here was a man that left Ahmadu Bello University in 1975 as its Vice-Chancellor but still attached to the university in character-building, consultancy, and advisory capacities without anticipation of any reward.
The Charity and Faith Mission which he established within the trekking premises of the University also aided in transforming the lives through reformations of the predominantly young people mostly students of Ahmadu Bello University into a model emulative of the life of Jesus Christ that emphasizes selflessness and sacrifice. At one time he was a part-time Chaplain of the University, several years after his retirement from active service in the University.
The Charity and Faith Mission Inc., which he established ran a center for Continuing Education that award diploma, certificates in public health care, with pastoral discipleship training and extra moral lessons barely free of charge. Professor Ishaya Audu no doubt lived an exemplary life, a life of complete devotion in the service to God and humanity without expecting rewards on earth.
His diligence, patriotism, and contributions to nation-building were evident in his flag of discipline and fundamental ideology. He left a big and long shoe that can hardly be warred by diligence, patriotism, selflessness, prudence, the fear of God, and open-mindedness. As a humanist, he had left a big vacuum that would for a long-time be left intact due to the self-centered tendencies of the majority of Nigerians.
