A Professor of English at the University of New Orleans , U .S .A , Niyi Osundare, has urged Ekiti State Governor -elect, Dr . Kayode Fayemi to banish desperate, extreme need and deprivation in the state .
He gave the charge in a message titled: ‘Still in Defence of Lasting Value’ at the Governor Kayode Fayemi Inauguration Lecture , in Ado Ekiti yesterday .
The renowned poet lamented that the situation had turned a proud people of Ekiti into exponents of the stomach infrastructure.
Osundare, who went down memory lane in the lecture on the cherished values of Ekiti people said : “ I never saw people starve and die in the Ekiti of my youthful days . Whoever had a little more shared the surplus with the needy and hungry .
“ Hard work and honest labour were highly valued, and the length of your ogba usu ( yam barn ) at harvest time in December and/ or the impressive expanse of your cocoa farm were the toast of the town , which brought honour to you and your family , and might even win you a new wife .
He added that “ wealth , honestly earned , was respected; wealth from dubious sources was disdained and ridiculed in traditional songs and snide remarks. ”
According to the professor : “ The barbarism and jungle justice witnessed in this state in the past four years is, without doubt , a consequence of the decimation of those long -enshrined Ekiti values that have featured so prominently in this lecture.
“ All of a sudden, illiteracy became so attractive, even desirable in a state where virtually every family boasts a university graduate , and the designation ‘Professor ’ used to rank close to highest in the order of enviable titles .
Osundare expressed concern about that there grew a sickening mentality that literally made you apologetic for being ‘too educated ’.
He said : “ Our artisans , transport workers, Okada operators , and others less privileged largely due to the bottom of the pit to which a satanically unjust society has thrown them , were inveigled into thanking their stars for not having been corrupted by education .
“ They were turned into the army for the enactment of wrong-headed , ill motivated civil disobedience , implementation of arbitrary political fiats and enforcement undemocratic edicts . A one -man authoritarian rule emerged that was strange even to the spirit of Nigeria ’s ‘nascent democracy.”
