PROFESSOR EDMUND NUNIE AND OTHERS SHOULD BE BOOTED OUT OF THE UNIVERSITY
By Kabs Kanu
This is Professor Edmond Nunie, the scum behind the SLPP Lecturers Association at FBC and the University of Sierra Leone. He was heard loudly advocating that every lecturer should become SLPP .
The scum is failing to realize that the University is not the citadel of partisan politics. The university is always the hotbed of academic and political freedom. People should be free in academia to decide where they want to belong and activist partisan politics should not be the forte of lecturers.
Lecturers are hired and paid to teach students and prepare them as future leaders of their country. It is their duty to teach students about diversity, democracy and freedom to chose —Not to become bigots forcing one political party down the throats of people in the academic campus.
If the University is non-partisan and apolitical as we once knew it, this NUNIE chap and others of his partisan political kind should be booted from the university, because they are a danger to intellectualism.
In Sierra Leone, we have seen the systematic politicization and tribalization of our ministries, departments and agencies ( MDAs ) and our social and governance institutions. You have to speak a certain language and come from a certain region to be employed or receive any headway in these institutions. Even the judiciary has been politicized and tribalized. Is that what they want to do to the University of Sierra Leone, once the Athens of West Africa ?
Our concern is what happens to lecturers who refuse to become SLPP? Will they not become victims of marginalization and victimization ? What happens to students who refuse to convert to SLPP ? Will they be graded fairly ? Will they enjoy the same benefits as the SLPP students ?
Politics is dangerously polarized and tribalized in Sierra Leone and a cat-and-dog relationship exists between supporters of the SLPP —who draw their support from the Mendes —and APC—who are supported by the Creoles, Temnes, Limbas, Lokkos and other Northern tribes. Tribalism has become the deciding factor for employment and the enjoyment of opportunities and privileges. The ruling SLPP has given most jobs and opportunities to Mendes.
The question is, if you turn the university into an SLPP institution what happens to lecturers and students who are not Mendes ?
Let us look at the matter even more deeply. What if other lecturers, in a fit of outrage form the APC Lecturers Association ? Given the blood-enemy relationship between the SLPP and APC, would that not be an invitation for constant political squabbles between lecturers to the detriment of academic work ? What will be the fate of academic exercise in the university ?
The University should act speedily to arrest this dangerous situation . It is not good for peace and love in the university and the nation. Nor will it foster good learning and equal opportunities for all.
