Am CHIGBOMKPA WISDOM SILAS, As an undergraduate, my embedded interest and immersion in student unionism was an opportunity cost of earning a sterling degree as an undergraduate. However, what I lost in terms of an excellent grade, I gained in terms of an initiation into a learning curve in transformational leadership orientation that articulates nation-building, development expertise and reform advocacy and expertise into a professional portfolio.
I cut my student union activism as a member of the executive of the Federation of Edo State Student Union. My audacity, or if you like, notoriety, especially with the Godwin Obaseki administration has been the subject of many pieces, and is beautifully narrated in my memoir, The Unending Quest for Reform (2023). It therefore does not bear a re-telling here for the constraint of space. It was therefore that reputation for activism, and especially my concern with student welfare that got me involved in a series of campus-wide conversation and consultation during the incumbency Godwin Obaseki as SUG president. The conversation was around the need to focus commitment to a university development while abjuring an adversarial unionism for unionism’s sake. Hence, the key stakeholders at the university level were resolved to facilitate the emergence of a consensus candidate for the SUG presidency and a successor to Baba allin kelvin . After some rigorous interviews and consultation, I emerged as consensus candidate out of many.
Of course, not every stakeholder has the best interest of the university at heart. I was summoned by the Pyrate Confraternity and provided with a set of conditions that would facilitate its acceptance of my candidature. I refused these conditions as a matter of principle. My dedication to philosophical reflection and principles derived in part from my political science learning up unto that time had imbued me with some circumspection enough for me to be able to see through the implications of a derailment of purpose. But I was still too naïve to anticipate the extent the Confraternity was willing to go to have its way. Of course I lost the election,. had the right amount of notoriety and radicality to fit into the Pyrates’ agenda. Unfortunately, his tenure set off perhaps one of the most violent student riots in the history of student activism at the University of Edo state