FACELESS ATTACKS ON KNUST

FACELESS ATTACKS ON KNUST
…the nuisance of ‘Nana Abrokwa, ‘Victor Pul’ and their ‘Siblings’
In recent times, our noble institution, KNUST has enjoyed tremendous rise both in infrastructure and international reputation. We rose from being 20th in University world rankings to more respectable higher heights. One thing that adds up to these feat that keeps our competitors mute is the aesthetic nature of our campus. The well-kept lawns and nice landscaping just adds to our ‘swag’.
I am very sure the good reputation of the school currently will make any leader both at the staff and students level so proud and confident. In that same spirit, it will make leadership position more attractive to others than it used to. It is in the wake of this that I see a lot of ambitious young men and women girding their loins to take over the realms of leadership in the students political spheres. It is a positive signal when you see such enthusiasm and participatory spirit rising up on campus.
However good and positive the pictures might be showing, there is this worrying canker, which if not addressed quickly and substantially, will go a long way to cast a slur on both our aesthetic environment and our seemingly attractive leadership positions. This is the desperate, indiscriminate, unreasonable and unintellectual smearing of KNUST with all kinds of posters, papers and pamphlets bearing the names of students supposedly aspiring to various positions on campus. If these posters were just posted on provided notice boards and other convenient places intelligently, it would not have raised any eyebrows.
Sadly enough, when one takes a stroll through campus, one would witness a sudden surge of wall defacing revolutionists on our campus. The chief culprits of these deliberate and conscious and puerile behaviours are names like NANA ABROKWA and VICTOR PUL. There are numerous other culprits but these two names seem to be the superpowers of the game. Just take a walk from the Commercial area down through the Block A of Africa hall and take a cursory look at the back of that particular hall. It has been seriously defaced with the posters or teasers of a certain NANA ABROKWA. Signposts of different departments and bodies on campus, giving various vital information have been plastered with these same posters. The menace has spread all over campus that even the semi-literate photocopy guys around are becoming fed up with this nuisance.
What makes these unintelligent behaviours more worrying and dangerous is what they are aspiring for. If they were a group of anti- NICE KNUST crusaders, it would have been a bit understandable. However, these are people seeking high offices of students’ leadership. My understanding of leadership is the ability to guide, direct and influence people. So if those aspiring to these high offices are putting up such unruly behaviours, then the multi-million cedi question I ask is, is there a better future for KNUST and student leadership as a whole? If someone aspiring to be the next SRC president has the shameful gust and audacity to deface our only female hall in a desperate attempt to gain recognition, what information is he sending out to KNUST? Maybe he will deface our ladies on campus when he is made a leader or he will turn KNUST into some lawless jungle. Maybe that person will create a personality cult for himself by having a hall sprayed with his name all over it. Or yet still, they will endorse lawlessness on campus.

Sorry enough, this unruly behaviour has been tolerated for long and these culprits always manage to go through all the electoral vetting on campus without any scratch and go on to occupy undeserved positions on campus. it is hard time we speak against this nuisance and stand against it as well. My octogenarian grandmother who has never seen the inside of a classroom before will wail for KNUST, should she come here one day and see the mess created by these ‘enemies of the university’.
I think the office of the dean of students should take a cue from their counterparts in the University of Ghana, and start placing fines on such people. Other concrete and punitive measures should be put in place to deter others from joining these masquerades. The student bodies concerned should also take up arms against them. More so, departments and other bodies who have their sign posts and bill boards as victims of this politics of desperation should seek their pound of flesh.
I do not know if this NANA ABROKWA, VICTOR PUL and the like are pseudonyms, nicknames, pet names or real names. If they are real names, then students who will go to the polls and undertake other electoral processes should take a second and critical look at them. What is even more annoying is that habit of them writing the sayings of people and putting their names under it without appreciating the copyrights owners of those sayings. Plagiarism of the highest order, which every writer or creator will frown on.
It is very unfortunate that we want to inculcate this attitude into our students’ political culture. Let us renew the old things and be up to speed with the world. No one is a saint. We are all guilty in one way or the other. Let us not take bitterness out of this plea. Let us pick out the common sense in this piece and use it in building a better KNUST, with an aesthetic environment, devoid of lawless student leaders. Long live KNUST and short live the dreams of lawless people creating nuisance in order to become student leaders.

NB: the writer did not write in vacuum. He has travelled the path that these current ones are aspiring to tread and have a fair idea of the concerns he has raised.

Courage Ahiati
courageislove@gmail.com
couragesdiary.blogspot.com