Murder on Their Minds was supposed to be the title of today’s Franktalk. It was supposed to be a reaction to the tales by moonlight emerging from Akwa Ibom and Ogun states. But I decided to leave the politicians to their own game and address a more serious issue; which is the ongoing strike by public school teachers.

For one, I do not take politicians seriously when they raise alarm that somebody is after their lives. My natural inclination is to wait until they get killed first before I believe them. I have lived in this country long enough to know that our politicians play politics with just anything and everything – including assassination (and/or claims of it). So, I have somewhat become cynical of these claims.

Furthermore, I am old enough to know that Nigerian politicians have long gone beyond sending goons after opponents to bump them off with guns. The nearest we still have to that is that they organise an “armed robbery” and, in the process, eliminate whomsoever they want to.
We have also had instances where an ordinary handshake could see you dying instalmentally. The way the KGB would kill an ex-spy in UK, for instance.
But even that could amount to taking the Science too for. Our politicians would rather rely on our own local Science.

Yes, we know what politicians do when they really want to kill themselves. They put such opponents in prayers - traditional prayers, that is. And when they offer such ‘prayers for any opponent, you see men who have no history of high blood pressure or any other heart condition come down with stroke, paralysis, convulsion, epilepsy, blindness, loss of speech, etc. It is then you see men who can’t swim (and who have never swam before) suddenly deciding to go swimming at the Bar Beach. It is then that you see a brand new vehicle fail brake, leave the road, jump gutter (and sometimes, fence wall, or even roof) to go and crush somebody relaxing in his backyard. It is then that you suddenly see a trailer going its jeje way, and two small cars are struggling between themselves on which one should be the first to run under the trailer and get crushed.

It is then that you see a politician who has abused the wrong people suddenly open his mouth to talk more and begin to bark like a dog. Ask the First Republic politicians, and they would tell you that waylaying your opponents with guns and machetes have never been a preferred way of getting rid of them. What would you tell the police when they begin to ask questions? Would it not be better to do it in such a way that the homicide people would have nothing to write in their Oyibo books? Yes, nothing that would not make them look stupid before the Oyibo people that trained them!

I learnt that two or three of the aspirants to the local government election have died ‘mysteriously’. The police can go draw their chalk and do postmortem, but we know, they will not find anything other than cardiac arrest – which I am told, is what eventually kills everybody (whether you were shot, poisoned or had full-blown AIDS). That is more like it.

Those who don’t want to kill you make sure that you take ill on the most crucial day of election, screening, primaries, or simply ensure that your lawyer meets with a little domestic accident on the day he is scheduled to argue your case at the tribunal or court.
So, when politicians suddenly begin to allege that some people (usually opponents) want to assassinate them, I just laugh it off- whether it is in Akwa Ibom, Ogun or even Oyo State. Because, even they know that we know that they are playing politics.

Not too long ago, Ajimobi, the ANPP candidate to the last guber election in Oyo, accused agents of the Alao-Akala government of plotting to kill him. They denied it. But barely a week later, they too came up with an allegation of their own, claiming that Ajimobi was also plotting to kill them. One-one goalless draw. Case closed. That is as far as the politics of assassination goes. From time to time, the AC and the PDP in Osun, Ogun, Ekiti, Ondo and Adamawa also play it on themselves.
And everybody, including the police, knows it. Or else, how can the police tell us that they have granted bail to a “confessed killer” who said he was paid N600 million to kill Gov. Godswill Akpabio and Mr. Timi Alaibe, even as they were yet to get anywhere with the investigations?

Well, I expect that in another week or two, the named NDDC director said to be behind the plot to kill the two men would also regale us with stories about how the two men had come close to killing him in the past and how he did not send anybody to revenge on his behalf.

It seems the surest way to throw a serving public officer off his guard is to accuse him of masterminding assassinations. But the truth is: If these people actually want to kill you, you’d be dead before you realised it. That is not to say there are no political assassinations. There are. Plenty of them, in fact. The only problem is that the plots don’t usually leak out before the deed. That is why we lost the Iges, Dikibos and the Harry Marshals of this world. As soon as it leaks, there is usually nothing to it.

But sometimes, I mischievously wish the politicians could get a little luckier with bumping off themselves. Maybe, in the long run, we would get good politicians who – in government – would not be so insensate to the plight of teachers. Politicians who, having their own children in our schools, would do everything to ensure that our teachers earn a living wage. Not politicians who, having sent off their own children to schools in England, US, Canada, Australia, Ghana, and even South Africa (where only God knows what they teach them), would now pretend all is well when our schools are shut down for a whole year.

I have my own children in a private school, but God knows I would not raise a voice against NUT and NLC in the event that they decide to picket the private schools. Which is why I strongly feel we need to address the current teachers’ strike – not really for the sake of the striking teachers, but for our own selfish interest. And for the safety of our children – for sending them abroad to study does not still solve the problem.

The good Lord has always had a way of punishing all of us for this neglect of the public schools. By the time our children have gone round the world to get the best Ivy League education, and thoroughly prepared to take the mantle of leadership in Nigeria, they would come back to find out that those they are supposed to come and lead did not get even the basic education to make them good followers.
Secondly, they would find out that all the councillorship and local government chairmanship positions have been taken up by the uneducated and semi-illiterate children of our maiguards, drivers, cleaners, cooks and gardeners who could not even afford a good secondary education.

And that would still not be all: Those of them who could not tout their way into local government and PDP secretariat would be the bandits who would ambush our sophisticated children on the road and at home, dispossess them of whatever they might have brought back from their overseas base, and even kidnap them for a handsome ransom in some instances.

Our only choice then would be to ask our kids to continue to stay abroad (as second class and third class citizens of those countries) and leave Nigeria (their own country) for those whom we have failed to educate today.
So, it is not in the interest of the teachers that we talk, it is in our own interest that we listen to them.
Nothing we pay our teachers is too much, especially in a country where we routinely pad and upwardly review the salaries of all manner of public officers – in addition to all that they have already helped themselves with from our national till.

Is it not tragic that many of the teachers who selflessly saw to the education of all of us, and still do so for our children, cannot even afford to send their own children to school?
That is why teachers no longer concentrate on teaching. They continue to look out for something else to do to earn a little extra to be able to afford three square meals.
Isn’t it a national disgrace that barely two years after leaving university with a Pass or Third Class degree and getting work even in a government department, many of us are able to pay all the lecturers in our departments and still have enough to keep a chain of concubines?

And we say we do not know why standards are dropping?
Until we begin to give our teachers the serious attention they deserve, standards will continue to fall even lower. Exam malpractice would continue to be on the rise and academic calendar would continue to be disrupted.
I know the big men have a ready option: Send their kids and wards abroad – which is another national tragedy. Because, time was when Nigerians abroad (including those on diplomatic missions) sent their children home to be educated here. But the situation has reversed. Everyone, including even civil servants who are supposed to be in the lower middle class, now sends his kids abroad for education. Before our very eyes, we have lost everything.

Time was when our parents reported us to our teachers for discipline. Today, every parent rushes back to his child’s school belching smoke each time the kid gets home and reports that his teacher gave him as much as a slap on the wrist. We go to throw our weight around, and remind the teacher and his headmaster that they must never discipline our children, that we would make sure they rot in jail if they ever tried it again.

That is why, sometimes, I look at the education minister and feel thoroughly ashamed that he passed through the same Federal Government College Ilorin that I attended.
The politicians can kill themselves; it is okay, but they should, please, not kill our education.