I once took a letter of attestation to one Mr. Tom Osazuwa to endorse on behalf of somebody way back in Auchi Polytechnic and after a deep meditation, he said: “if anything goes wrong, I will say when I knew her…” exactly! That is the Catch-22: “when I knew her”.
We are in the season of testimonials, attestations and certificates when school heads, principals, headmasters, rectors, provosts and even vice chancellors testify on an innocuous piece of paper that the character exhibited by a product of their institutions is good enough to withstand the vagaries of societal demands years, decades and eons thereafter.
My secondary school days had a dramatic ending. The principal, Mr. Emuakpeje, well known as a rabble rouser, elicited some minor skirmish from the graduating Class Five students that attracted some traditional rulers and the dreaded ACIE (Assistant Chief Inspector of Education) into the school. Those ACIEs were some monstrosities in the Education sector way back in the 1970s. At the end of the peace meeting preceded by acts of bureaucratic intimidation, more rabble rousing and unsolicited intellectual posturing by the head of the institution, about nine of us were singled out for vilification. And the only tool available was the ubiquitous TESTIMONIAL!
And what did the nine of us get on the column for conduct? FAIR IN CHARACTER. For the rest of the pack, our conduct was SATISFACTORY to the principal. Methinks it was a narrow escape for quite a lot of us but it is left to know how that judgement has affected our later lives. It was about 44 years ago and quite difficult to trace everyone to know how best we have done with the comments of our principal but one of those that got the FAIR IN CHARACTER comment currently pastors a prominent church in Eastern Nigeria. Another, according to reports, is a legal practitioner in the United Kingdom while one of those who got the SATISFACTORY is still having issues to settle with the Federal Government on account of how he executed the public office that he had the privilege of holding.
In the light of the above, Mr. Osazuwa’s wise statement comes to prominence: “when I knew her…” and here the framers of the English Language and their unrepentant adherents have some explanation to offer. Somebody goes through a primary school for six years and upon leaving, the headmaster says HE IS OF GOOD CHARACTER, DILIGENT IN ASSIGNMENTS AND PRUDENT IN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT. Erastus Akingbola of the defunct Intercontinental Bank, Cecilia Ibru of the defunct Oceanic Bank and many others of their ilk brandish testimonials bearing such accolades, right?
The man who was superintending the empire that qualifies people for admission into ivory towers where upon a scheduled sojourn are qualified both in character and in learning for the academic degrees they were consequently awarded today is a regular visitor to the courts to explain why he was being given billions of naira to run an organization where his successor has turned into a money–spinning machine for the federal government. How credible will be the certificates which originated from such a warped and compromised mind owned by one Prof. Dibu Ojerinde and an institution called the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB)?
Nigeria’s Senate President (is he a Mr., Chief or Dr?) Godswill Akpabio attended a primary school, no doubt. Ditto the Speaker of the House of Representatives. They also attended universities and other institutions of higher learning. They both brandish testimonials, certificates and degrees from ivory towers that indicate they are men of diligent character, compassionate, considerate, prudent, and more of such. They have received awards and will receive more to convince the world about their humaneness. Today, they preside over an institution that approved N500 billion to be paid to 12 million Nigerians to relieve them from multidimensional poverty, while approving N70 billion for about 490 of them in the National Assembly where they seat as the unchallenged and impeccable mandarins despite their despicable mannerisms.
The headmasters of the primary schools attended by these prominent Nigerian citizens, if they are still alive, are likely to be among those multi-dimensionally poor Nigerians. What will be going through their minds, knowing that those they testified for are sitting and presiding over the strangulation of Nigeria and the squandering of our collective patrimony?
Until very recently, Mmesoma was just another ordinary name among the Igbos. When other candidates who took the last unified tertiary matriculation examinations were busy praying for a result that would guarantee them a space in the institutions of their choice (if there ever was such a guarantee on account of your scores in the JAMB examinations), Miss Mmesoma Ejikeme was on her phone manipulating her scores to a reasonable, comfortable and maybe defensible score. Defensible because she had the capacity to have awarded herself the maximum obtainable marks of 400, but she rather chose 362 to avert the prying eyes of an idle public away from her misdemeanor.
Before the flurry of “counter-incentives” began to flood her way, Mmesoma was on her way to glory (or more appropriately vainglory). This confirms the time-honored dictum that while success has many relations, failure is an orphan. With the colossal deluge of negative invectives to her persona, Mmesoma totters on the brink of psychic inertia. One thing remains quite obvious and has neither been withdrawn nor seen to have been withdrawn: HER TESTIMONIAL from her secondary which, to all intents and purposes would have honored her as the brightest star in the firmament of universal reckoning, or such voluptuous and verbose commendations.
Some universities issue certificates that read “having been found worthy in character and in learning, this certificate is issued to…..”. At the end of the day, does that statement survive the time, or is there a mechanism to check how the holders of such accolades are deploying the instrument of trust bestowed on them?
The grouse here is about the use of IS and WAS in testimonials. M. C. Oluomo that threatens Mama Chukwudi not to dare come out and vote in her own interest, Mahmoud Yakubu that conducts a multi-dimensionally flawed elections, the leader of those goons that snuffed life out of their fellow students like happened in University of Benin, recently, the owners of the hotel where a post-graduate student of the Obafemi Awolowo University was brutally murdered, all of them brandish testimonials that attest to their good conduct. Do their present character and conduct justify the finely selected accoutrements with which they were dressed in the past?
I got an umbrage for attesting that somebody “was of good conduct”. Now, here is the story: somebody goes through an institution and five years later, you are requested to attest to the conduct of the person. What tense should apply here – the present, or the past tense? When the testimonial was read, there was mayhem. It is not proper to say that the student “was of good conduct” five years ago, but rather she is of good conduct today, after I last saw her five years ago!
You can put lies in books, but books on their own do not lie. As the Minister of Information under President Muhammadu Buhari, Mr. Lai Mohammed might have lied just a little just a few times. Those lies were written in books, so while Lai might have lied a little and those lies were written down in books, those books will never lie because eons later, what is written in them remain in their original state. When Mr. Akinyemi therefore brought an agreement written in the 1870s in Yoruba language between two families over land to this writer in his office, the sanctity of the written word became more apparent.
A lot of people are today justifiably in jail whose characters had been attested to by people with the competent authority to so do. Who should be held accountable for those people that have engaged in the malfeasance that led to their incarceration? Is it the English Language or the application of it? Or better still, should those that attested to the impeccability of such characters be held to account?
Those who know should please step forward for recognition while I plead to be continue exercising my privilege of “thinking allowed”.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Igbinedion, educationist, writes from Lagos
