Losing one of our own will always be shattering, and more shattering, especially in the way Happiness Odeh was lost. To think the young lady had just emerged a beauty queen in the recently organized Miss MAPOLY beauty contest only to meet death in a cold, barbaric way re-establishes the uncertainties of life made worse by a highly insecure nation like Nigeria.
As expected, her story, in the excruciating negative, took national interest contributing to the tolls of avoidable deaths our young population have been meeting as a result of a porous security system. This could have been anyone, from any school, from any family, but this was a Nigerian in a tertiary institution with the potential to contribute to a better society but a government contemptuous of such.
Unfortunately, the blame game would not bring back Odeh just like it has never brought back the litany of others who have suffered similar fate, not to mention that we are also bequeathed with a faint hope of justice for Odeh in cognizance of the disreputable incompetence of our law enforcement wing to swoop on perpetrators of crime and mete out justice, especially when the victim is not an “elite”.
What you find as we have been flushed with are condolences, commiseration, tributes from political opportunists who never cared zilch for her when alive finding a way to her family’s house with a dour mien, sympathetic aura, and Eldorado tongues that as often seen leaves with them, never making a return.
We are familiar with this cycle, devastatingly so; yet another example to bring back the prayer: may Nigeria not happen to you. In all, what can we do but pine for our mate’s heartbreaking death to be among the very few whose justice would one way or the other be effected.
That said, it brings us additional heartbreak as a press outfit on campus that in our responsibility to inform the students’ populace as ethical as we have been doing for the over 23 years we have been on MAPOLY Campus, the students’ leaders would choose this grieving moment to play a shameful antics for reasons best known to them.
Press Club MAPOLY has over the years earned a reputation as the only registered and recognized press outfit in our over 23 years on campus. Over these years, there have been mushroom campus media outlets that have sprung up to compete with us for information dissemination in MAPOLY but due to their propagandist motive, the management has always rejected them, only authorizing PCM for we have proven to always stand by the truth and repulse being used as a puppet for propaganda.
Unfortunately, it was so disappointing to see “our” students leaders go ahead to recruit one of those platforms that have tried to compete with us in the past but have been rejected by the management for its unprofessionalism just so they can debunk a statement they made in a report we have them on tape making. If they can do this, going to get an unauthorized platform to do their bidding, then the question is: are we really safe with these guys steering the leadership of the students’ populace? But then, we should not be surprised at their brazen rebellion for constitutional authority and fair play. If one recalls well, they also did go to bring an unauthorized team to come play a football-friendly match with us, caring less about the security of the students as prioritized by the management.
Anyway, we receive their slander in good faith. We receive their quality of leadership in good faith. We would not know why after saying what they said of which we have the evidence, they would now want to withdraw it. But then, we understand that sometimes you can say something and then realize you have goofed. But then, ideally, the next thing as leaders you are supposed to do is to find a peaceful way of resolving your mistakes. But what will our student leaders do?
They would rather want to foist their mistake on us, make it look as though they didn’t goof, so they can save their head and make us lose ours — a risible narrative of someone wanting to eat their cake and still have it. But then, we have a principle in Press Club MAPOLY, and that is: based on truth, and we have never for once in our over 23 years on campus gone against this principle. If the students’ leaders want to continue to deny what they told us, we have decided in honor of Odeh, we would leave them to their chosen path of lies, deceit, and pride.
Odeh deserves the honor of the moment of grieving, and any scuffle at this moment with her as the subject would be disrespectful to her, her parents, her friends, and the students’ community, as such, we won’t be prolonging this issue beyond this, making peace with our evidence.
With that communicated, Odeh’s death is a louder reminder of how we must be more careful and security conscious of our movements. Insecurity, as seen, is not only peculiar to the north, to the Christian, to the Muslim, to the old, but virtually all compatriots. Students should therefore take a more serious disposition to their security, especially without the school.
