That hunger and poverty are first cousins is no great sound bite. It’s actually a no brainer as just anyone can figure that out. What may be novel to some of us is a recent emergence that hunger borne out of extreme deprivation and want could morph into a most strange spirit.
Imagine what a hungry man would do to quieten his duodenal inquests. Nay, what wouldn’t he do in the face of acute existential push? It’s like a man at the precipice peering down the abyss; it’s a fight for life.
These imageries came to mind recently upon reading the sorry story of staff members of the Tai Solarin College of Education (TASCE), Omu-Ijebu, Ogun State. As the report goes, the staff – both academic and non – academic – have not been paid salaries for 28 months. That would be an entire two years and four months.
As you read this, TASCE workers would have commenced hunger strike, as they proposed, to press their points. But wouldn’t that amount to a starving man rejecting food? Have they not been on some form of abstinence in the last 28 months? Didn’t they say about 48 of their members have bitten the dust in these trying two years? Why do they contemplate mass suicide? Their tormentors would be pleased to be rid of them.
This is why Hardball is taken in by the previous methods the workers had adopted in trying to rouse their seemingly obdurate and insensate employers. According to report, the workers gathered a few days back and held what they say was “spiritual exercise.” It was dubbed “White Monday,” as most of the workers turned out in white attire.
The exercise, they say, was conducted according to both Christian and Muslim rites. They had held a prior exercise last December which was tagged “Black Thursday;” they dressed in black.
You must have heard about the Hardball instincts? Roughly summed, it’s something of an extraterrestrial antenna that picks otherworldly signals meant for worldly good. Hardball therefore thinks that instead of the double jeopardy of afflicting a hungry group with more hunger through a strike, the ‘fashion fair’ would be even more effective.
Imagine about a thousand workers, emaciated and haggard, all dressed in white and sepulchral; standing mutedly in front of the Ministry of Education complex or State Assembly for instance like white plague? Imagine a thousand bodies, all dressed in black attires rigged at any major intersection of a city – no word, no placard, no motion, no emotion or even commotion, just standing still and sad as death.
Protests like these around the capital for one week are sure to yield desired result. Call it spirit of hunger…
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