ETISALAT, ABU ZARIA AND A WHOLE LOT OF HULLABALOO

As I’m writing, I’m still not sure what to name this post. I’m sure y’all got back from the break to meet a splash of green and black everywhere. You must be living under a rock or probably in Shika (‘cause Kongites were aptly represented) not to have noticed the presence of the telecommunication company, Etisalat in our illustrious school. Sincerely, I don’t mean to sound like a broken record with all my criticism and all, but one of us has to be the voice of reason on this campus. We may be all excitedly chattering away and singing praises for Etisalat for the Kia Picanto they gave away, but all is said and done, and the hullabaloo has died down, let us sit down and critically examine in our minds the whole show that Etisalat put on for us.

Okay, a lot of you will probably disagree with me on this first one but I’m gonna come out and say it. The empowerment seminar with Niyi Adesanya was not all it was hyped to be. This is probably because I’m not easily impressed having grown up in a world of books written by renowned authors. Fine! The guy is charismatic and knows how to work a crowd, my God! He had even me up and cheering the whole ‘I have a dream’, ‘I am a champion’, etc., but when I sat down, I asked my neighbor if he could list five new things he’d learnt from Mr. Adesanya’s talk that he could apply to his life to be successful and what not, and he came up blank. Oh, not to lie, I picked up my own lessons from the stories he told, only that he never pointed them out as the points he wanted us to grasp (no pun intended). Though, some people learnt what they learnt… Maybe I’m the one with the problem (I wish!). Still on the seminar, the engineer that came out to share his success story was just a joke. All he told us was that he finished school, got a job with Water Board, Kano, then with Shell Nigeria, and then ventured into some failed attempts at politics. What is the lesson here please? That we should look for good jobs when we graduate? Oh well, at least I enjoyed the comedians. *shrug*

As for the prizes given, why in God’s name will Etisalat give out only twelve or thirteen items (these are the ones up for grabs in the draws and not the whole footballers’ own) in a school as populated as Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. When I heard the whole noise and read the posters, I expected about 50 items, AT LEAST. They gave out only two blackberries and two laptops, then about eight Nokias, then an Andriod or two (not 100% sure of my figures, so make una no quote me anywhere o), and the car. You may want to still get impressed, but look at these calculations. Imagine a thousand students buying the raffle tickets at N200 a piece, that’s N200, 000. That has already bought all the miserable Nokias and the two Blackberries in fact. Think 2000 students and the figure doubles. This has in fact covered the expenses they incurred on all of the gifts, save the Picanto. And I can bet you from the tickets I saw that nothing less than 8000 tickets (GIVE or take some thousands) were sold.

So you can indeed see that Etisalat really didn’t impress as you were probably thinking. They probably even made a profit. And trust our rumor carriers for ABU, Zaria, tongues are wagging. No be me go tell you wetin them dey talk, before I enter bege (trouble) with some Ogas at the Top. Before signing out, in case you were wondering who won the car, it was a 200 level electrical engineering student, also a member of Fellowship of Christian Students (na God do am *hehehehe*). Still, Kudos to the Students Representative Council for such a fun two weeks in an otherwise dreary Ahmadu Bello University. I remain your voice of reason and social critique, @Osilama24.