On that very evening, I mean the eve of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) Students Representative Council (SRC) elections, the whole university campus was engulfed with tension. As I stood there soaked with fear and emotional pains like Martin Luther King Jnr standing in the shadows of Abraham Lincoln delivering his remarkable speech, “I HAVE A DREAM”, so I also begun to have a dream for Unity Hall (Conti) and University Hall (Katanga).
I have a dream that the violence between Conti and Katanga which doesn’t solve any problem in KNUST but only dramatize and call attention to the existence of a social moral ill will end one day. I have a dream that one day Conti and Katanga will put their elbows together to upscale the existing status quo of KNUST and move from the darkness of our yesterday and the fatigue of our despair to the buoyancy of hope and a brighter KNUST.
I have a dream that one day Conti and Katanga will embrace each other not because of a victory from a football match between Chelsea and Man U or between Ghana and Nigeria, but it shall be an embrace fetched from the wells of love and a reverse of the gear of their hearts and conscience from a long hatred to a prolific affection for each other. And when this happens, a day shall come that on the bed of morality, Conti and Katanga will lie opposite each other and take relevant decisions for KNUST.
I have a dream that one day Katanga will stop carrying a coffin dramatizing an imaginary death of the VC but will carry placards wailing and fighting for the rights and freedoms of students. Trust me, one day, Conti and Katanga will hold hands together and sing songs that will soothe the hearts of the oppressed and depressed and will stop singing profane songs that debase the dignity of humanity. And I have a dream that one day, after the SRC president has delivered his speech at every SCC meeting, Conti and Katanga hall presidents will mount the stage and deliver the most remarkable speeches in the history of KNUST.
My brothers from Conti and Katanga, our generation faces some of the worst problems to be ever encountered such as unemployment and debts to be inherited by our future children and we must wake up and collectively face our challenges head on. In fact, the world is waiting for something newer than this wrong imitation of the past which we call hall traditions. Recently it was reported that one of our own has joined a terrorist group called ISIS, this should send a big warning note to us. Our influence on the various university campuses with the so called hall traditions which are more often carried out with strange practices, zeal and shadow occultism must be reconsidered.
We have received freshers (first year students) into our various halls and the best thing we can give them is not passing on our traditions called ‘morale’ and ‘charge’ to them but to awaken their conscience to the galling challenges we are facing in our generation and how to overcome them collectively.
I am not a prophet but a dream waver. But trust me; if the ‘power’ of Conti is infused with the ‘charge’ of Katanga intellectually, we will certainly rest not. Long live Conti and Katanga, long live Africa. God bless you.
“We are not children of a lesser god”.
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