"Not gold, but only men can make a nation great and strong. men who for truth's and honour's sake stand fast and suffer long; brave men who work while others sleep; who dare while others shy. They build a nation's pillars deep and lift them to the sky." - Ralph Waldo Emmerson.
As I write this piece, I am choked with a lot of incurably complex emotions: anger, contempt sorrow, love etc. I was feeling helpless a moment ago when something reminded me I can get a pen and shoot back. That is just what I’m doing here.
On an average busy day, a lot of things can happen to provoke the above mentioned emotions. But I don’t think what makes me feel this way happened this afternoon. Instead, it is an accumulation of desperation, anger, frustration and depression over the years. I should not bother you about my emotions because not many people care how I feel. And I don’t care how they feel either. What I care is that everyone does what he/she should do, when it should be done and how it must be done. The weather in Makurdi is very hot and as I sit on the second floor of an upstairs here, I can explore the topography of the town with my eyes. The streets are busy with vehicular movements. People are coming and going at a very fast speed. People here are very serious about their businesses. From the recharge cards’ sellers to the fuel hawkers, the story is the same. They all want to earn a decent living with a more comfortable future. The noise here gives me headache. I asked myself a moment ago why I have to be here in the hot Makurdi sun. the answer was clear: I was looking for something I have never been able to find for the past two years: something I might never find in Nigeria.
Do you wonder what it is? Well, what else should a naïve nineteen-year-old guy be looking for but an education that can equip him for the future life? There are many people of my age who want to go school. We have gone through the process many times and have still been unsuccessful. My inspiration is drying up but I must complete this piece. Sometimes it is better to wait until something like the ASUU strike or the Jos crises happens before one can draw enough inspiration to exhaust a page, writing. One question I have always asked is why not all the kids who want to go to school can. There is no direct answer to this, but I have experienced some likely reasons. One of them is that some of these kids are not strong enough to scramble for the little spaces our under capacitated universities offer for admission. Another is that some kids are not equal enough to be enrolled into some courses.
One major reason however, is that government at all levels do not care whether these kids go to school or not. This explains why at a moment like this when over a million candidates sit for the UME a year, the federal government has committed less than seven percent of the annual budget to education. Of these only few would be absorbed into the university system. The rest have to wait. No, they don’t just wait; they keep sitting for the exams. As the years go by, the war to secure university admission is getting hotter. Secondary schools are pouring out their products in great numbers. Some of my admission-seeking comrades have been advised to go in for any course. They are told that what matters is the certificate with which they can get a job and make money. So someone who wants to study Law should go and study Toilet Maintenance because a certificate is a certificate and money is money, isn’t it? But people forget one thing. We are not going to school so as to get work and make money. We already have a lot of work to do. What we want to get from school is the ability with which we can do this work. We have a civil service that is dull, for instance. We also have representative in our Legislatures who go there only to fight themselves over money. Some of them would run two terms and yet not pass the Freedom of Information Bill. All these are backlogs of work to be done. So who is going to school to look for work? And we don’t make money; we only earn it.
Now to go to school in Nigeria is as difficult as smuggling cocaine into the United States. The average Nigerian university is difficult to describe. To gain admission into the university is a life-long ambition and to graduate is more than an eternal struggle. Once in a while the ASUU-Federal Government abracadabra would close universities for months. Then closely following would be the Jos Annual Fighting Festival. All these conspire to keep the Nigerian student in school long after he should have graduated. When Boko Haram scattered Bauchi last year, how many students lost their lives? How many in Jos? University authorities would still increase school fees and students would protest leading to closure of the universities. Two years and some months, a session that should have taken only a year would still not be completed. Before a lecturer can define what a noun is, the university is closed for a warning or informing strike. The students would be on the road home, to an fro, forever like a pendulum bob suspended by nature.
That we want to go to school in a land called Nigeria is the only offence for which the federal and states governments have been punishing us this way. We cannot talk much because they are the government and who are we? We are a disorganized group of little noise-making heads. The government is too busy going to Japan to woo investors. And the argument is that we have no choice. Those who have choices are studying in Canada, Britain, Malaysia or even Sierra Leone that stopped fighting only yesterday. But I argue that we have a choice. Yes, since our own governments cannot provide for us this basic opportunity to help us help ourselves, we can run away to Libya where a number of our countrymen are already waiting to die. Yes, what difference does it make?
Now, to be educated is my right and I don’t have to beg for it. All concerned individuals and government agencies, should please take note or I will run away.
