The Nigeria of these days is rather amazing. It is one that is quite disheartening. We toil and struggle to go to school in this present day Nigeria, yet we are derided and called different names, addressed in different uncomplimentary ways, ways unbefitting of people of our standing.
People of the generation before mine went to school in Nigeria when it was convenient to go; they went at a time when one would be very happy to be a student of tertiary institution. They were students when dear Mama Naija was great enough to cater for her youths, cater for her students.
They did not bother about cooking their meals while in school; they never bothered about doing laundries. They did not go through the stress and hassles of transportation on campus or having to live off-campus because the edict establishing their school made it non-residential, like some of our new institutions of higher learning.
The students of these present-day Nigeria go through a lot of stress. Apart from having to gain admission in manners harder than that of a camel passing through the eye of a needle, they face a lot of problems. Lectures are fixed arbitrarily, fixed in manners that are only comfortable for the lecturers without any bit of pity for the students.
The lecturers get to call the students all sorts of names. They do these for reasons best known to them. Students are hounded and victimized, they are grounded and vilified. They only find solace in the hands and hearts of some colleagues of like minds and of course, their sponsors and loved ones. It may even be one of the reasons students are engaged with ‘that very close someone’, they may need to share their burdens with one of them who is ready to give a shoulder to lean on.
Now who is to blame for all these katakata (confusion)? The generation before us had it so good. In some parts of the country, it was free education at all levels. With the likes of Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the saddle of leadership, one had no cause to worry about going to school, or not. It was a matter of not going and feeling so inferior to those who have gone.
It was easy to go to school; they made it easy for you. You just wanted to be in school and work your socks off. You wanted to work your fingers to the bones because you knew it was all about lots of reading and then some, or lots of socializing, depending on where you belong.
That has changed now though. With all sectors progressively deteriorating, education and morals also gave way. Schools became a shadow of themselves right from primary to tertiary. Private institutions now top the chart and the mere mention of you attending a public institution sees you looked down upon, as if those that now send children to private schools attended one.
All that does not bug me anyway. The major thing that pisses me off is having someone refer to me derogatorily as ‘half baked’. The folks responsible for the decline are those that parade themselves as reformists. They are the ones now crying and shouting, panting and puffing that they want to reform the educational system in my dear country.
They will not come out straight to address issues; they will not come out plain to say that they and their fathers caused the rot. The fathers will only call us names while the sons nod in agreement. They will just raise their voice to get the silly attention they desire from the media.
The generation before mine wants to impose standards on my generation, standards of back then without actually making everything they had available to us. They had it so good, they enjoyed every basic necessity from water and electricity to good roads, they had all the equipment needed for practicals in their laboratories and will not go and rent a skeleton in town, like what obtains today. Everything worked in their favour.
I can go on and on about everything they had and how it was in place while they were growing. Let’s place both generations side by side. How many truly brilliant students get scholarships these days? How many?
If you showed a bit of promise back then, you were considered for scholarship. These days, you are not considered if you have nobody in the corridors of power. Everything was on merit then but what do we get now? They employ someone worse off than you while you walk about the corners of your neighborhood in your well-worn slippers and trousers, waiting for a miracle to happen.
Employment opportunities waited for them back then after their school. In fact, as a high school graduate, you were accorded respect. God help you and you finish Polytechnic or University, a good job and then a brand new Peugeot 504, 505 or Volkswagen beetle car was waiting for you. You had no stress getting the cash needed to get settled.
Place the Naija youth of today in the same shoes and you’ll see wonders. What we get however is the exact opposite of what they experienced, yet they show-off their agbada and babanriga in front of the television cameras and belch nonsense that we are half-baked. They forget that they caused it all.
After the pre-independence and first generation of leaders came those ones we can call bastards. They destroyed our common heritage and today, they shout themselves hoarse because they see a newspaper guy and a television lady, they have nothing to say but they want their face to be seen on TV and newspaper pages, saying something. That ‘something’ which in many cases is outright rubbish and balderdash.
Have they bothered to ask themselves why Nigerian youths thrive in well-organized societies? They will not. It is a question too hard for them. There is a particular Vice-Chancellor in Nigeria today. His school is in the place that calls itself the north, despite being closely affiliated with the South.
A lecturer who was a colleague back then questioned the guy’s moral right to do some things which he presently does. He said they had full chicken for their meals and the day it was reduced to half, this particular VC, then a student, led the protest. He is today one of the voices that stifle student uprising. He is the one who champions double-standards and injustice in his school today.
How much did they pay in government institutions back then? Today, we are made to pay through the nose. Sometimes last week, the papers were awash with stories of an institution neighboring the one earlier mentioned. They increased their fees to N100,000. Yet they come out and shout that the economy has been destroyed.
While I was in that school, I did not pay up to N30,000 as my fees for the five years I studied there. Yet we say the students are interested in getting rich quick while forgetting that we give them no choice because they are from indigent homes.
They have made education a luxury for people that are struggling, it is totally out of their reach now.
Mission institutions are not left out. The story I heard was that they were the ones that were readily available for everyone back then. The St. Andrews and St. Joseph schools, the Anwar-ul-Islam and the Ansarudeen (popularly called AUD) schools, were cheap enough for everyone. What do we have now? Costly schools some people dare not near. Yet they open their mouths and call us half-baked. Who baked us half way? No be them?
Leave me, let me vent my anger. I’m bitter at these people. Why should I suffer in school for years only to be called ‘half-baked’? In my first year, well over 5,000 students cramped inside two halls to receive lectures. In my second year, we had to wait for one set to finish their practical before we did our own. In my third year, we had to take lectures in the laboratory, because there were not enough lecture halls available for use.
In my fourth year, we used primitive tools for our practicals. In my finals, I had to combine my research project with class lectures, there was finding no balance. I graduate after all the stress and still get labeled ‘half-baked’? Total nonsense!
Me I get luck o. Some folks did not even see their laboratories or how it looked like. They struggled all through school for no fault of theirs. They had extra year or years as the case may be because one dumb fellow say they are not serious. One dumb man, called a lecturer says more than three-quarter of his students are not serious and he fails them. Is that not a half-baked lecturer? Nemesis catches up with people and has caught up with this ‘bad news’.
I have sworn that if anyone, I mean anyone from the sixties, seventies and early eighties refer to me as half-baked, I’ll give that person a piece of my mind. Tell him or her it’s their generation, a generation of waste and rape, that set the tone for what we experience now.
Is there anyone who calls you that derogatory name (half-baked)? Tell them you are righting their wrong. I’m outta here. Let me go do something that will improve my mood.
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