Your lecture room is an eyesore.
With students sitting on the floor.
500 students stuffed in a lecture hall built for 50.
No additional facilities. No public address system. No ventilation other than the broken 4×4 windows.
Students sitting by window rails and hanging along the corridor, stretching their necks to try to hear what Mr. Lecturer is saying.
Some hunching their backs for others to improvise as writing tables.
Students from the middle rows to the back can’t even hear what the lecturer is saying.
So your teachers meow, they grunt, they crow and they go, leaving you with everything but knowledge.
Then you come out, not knowing how to do anything, including what you studied.
Then you either return home to begin a second childhood or you resort to learning trading, make up, sewing, hair making, network marketing etc.
Those who carved that dis-functional space for you are aware.
They barely send their wards to where you are. They know what is obtainable there now.
They send them to where they will be competitive when they return.
Because even in employment, they prefer the kpali with a foreign fragrance.
But from the much they have stolen from you, they put N20k in the envelope for you, and call it bursary.
Yet what they pay for one of their own per session can cover 50 of your kind per session.
They will snap you in full glare and package your receiving, and use it to campaign to win the next election and keep you where they think you belong.
While their own are in places with cosy and air-conditioned classrooms.
Where there are no gangsters on campus and no sorting or strikes.
Isn’t that where you are?
Trapped in the murky drains of the dilemma created by those you venerate.
As election approaches, the choice is yours again. The ball is in your court to play to the player of your choice.
The choice is yours to ask questions or to collect and chop your future.
The choice is yours to participate in the elections for your own good or make yourself available to be used in raping your future.
You have to look whoever needs your vote straight in their very eyes and ask them what they want to do with those places that are meant to prepare your future.
What they intend to do with your moribund and antiquated curriculum?
This forthcoming election presents the opportunity for that engagement.
You are vulnerable, you will either be the one they will use in protecting the ballots or use in stealing the ballots.
But will you stand up to be counted by doing the right thing?
Will you go and get your voters card, refuse to participate in violence and ballot stealing, report those planning to do violence and mobilize your peers to participate in the elections?
Yes You Can!!!
Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo, Publisher of CrossRiverWatch and a rights activist, is a Cross Riverian and writes in from Lagos.
NB: Opinions expressed in this article are strictly attributable to the author, Agba Jalingo and do not represent the opinion of CrossRiverWatch or any other organization the author works for/with.