Cultism in Nigerian universities and the future of Nigeria KAYODE KETEFE
"Submit your papers now!" The invigilator's voice boomed with vigour induced by fear and exasperation. "No Sir, we have ten minutes more!" Chorused some of the students who were still scribbling with desperation in the final efforts to, hopefully, earn some extra marks. "Submit immediately!" the tone of the voice this time around was imperious even though fear was discernible in every syllable. The students' eyes were wrenched off the sheets for once in two hours as they stared to get what was bordering their lecturer. Then all hell was let loose, a pandemonium broke out as the students stared outside the window in the examination hall. Not less than fifty weapon-wielding cultists had besieged the examination hall, chanting blood-chilling war songs. The invigilator cum lecturer was the first to bolt; he abandoned the collection of the examination papers and scaled the window heading for the perimeter wall to escape into safety. Alas, he was caught before he could scale the wall and he was kidnapped. His corpse was found five days later in a small bush adjacent to the campus, his body was badly mutilated! This is a true life story and it happened in the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye, (OOU) Ogun State, in 2006. The lecturer in question is a personal friend. We spent five years together at the Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State. His name is Seun Oyedola, a very amiable, good-looking and remarkably intelligent man. When we were at Ife, Seun was already a graduate, having graduated years earlier from the same university's Faculty of Arts where he obtained First Class honour in English language. Even at the Faculty of Law, he was one of the most outstanding students and he graduated with Second Class Upper Division which was the best any student could get from that faculty then. Unfortunately, this promising and talented young man was wasted in his prime by the cultists. The reason being peddled by the killers for this tragically heinous act (going by the earlier threats the lecturer had received) was the usual stupid reasons you often hear by these youthful gangsters - that he had snatched a girlfriend belonging to one of them! Sad to say, nobody till date has been prosecuted for this terrible crime. The problem of cultism in our tertiary institutions has just come to the fore of our enervating social malaises one again with the killing last Thursday, February 28, 2013, of an upcoming hip hop artiste, Damino Damoche, whose real name were Olaniyan Damilola. This Banking and Finance student was gunned down by assailants suspected to be cultists right in front of the gate of his school, the Lagos State University, Ojo. Just three days later, another student of the same institution, simply identified as Kabiru, was gruesomely murdered by suspected cultists who shot him in the head at a close range. These shocking happenings are sad reminder of the singular cultic tragedy that occurred in the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, on Saturday, July 10, 1999 when cultic students besieged the Awolowo Hall of the institution and shot dead eight students with another eleven students seriously injured. Secret cultism is a thing that obtained in many tertiary institutions across the world, including American and British schools, but their object was not to harm, maim, kill and destroy. This writer has never heard cultists in those other places routinely descending on, maiming and felling fellow students in their prime. The matter has come to such a head now that the authorities must find lasting solution to the menace cultism in our schools. If our so-called ivory towers have transformed into butchery instead of places of learning, then the quest for our economic growth and development would remain unrealisable dream; future of this country is doomed since a country greatest resources are its human resources, specifically those to who the future belongs – the youths. The Nigerian leaders who make it impossible for the youths to realistically anticipate a bright future after graduation from the tertiary institutions should also search their conscience. There were times in this country when undergraduates began the countdown to the day of their graduation from year two or year three, basking in the prospects of good employment with its concomitant nice cars, accommodation and other good things of life. Nowadays, majority of our youths graduate into unemployment. Many of these cultic boys and girls have brothers and sisters who have graduated many years before and are still roaming the streets in search of non-existent jobs. Tertiary education seems to have lost all its allure, so the youths are disenchanted and roundly frustrated; when frustration reaches certain level, a person is capable of an infernal behaviour imaginable. This probably offers insight into why our undergraduates have turned into misanthropes. Certainly if our youths have realistic expectations of good life, very few would find descent into criminality attractive. Our government should know that as long as the youths are not empowered in positive terms the acts of delinquency and criminality would continue to prove intractable. Thus the said lasting solution must be conceived and implemented from criminological and sociological perspectives. |
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