Beast Of Your Own Nation; Don’t Murder Your Future In Campus -By Promise Eze

Like Agu in Uzodinma Iweala’s Beast Of No Nation many students have had their hands smeared with blood — the blood of their very own destiny — by joining themselves with blood thirty forces. Unlike Agu who was coerced into joining Strika and his team, several students willingly choose to be a soldier in the army of failure.

True, the university is a free world. But this freedom have been abused in most cases. Rather than use the opportunity to expand their horizons and improve their lives, these fool hardy individuals waste four and more years of their time in campus seeking for pleasures that never satisfy, pleasures that never last, pleasures that are detrimental to their purpose in campus.

And what do care free students do? They engage in all sorts of frivolities, entertain all sorts of distractions, participate in every party available to attend, follow all sorts of friends, indulge in every kind of romantic relationships and since they don’t have the time to study their books,  give room for examination malpractice. Sadly, some due to the need to feel belonged, join cults. So the buccaneer will gun down an axe simply because of reasons incorrigible. The axe will later grab a buccaneer from an examination hall, throw him down in the scorching sun, as it happened this year in a university in Calabar, and insert pellets into his skull, chest and right eye allowing blood to cake around his wounded body parts. On and on, the viscous circle of bloodletting and revenge continues to revolve. The rise of cultism in campus is alarming. It’s bewildering how young men and girls will want to join group as dangerous as that. But whatever the reasons are the result is pitiful.

Some are given to promiscuity. These are the ones who will play saints at home but whores in campus. Forgetting that the university is not a brothel they throw caution to the wind by opening their legs for every Dick, James and Harry. We hear of sex for marks. The verity is that in some cases lecturers are not the one making the overtures. Female students yearning for the easy way to success garb themselves with seductive attires, expose their cleavages, wearing tops revealing sturdy breasts all with the aim of turning varsity lecturers on. Lecturers are not finding this funny. Read the words of Suraj as to told ogalecturer.com. 

“I was personally harassed by my female student for refusing to go into a relationship with her so I can pass her in my course. In fact, she and her friends threatened to come to my house and rape me.

A colleague in the University of Ibadan also went through a similar situation: a female student barged into his office after sunset, locked the door, removed her cloth and asked him to have his way so he could pass her his course,” he said.

Not every of these randy females  were smart enough to dodge the consequence of this foolishness. They left school with other sorts of degrees: a child —whom the society will call a bastard and the malignant HIV AIDS.

Playing the beast of your own nation also means embracing laziness and shoddiness in a time when seriousness should be adorned on your neck like a special ornament. “I will read tomorrow,” you say and tomorrow makes way for another tomorrow until you have exam questions staring at you intently in the eye. Who destroyed your CGPA? Mr lecturer or you?

The future is always bright, while the university is an avenue where we can make this future brighter the onus remains on us to make it glow or grow dim. One way to avoid tarnishing your own future is by being focused. That’s the key. Prayer will help but as long as you entertain distractions God will be unable to render any sort of help to you. 

Many Nigerians swim in regrets because of how they made improper use of their time in campus. Some families would have been free from the chains of poverty and humiliation today if the parents had refused to heed to the crooning of distractions and failures. If they had focused in their academics and had spent time bending their heads over their books circumstances won’t be as bad as it is for them.

Life is like a merry-go-round. The battles you fail to win today will encounter you tomorrow. Instead of being a beast of your own future, destroying your tomorrow with abandon today, why don’t you fight the good battle?

Fight to focus!

Promise Eze is a 200-level student of Education Economics in Usmanu Danfodiyo University.