On Climate Change And Contemporary Mediocrity In Nigeria Universities -By Idowu Odeyemi

In Nigeria universities, I have come to notice that the university administrators keep recruiting without scrutinizing the admission seekers. This I recognize to be the major cause of mediocre students having higher percentage of the population in each university. As per mediocrity among Nigerian students, the university administrators can escape our blame if we do a research of their being. Most of them belong to a place lower than the mediocre class. Maybe we can group them to be ‘imbeciles’ or humans with cockroach brains.

I have justifications for my conclusive proposition: First is Nigerian students engagement with reality; its problems and provision of possible solutions. I just read a piece on GUARDIAN.COM about a 16-years old Swedes girl, Thunberg Greta, agitating for the stop of ‘Global warming’ I.e. climate change. According to David Crouch of The Guardian, her protest has captured the imagination of a country that has been struck by heat waves and wildfires in its hottest summer since records began 262 years ago. I also read somewhere that Thunberg and some high school students, inter-subjectively, agreed to shun school to take to the street to protest against climate change. Saying their parents owe it to them to leave a planet they can live.

Speculatively, 72% of higher institution students in Nigeria do not even know what climate change means.

This high percentage of mediocrity is disdainful to a philosophic mind. Nigerian parents might share out of the blame, too. This is for their act of indoctrinating the tabula rasa minded kids that school certification is the only criterion for success, therefore, postulating the dogma of ‘go-get-the-certificate-and-get-a-job-to-feed-your-stomach.’ This dogma have made us to neglect the priority of Plato’s school -Academia- which is just to ‘teach’ and of course, by necessity, ‘learn.’ Learning is essential because it gives knowledge. Knowledge is essential to solve the problems we are facing in human existence. But how will this problems not persist if the learners are after ‘la cram, la pour?’

This mediocrity, some might want to argue that is a result of the problems we face, and the absurdity of solving it. However, I, vehemently disagree. My course of study on human beings state of nature has endowed me with the perception that we, beyond anything, cherish pleasure. This mediocrity, which we find among Nigerian students, is not because of the absurdity of solving it, but that they -mediocre students- do not know that these problems exist at all. They do not see beyond conquest. They do not see beyond living-as-it-is instead of living-as-it-should-be. But, then, what is the meaning of ‘should’ to a mediocre?

What fucked my skepticism away are the mediocre students. They will not read this article because they believe the grammars are too much. And the grammars that are difficult for them to apprehend are: climate, skepticism, proposition and many other primary school English. The mediocre students will say English is not their mother’s language. If then you love your mothers language so much, why not skip your exams to protest the situation? Why not engage the consciousness of others about the humiliation such demeaning thing as borrowing another man’s language to write your exam? I can, without no iota of skepticism, say that what is going on in Nigeria universities is a literacy program. It is nothing about education. Even from our primary school, it is A for Apple; just to read and write.
Another comical thing is that in Nigeria, the university Student Union Government are usually funny fellows, dunderheaded tall faggots and mediocre.

You will see them facilitate and engage themselves in protest against mid-semester exams and blame the school for failing them. You will not see them tackle the root of the problem. For instance: situating a protest, after a talk with the school management, to keep the library running overnight instead of closing by 4Pm like normal staffs. Forgetting that the library, a room of voluminous books, for some, is a health center: therapeutic.

Climate change will cause us a lot of problem. Some researches says that by year 3030 the earth will be like a desert with roofs blocking the dust from revealing itself to the birds that fly in the sky if we continue deforestation. And dear, mediocre, what is the meaning of deforestation? I am sure 66% of you don’t know it. I blame our teachers, chronologically.

Idowu odeyemi is a Nigerian poet, essayist and writer of fiction. His poems have appeared in international journals like Constellate Journal in Birmingham city, Mearak Magazine,London; World Book Of Poems, India; Kahalari Review, Praxis magazine among others.