Category: Campus Life

Six undergraduates at the weekend renounced their membership of secret cults at the Federal Polytechnic Oko, Anambra State just as the institution’s Anti-Cult group destroyed the temple of Black Axe confraternity cult.

The repentant cultists were mostly freshers who were initiated about seven months ago while one of them is a final year student.

At the convocation arena, venue of the renunciation ceremony, the Anti-Cult group led by Khaki Abdullahi displayed some items recovered during the raid of the temple.

Among the items included a bible, mace, three pieces of regalia for the chief priest and other hierarchies within the cult group, axes, charms, candles, vests and daggers. The items were burnt by the repentant cultists.

Abdullahi explained that his group acted on information which resulted in the destruction of the temple, warning that the other members of the group who refused to renounce must be rusticated.

Addressing members of staff and students of the institution, the Rector, Prof Godwin Onu said when he assumed office in 2010 over 50 students renounced their membership of various cult groups, adding that his administration’s zero tolerance for cultism and is yielding positive results.

“We have sustained our efforts through prayers with the men of God around us, the activities of the Anti Cult Squad and other mechanisms put in place to ensure that our students enjoy their studies and live without fear. We stand on the declaration we made that this place must be cult free,” Onu said.

He noted that all efforts made by various cult groups to re-launch themselves in the school have been thwarted. He said four members of the Black Axe from another higher institution in Abia state were recently arrested at the polytechnic “to prove that our school is a no-go area.”

Onu declared: “These young men who have declared in the name of Jesus Christ that they will no longer have anything to do with cultism or have any relationship with cult groups are hereby pardoned and forgiven. We reintegrate them into the polytechnic and they are not going to suffer any form of punishment.”

He, however, warned that those who refused to renounce their membership of various cult groups would be expelled from the institution if caught “as we are tracking them.”

While giving the repented cultists moral advice, the Anglican Chaplain at the school, Venerable Chukwudi Osondu told the students that membership of the secret cults would only lead them to destruction, adding that what baffled him was the inclusion of the Bible among the items of worship by the cultists.

Reacting to the growing concern of students and visitors, the management of the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID) may have been planning to stop beggars’ activities on the campus.

The Dean of Students’ Affairs (DSA), Prof Wakili Gaya, made this known in an interview with our correspondent in his office. He said the management would come up with a regulation to address the scourge.

“The complaints about the begging activities in the school have come to the notice of the school management and we are fully prepared to put an end to this menace through a security check point at various school entrances,” he said.

Gaya attributed the activities of the beggars to the failure of government. He said: “The failure of the state to relieve the poor and physically-challenged has resulted into this influx of Al-majiris we are now witnessing on the campus.”

Faith Ije, a 300-Level student, was concerned about the numbers of beggars on the campus. “I have personally experienced the scenario where beggars walked into the lecture hall to seek for alms. The implication is that lecturers as well as students are distracted,” she said.

Eleven-year-old Salisu Umar, who came from Bauchi to Maiduguri to acquire Islamic education, told CAMPUSLIFE that life had been difficult for him because his teacher had large number of pupils to cater for. “So I take to begging in other to eke out living and survive,” the kid said.

Ayo Ayodeji, 300-Level Accountancy, urged the management not to delay in stopping beggars’ activities on the campus.

I have decided to play the blind to my amateurish ‘poetic nonsense’ and speak the language every layman understands. Countless times, a couple of other countrymen and I have rained curses on certain people in the corridors of power or if you like, the helm of affairs. Some have called for a change of party system, ruling party and ideology.

Some advocate dictatorship as the best form of government Nigeria deserves. Others say a change from capitalism to socialism would change the condition of people. However, the one question that has been in my mind is: aren’t we all guilty of the mess in Nigeria?

The mighty Iroko tree, we seem to forget, is formed by a seed buried underneath the soil. If corruption has become a force to reckon with on the political arena and indeed every facet of the Nigerian society, isn’t it that we allow the scourge to flourish? Charity, they say, begins at home. If the family unit truly makes a society, then every Nigerian family must have a fair share in the blame and curses we rain on our leaders.

As our elders have it, it is the egg that becomes the cock. Every Dick, Tom and Harry in leadership position today certainly undergoes such biological transitions. If we now say our leaders are greedy, inconsiderate, ruthless, self-centered and gluttonous, I dare say, the society is to blame.

If given the same opportunity, I bet it, you and I would seek first the kingdom for ‘self’ before other things are attended to.

Let us face it, we are as guilty as the victim of our accusation. No defendants as there are no plaintiffs in this blame game. Therefore, when we curse a member of the Nigerian family in power, we indirectly curse, by extension, every other family, rich or poor, who must have benefitted from the largesse of power. It is a long and endless chain.

My brother, sister, niece, nephew, cousin, uncle, aunt, etc walks into my office but meets many qualified job seekers seated outside. He or she gets the job he or she is not qualified for but at the expense of other qualified applicants. This is called connection and it is also a form of corruption

Aren’t you and I then an integral part of the same corruption we hate with passion in public offices? On a lighter note, if corruption were to be killed today, there would be death in every household. Now that it has been established that the scourge is in every home, our holier-than-thou minds dissolve in the face of this reality. What then is the way forward?

Though, I’m not in any way exempted from the malaise, yet I must suggest that every man begins to see wealth as useless without its distribution. If everyone is rich in a society does not mean anyone rich. We only know the privileged people are rich because some others are poor.

Besides, the same sweat of the poor is used to build the wealth the rich enjoy. If a man has one hundred mansions scattered across the country and another is homeless, the one with many mansions cannot sleep in two rooms at a time; why can’t be his brother’s keeper by given him a room? If we all live our lives with other people in mind, the world would be a better place.

If our society must be saved, everybody must play his own part to clear the mess of corruption and bad attitude in the country. If this malaise persists, it means all the families on the Nigerian landscape are guilty of the crime we all accuse the leadership of.

Dele, 400-Level English, OAU Ile-Ife

Barely two weeks to the semester exam, the Students’ Union Government (SUG) of the University of Calabar (UNICAL) has organised the union’s Annual Students’ Week to round up the semester.

Academic works were brought to a halt as the campus bubbled with various social activities during the Week. Though, the week was declared lecture-free but some lecturers still fixed classes for students.

The Week with the theme Consolidating the strike for a perfect balance started with a rag day and awareness campaign coordinated by members of the union.

There was also a bonfire at Malabo Square, which was attended by off-campus students. Highlight of the bonfire night included a talent hunt, flying of balloons and dances.

Chemistry department students, who spoke to our correspondent, said the bonfire enlivened them after their lecturers released bad tests’ results.

The following day, students clad in different colours of attires moved round the campus displaying their departments’ symbols. They later converged at the university stadium for a carnival.

Arikpo Oboh, president of Faculty of Basic Medical Science told CAMPUSLIFE that his colleagues appeared in lab coats and cadaver to draw the attention of authorities to the plight of the students in medical college. He noted that cadavers used for practical purposes were scarce and that laboratory equipment in the Physiology and Biochemistry department was not readily available. “We need more lecture venues to give the students conducive atmosphere for effective learning,” he said urging the Vice Chancellor to build more lecture venues for students.

On Friday, students embarked on an excursion to Obudu Cattle Ranch. It was a two-day tour.

It was a seven hours journey from Calabar down to the isles of Obudu still in Cross River state. To students going there for the first time, it was an experience, a memory that will linger forever. On arrival at the ranch, the students gathered at the gate for photographs.

One of the students, Blessing Effiong, 300-Level Sociology, told CAMPUSLIFE she was visiting the ranch for the first time. She said the excursion was interesting and educative as it afforded her to know historical points during the visit.

When I was putting the first part of this column to bed last week, the very depressing and heart-rending report, put together by a 10-member Needs Assessment Committee, headed by Prof. Mahmood Yakubu with former Academic Staff Union of Universities’ (ASUU), President, Prof Ukachukwu Awuzie as member was released with the revelation that public universities have largely become a mockery of what citadels of research and learning should be; in essence, our tertiary institutions are in a dire strait, far more than we ever imagined. This however, is story for another day, but what I started out writing last week is directly connected with current happenings in the ivory towers.

As the fees being paid by undergraduates kept increasing over the years, it is becoming apparent and glaring that we are gradually imbibing some of the attributes of a full-fledged neo-liberal capitalist system that has profit as the driving force of almost everything. Put simply, we are likely not going back to the days of free or subsidised education because education, like other social services and products, will be commoditised and anyone that needs it will have to pay to access it. But unlike other full-fledged capitalist states that have shock mechanisms to take care of the helpless in society, ours does not. So in the case of the present reality what needs to be done to ensure that a student is not denied access to education because he is from a poor family? Since we borrowed our democracy from the United States of America, I’d like to draw examples from there on how students access loans to complete their education and see if we can borrow a leaf.

In 1965, Senator Claiborne Pell of the US Congress tabled a legislation that later became the Higher Education Act. Originally known as the Basic Educational Opportunity Grant, it was later named after him (Federal Pell Grants). The Pell Grant is money the U.S. federal government provides for students who need it to pay for college. Federal Pell Grants are limited to students with financial need, who have not earned their first bachelor’s degree. The Grant program is sponsored by the United States Department of Education which determines the student’s financial need. The U.S Department of Education uses a standard formula to evaluate financial information reported on the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) to determine the student’s expected family contribution (EFC).

Funding for colleges and universities is managed partly by the Department of Education directly, called the Federal Direct Student Loan Program (FDSLP). The other half is managed by commercial entities such as banks, credit unions, and financial services firms under the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP). Some schools accept only FFELP loans; others accept only FDSLP. Still others accept both, and a few schools will not accept either, in which case students must seek out private alternatives for student loans.

The Pell Grant is covered by legislation titled the Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA), Title IV, Part A, Subpart 1; 20 U.S.C. 1070a. These federal funded grants are not like loans and do not have to be repaid. Students may use their grants at any one of approximately 5,400 participating post-secondary institutions. These federally funded grants help about 5.4 million full-time and part-time college and vocational school students nationally. For the 2010–2011 school year, 7 of the top 10 colleges by total Pell Grant money awarded were for-profit institutions with one institution; University of Phoenix, Arizona having an enrollment of 380,000 students.

Before the Pell Grant became what it is today it went through numerous changes between 1972 and 2011. In that year, the maximum award amount per student was $5,550 (N847,800). The program was funded at an amount of $17,114,000,000 from 2008–2010 as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The application process requires the student and the student’s family to complete a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form. The applicant completes the FAFSA form for the first time prior to starting the freshman undergraduate year, and then updates the form each year as he/she progresses through the college undergraduate term.

In Nigeria, we do not have anything close to the Pell Grant, though we have instances where some state governments give scholarships to their citizens, but this often fall short of meeting students’ needs. What we do have is the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) which was established as an intervention agency under the Education Tax Act No. 7 of 1993 and amended by Education Tax (Amendment) Act No. 40 of 1998; with project management to improve the quality of Education in Nigeria. To enable the TETFund achieve its objectives, Act No. 7 of 1993 as amended imposes a 2 percent (2%) Education Tax on the assessable profit of all registered companies in Nigeria.

There is no doubt that university education has undergone tremendous expansion in recent times due to rapid increase in the demand for and enrolment in university education perceived as crucial in sustaining individual growth and relevant to the development of high level manpower in relevant fields for socio-economic, scientific and technological development. For instance, the university enrolment figures of 1,096,312 for both the degree and non-degree programmes in 2010, for instance, exceeded the carrying capacity of 715,000 by an over enrolment of 381,312 students. Government objective is to provide adequate access to university education to whoever desires, however government resources have not been sufficient to meet the massive expansion needs. Therefore the need arises for cost-sharing arrangements.

A recent study conducted on the socio-economic background of households in Nigeria revealed that over 70% are poor and only about 29% of families can live on one dollar (N157.00) or above a day, which implies that the socio-economic hardship experienced by the parents deprives many of access to university education as many cannot afford to pay their children’s school fees thereby not addressing the issue of access and equity

Juxtaposed with the average fees charged by Nigerian universities which stands at not less than N100,000 and in excess of N1 million in case of some private universities, it means that over 70% of some households may not be able to send their children to the university. Since some companies are already committing 2% of their assessable profit to the TETfund would they be willing to do more to support tertiary education?

They should considering the fact that products of such universities are the manpower they need; companies should see this as an investment for the future. There is nothing wrong for a company to have a long term plan for a specific cadre of students that it may need for its line of business. It can set up a loan scheme with some universities where they can go into an undertaking with students who would be compelled to work for certain period to offset their loan arrangements. This, I believe, will go a long way in stemming the tide of “educated illiterates” that some of our universities churn out every year. The money wasted in retraining these graduates can be put into more productive uses.

However, I have my reservation because the present neo-liberal ideology teaches Nigerian leaders to subject provision of social service such as functional education, affordable healthcare, massive transportation development (road, rail, water), job creation, food and energy supply, etc to market forces. With these policies, it is the rich that will be buying up the country’s resources at a token- with state resources anyway- while majority will not be able to afford the huge cost needed to access social service. Is this the way to go? China and other Asian countries should point us toward other route.