Students of today bestowed with the advantage of technological advancement, are the leaders of tomorrow. Equipped with knowledge of the past, armed with the troubles of today, many will say students are the light at the end of the tunnel. Politics has evolved in the country, but there is no denying that Nigerian politics greatly improved with the penetration of education in the country.
Leading the fight against colonial oppression were student activists turned politicians who were equipped with political ideologies they studied from political revolutionists from other parts of the world, and they in turn fashioned political ideologies that fit the challenges they were facing at that time. Notable figures in Nigerian political history can be traced from their records in tertiary institutions in the country; these figures cut across different financial, religious, and ethnic backgrounds.
Their actions are still a point of reckoning in the annals of our nation’s history. The reverse is now the case in the political scene of many public tertiary institutions in the country. Many who call themselves comrades seeking elections into student bodies are no longer comrades in the real definition of the word, but fellows who are seeking a path to uplift their selfish desires.
We have full-time comrades who, at the age of 40, are buying postgraduate degree forms in order to bear the name of student just to continue dipping their kleptomaniac fingers into the pool of departmental faculty dues for personal gains. Year to year, no tangible student projects to justify the amounts paid for dues, but we hear news of students being suspended by fellow students for fraud.
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The various Student Unions have become a form of settlement for Vice Chancellors, Ethnic champions, and other ephemeral reasons that have no real ideal that can truly challenge the status quo of our political conundrum today. Student politicians during the day, but errand boys for established politicians with little to no political ideology at night.
If we say students have the power to shape the future and destiny of a nation, then with this crop of student leaders in the country, where will Nigeria be in the next 30 years? There is a need to overhaul what term political arrangement in Nigerian Tertiary Educational Institutions to meet up with global standards and the reality of the current Nigerian State.
Students must set a high bar for those who truly call themselves leaders in our ivory colleges, and this crop of leaders must aspire to be different than what we currently have. Politics in Nigeria’s Tertiary Institutions should be returned to the old path of intellectualism, a place where wealth and ethnic coloration have no place in deciding who becomes what. Politics in Nigeria’s Tertiary Institutions should lead to excellence and not be a constant reminder of the rot in our country’s political system
