By Prof. Oludare Ogunlana
The title of this piece is not what the author gave to it. The author called it ‘Future Tears’ (Ekun Ola). It is Intervention that chose to retitle it the way it now is if for no other reason(s) than that an editor is entitled to his own stupidity. But if these are what the young people who will be future military commanders, wonder kids of the Nigerian Air Force, top civil servants, philosophers, tomorrow’s Dangotes, the future Achebes and Soyinkas and the next set of Aminu Kanos are doing on most of the campuses, then why might it not be ‘May God Have Mercy on Nigeria’. Some of these bits are not new but, here, we are dealing with a professor’s representation of them. Intervention thanks the reader who copied it from another platform to it.
Our boys whom we sent to the universities to study are now living in hotels doing “Yahoo”, defrauding people. They are not studying. They are “sorting”. Bribing lecturers to pass.
They only come to campus in convoys once in a while to show off. Guess what? Some lecturers are even worshipping them.
Our teenage sons are now driving Benz Cars in the university. They are now “happening guys” on campus. The houses our sons in universities are living in now are flats and duplexes as against the self-contained that we used to know. Well-furnished and so beautiful like the home of some state governors.
Our sons are all married in the university but single at home. Girls swarm around them… living with them, cooking for them, doing all sorts of things with them and for them….. These girls are our daughters whom we sent to the universities to study.
They are in every club and hotel in town….they are found in front of exotic cars, fastening seatbelts, taking selfies, recording short videos and moving their tongues and lips like DOGS.
My recent research in Nigerian universities opened my eyes to this current ugly reality. I wept for the future. These are teenagers, not even adults.
Guess what? We still see them as children who know nothing.
I don’t want to mention names of hotels in IBADAN, LAGOS, IJEBU-ODE, ABEOKUTA, AKURE, EKITI STATE, etc where you will see your sons and daughters. They have been living there for weeks if not months.
They are not going to school. “Who school help?” Don’t you get it?
These teenagers— boys and girls – are abusing drugs. Not just hemp (igbo) but cocaine, tramadols and other terrible ones.
I had once boarded a vehicle with a young girl in AGO-IWOYE who had some crack (cocaine) in her purse. For a reason l did not know, the police officer that stopped us for a search didn’t search her but searched every other passenger.
On the way, she brought out a drug, gently sniffed some and threw out the remaining through the window. I looked at her and paused, she also paused; both of us paused. I remained deaf and dumb until I got to my destination.
Who will save this generation who painfully are our tomorrow and future of this country?
WE ARE SADLY KEEPING TOO QUIET! EKÚN ÒLA!
May God beautify our characters and the characters of our children