By Chidiebere Nwobodo

Seven months since ASUU began striking, our universities are still under lock and key. Our active youths have been abandoned in the doldrums of hopelessness. Imagine seven months of brain drain and despondency? and the thought of losing one academic session? what of seven months of idleness? and an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.

While the future of Nigerian students are in limbo, our political leaders are goose-chasing and shadow-boxing absurdities. who bewitched our leaders? where lies sense of responsibility and leadership? Presidency, Governors and National Assembly members are more interested in gaging the youths via social media bill and persecution of #ENDSARS activists. What a tomfoolery when the fledgling nation is on fire of insecurity, excruciating economy and decaying university system!

What is wrong with Nigeria as a nation? are we cursed or what? who did this to us? As parents, your kinds have been out of campus for seven months, and you’re still behaving as if they’re not losing anything? you wake up in the morning, exit the house to the office, to continue your self deceit as if all is fine in your home? you return in the evening knowing that your children idled away the day and you still sleep with your two eyes closed? Certainly, you must be an idiot!

This is exactly what our political class are doing to the fabrics of this country; deliberately destroying the youths by keeping them at home, simply because their own kids are abroad getting the best of education. And you think you and your children will have peace in the future? no way! Beyond the bone of the contention, which is the mode of payment of lecturers’ salaries cum outstanding allowances being owed by government, funding for critical infrastructure in the universities is at the all time low.

University system has been literally abandoned. Our universities have become so dilapidated and degraded to the extent that it is strangulating potentials it was meant to harness. Most of our campuses look like unkempt museums. They’re no longer glorified secondary schools but depressing dungeons of cultists, internet tricksters and raving prostitutes! creativity is zero; innovation is dead.

Human development is no longer the primary goal of the ivory tower but churning out worthless certificates of outdated courses like factories running on automated production lines. Majority of lecturers now venture into the once respected profession, not to impact knowledge but solely for economic benefits and its attendant side attraction of preying on our young ladies for lascivious satisfaction.

Huge chunk of our graduates are unemployed, underemployed and unemployable, while those currently in school are locked out because of ASUU and Government unending imbroglio, anchored on leadership cluelessness and gross incompetence. Nigeria is sitting on a time bomb. Our leaders doesn’t have the capacity to tackle present challenges bedeviling the nation while they are irresponsibly creating future monstrous problems.

The world is progressively moving at the speed of light, while Nigeria is busy snoring away its future on the bed of leadership tragedy, aided by hangover of mass docility. Whenever I take a limp into the future, juxtaposed it with landmark developmental strides around the world vis-a-vis stunted growth Nigeria is suffering, I begin to weep for this contraption masquerading as a nation.