The Nigeria Student: Half Baked or Self Baked

Every now and then for the past few years, I keep hearing this and that on how we, the new generation students or rather graduate has become half baked. But I keep asking myself, are we really half baked?
Is it our fault that our schools aren’t conducive to learn?  It is it our fault that we don't have public libraries to crash at, or is it our fault that they have mismanaged the funds allocated to cater for proper education. Is it our fault that they are corrupt and receive bribe to pass some of us to get into institutions?
Or is it our fault that everyone wants to go to university instead of polytechnics, colleges, training centers and the likes? Is it our fault that the education structure isn't really a structure? This are minutes of the questions that parades my mind each time I watch them say it.
Many a times, I have found that it is not really our fault; we aren’t half baked because sincerely, we weren't baked at all. At most, we are self baked. Just imagine this so called VIP's in the Nigeria cabinet set of morons and wardrobe moguls, vagabonds in power as Lt. Fela Anikulapo called them, some of which don't even have secondary school leaving certificates. Tell me, how will such individual contribute to a better policy to educate us? And of course, he will come out with that little grammar that everyone learns with ease today, and say ''most Nigeria graduates are half baked''. Even the ones that are there academically and in sound literacy, who enjoyed the best of education in the era of our so sweet motherland, they went to the best school a Africa nation can have, when and where they had nothing else on campus to do except from read in a conducive library, sleep at suitable times and eat sumptuous meals which was arguably with ease considering the simple truth that it was “FREE” without worries of tuition fees and the likes, at then, the Nigeria economy was booming. Unlike now, I live outside campus in a room that leaks, ok may be I don’t, but some people do that I know of, I watch my linens, iron my cloths, manage a thousand naira for weeks, no electricity and after years of reading like a geek with candles, lamps or shades, my eye is consumed with conjunctivitis and then,  what can be more devastt to the mind than that feeling that even if I die reading, I will probably end up in my dad’s couch watching TV and catching up with News on Channels and other stations, and every other day walk the hell out of the streets of Lagos and lo and behold, I still end up eating my mom's okro soup and vegetables unlike when you, I meant they because they aren’t reading this because they are practically selfish to their thoughts or they can’t navigate themselves here, had jobs waiting for them before they graduate. Ok now what they say to justify that is that most of us are unemployable. Really, are we that bad? Well, that a discussion for another day.
Now back to our discussion. Is that devastating enough? Or not yet a good excuse for being half baked? Let me buttress my point. Our so called professors and their companies of heroes are our very problem. Most lecturers either don't come for lectures, stick to the old knowledge of the concept they practice, they lecture and not teach, they hold multiple job and even when they manage to show up in classes, they perform. Yes, I mean it when I said they perform. They spend lucrative time telling us stories that add no value to us, tell us how they went abroad and all that, tell us how many of us won't reach their status, asking questions that can psychologically demoralize a individual like ''Do you have a professor in your family? Of course, I don't, but ask Pure-Chemicals Nigeria limited and co, I have the best engineer Nigeria can have. And most of all, you can imagine if your lecturer ask you "what do you know", they continually oppress you with "even if you read the whole of Cambridge, you won’t get a A" just because he thinks, your never better, or he never had A’s, can’t imagine you are better than him or better yet, he had quality education than yourself. Now tell me, how I will be encouraged to go home and read better or strive to be. Ok, maybe that is yet another dumb excuse. But look it from this Fahrenheit, I read like oh lord have mercy and look like a geek, write a hell on the subject matter relating to whatever test I am assigned to, and I get 0 (zero). I mean nothing!!! For real, like I never attended classes or failed to write test or assignments and all that or I didn't even write my matriculation number. “Abi” or what will a lecturer give as an excuse for a student getting zero. Although, I must say some deserve f9 but not zero. But then even if they do deserve it, is it their fault? They should probably be in technical schools and others but if you don't attend university, then you haven't attended institution nor gotten a degree yet.
I was in my favorite professor’s class recently and he said, most of us will graduate half baked and I said in my freakish mind, "Sir, self baked". Yes I said self baked. You want to ask why? Ok, Out of the little they give me from home, I still have to buy textbooks and browse the internet for journals. Yeah, you can say how many of us really do that? Not all, of course, we socialize which is part of living through social media and the likes which wasn’t open to them because it never existed then. Mind you, I am not saying that mobile phones and technology is tending more harm than good but then, let's be human, after facing the tension of a terrible lecturer whom had threatened me with words, or as a female lure me to share his bed in exchange for success with enough threat that if I don't, I will remain Undergraduate for a longer time. Wouldn't I resort to chat, talk to friends and family who need nothing or ask for practically nothing but to say hi and help ease my stress with words. Oh lord, have mercy on us, have mercy on them.
Another aspect that picks my interest is the fact that many courses in our chosen discipline are practically irrelevant. Economics department for example, they are this discipline; they are because I am not a disciple. They are these set of people whose disciples from secondary schools (I wonder how many countries still call it secondary schools) love economics because of the easiness to read and how easy to determine demand and supply jargons without further-mathematics which in the higher institution as they will call it because I will rather call it Upgraded secondary school, is regarded very vital if you have to survive and become an Economist. This, students strive to get along with which is very not possible to grasp in one day and so many of them strive to breathe and from their first year to their last, they are either looking for X or Y. Only in some case “z, y or q” get lost too and they have to find it, and since my four years stay here, my friends are still finding X and his company of criminals which will become irrelevant immediately they leave the walls of these citadel. Oh what a shame. It’s simple, it's just irrelevant. Why put us through that mental stress, is it to show the world what we are made of? Or to please our self and think that we are self actualized academically or what really when at the end of the day, we still have to travel to Cotonou, Ghana and other neighboring African countries in Africa and to others across the globe to get a master's degree. Well it is not a master's degree, to me; it's a mere degree after we have failed to have a substantive degree which can propel us to being a certified professional.
For crying out loud, our tuition fees are high, maybe that's one of their ''mumu" policy to curb the rate of people attending universities. But, it didn't work because they are not the one paying for the baked products; it's our parents who pay. Tell me how they have baked us not to talk of half-baked. We baked ourselves and we deserve credit for that. I am a proud undergraduate whom well will soon be a graduate and I can say it anywhere that I am not half baked, I am self baked and wholly baked for the records. Oh, you want to know how or why, give them this laptop and let them manage a blog with schooling, write a novel when I don't study English, go for shows in between semesters as a musician cum comedian. Or how Tunde Ogunowo became a blogger, a musician, a writter and a radio personnel, a economist in just four years. My friend David is a designer, a cobbler, a potential accountant, a writer just within four years. How Linda Ikeji manage to rise to stardom without a master's in blogging?
So they should come and tell me how they are half baked and let me show them how much they are a shame. So if someone out there still feels we are, show them we are not, we are what the structured us to be and even way better. Tell them we are self-baked and not puppets like them. Tell them, we've gone through a hell of four years to become an achiever. Tell them, we are worth every penny and they are worth #IdontKnow. Let this reach them and let them think that even in between the state of emergency they've threw us, we strive and still shine if not, they won't have that manager thinking for them.


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