On January 8, 2000, I resumed to campus from my long holiday as a sophomore hanging precariously on a 2.5 G.P.A and poised for failure on the slightest un-seriousness. I no longer had passion or zest for my study let alone other academic related issues. A life of profligacy and prodigality had eaten up my system, ravaging it beyond description. My world became a life of paradox, self compelling locked in the ecstasy of academic success, yet contrasting in policies and lifestyle. A cursong look at my academic antecedent, that is my pre and post elementary school life or at my past educationally historical exigencies, vis-a-vis my present academic status-quo, one would realize that it was likely to endanger a high level of pity or pessimism as my time and energy was grossly mis-managed
I decided to take up a political office with a view to becoming popular, gaining fame, winning student’s sympathy and having a concrete reason for my academic degeneration, though students politics in Ajanlekoko university was designed and aimed at kicking against the tyrannical acts of the governing authority and protracting youths from a university system that had pitched a formidable tent against all forms of progressive struggles to emancipate the poor, the downtrodden Nigerian students, and impso-facto denied every other attempt at egalitarianism; it was a platform through which the members of the night crawlers popularly known as the secret cults perpetrate their heinous and inhumane acts. Hardly had I spent two months in the office as the students union secretary general than I started dinning and winning with the inglorious and infamous members of the secret society. Of course misguided students are being conscientised to consider it a status symbol to hold affiliations with any of the confraternities on campus. That was the begging of another sad story better imagined than being told.
On one fateful day, I was in my office about to gulp a cup of coffee when a group of six fierce looking young men walked in unannounced. They were members of the notorious “eye” confraternity. They wasted no time in divulging to me their recently perpetrated evil act which was undergoing investigation by the university authority in conjunction with the student’s union representatives.
I was compelled and ordered to cover their evil deeds at my subsequent meetings with the university authority or faced being brutally maltreated. Consequently, the campus which I swagger majestically on its streets became a place I tip-toed upon with a bi-focal lens of high magnitude and being courteous of every living anatomy within close range or focal distance.
The fear of “who is who” deprived and starved me of my lectures as I began to attend classes during tests and examinations only. My fear became allayed after the completion of my tenure in office which gave an opportunity to the “vampires” to feed on a new ground and taste a new flesh.
On February 2001, I became a junior basking in a pool of 3rd class, ready to be shown the way out of the university, or in a milder sense, simply to be advised to withdraw due to academic incompetence. I became highly frustrated, physically, emotionally, spiritually and otherwise. I found myself between the red sea and the deep blue sea in taking decision that will propel me into a new beginning in life.
I could think of no good decision. My intelligent quotient became so low to germinate any reasonable idea. I thought of quitting the university system; I taught of buying a fake university certificate at the end of my course of study; I even thought of committing suicide, a solution that would project me out of my abode of shame and reproach did not come forth. It then dawn on me that I was threading on a bleak future with no ray of hope and that sent fluid flowing freely from my checks. I did not just cry, I did shed tears, I did not just weep, and I did muse. It was touching, heart breaking and indescribable. my two years of little romance with an unfocused and exuberance life style merely put an end to my education and almost jeopardize my future, but just when I was about to finally give up, I met the greatest counselor of all time, the greatest solution provider who turned a new leaf in my life. He transformed my shame to fame, traded my pains for gains and converted my reproach to testimonies. Some call him the king of kings, lord of lords, Jehovah nissi, GOD of possibilities, I am that I am, the God of manifestation, transformation and glorifications… but I call him creator-JESUS CHRIST. I akin to his “one instruction” all my entire challenges on campus became history.
