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Opinions of Saturday, 3 November 2018

Columnist: Iddrisu Abdul Hakeem

Ghana to become a banana republic: Universities are now zoos?

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Say what you like, the goat is a hard worker though its heirs always prevent people from seeing its sweat.

Ghana is certainly not being cursed by its Maker with her confirmed station at the third world like the devil's place in hell!

Her trouble is simply that she breeds (in universities) and houses her own enemies (corrupt leaders, and majority of uneducated graduates).

Indeed, corroborated unmitigated woes of our dear nation continue to escalate boundlessly and geometrically, and all hope seems to have parted company with us after sixty one years of sweat without sweet.

Mainly because, some political leaders are unable to moderate their greed.

Rampant corruption, bad governance, diseases, conflict, and political victimization continue to hold by the jugular.

As if that is not worst enough, our university students, the hope and conscience of the nation have become more disappointing than the fight against the above mentioned miseries!

It was the First Lady of Nigeria, Aisha Buhari, who once described some undesirable political elements in Nigeria as jackals, hyenas, in a zoo who unmeritoriously hijacked his husband's Aso Rock (the Nigerian Presidential Villa), when President Muhammadu Buhari, her husband, was on medical vacation in England.

In my humble opinion, I believe sometimes one does not require a tail in between their legs with pumpkin leaves as their favorite 'graze' to be qualified as animals.

The reason why animals are kept in where we refer to as zoos with heavy gating system, is because the lest opportunity they get, if their keepers fail to keep the gates shut, there would be reports in the media the next minute!

Because of their lack of intellect and wisdom.

Once an individual compromises and corrupts the intellect, he's now in a jungle of his own.

Such people must be taken to where they belong by those who are in charge of the safety of society.

The same goes for respect.

It is a reciprocal.

It is a game of tit for tat.

Being a university student does not automatically guarantee one respectability if they don't value the ideals and ethos governing university education.

In fact, in my unbiased perspective, if a university student is behaving like an over pampered child that has misplaced a promised candid, he or she should be treated with the contempt that they deserve!

I listened to the VC of Universiry of Ghana, Professor Ebenezer Oduro Owusu, and his clarion call upon lecturers to respect university students, and I queried myself a rather rhetorical questions.

Are lecturers, or even the security, to respect all university students, including the Indian hemps smokers on campus?

Must lecturers respect those university students who embark upon 'naked Morale', and march around campus with their horrible uncircumcised 'sausages', and if saner students want to take picture of such insane entertainment their phones are seized and smashed in front of them?

Must lecturers respect those university students who sleep with their counterparts in the open like animals mount one another?

Is Professor Ebenezer Oduro Owusu suggesting that university students who are caught snatching iPads on campus, must be respected by lecturers at all cost simply because they are the largest customers of the lecturers?

Has Professor Ebenezer Oduro Owusu forgotten, that he who turns his tea cup into a chamberpot, must not take offense if others use it to collect urine?

For me, if there's a blur or slimmer difference between university students and that of sophisticated armed robbers and other hardened criminals at the Kejetia market, it's fair to allow the full weight of the law loosed on them.

Those who chastised Professor Obiri Danso for finding answers and solutions to the above listed questions, did university education a great disservice.

There are all forms of mannerless students who have no regards for the ethos of the game. What should be done to them, Prof.?

After 60-something years of independence we still find ourselves where we are; unable to develop. And yet our university students in the 21st century are worst than 'Delta Forces' in terms of destruction!

Following the numerous comments that accompanied the KNUST impasse by some politicians, opinion leaders, and other social commentators, I was left with no choice as a young man with role models in my life, but to thoroughly rewrite and readjust my list of role models.

My role models like Honorable Ablakwa, Manasseh Azure, Abdul Malik Kwake Baaku, Sammy Awuku, were simply annoying; alluding that students if their emotive if not frivolous demands are not listened to by authorities, (like the animals in the zoos), they have the right to stage an Arab Revolution, vandalizing and bulldozing university's properties!

Yes. Their comments indicated that.

University education goes beyond the usual chew, pour, pass exam, and past the system, that we know in our clime.

It is an avenue to jettison some archaic beliefs and retool one's thinking to aligning with acceptable civilization.

You can't achieve such a peerless feat if you're ideological fixated and being unresponsive to change.

If after 60-something years of underdevelopment, we still hold on to unnecessary traditions that cause our very foundation, what's the difference between us and the occupants of the kingdom of the Lion King?

Those countries like the Asian Tigers that were on the same wavelength with us in the 60s, 'took off' because they modified, if not jettisoned, some of their unreasonable cultural practices and traditions.

Something, our university students in the 21st century, strongly opposed to the point of even demolishing the little that took us over sixty plus years to build!

What a shame!?

Converting the segregated males' halls of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, KNUST, was certainly a stepping stone in the right direction seeing to it that the mindsets of students are reprogrammed towards something better, departing the old system that has rendered us useless over the years.

Somebody should Google clashes between these traditional males halls over the years.

Yet, many analysts advertised and displayed, and I regret to have to use the words, their ignorance and myopia, by arguing against the university for taking such bold steps.

All supporters of this backwardness, buffoonery, and mediocrity, that was showcased on the campus of KNUST, must bow their heads in shame.

Let's remember, the Young shall grow (with their mentalities)!

I rest my case!

God Bless Ghana,

God Bless Africa,

And may God retool the minds of Africa's youth for the best, (not vandalism).