pannigeriannews 
By Olayode Inaolaji
Over seven thousand new students of Ladoke Akintola University of Technology (LAUTECH) were matriculated recently anidst pomp and circumstance. This is a great success.
There are two genres of students; they are: the serious and the unserious ones. The serious ones will be ruminating on the godly techniques they can employ to graduate with flying colours while those of the other calibre will be cogitating on the ways to associate themselves with new friends who will broaden their horizon in becoming expert internet swindlers and many other unscrupulous endeavours that have enveloped the 21st century.
Education, they say, is a potent weapon to vanquish ignorance; the absence of it is outright obscurity. It is unfortunate that in Nigeria, holding of first degrees is tantamount to a sachet of water which is usually dumped on the floor upon drinking the water therein.
Hundreds of thousands of people graduate annually from universities, polytechnics, colleges and other monotechnics with no employment opportunity. Even with this, some are still gaining admission. Gone are the days when job seeking usually required low effort. What is the hope of the unemployed graduates? Should they be optimistic or pessimistic? However, some people are lucky: they secure jobs easily.
In this country, the level of employment opportunities is low. This can be avouched by the histrionic and at the same lugubrious incident that occurred on September 5, 2022 in LAUTECH in which an alumnus stormed the institution, as a result of what seems like depression, wanted to return his first degree and requested the tuition he had paid since his first year. This is very unsavoury; although, he has been receiving financial assistance.
It is a crystal fact that success in life can never be guaranteed by the level of education. However, it will be more than pleasant to be educated than being in mere ignorance in the society. Formal education, teaching and learning process being carried out in the four walls of the classrooms, is cogently for the uplift of the society.
In this epoch, social vices aren’t seen as the wrong but as a way of life by some ‘moral-lacking’ students. Social vices such as cultism, examination misconducts, gangsterism, fornication, sexual assault, drinking of alcohol and unleashing of ruckus in and outside the campus, to mention but a few.
Serious students who have the mindset of graduating in flying colours are herein admonished to shun all the sorts of moral decadence highlighted above. I am not saying the students should not create friendship because the secondary purpose of attending higher institution of learning is to garner connections which, often time, makes an individual to have immense influence across a particular entity.
Contrarily, according to research, the hazard being wreaked by peer group is immense than the positive ones. Students have to be careful with the kind of ‘pals’ they move with. Birds of a feather flock together, they say.
The law and order of the school should also be stringently adhered to in order to forestall being a prey of who will be on the lists of infamous students in the institution which pit a stain to their immaculate toga of integrity in the future.
Congratulations to the newly matriculated students of LAUTECH, Ogbomoso, Oyo State. Success awaits you all.
Olayode is from Ogbomoso, Oyo State.
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