Two weeks ago, a fair lady took to TikTok to post a video of herself making a shocking revelation about how she successfully passed through school. She mentioned her school as the Federal Polytechnic, Nekede, Imo State. Emerging from what she claimed to be a successful defense of her diploma project, she gave the credit for her academic success to God and her private part. She didn’t use “private part” but rather resorted to an unrefined word, perhaps to create a shock effect.
For the benefit of the morality police, there are two quick things to say about this before getting into substantive matters. First, we need them to remember the Igbo saying that society often hears the truth about life from the mouths of the mad. Second, there is always this tendency to downgrade or completely abdicate everything that God has given to us to live and thrive. Thus, exam success is no longer a product of academic diligence but a result of direct spiritual interventions.
Now to the substantive matters.
We all read (or heard) the vivacious lady who took to TikTok to crow about how she successfully navigated school. There are at least three issues in the lady’s action and our reaction that jump out for closer attention. All three issues are typically patented in Nigeria. The lady in question appears impulsive, our reactions seem irrational, while the school appears hypocritical in its pursuit of a clean image. To that extent, the lady’s action and our reaction to her testimony may not pass the tests of thoughtfulness, rationality and empathy.
Take our individual reactions, represented by the media trial that has now cast her as a demon. She may well be a demon, but who knows this for a fact? Does anyone know her well enough to pronounce her as one? Our interest should have been on her statement, which is ambiguous. capable of diverse interpretations. Rather, we appear to have jumped to the interpretation that she was referencing either voluntarily or forced sex-for-marks. But is this all there is to her statement? There is a lot more to the statement, if we were to consider of the following possibilities.
Many young men today throng construction sites, looking for hard labour tasks to earn money they need for tuition and general upkeep. The females engage in sundry, physically and emotionally demanding activities to support themselves in school. Therefore, is it not possible that the lady found her private part an easier channel through which to support herself through school? I hear that they call the practice “hookup” and this practice is now widespread in our tertiary institutions. Additionally, there are rich and affluent persons who keep schoolgirls as sidechicks and pay them for their service by sponsoring their education. Any of these two categories can legitimately claim that they passed through school with the help of their private parts.
We can question the morality of both preoccupations, and we should. But the victims, as I prefer to see them, need more of our pity than the self-righteous condemnations we have hitherto witnessed. Many of the girls would not resort to immoral behaviour if they were offered alternatives. This is not discounting the reality that quite a number may be into it for the opportunity to keep up with the Joneses – or to flex, as they put it these days. What is important is that, if this were the context in which she referenced the tool she used to survive school, it changes the complexion of everything she said. This makes our reaction to her story a bit hasty.
If our reaction to the testimony of the lady is bad, the reaction of her school appears worse. The Federal Polytechnic, Nekede, did not consider that what it put out as a press statement was both sanctimonious and self-indicting. In one breath, the school took the position that the girl was immoral and disrespectful of God, as if it was a judge of what God demands of a vulnerable individual. And then it proceeded from the assumption that she was a culprit, while ignoring the greater danger that lecturers in the school could be the demons, if this were a sex-for-marks situation. A careful reading of the press release also indicts the school. All the elaborate safety nets it claimed to have installed to protect students spoke to the fact that the school had prior knowledge of the rot in the institution. In the end, the school ended up giving us the impression that it was more interested in protecting its reputation than on the brand image that one of its products exposed to the world through TikTok.
The most baffling reaction is, however, reserved for the lady herself, after opening her mouth wide. Lady Sharon started a fight she apparently has no stomach to finish as soon as her school launched into offensive mode. Her video gave the impression that she was a vivacious, happy-go-lucky girl, unafraid and ready to challenge the world. But she turned out to be a pussycat, not because of the profanity she uttered but because she let this opportunity pass. In the world of technology where she operates, she missed a great opportunity to extend her 15 minutes of fame into a business that would have made her for life. There are two claims to fame for anyone that will become a celebrity: achievement and notoriety. She had an opportunity to make money by branding herself as either of the two.
She could have become the face of the crusade against sex-for-marks in Nigerian tertiary education. She will surely receive her certificate – world pressure will ensure that – and thereafter launch into a career that will take her on speaking tours nationally, and, yes, even globally. In this case, she needed the support of a bespoke publicist and relevant NGOs to thrive. Her reputation will remain intact because she will be the victim that everybody sees. And what she does will go farther in impact than the hotlines and preachments from the pastor rector of the school. The people who subject students to this indignity will be named and shamed. She would have had the time of her life.
If she decided to play the notoriety card, a little support from brand companies and skillful publicists will also do the magic. And she would have become a millionaire in no time at all. There are girls and boys that engage in things that are far more morally offensive to make money. Hers is different because it would have deepened the conversation, even as the puritanical among us recoil at her abrasiveness.
This is why, when I saw the video clip, I was intrigued but not offended. Rather, I felt a combination of curiosity, pity and indignation. The curiosity is the context in which she spoke, and which has been dealt with. As a parent, I felt pity that she had to go through such trauma to graduate from school. I also recognize that we all feel the same way; I suspect that most people were offended that she used a vulgar world to describe a female private organ. My indignation was with a wonderful, self-appointed lawyer encouraging her to walk back everything she said in the video. With every denial, she flushed down the tube opportunities to add value to an ongoing difficult social conversation – and equally use her beloved social media to launch herself into an early payday.
At the end of the day, it is possible that the lady was merely out to catch cruise, chase clout and trend. Which is why she turned out to be a pussycat rather than a tigress. The pussycat in this context represents the dictionary definition of what her lawyer wants to make of her, a weak, compliant or amenable feline creature.