Misery has always loved company. Nature made it so, perhaps. The feeling is always deceptive, though. It is more or less an escape mentality with very little, if any, enduring value. For any person or persons caught in the web of difficulties, resorting to pointing out problems elsewhere as proof that there are problems everywhere, hardly offers relief to the challenge at hand. Indeed, such a tendency is a pathetic manifestation of unseriousness, if not outright insincerity.
Seeking to point at problems and tragedy elsewhere as a strategy to divert attention from problems at hand is a most miserable expression of abdication of responsibility. For political leaders and politicians, though, referencing problems elsewhere in a bid to justify their own policy shortcomings is common practice. For them, any problem elsewhere, be it earthquake, trade union dispute or disaster of any shape, often presents a good shield to hide behind, a necessary instrument for warding off attention to what may not be going well at home. The escape may be momentary but, for political actors, it always counts for something.
Without doubt, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brazen invasion of Ukraine presents a huge source of momentary escape from reality for Nigeria and Nigerians. The crisis could probably not have come at a better time for the political leadership at home. Interestingly, it does not seem as if it is only political leaders and government officials that have found Russia’s superpower muscle-flexing in Ukraine a welcome, even if debased, distraction.
Frazzled and virtually desolate from a suffocating mix of pervasive insecurity, constricting poverty, multi-dimensional social problems and unparalleled uncertainty about tomorrow, a sizeable portion of the Nigerian public, including the media, seem to have found in the outrageous situation in Ukraine a break from the monotony of unending lamentations at home. Putin’s rampaging army have also been visiting enough devastation in Ukraine to adequately dilute, if not displace, attention to the many uncertified war fronts at home in Nigeria.
Even Boko Haram and the sundry terrorists that have been holding Nigeria by the jugular in the past few years seem to have their attention captured by the war in Ukraine too. Or how else does one explain the coincidence of noticeable reduction in the spate of terrorist attacks in the northern flanks of the country since the commencement of the Ukraine crisis?
Of course, Nigeria’s many distress points are still very much alive and on. All that the Ukraine crisis has done is simply to divert attention from the many upheavals around, but they remain no less dangerous.
Interestingly, even as the Ukraine crisis has provided some diversion from total media attention to disasters of terrorism, kidnapping, ritual criminalities and economically disabling fuel scarcity at home, the same war has equally beamed a scorching light on Nigeria’s other crises of existence.
The Ukraine war is not any different in this case. There is hardly any major global incident of the present era that does not promptly translate into an indictment on Nigeria’s mismanagement of its resources and potential. The crisis in Ukraine, even though unintended, has called attention once more to how badly Nigeria has done for itself.
It is well and commendable that the Federal Government responded fast in arranging for stranded Nigerians in Ukraine, the majority of who are students, to be evacuated and brought back home. President Muhammadu Buhari’s quick approval of fund for the evacuation and immediate execution of the assignment was encouraging.
Beyond this commendable act, however, lies a very troubling reality about Nigeria, which the Ukraine crisis has brought to the fore once more. Ukraine is not, and ought not be, under normal circumstances, a prime destination for Nigerians seeking higher education.
Nothing in the climate, the culture, the food, the location, etc., recommends the country as a preferred choice for a Nigerian student to go for higher education. How is it then that Ukraine became a busy base of thousands of young Nigerians on graduate and post-graduate studies? Yet it is not only Ukraine. Lichtenstein, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Romania, Kazakhistan, Greenland, name them, far flung lands. Young Nigerians in thousands, some still in their teens, are scattered like oil bean seeds in prime heat all over these countries, in search of higher education.
Are these young Nigerians in these locations simply for their love of adventure and foreign education? Certainly not. Young Nigerians and hapless parents take their fate in their hands and are literally ready to go to the end of the earth to find good education, simply because their country and their government have proved incapable of providing them the opportunity for meeting this basic need. Worse still, the government, over the years, seems incapable of appreciating the indictment that this situation represents for it. You can bet that the Minister of Education, so called, sees no link between his high office and how many young citizens have access to education annually.
A more poignant commentary on the pathetic state of Nigeria and its bankrupt policies on human development could not have been found in any better setting than was the case where the Nigerian government was commendably bringing home students caught in the Russian-Ukraine fire. While those endangered students were being brought back home, the universities at home remained all closed down for the umpteenth time, caught in the throes of industrial dispute by academic staff of the universities.
Of course, the pattern is set; once the academic union ends what has evolved into its quarterly exercise, the non-academic staff will commence theirs. Determining where the pendulum swings in terms of the share of irresponsibility in this unending dispute is no longer easy.
The indeterminate duration of academic programmes in Nigerian universities, occasioned by these now programmed bouts of devious dog fight between government authorities and university unions is one of the major reasons many parents, who are by no means rich, make steep financial and emotional commitment that send their children away to places they can barely imagine, just to get standard education within a specified time frame.
It is not difficult to appreciate the pain and burden of the young Nigerian fourth-year medical student who, having escaped from Ukraine, is now a refugee in Poland. He may not have any idea of what the future holds for him nor is he financially buoyant to be on holiday for as long as the crisis lasts. But he outrightly rejected the offer to be evacuated back to Nigeria. He had a simple but loaded question: “what will I be coming back there to do?”
The ones who have returned from Ukraine to the embrace of their relieved parents will relax for a short while, after which they will inevitably ask that critical question: what have I returned here to do? And what answer will the government give them?
In any case, even if the universities were not on their periodic lockdown, most of these students headed out of Nigeria because even with above average and sometimes excellent secondary school results, the Nigerian system happily shuts them out. Thank God there was fund to bring them home, at least they should savour home food for a while and plan where next to go. Anywhere but home.