By Comfort Obi
I was not quite satisfied with the write-up because it spared an important segment of the society which should be publicly flogged. Yet, I found it irresistible. The first thing which drew me to it was its caption. “Nigerian Politicians Destroying Our Girls”, it read, no, screamed.
I am a fan of the writer. I love to read anything written by Sam Amadi. Atimes, I agree with him. At other times when I think his outing is a product of partisan politics or prejudice, I don’t. But his writings fascinate me. He is brilliant. A good analyst. Deep. And why not?
Amadi is a number of things put together. A politician. He was an Imo State Governorship aspirant under the Labour Party, LP, in the off-season election of November 11, 2023. He withdrew on the day of the Party’s Governorship Primaries. Good a thing he did because, I would hate to keep counting him, each time he spoke, as one of those given an unpleasant technical knockout by the incumbent Governor Hope Uzodinma.
Amadi is also an Activist. Technocrat. A solid academic. A Law Lecturer at the Baze University, Abuja.
I don’t know why, but his Faculty, Law, at the Baze University, holds a huge attraction for Nigerian Politicians. It is where a good number of them go to read Law. Senator Dino Melaye. Senator Ifeanyi Uba. And some more. It is their preferred base. Now, sadly, for some of them still aspiring to read Law at the University, the National Universities Commission, this other day, pulled the rug from under their feet. It barred the University from admitting Law students for the next five years for “over-admitting.”
Amadi is, also, a prolific commentator on national issues. So, on Thursday, December 7, 2023, when Amadi’s write-up hit Whatsaap platforms, I read it immediately. My first reaction was sadness. I worried about the girls Amadi wrote about. I thought about their parents and guardians who pray for them everyday, and I worried some more. I thought about the danger some of them could face while on their illicit business, and my worry climbed to high heavens.
If you have young girls in the University, especially if they are beautiful, and more especially, if they are in Abuja, the Headquarters of Nigeria’s politicians, Dr Amadi’s write-up should make your heart skip many times over. Mine skipped. I have young girls there. And to quote Dr. Amadi, “they are young and pretty.” So I was worried. Within a couple of hours, I had read the write-up six times, and without seeking his permission, I asked the Editor of this magazine to run it.
Dr Amadi’s outing hit the target. It went viral. I saw it in all the Whatsaap groups I belong to. But for the benefit of this write-up, a brief recap is necessary.
Amadi said he was at the high profile Transcorp Hotel, Abuja, to analyze the News for Arise Television. He is an analyst with the Tv station. On his way out, he wrote, he saw a bevy of “pretty, young girls crowded in a corner” at the lobby. All were skimpily dressed, he noted. You know, that type of dress which leaves nothing to the imagination. He said they looked like “commercial s$x workers.”
Those girls must have been very conspicuously displayed “for sale” for Amadi to see them. They were bold. Sure-footed. They were neither hiding, ashamed of their skimpy appearances, nor worried that they were seen in that hotel as “late” as 10.30pm.
Proof?
One of them, who Amadi identified as his student, excitedly went to greet him. See, the girl “no fear”. These our children “sef.” You were on an “illegal” business, you saw your Lecturer, and instead of dodging, you boldly went to greet him. God “forbid bad thing”. During our time, (suddenly seems so long), we would have disappeared if any of us was crazy enough to go for that “kind of business”!
Perhaps, for the student’s guts, Amadi gave it back to her in the write-up. Stopping just short of mentioning her name, he made sure that those who know the young girl, including her colleagues and parents and siblings would realise she was in a hotel at that time for an all-night “extra curricular activity”.
Amadi: “One of them rushed to greet me: ‘Good evening sir.’ She was one of my students. I recognized her clearly because she had a slight disability, and I paid attention to make sure she followed the coursework.” Good job, Doc., for paying attention to her coursework. My opinion, however, is that it was not necessary to describe her, especially her disability, in a way her school mates and family would know what she was upto that night. Her cup of tea though. She asked for trouble. But I digress.
So, Dr Amadi’s story. He said he, also, recognized three others as fresh graduates of his department. “I recognized three of those hotly dressed pretty young girls as fresh graduates of my department.” Meaning: four of the girls, up for “pick” were of Amadi’s department at Baze University. Question: What impression would one now have of girls in that department? Seems hanging around Hotels is their part time job. I wish Amadi had spared that open revelation.
But we continue. Amadi hit the nail on the head, in case we were in doubt about the business of the students in the hotel. He said they must have been arranged for “picks” by some people for Politicians in that Hotel to sample. Amadi: “A Nigerian politician or man of means have arranged them for his pleasure and those of his friends and acquaintances.”
He expressed shock. Imagine. Shock?
Just because he saw them in a Hotel as decent as Transcorp, Abuja? What if Amadi had seen his students along a red light? Will he faint?
A number of female students do that for a couple of reasons. They include: To fund their expensive lifestyle. To pay their way through Universities. Or to maintain their families. A number of them double as students and breadwinners in their families. Let me bore you here with this story.
A couple of years ago, I came across one along Opebi Road, Ikeja, Lagos, at about 2.00am on my way going back home from office. It was a cold night. It had just rained heavily. She was young. Beautiful. And Vulnerable. A Police check point was just a few meters away. So, I asked my driver to stop. As we stopped, she rushed to the driver’s side, but was disappointed when she saw me. She sighed, made to walk away, but I called her back. To cut the long story short, she told me her heart-wrenching story and why she is “selling herself”. A second year French student, she had nobody to help pay her way through school. Her mother is a widow, and had just lost a menial job she was doing. From that uncivilized hour when I met her, I took up her school fees, accommodation, feeding, general upkeep. That kept her off the red light, and her dangerous “job”. I am happy to say she now works in a high profile firm, a job she divinely secured immediately after her National Youth Service, lives in a good apartment with her mother and two siblings, and owns a car. She has remained clean. Again, I digressed
Let’s read Amadi’s final submission: “Nigerian Politicians are destroying our young girls. How can such young girls who are debased that early rise up to be moral champions of tomorrow? How?”
My response: I agree with Dr. Amadi. It is difficult not to agree with him. We know the truth. But I have a problem with his write up.
Dr Amadi forgot to tell us the whole truth. He did not go the whole stretch, especially, as it concerns some those students. He forgot to, excuse this cliche, hit the nail on its head. He spared the University environment and the dirty job some Lecturers are doing on our young girls. He, cleanly, forgot that the destruction of our young girls is a big business in the Universities. He spared those his unscrupulous colleagues. He cannot talk about the destruction of our young girls by Politicians without mentioning that the Headquarters of that destruction is in our Universities, actively driven by some of his colleague- Lecturers.
These Lecturers have done more harm to our young girls than the Politicians he pointed accusing fingers at. Will Dr. Amadi be shocked to hear that, perhaps, a number of those girls were in that hotel to make money so as to sort out some their Lecturers?
Dr Amadi must know that the young pretty girls not only “sort” some of their unscrupulous Lecturers out with money, they also “sort” them out with their bodies.
They are in categories.
While a number of the girls are, literally, forced to give their bodies to those Lecturers to avoid being marked down, or even made to repeat courses or a whole session, others, on their own, just abandon school, go “frolicking” for weeks, to the knowledge of their Lecturers, come back, settle them with money and their bodies, make good grades, and flaunt certificates which they can hardly defend.
Recently, such sordid stories emanated from even top Univerties. One of such is the scandal at the University of Calabar where female Law students did the unprecedented. They carried placards and protested against their Dean. They alleged they had become tired of “servicing” his body and pocket.
Truth is, there is actually no difference between the Politicians Dr Amadi focused on, and the wreck some Lecturers have wrought upon our young girls. But that’s putting it mildly. The destruction of our girls is worse in the Universities than anywhere else. It stinks to high heavens.
Here is why.
Those young girls were put in their hands to be guided. To be taught. To be shown the light. To be equipped to face the world. But some unscrupulous Lecturers, instead, are more interested in the bodies of the girls and the cash they collect from them. It is the same cash they collect from the male students. This has turned some of the young boys into “yahoo-yahoo” experts. The result is the disrespect Lecturers suffer before their students, and the wrecking of our education system which, because of the sorting business, produces not a few half-baked graduates.
But finally, I appreciate Dr. Amadi for drawing our attention to this shame of a Nation. Nothing new though. It has been there for a “looooong” time. We just have been ignoring it, and dismissing it as “the usual.” But I wish he had gone the whole 100 meters by adding some of his colleagues as danger zones for young girls.
Yet, there is a consolation. Next time when Dr Amadi’s female students see him at the Transcorp Hotel, Abuja, they would show some respect, and hide from him. None of them will be bold enough to rush out to greet him – assuming they read him. It is a good beginning.
Obi is the Editor-in-Chief/CEO of The Source (Magazine), https://thesourceng.com. Email: [email protected], [email protected]
