#BNCampusSeries: Olatunji Wanted to Become Agriculture Minister Before University. Not Anymore

Editor’s note: For the next 3 months, we’ll accept and publish students’ experiences on Nigerian campuses through the #BNCampusSeries. Beyond the four walls of the classrooms, so many things happen on campus, and our goal is to document the various aspects of this phase. The BellaNaija Campus stories will explore academics, finances, love, school anxiety, mental wellness, relationships, and everything in between, and we invite you to be a part of our effort to share the diverse experiences of campus life.

Today, Olatunji Olaigbe, a student at the University of Ilorin is sharing his story with us. He shares how his dream of becoming Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture got deflated due to the unconvincing environment of the university system. In his third year, in an attempt to escape the system, he sacrificed his school fees for a scholarship he didn’t eventually get. But he also realised that the same system was his best chance of getting any form of education.

On my first day in school, I was wearing a blue t-shirt and trekker sandals my uncle gave me. There were too many students at LT1 and nowhere to sit. The lecturer was saying stuff about cells and bacteria that I could not make out. Before that class ended, I’d realised that I made a huge mistake coming here.

You do not know – or you do not comprehend it – until it is too late. There are many ways schooling in a federal university can go wrong. Your examination scripts could go missing; you could go on strike for a year and a half; you could end up on a one-sided beef with a lecturer; you could know too much or too little; you can suffer school fee hike so high you could no longer afford to pay; the computer could go off while you’re writing a 4-unit CBT course; you could miss an exam because there was no bus – the list is endless. In a Nigerian school, there’s a 98.9% chance something will disrupt your education, and I did not account for not reading enough. 

Mine went wrong before I got into school. I did JAMB twice and scored well both times. The first time, I lost my job some months before resuming so I couldn’t save for school. I had to do it again. The second year, I chose what I chose the first time, again, Agriculture at the University of Ilorin. Before then, I’d been working on farms all my life. I worked in my uncle’s farm, on a farm where my uncle trained, and in another of my uncle’s farms. I also used to plant stuff in a small unravelled part of my grandfather’s house in Lagos. One time, I cultivated a water yam stalk till it was big enough to be harvested, and then a kid who used to come fetch water in our house harvested it. Another time we planted maize beside those canals in Ajangbadi. They died around the third week or so. So I was already into farming and studying agriculture just felt right.

When we first got to Ilorin from Lagos in 2013, I was considering studying computer science due to the large-scale stress of farming. But by 2016, I had worked enough in farms to decide I wanted to be Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture in 10 years, lol. Everything seemed so clear: I would continue farming while going to school, bag my master’s and PhD, and do crazy research like rebreeding a promising but largely unproductive species of poultry. 

All of that was snuffed out in my first semester in school. In my second semester, I started eyeing universities where I thought I’d thrive. I sought out scholarships to international universities. I almost got into a university in the Czech Republic, waiting for a scholarship. In my third year, I had to choose between making an application fee or paying my school fees, both of which I did not even have. I watched my university school fees payment portal open and close multiple times. I was confident if I did not pay the school fee, I’d eventually get the scholarship and say bye to schooling in this claustrophobic hell-hole. I never got the scholarship. 

That morning, I ran for two hours straight instead of my usual half an hour. Looking back, I think I just wanted to sweat all the water I would later cry out. The next day, I had a friend take a Kuda overdraft to pay for my school fees while I waited on the payment from a gig.

Now, I’m less sure of what I want to be. 

You lose your big dreams in these university walls, and in return, you claim to have earned a better career path, or that it taught you to be more realistic. Along with your dreams, you forget that it is not wrong to have big, seemingly unrealistic dreams. 

It’s easy to sidestep all of this by pointing out the very few outliers the system produces. It’s even easier to ask yourself, “How many people in governance, industry, or finance are the product of the same educational system that you are going through?” Check the data, your suffering does not lead to a greater good. You are here because of decades of poor governance and your inability to afford something better. 

The few who come out unscathed do not excuse the hundreds of millions of those who don’t. More so, we should not pay the price of genius for the bare minimum. Every day, I am waiting, heaving for this to be over. As you’ve probably asked me as you read this, I ask myself why I never dropped out despite the many times I almost did. I’ve also learnt that you’re better with it than without. After you’ve rightfully grieved your dreams and complained, you realise this is still your best chance at getting anything that looks like an education, and you better take full advantage of it.