In Tirana, Albanian students have entered the fifth day of anti-government protests demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama over poor university conditions, high tuition fees and inadequate support for young people. They clash with police firing rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons. They refuse to be slaves in their own country.
In Nigeria, the opposite is a national tragedy.
While our institutions of learning are being destroyed before our eyes, Nigerian students have abandoned resistance and mastered sycophancy. Instead of emulating the courage of their Albanian counterparts, they are busy singing praises of their oppressors.
How do you explain that in a country where tuition has been hiked beyond the reach of the common man, where parents have no living wage, where sponsors are crushed by the devastating effects of fuel subsidy removal, where students trek to dilapidated campuses and drop out daily, the so-called student leadership is pledging support and mobilizing votes for the very oppressors destroying education?
It is shameful to watch Nigerian students trooping to sing praises of DG DSS Tosin Ajayi and other agents of the state that symbolizes this repression, promising bloc votes and loyalty to a system that has made schooling almost impossible.
The Albanian student demands better university conditions. The Nigerian student demands a photo opportunity with his oppressor.
The Albanian student says: We cannot afford tuition, resign. The Nigerian student says: We are suffering from hike, but we support you for 2027.
This is not student unionism. This is political prostitution. This is the conscious mobilization of votes to further the subjugation and repression of already suffering students and by extension, the general public.
Albanian students know that silence is complicity. Nigerian students have turned complicity into a profession.
History will not be kind to a generation that chose praise-singing over protest, that chose crumbs over courage, that chose to legitimize its own oppression.