Dear Undergraduates,
Depending on your academic strength, students unionism is something you should actually look into.
The primary reason for being in school is to study and graduate with a good degree. However, the world that lies just beyond the perimeter wall of your school is much interested in leadership skills than intellectual power to solve X and Y problems.
When we talk of leadership here, we do not mean politics. Leadership means responsibility in this context.
How are you able to work with efficiency and deliver desired results. If you are hired as a Pupil Pharmacist today, how are you able to work with the people around you to discharge your duties? How are you able to work in an environment that is deluged with so many processes and operational bottlenecks, but then you can keep focus on what is expected of you to deliver at the end of the day?
Immediately you sit for an interview with a highly structured organization, you will find yourself answering more of these questions than the Theory of Vibration you studied in school or Advanced Thermodynamics. When you have an experience in students unionism, you give the interviewers a good chance of asking you questions that will assess your social intelligence and emotional intelligence. Already, your degree certificate has already informed them about your intellectual intelligence.
This is why I feel students in their penultimate years and final years should explore some unionism no matter how little. It can be at the SUG/SRC level or faculty level or departmental level, or even the commonest one- religious associations (MSSN, for example). And when you go into unionism, strive to make it an impactful one. Be innovative- think of new ways of using that student body to make impact in that school.
Don’t do what some of our union leaders used to do in those days where every year they keep constructing new departmental and faculty signboards because it gave them an avenue to steal from the association’s money. No, you don’t need all that. You have a big dream ahead. Your leadership presence in unionism should be strictly to accumulate experience in leadership, interpersonal relationship, system thinking, decision making process, strategic planning, etc. All these have a place in students unionism. You should attempt to make waves, change narratives, do something new. You will have too numerous stories to tell in interviews.
You have a CGPA of 4.81 in final year, do some politics man. You’ll still finish with your first class. Same thing with people having CGPAs of 4.15 or 3.07 in final year. Your class of degree is almost always sealed already. Just make sure you don’t get a carry over. Even if you contest and lose the election, get involved in the struggle. You will have two or three key learnings. If you don’t want politics, do some certificate courses like Cisco or something something management. I mean, use your final year do something that will add to your CV. Have that competitive advantage over a graduate who only has the degree with nothing extra.
Disclaimer: If you go do Aluta too much and fail courses in your final year and spill, no be me send you 🤗. I said you shu make sure you read and pass. Don’t spill and splash.
- Ibrahiym A. El-Caleel.
What's the difference between Tinubu's Govt and Kidnappers? You abduct kids, underage for several weeks without feeding properly for doing NOTHING CONSTITUTIONALLY WRONG. They only came out to protest the terrible state of affairs in the country. You now arraign them in a court in this sorry state.
Shame on you.
May Allãh send down an unimaginable wrath on you all responsible for this wickedness.
@ahmadkhamisusma@AbbaM_Abiyos No matter what he did, there's no law in military that allowed a general to lock someone for such years, except best on the judgement of the court marshal