Investigation of The Causes and Root of Cultism on Campuses

Corruption in the low and high place has also become an incurable malady. Our society is simply a home of insecurity and near lawlessness.

All these societal malaises have given rise to a state of confusion in our society. This confusion has become a contributing factor to the issue of students continued involvement in cultism.

In the first place, the government has no meaningful programmes for the youths which will prepare them for the challenges of our developing world. It seems nobody realizes that the students of today will be the leaders of tomorrow. The question of corruption and indiscipline is there and fast becoming a culture among the present day leaders and yet government does not think that it is high time we did something to stem the tide. That remedy can come through taking a closer look at the kind of moral training that our student on the campuses are getting if they must make a difference in our society of tomorrow. Apart form the student, which they are engaged in which they do not often take seriously, the students have nothing to occupy or challenge them. In such situations, they supply the mission link and provide some engaging programmes for themselves and often one of the bad programmes they initiate is cultism.

The government does not seem to be interested in these students and they are not happy about the neglect. The leaders we have today are busy chasing shadows getting involved in contract scams, forgery looting of public treasury and all forms of atrocious acts.

The students are copying these bad examples and are applying them to worsen the already confused state of the society even our leaders who should be worried about the decadence, gangsterism and cultism promote them. They recruit the students as political thugs to help them win their elections. They engage the students as hired assassins to eliminate their political opponents. The Enugu state university of science and technology students’ demonstration (violent) of Monday 13th March 2001, which saw the extensive use of firearms, is an eye opener to the fact of the matter. The guns used as gathered were part of the consignment of arms bough during he 1999 elections to ensure victory at all cost. It is easy to give water to the monkey but very difficult to collect back the cup. This is actually how our leaders are equipping the students for tomorrow’s challenges, a way of inning the embers of cultism on campuses.

The incessant strike action embarked upon by the staff of our institutions of higher learning arising from disagreement between the government and the staff of our school creates more problems. These interruption make the academic programme so disjointed and leaves unnecessary room for students to engage in cultism and other related acts. While the staff and government slug it out there, the students indulge clandestine acts. Since nothing occupies them, there are no academic assignments, learning is not going on and the youthful energies cannot be left to rust unpunished.

There is also the belief today that the intermittent military interventions in governance have contributed to the confusion. A study showed that cases of cultism and violent acts were higher during the of military government. Addressing about four thousand fresh students of the university of Benin on the 6th of March 2001, the vice chancellor professor Richards Anao was of this view:

“During the military era, it was the vogue for everyone to resort to acts of violence at the pretext of vent their ideas and feelings cultism featured mainly during the military regime when the culture of violence and might is right prevailed (Guardian Thurs 22, 2001 p.47)

i strongly believed that university and polytechnic students who resort to violent protests are direct products of the dislocation in the society at large. This is because; years of military rule have turned many Nigerians into soldiers of sorts.