Sad news from Malaysia I

This morning (of 28 February 2009) we checked out of Nikko Hotel after the 3-day International Conference of Youth on Terrorism. While waiting for our bus in the lobby, I decided to read the morning newspaper. I soon got weary of reading it; because the typical newspaper here is so thick you could club someone to death with it. But before I could put the paper aside, I noticed a report that heated my blood.

Other participants noticed the change in me and asked for an explanation. I showed them the second half of page 20 of New Straits Times. My friends saw the picture of firemen struggling with their machines to extricate one accident victim from a car that looked like a chewed gum. Under the picture was the caption, “Two Nigerian students killed in crash.”

Because my friends are not Nigerians, they didn’t show much interest. But I was angry because the dying of young Nigerians from avoidable reckless situations has become a trend here. Besides reckless driving, our younger ones engage in immoral activities including drug abuse which sometimes leads to their death.

This latest incident is just a new addition to the sad statistics. About month ago a Nigerian died from drug overdose. Two weeks before him, two die from similar circumstances. All of them were young undergraduate students studying at private universities and colleges.

This piece should have been written eight months ago. When I came to Malaysia, my friends who were here before me, asked me to use my column to warn Nigerian parents of the dangers of sending their children for undergraduate studies here. I was hesitant to sound such a warning not because I had any reason to doubt my friends but because I believed then as I do now that Nigerian universities are far from the enlightenment centres they used to be.

Additionally, we’ve only a few places for the hundreds of thousands of students that qualify yearly for higher education. Thus I didn’t only support parents sending their children abroad for good education, I also advocated it. But my views changed at a meeting we had four weeks ago.

At the gathering I discovered how naïve I was and was not only converted to my friends’ cause but I also resolved to write something about it immediately. Per chance a few lives could be saved. But four weeks after the gathering, nothing was written because I was too shocked to write.

The meeting was an orientation program for postgraduate students from Nigeria who started their studies at UPM in December. Dr Abdul Karim the President of Nigerians in Diaspora and also a senior lecturer at UPM was invited to advise the students on how to manage their studies, relationship with supervisors and how to conduct themselves in Malaysian society.

During the question and answer session, the discussion changed to the reckless behaviour of Nigerian undergraduate students. We were all speechless as Dr Abdul Karim gave us detailed but grim account of what’s happening among our students.

“Two days ago” Dr Abdul Karim began, “I was invited to the hospital concerning the death of a Nigerian student. It was a suspected case of drug abuse. The deceased went to his friend’s room to complain of stomach pain. But his friend did nothing. He started vomiting blood. The friend did nothing. It was when the boy was clearly dead that the friend starting running to fetch other friends to take the body to the hospital. The hospital rejected the body when the friends couldn’t show a police report. They eventually got police report, deposited the body at the hospital and disappeared.”

It appeared the friend was hiding something. Probably he was avoiding the discovery of drugs in his room for after he ran away from the hospital; it took several phone calls from all concerned including the embassy before he appeared again. When asked how the deceased died he said his friend “took something.”

The problem has become what psychologists call ‘a social epidemic’ among the cultural group called Nigerian undergraduate students studying at private colleges in Malaysia.

You’ll learn more about these unfortunate incidents and what parents need to do in the second part of this piece. But in the meantime, if you need the phone number of Dr Abdul Karim who’s the President of all Nigerians in Malaysia, send me an email and I’ll forward your request to him.