Sad news from Malaysia II

By Ibraheem Dooba

The personality of an average Nigerian is such that – as one of my professors would say – “his presence is felt and his absence noticed.” But our younger ones have taken it a notch further: their presence is felt and detested. An Indian graduate student once told me, “Before moving to the US to complete my studies, I was studying at a private college in Malaysia. Some of my classmates were Nigerians. The Nigerians were so loud that the Chinese landlords refused to rent houses to them.”

A Yemeni friend told me the same story, “I was looking for a house for my friends who were coming from Yemen to study in Malaysia. So I went to an agent. The first rule he gave me was that I should not share the house with Niggers. At that time, I didn’t know what a Nigger was.”

To me all these are cases of racism in a world that has discriminated against the black race for centuries. But sometimes our younger ones invite such treatment. Here’s one of the stories Dr. Abdul Karim Mohammed told us: “I went to a private university and entered a lift with some people. Among them were three Nigerians, two boys from the north and a southern girl. Apparently, they were coming from a drinking orgy. One of the boys was making a nuisance of himself and then vomited in the lift.”

Here’s a question: if you were a landlord and had a house to let, would you give it to these three? In a country were the activities of incorrigible 419ers have already dented our image, this trend by young students who came to Malaysia for noble reasons is worrying. And the trend takes no religious or ethnic tint; southerners, northerners, Muslims and Christians are all involved. Among the two that died recently, one was a Muslim and the other was a Christian.

Does it mean that all Nigerian students studying at private universities are immoral? No. Actually many of them are good and I personally know some who have nothing to do with drugs or any immoral act. But where crime and immorality are concerned, the society does not see the good, it sees the bad especially if the bad are from a minority population. And as Aron and Aron said, it doesn’t matter if the ratio of bad to good is lower in the minority population than the same ratio in the majority population; the entire minority population is perceived as having more tendencies to do evil. In psychology, this is called illusory correlation.

But how we are perceived is not as threatening as the real and immediate danger of how a few created an environment that sucks in the good and then leads them to their destruction. Some of these children are from good families. However, the peer environment is more powerful than coming from a good family. Of recent, studies by psychologists have shown that when it’s said that the environment has more influence on the attitude and personality of young adolescents than heredity, it’s the peer environment that’s meant rather than the family or school environment. For a full treatise on this topic, read Judith Harris’ The Nurture Assumption.

Our worst fear is that there’s an environment of drug abuse and more and more students are being lured into it. An undergraduate reported to his uncles recently that when they asked their friend why he had stopped coming to the mosque and why he was using his time abusing drugs; he told them off and asked if they’re the ones paying for his education.

When I called a boy - who started school here this semester and whose parents visited me when they came to Malaysia - and asked about the drug situation in their college he told me: “No they don’t do hard drugs here. But there’s a joint where people smoke hemp.” Now that frightens me.

What parents should do
The emails I received after the first part of this piece show that parents are genuinely concerned. But they should not panic. The Nigeria High Commission is looking for ways to solve the problem. Yesterday I was asked by Dr Abdul Karim Mohammed to accompany him to a meeting called by the head of chancellery Mal Mohammed Arzika to discuss these problems.

In the meantime, here are my suggestions: (a) don’t send undergraduate students to private colleges and universities here. It’s better to spend ten years getting a low quality degree in Nigeria than to die getting a good one. (b) If you already have children here, get a trustworthy guardian for them. Preferably the guardian should be within the school where your children study or at least get someone that can visit them regularly. (c) If you insist on sending your child to Malaysia consider enrolling him at public universities. Although the admission requirements are stricter, they’ve better professors, better facilities and because they’re not profit driven, they can easily expel your child. And then you’ll know how he uses his time.