Hello, everyone.
I welcome to my blog and another wonderful edition of the hive learner's featured post. One thing about power and the abuse of power is that many of us think it is only politician's and rulers that abuse power but that is just one big fat lie we tell ourselves. We criticise politicians and call them names but when we are given very small authority we do the exact same thing we criticise and judge our politicians for and it just doesn't make any sense, I think 95% of humans get power drunk and once power touches their hand they let it control them.
Power can consume one of they are not careful enough, a humble person can go from being humble to being proud because they now feel powerful and untouchable. The questions I always tell people to ask themselves is "how are you handling the office you are in? How are you treating people in that office?" We judge our leaders and other people for how they treat us in the office that they handle but don't look at how we treat people in our own office.
I think every Nigerian university student have had an encounter with those none teaching staffs in offices, people you go to meet to get something important done but because they are the ones in charge they decide when they want to do it. Clearly you are not doing anything, attend to me and let go on with my life and academic activities rather they keep you waiting for hours while they do things that are less important and then when we call out bad leaders and politicians they do the same as us but fail to see that those things they do to others in their office is just the same thing as what these politicians are doing.
I have seen abuse of power countless times, but the one I want to focus on is the the one that happens in Nigerian universities. In Nigerian universities there are many many ways that power is abused, the lecturers abuse power, the non teaching staffs abuse power, those working in the school clinic abuse power and it has cost students their lives. When I was in school I told my friends that if anything happens to me and I probably pass out and need medical attention and they rush me to the school clinic, I will never forgive them because I have seen the type of power abuse that goes on there.
Back then in school we had a lecturer who whenever a student offends him, you will hear him say "go and ask about me, I can keep you here for 10 years and nothing will happen." He says that with pride like it is a good thing or something to be proud of, and what he says is nothing but the truth because we have seen for ourselves those who fell into his trap and how they keep failing all the courses he handles, no matter how well they prepare or how well they wrote the exams, the grades are still the same because he has promised to keep them for 3 extra years.
If he tells you he will keep you in the school for a particular number of years, he will do it without thinking twice, the moment you gain admission into my school as engineering student, you are first of all warned about him by senior colleagues and asked to avoid falling into his trap. He has been doing that for years and still doing It and yet no one has challenged him, not fellow lecturers nor students who are scared to be marked by him.
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