Ogbontarigi

The 2023 elections nearly brought LAUMSA to her knees. Emotions rose like a hypertensive crisis reading 240 over 120 on a digital sphygmomanometer. The pressure was palpable. The air was heavy. The campus watched in disbelief the dagboru-ism of LAUTECH medical students. Character assassination became a sport. Relationships fractured beyond repair. Some classmates stopped greeting one another until graduation rescued them from the awkwardness. Politics was mistaken for purpose. Banter replaced brilliance. There were even reports of physical altercations. Manifesto night, which should have been a theatre of ideas, became a spectacle of noise. What ought to have been the most intellectual display on campus turned into a parody. Other departments looked on with thinly veiled amusement. Those were dark days! Darky days! The administration that emerged carried controversy like a badge. Agendas floated like kites without strings. Executives ran parallel offices. Visible cracks widened into id...

Medicine is arguably the most nerve-racking and demanding course in Nigeria—and perhaps even in the world. Our workload is massive. Our lectures are almost endless. Our exams are so exhausting. Simply put, med school is hard. ‎ ‎There is however another weight we have to bear,  one that makes the course even harder—uncertainty. I am not talking about the uncertainty of passing exams, that is already uncertain(at least for some of us). I am referring to the uncertainty of how long the program will take. It is clearly stated to be six years on paper. However, we are often asked to embrace the possibility of an x. It then becomes six plus “x.” That “x” can stretch into one, two, or even more years. ‎ ‎If this "x" was as a result of the natural rigor that comes with the program, it could have been a bit bearable. It is however unfortunate that this extra x is not usually because of this. It is often because of strikes. Every time doctors, lecturers, or hospital staff lay down th...

If chaos is what you seek in a Nigerian gathering, forget bombs, all you really need is an 8-lettered word and a plate of peppered meat. Feminism. Then you can watch the room burn.  Feminism is a word that flies over our space more often than there are enough birds in the sky. Everyone knows it, but only a few have taken time to look it up. Amongst these few are mostly those who merely stumbled on a Twitter post with an exciting caption...'Men are scum' or 'The West is corrupting our girls'. The issue is that such persons are left with skewed views and notions that they then develop as best suits them. Do you remember being called in class by your stern looking teacher to define a term you barely knew? ' What is soliloquy?'...'Define respiration '. You stuttered, guessed, and hoped that by saying what you were certain was not the right answer, you would arrive eventually at what is.  We would be taking this route not because we lack sufficient knowledge...

Exhausted... Sigh... Driven by a childhood wonder, frequent visits to the pediatric clinic, the smile on the face of the doctor, a reassuring answer to each question, the warm touch of her hands...  _“Mom, I'm going to be a doctor in future.”_  She smirks...inwardly. The wall posters have paid off.  _“That’s my boy.”_  Carrying this dream into secondary school, motivated by Ben Carson Gifted Hands is one good story. It’s possible. Medicine can be studied. Preclinicals… Anatomy like mountains, Biochemistry, like waves that drown. Physiology, sometimes it breathes life, sometimes it steals your sleep. And then The Obafemi Awolowo University, Ilé-Ifè. The Dental Medical students, Part 2, got their MB results. Some passed. Some got distinctions. Some failed. Normal, right? At least, normal for medical school. But then, a shadow falls. Someone committed suicide. We don’t even know the name. Just “someone.” Gone.  _“It’s happened before,”_  someone says.  _“...

By LAUMSA Literary & Debating Society Written by Akande Richard (BiG R) If NiMSA were a human body, the cardiologists would have called Code Blue weeks ago. Our national association, meant to be the beating heart of 90,000 future doctors, is now suffering from acute political arrhythmia, complete with presidential palpitations, regional hypertension, and the occasional Twitter‑induced convulsion. And the surgeons? That’s us, the intelligentsia, standing in scrubs at the theatre door, whispering, “God, abeg.” Scene 1: The Presidential Broadway Enter Mr. Ahmadu Sardauna, NiMSA President. One bright morning, he glanced at the Constitution, smiled, and said: “Cute document. Let me cook.” In his now‑infamous press release: He suspended the Southwest Regional Coordinator, dissolved her entire council, and advertised their seats like Airbnb listings. He declared the Vice President Internal (VPi) seat vacant, like a landlord evicting a tenant for playing loud Afrobeats. He redrew Nigeria’s...

 A people prosecuted, A dream conceived and A land targeted.  “The Jew is not just hated because of his religion. Even when he discards it, he is still hated. So long as he is a Jew in the eyes of others, he will remain the outsider.” "Had history taken a different turn, the Jewish homeland—Israel—might have risen in East Africa—Uganda— not the Middle East.” Jewish history is one that was strewn with hurdles and suffering. For a community that small to have survived under circumstances so harsh—multiple expulsions, forced conversions, and massacres is nothing short of a miracle. All over Europe — from England (1290) to France (1306, 1394), Spain (1492), Portugal (1497), and many other places across different times in history — Jews were repeatedly expelled, killed, or forced to convert.¹ They were blamed for plagues, accused of blood libel, forced to convert or die, and were at times economically scapegoated. Blood libel refers to the accusation that Jews kidnapped and rituall...