Are African graduates more interested in personal success than nation building?

Yes

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by Uki Asemota

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Sad as it may sound, most African graduates are more interested in personal success than nation building. The reasons may vary from country to country, but the reasons are quite similar. Having had the advantage to come abroad and study, I have seen how my perspective of life and nation building has all changed. I have personally come to the conclusion that the most important issue for nation building for me is me. I am without doubt that most Africans feel the same way.

Having been blessed with the opportunity to study at Masters level in the UK, I am faced with the stark reality of returning back home to an environment where nothing seems to work. Bad roads, power failure, armed robbery and kidnapping etc; an environment where the leaders are only interested in defrauding the nation and stacking up their loots in other developed nations where these monies are used in the maintenance of their roads and provision of basic necessities. Families pull together all their resources to send their children abroad for further studies in the hope that that child would help them when they have graduated and have a higher earning power.

This would be one of the main reasons why, when graduates finish their studies, they want to remain behind in the UK or US so they could earn more. Others are afraid to return home without a secure future or the knowledge of a very good paying job awaiting them on their return. It must be said, though, that most new companies in the African nations offer new graduates who have studied abroad a lot of money as an incentive to come home and help build the nation. However, I am of the strong opinion that those who return home to pick these jobs with a view to making a difference are faced with the problems of change. Most of their superiors or subordinates find it had to change because of the prevailing system. A system where favoritisim prevails and excellence is rarely celebrated.

There is a saying "it takes a village to raise a child"; I would love to change that to "it takes an army to build a nation". Though a lot of graduates who have studied abroad would love to make a difference in their nations, it would be almost impossible until the nation itself wakes up from nepotism and becomes patriotic; until the citizens of the nations wake up to the fact and knowledge that the nation is theirs. Until people are ready to fight for what they believe, retrain the youths to become more patriotic and learn to understand that there is reward for excellence and hard work, until the people stop seeing wealth as the ends to a means but a means to an end. There would be no hope.

More and more graduates would come abroad and decide against returning home because things are either too hard back home issues such as wars, famine, drastic inflation due to obsession with power by the ruling class or they become comfortable with living in an area where things seem to work; where they would work and be rewarded for their hard work. Though their earning may be highly taxed, the opportunities these host nations provide seems to out weigh returning back home in the hope of building a nation that seems determined to rot and decay.

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