Hi people, I am Fiyinfoluwa Oyebisi. I guess I will be a visiting blogger on this space (smiles).

To be very candid with you guys, I didn’t know what to write few moments ago. But then, I just heard the Teaching Practice story of my roommate, Dee. According to her, she had her Teaching Practice programme in a local grammar school in Lagos (Mainland). Dee narrated her ordeals and experiences throughout her stay in that school. I laughed almost throughout the narration. Damnnnn! African Magic is real mehn, get ready for African Magic’s reel! Can you imagine a JSS 3 student writing love letters to his TP (Teaching Practice) teacher? He even had the effrontery to write the love note on the questionnaire she gave them to fill. Dee teaches Security Education as a subject to these children and she tried as much as possible to maintain a friendly relationship with her students, this might be due to fear she had for some of her students.

For instance, there was this time she was teaching them about crime as a topic. During the class, one of the students mentioned that the father of another boy in the class is a native doctor, as in original “Babaalawo”. And the boy in question was even staring at Dee in such a way that conspicuously showed that the information given about him could be true… Can you just imagine! If I am to be Dee I could go on and on narrating all the experiences of TP.

These stories made a spur in my heart. And I asked myself this question. Why would we see these things happen around us and just think it is normal? It’s quite saddening that abnormal things are considered as normal in this part of the world where we come from. I had the privilege to attend a panel discussion in which Oludare Akinlaja was one of the panelists. He said something that was quite funny. He said that if most of us as Nigerians travel to developed countries of the world, we would practically run mad because we won’t be able to comprehend how those people think, seeing that our perspective of life is largely different from theirs. In Japan, they make use of umbrella posts, a place one can pick up an umbrella when needed and drop it at the next umbrella post after use.

Just imagine if this happens in Nigeria, you will just see people packing umbrellas home even in broad day light (smiles). It has become our custom to sit back and criticize the people in governance and we ourselves have been performing poorly in our own little spaces. The problem with us as a people starts as little as throwing “Pure water” nylon on the floor. When we are on that bike or inside that “Kéké Napep”, the rider would make use of the oneway route and you as a passenger will nudge him on. We should focus on how to become better citizens of our country even for the sake of the generations after us. So they won’t experience a TP like Dee’s and that their own future be brighter even better than ours.