University of Lagos:
Aside the stress that comes with schooling, the meagre flow of finance has posed as a challenge to majority of students as money is needed to meet basic necessities.
The average amount a student spends in a day depends on what such student spends money on, but the list is essentially on food, transportation and typing/printing of assignments. This is usually an average total of at least N2000.
Students also go from making compulsory payment for textbooks to payment of Faculty/Departmental dues and other miscellaneous expenses and they have only their lean purses to shoulder these financial burdens.
Due to how insufficient cash flow is, a good number of students cook what they eat as research has shown that it is more cost-effective to do so. This gives the student the opportunity of preparing varieties of food that would last longer unlike eating out which costs more. On the other hand, there are students who do not care about balanced diet, as long as it will put a hold to the growling noise from their stomach, they are ready to eat a particular meal popularly known as “Sapa food” all through the day.
The lean times by extension has affected social life of most students. There are situations where some students cannot participate in the usual social occasions in school like picnics, field trip, dinner party, cultural day and even projects tied to their curriculum because of the financial restraints they are faced with.
In a bid to survive the hard times and support their purses, most students engage in Jobs before or after classes or venture into small businesses. This discomfort has gone as far as negatively impacting on the academic performance of these students as they no longer have enough time for studies.
But there are students who have decided to use what they have to get what they need, as they say. The female students in this category take to prostitution, regarded as the oldest ‘vocation’ in human history. Smartly, they don’t like their ways being tagged prostitution. Some have veiled it as hook-up, chaperon, care-giving, among other coinages. But it remains what it is: selling their body for cash usually to the rich. This, no doubt, comes with its risks as some students have been robbed and abused while a few others fell victims of ritualists.
Their male variants have taken to pimping. They ‘arrange’ female students for ‘sugar daddies’Campus for a fee.
Nonetheless, the burning survival instinct the country’s economy and the school systems have embedded on the students has made them to become more innovative in managing the meagre resources at their disposal.
Some have resolved to get whatever token they can through legitimate means because at the end of the day, one grain does not fill a sack but it helps.
Written by Clementina Amaka Ugbechie
