a young man who is successful in his journey as a student, who recently graduated from the University of Nigeria Nsukka with a first class and is also politically inclined.
Combining academics with other extracurricular activities during the school academic session can be a great multitasking role.
And this is the reason why some student who can’t multitask, of course, quit some of these activities to face their studies alone.
Cyriacus Sochi Aneke is a founder and director of Pen Power Foundation and also a first-class degree student in library and information science from the Department of the Library Information Science, at the University of Nigerian Nsukka, he is a social media manager to the managing director of Afrinvest West Africa.
He graduated recently in 2022 to be precise with a first class and this is despite him taking up all those activities in school, talking about political activities and even secular politics.
How then did you manage to balance politics with your school work and graduate with a first-class degree?
The journey
After my graduation, I’ve always lived my day talking about myself, telling the younger and the older ones, how I was able to do it.
sincerely just like my name implies, such it’s only God, but then some human factors also come into play.
engaging in student secular politics and combining it with studies, it’s not easy, but then I am here to tell you that it is very easy because everything is all about typically balance.
what was on my mind when I was studying to get this first class, I asked do we have student politicians that graduate with something other than 2.1 or 2.2, most times you find them not even graduating as a result of one issue or the other.
when I did my findings, I couldn’t find any in recent times, I said I’m going to break this record and I’m going to play not just politics I’m going to play secular politics too.
let it be a voice of reason to everybody out there, people should understand, young people should understand that these things are possible, you just have to find balance, you create time for everything.
you shouldn’t dive into everything at the same time, just like our people say, you don’t have to put all your hands and all your fingers into the mount at the same time,
there should be time for everything, that was actually what saved me.
being a writer, and a student secular politician, I call myself a young politician, from being a class rep, representing the interest of other students, and also having time for my books it’s all about balance.
do you think other factors might discourage other students from venturing into combining politics with school?
According to Afiatv, your course library and information science, one would ordinarily think that okay, perhaps you went for a simpler course that was what gave you that lead way to come up with a first-class, is it a simple one? and what is the connection between that and politics or do you plan to keep it and then pursue politics subsequently?
Sochi stated, “I will honestly address the perception that no course is simple or complex; rather, it is all about the person studying the course and the lecturers.” all revolve around the teachers, and my course library, and information science, it wasn’t what was on my mind when I was writing Jamb.
I had a very complex growth when it comes to academics, I was a science student in secondary school, and then I gained admission into Agronomy and Eco-Management ESUT but at a time, I had a kind of paradigm shift and I asked I was a writer and I find myself in agriculture.
so, I had to pull out from the school entirely, I had to start writing Waec and Neco all over again, I had to diversify from science to Arts, write Jamb, waec, and neco all at the same time, and add English and literary studies, then as Grace may find it, I found myself in library and information science.
I was really confused on my first day of class because this wasn’t my dream, but I found motivation when I reminded myself that if I was being arrogant, I should be the best silly student here.
Library science actually in UNN and other schools, isn’t as loud as other professional courses like medicine, and nursing, I tell myself and a few of my colleagues that we are going to put this school on the map, how do we do it, let’s go into politics let’s not just focus on just studies let’s go into politics we shouldn’t just shy away from these things, it is our civil responsibility.
Academics shouldn’t be limited to coming to class and living a normal student’s parallel life; rather, it should be an all-encompassing journey.
Today, sincerely I have gotten first class I have graduated but I am more grateful for joining politics, because being a student leader and serving with some of these secular leaders, I have learned a whole lot of life lessons that no school will ever teach me.
what are the challenges of combining politics with school?
According to Afiatv, one should draw on personal experience. If, at some point, you encountered difficulties that made you feel like you were giving up, how has it affected others, considering that you worked and assisted students in a school environment?
According to Cyriacus, “I had a lot of difficulties, but the question of what does politics mean to you, as a student, as a young person pursuing a career in politics, what are you going to do there, is more of a passion, it is more of trying to put the message out there,
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it is more of a passion, it is more of trying to put the message out there, it was more of a clear call to me, so when I dive into politics, I know that this isn’t just for the quick benefits, so I didn’t care about the benefits, I just went about my duties as a servant leader.
sincerely it could be challenging, you could imagine preparing for exams and also preparing for one political Journey or the other, during my time in 2020 I was the youngest Special Assistant to serving a government, I was the sen on students’ development to the former idi local government chairman.
it wasn’t easy I had an issue with one of my lecturers, he asked, so how are you going to do it, I told him I could, so this man made it a point of Duty anytime I wasn’t in class he would take a roll call, these are the challenges I found, it wasn’t really easy but I was able to do it.
the major challenge I found as a person is a focus, I found it very difficult to define myself, if you ask me what can you do, I would be caught in a situation where I tell you that I can do everything, it has always been an issue.
What are the specific challenges other students working with you encounter while picking up extra activities in the school?
it’s fair enough but for other students whom you will opportune to work with or perhaps serve, would you say there are specific challenges that they encounter while picking up extra activities, and again you talked about balance for instance when you started you said everything in life is about you know striking a balance, so what is this balance at this point, is it in terms of time management, how are you able to do it.
the challenges of what student and how you were able to maintain this balance perhaps someone might just learn from your experience.
Sochi discloses that this balance is a side of a coin, why this other side of this coin is discipline, there is no balance for every young person for every student and for everyone out there without discipline, you need to be disciplined, politics can be challenging in the sense that it is intoxicating you see yourself starting with a class rep today, tomorrow you see yourself as a faculty president, so I can be a faculty president, how about the SUG president it is intoxicating, but then it is all about discipline.
this is what you want, no matter the excitement, privileges, and the other benefits you will get from these other positions this is what you want.
for instance, I fell in love with the Rotary Club, but I wasn’t able to join the Rotary, even when the former president Ifeanyi by name even promised to buy me a form to become the Rotary secretary because that time I had to discipline myself, Rotary wasn’t in the picture for me, I wouldn’t be able to achieve much with Rotary, I said no to Rotary.
I love Kite Club, but I also told myself that I couldn’t possibly come out to the public once a week to dance to all these cultural dances when I had so much going on and so much on my hands. I just needed to discipline myself.
so there are many other opportunities, Politicians once you are out there you are like a man wearing a white garment in a black environment, it keeps you shining, people will come with opportunities but it’s all about your discipline.
do you think the school environment is structured in a way that enables students to look at or Venture into other things other than academic activities?
Sochi maintains that it is not the position that makes the leader, it is the leader that makes the position, no matter the environment you find yourself in, it’s all about the person, the school can have their own set of standards, their laydown procedures, then it’s all about you, that is where that balance comes in.
it is challenging, sometimes you find yourself, you would be in class and you are called, maybe to an office you find yourself in a situation where you have to choose between your academics and your civic duty as a leader, so it’s all boiled down to discipline as a student.
studying versus the certificate that is been obtained upon graduation
initially, you now have plans to study library and information science but you found yourself there, even though you had a way of loving it at the end of the day, now other students perhaps find themselves in similar situations, who just want to go to school because that’s the admission that has been given to them, now to a point of course studying versus the certificate that is been obtained upon graduation, which is why most people upon graduation begin to either change the career path or get into a different field completely and the factors that you think are responsible for these.
there’s also a recent development where a lecturer has advocated the study of Witchcraft in Nigerian universities, do you think courses like this will further reshape Nigeria or would it add value to the system generally?
According to Sochi, he said it is about time such courses are put into the system because there are lots of fallacies out there, there are lot of understanding about this witchcraft traditional practice, but then on the other hand you ask yourself what is the direct impact of this courses to an average Nigerian.
I feel that as much as these courses would balance, make it have a kind of scientific approach to understanding these phenomena, also consider there are lots of things to be done in Nigeria instead of misdirecting this money into research and teaching these courses, there are other things to do, focus on the ones already there, make sure that they are quality and quantitative enough, instead of going into more.
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I believe that a man who started a building should focus on completing it before diving into another.
so I feel that these courses are good, the government shouldn’t put them into the curriculum, into the system, when there are other things to be done with money, like quality education, dilapidated buildings and a lot of unforgotten structures.
these things are more important because I don’t see the direct impact of these courses on an average Nigerian.
are there critical areas you think the government or School authorities should focus on when it comes to revamping or developing the education sector
Quality education, good education if there is no good teacher, there will not be any good students it boils down to teacher education too, these teachers should be passed through a lot of Education, a lot of training while they are being trained, they should also be compensated for their time, there should be enough motivation for this teaching because a lazy teacher makes a lazy student.
you will see students who graduate, with what we do these days, what students do, what Young students do is garbage in garbage out, students creme into the exam, make their A’s and come out empty, people see first class, I see a lot of challenges and heights to scale.
government Beyond these theories they are taught in school, the government needs to input more practical and skill acquisition, so that when they come out there, it wouldn’t be the pattern of from a school to learning a skill, this is very wrong, imagine an engineer, someone that’s studied mechanical engineering will just graduate go to a roadside mechanic and start learning the very wrong Practical.
there should be enough practicals for some of these courses, some of these courses have an internship like my program, I had a six-month internship at
Center for Memories where I was the head of the librarian section.
most of these courses should have internships and more practical input, also government should have more when it comes to helping those from poor homes, so that this will also help to reduce all these students or children loitering the street.
what kind of activity do you think students can pick up while in school it might not be politics.
what kind of activity do you think students can pick up while in school, it might not be politics like you but are there other interesting activities that students who are still in school can also Avail themselves of, so maybe of course expand the scope of studies. what activities do you think could Be?
Cyriacus said that politics isn’t everything, while I was an undergraduate, I didn’t just do politics, I was also a writer, I started, I trained myself in school with little help from people, students should go into skill acquisition like soft skills, we are in the digital world and the youths are digital, positively and negatively, they should go more into learning soft skills.
There are lots of AI programming skills they can learn, including writing, there’s nothing you can do today without having writing skills, and soft skills, so I think Beyond politics, they should go more into learning these soft skills, and writing.