Nigerian Students Hold Forum on Rethinking the Future

Nigeria students drawn from various universities across the country recently held the ‘UNIV Nigeria’, an annual gathering designed to expand their horizon beyond their imagination and offer them the opportunity to exchange ideas and constructively reflect on the most important issues facing them in today’s world.

This year’s programme, which is the 50th anniversary, held at Pan Atlantic University, Lekki, Lagos with the theme ‘Rethinking the Future’. Participating students were from the University of Ibadan, Pan Atlantic University, University of Lagos, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, University of Benin and the Institute for Industrial Technology.

The Coordinator of UNIV Nigeria, Mr. Ikechukwu Onuoma, who appraised the theme of this year’s event, described life as a story that is written in the first person but no one can write it without counting on the others.

“No human life is isolated. No man or woman is a single verse; we all make up one poem,” he said, adding that the youth glimpses the world both in its greatness and imperfections.

“In the university, a student encounters both satisfactions and dissatisfactions of the world. One feels a desire for change, along with a certain insecurity one never knows whether one’s efforts will be successful.”

He said UNIV Nigeria, which was inspired by the Univ forum, began in Rome in 1968 and attracted about 3,000 students from different American, European and African countries annually, adding that they gather to share ideas on how to shape the world to become a better place.

“50 years ago, this same restlessness led to a revolution that overthrew all points of reference. Freedom was confused with unruliness, opening the way to the current liquid society. Like all ideologies, the student revolution of May 1968 did not do justice to the authentic greatness of the human person.

“To be effective, every paradigm shift needs reflection; it needs to listen to the deepest truth of the human heart. Otherwise, the revolution ends in chaos and debris, the human person needs to ask how we can build a more just, more humane and cleaner future today,” Onuoma stressed.