THE BEST HUNTER
Written by Akinbowale feranmi Gideon
Edited by Oluwatobi Mercy
April 30, 2025 | 3 MINS READ
These days, I often find myself wondering: What truly makes a great hunter?
Is it the early bird, the one who rises before dawn, hot-footed and eager to get to the forest? Or is it the seasoned hunter with old-forged rifles, confident in his years of experience, who knows every corner of the forest and goes in at his own pace?
Such are the hunters and such is the forest, the vast, storied hunting ground we know as Great Ife.
But this time, something felt different.
I walked through the great campus and was stunned by the emptiness. By the second week of resumption, the footprints were still so few that one could count them without effort. It was both unsettling and a little sad. In that moment, a thought struck me: What has become of our dear Great Ife, Africa's most beautiful campus?
That thought lingered.
So I bought a chilled bottle of zobo to cool my mind, hoping the sweetness would drown the sorrow. But even after the last sip, the question remained. I couldn’t help but search for answers.
And after some digging, I discovered a few reasons behind this slow return.
First, the obvious one: the economy. Everything is expensive. Students have to gather money for food, transport, and hostel rent especially those staying off-campus (which, let’s be honest, is most of us). Preparing for school now feels like arming for battle. You don’t just pack your bags; you gather bullets, catapults, and cutlasses, metaphorically, of course.
Secondly, there's the familiar culture of late resumption.
It’s an unspoken tradition that’s trickled down from our secondary school days, this belief that nothing serious happens in the first week. Even students who never travelled for the break still refuse to show up in class. Maybe it's a show of ‘maturity’, especially among Part 2s and finalists, the belief that they know the system well enough to come in whenever they please. To them, it’s a badge of seniority. The audacity. The professionalism. The "I’ve been here, I know how this works" energy.
But while that may be funny on the surface, the reality is, it affects academic excellence.
Sure, early birds don’t always top the class. But early preparation? That can’t be overstated.
Let me share something that happened recently in my department.
A lecturer walked into a half-empty classroom, visibly irritated. He didn’t say much, just announced a test for the next day. And boom, the next morning, the class was full to the brim. Everyone showed up.
That’s when it hit me, students aren’t unserious. They're just... unserious in a serious way. And maybe, just maybe, we’ve normalized this culture of delay a little too much.
This isn’t a rant or a lampoon. It’s just the observation of a concerned student, a hunter trying to understand the changing rhythm of the forest.
