By IFEANYI GIFT C
It is no exaggeration that the number of student’s in Nigerian universities that is(state, federal and state) keep on increasing. Many of the universities lack the capacity to build students Hall of residence (hostels), lack of sufficient Hall of residence may probably have led to to the emergence of cohabitation
among university students. Cohabitation is not commonly used to describe people who are merely
sharing a living space or who call themselves “Roommates”, rather cohabiting can pertain to either
heterosexual or same sex couples, but it is most commonly used in reference to heterosexual couples.
Cohabitation among students has eroded the level of morality among the youths that is why
Adeniyi(2019, p.10) stated the high rate of abortion. Some cohabiting females often get pregnant and
because they are not prepared for Parenting, they engage in abortion which exposes the female
partners to the risk of death or damaged uterus.
A friend to my sister lost her life to abortion, the story was that the female student was cohabiting with
a male student, while she was cohabiting with the student she got got pregnant and the male student
not ready to father a child opted for an abortion which the female student agreed to because she could
not bear the shame in raising the child alone. The news getting to my sister was that the female student
in question (her friend) is dead. Another report had it that a female student also got pregnant but
succeeded in carrying the pregnancy for nine months with pains and agony with little help from friends
and neighbouring village where she found refuge outside the school vicinity but later sold the infant
baby to child trafficker after delivery. A student of 23 ended up becoming a lesbian and drug addict
because she Cohabitted with a bad influence” Show me you’re friend and I’ll tell you whom you are”.
Female students are not the only ones who engage in the evil trend our male students also indulge in
this evil trend. A male student was reported to have contacted the disease known as HIV/AIDS in the
school environment because the female student he Cohabitted with had the disease and unknowing to
him he ended up becoming a victim. Most students fail to do academically well because they are no
longer filled with the mindset of becoming excellent in education rather they are now left with the
thought of managing a home that is not Ordained n enjoying life with the males/females they are
cohabiting with. I know of a young, intelligent and vibrant female student who became a bandit and
kidnapper and was later apprehended by the police and sentenced to life imprisonment because her so-
called boyfriend she was cohabiting with was a member of the kidnapping gang.
Some of our students not only cohabit to know how loving or how good the other gender would treat
them rather they cohabit to test how compatible they are for marriage, some parents are not in total
knowledge of what most of our children do which is why we indulge our parents, guardians, school
authorities, NGO’s and government authorities at both state and federal levels to help in stopping this
evil trend going on presently in our institution of higher learning.
IFEANYI GIFT C wrote from ABSU, UTURU, ABIA STATE
