RAG DAY!

The term RAG day which many of us while in school and out of school don't know means: "Raising And Giving Day".

Raising And Giving

Rag day is traditionally an activity centred on raising funds for the less privileged in the society. Though, there are divergent views as to where the term "Rag" originated but it is thought to be from the Victorian era when students took time out from their studies to collect rags to clothe the poor.
Since then, rag day has since been adopted throughout the institutions across the globe.
The school management at the end of the programme collect the proceed gathered by the students to make donations to orphanage homes while in some cases it is used to purchase the needed materials and facilities to make the centres more functional.
On the ‘D-day’, students would be seen in their numbers wearing tattered clothes in order to appear funny and at the same time cut a picture of people in distress. This act, undoubtedly make individuals and passersby see reasons to dole out some coins to them and they appear as though they are beggars in their torn dresses walking around the cities, towns and roam the streets endlessly in groups or individually.

Meanwhile, it has been observed that there is deviance in the essence of rag day in Nigeria from what it used to be in the past with lots of activities now incorporated by various schools and students.
Presently, the ways and manners it is being held differs from one institution to the other with some institutions marking it for a whole week.
In observing the rag day, i discovered back then in my University days that each individual join their colleagues to observe the exercise for different reasons. Some students now see it as opportunity to catch fun and experience some form of excitement with the money realised while others particularly those who are having difficulties make use of such exercise to seek for donations from the public. What they generate is used to take care of some bills in the pursuit of their academics.
In desperation, some students travelled as far as they could go during the exercise just to make enough money and it had unfortunately resulted to several students losing their lives.

My first experience was while in first year at the Federal University of Technology Minna, Niger state ( futminna.edu.ng ). I found the exercise very interesting and exciting.

For a shy person like me, i made up to 3K. Never regretted the experience. We left as early as 6am and got into the city. In the course of moving around I lost touch with the guys I came with and that was when I saw another friend.
Me and this guy (who happened to be in my department too) later went round and did the craziest things ever. We entered bikes for free telling the bike men that that's how they can support our ragging. We entered a market and things just got crazier. All the market women were just smiling and giving us whatever they had. Some will even want to give you fish lol. After the market we went to shops around doing our thing before our final stop - A huge departmental store complex.
It was there I did the funniest things I could ever think of, was it the faked accents? or the acting? at a point I almost thought I was going mad sef. I pitied the beggars in front of that departmental store as that day we were everywhere so people didn't have much time for them.
At the end of the day I and my friend came together and shared some of what we got with the beggars.
I didn't take a single picture but the images are still fresh in my memory.

The fact is that the exercise has come to stay in the nations tertiary institutions; however there is the need to change the student's perceptions as regard the rag day. Presently, with the way the trend is going the students now portray themselves as corporate beggars of which the proceed gotten from the event instead of being used to provide some items for the needy are used for themselves... Cj