Objectives
*To call attention to the fact that a lot of energy and resources are spent in Nigeria in organizing education;
*To alert Nigerians that they are not utilizing the education they acquire to solve society’s problems;
*To suggest that unless Nigerians make deliberate efforts to channel their education to tackle local and national problems,the efforts of the schools will continue to be set at a nought;
*It is argued that the way to avoid futility is to mount concrete programs of adult education along with formal education for children and youth.
Every news over the various media in Nigeria reports one or two news item on education daily. If you are not convinced of this,turn the pages of any Nigerian dailies and you will not fail to be amazed that educational news dominates local or national activities. These news reports on education stress communal efforts to rebuild this school or that college;local communities levying their members in order to pay fees for their children at school;this man or woman awarding an Educational Scholarship to that clever student from poor parents or to an orphan.
Local and urban dignitaries vie with one another to donate this or that cup to promote school sports;the state governments issuing directives on registration of primary school children;Teachers Training Colleges,Colleges of Education and the universities;Federal or state scholarships and bursaries awarded to hundreds and thousands of students in order to encourage further education, and so on
The reason for this litany of educational activities in the country is to call attention to the fact that Nigeria and her citizens spend most of their time,resources, and energy worrying and toiling about getting educated. In spite of it all,are Nigerians really educated? Or rather, do they want to be really educated?Are they merely interested in chasing shadow of education and not it’s substance? I am not so sure that we as a people ,are ardent about being educated with a view to tackling in a sincere way personal,societal, national,and international problems and issues as others in Europe and America. Our education is neither ornamental nor technical. It seems to me that we strive to get education that will perpetuate our subsistent existence instead of lifting us from the plane of existing to living.
Let me explain,One of the first marks of education on an individual is the ability to do an honest day’s work for a day’s wage. Now, most Nigerians who have been through through formal education even up to the university level must have spent 16 and 18 years, minimum, educating themselves for a vicarious living:six in the primary school plus six in the secondary school plus four or five years in the University for a first degree. Assuming that about 10% of Nigerians get thus far in education, can we honestly say that half this number gives a selfless,useful and sincere day’s service to sustain themselves and the nation? It will be sheer pretence if we affirm that this truly happens. We may try to shy away from the fact that most spent their efforts on selfish ends; but a critical trip to any of our public and private service sectors will convince any doubting Thomas that we are a race of lazy lot, our education not withstanding.
Take this matter from another angle altogether. Compare an average Nigerian who has had a good university education with his European or American counterpart. What do you stumble upon? A yawning disparity in a committed sense of responsibility to a given situation and a given cause.Give a European or an American an assignment to be an officer in a large establishment, he will take up that work as a personal challenge to his integrity and educational competence. He will die, Fighting to see that the work is done to perfection within human ability by goading his team of workers to produce an excellent finished job.
He may not himself do the drudgery aspects of the work; but he must select his key men and women,spur them on to give out their best,and in the end all of them will earn a good name and the promotion s for a good job well executed. Now give the same assignment to a Nigerian of the same educational and experimental background. His first concern might be how best to cheat his way through and get rich overnight at the expense of everyone else. He will not choose capable key men to produce an excellent work;rather he would want those he can hoodwink,that is, he would select men and women of mediocrity; and if anyone in his team gives hope of producing an excellent job,he will run him down that the man would quit, tired of being eager to do a good job of work. Nigerians need reeducation so that they can give the devil his due and be able to appreciate their limitations and therefore stop riding high on the domes of their less fortunate countrymen and women. Turn this matter of reeducation to the concept of Of Renewed Hope. We all must clamour for a united country,free from hatred and ruinous ethnic chauvinism.
Enough to argue that Nigerians need a rebranding of mindset..Our Resolution should lay emphasis on operational terms that every Nigerian who passes through the portals of formal education in the country must be taught, in a practical way, how to do a meritable work to justify his being paid a commensurate living wage. The offices must be manned by dedicated professionals who must attune to the criterion for employment on the ability to perform and on the presentation of paper qualifications alone or else I for see no end to poverty of our people and our society until everyone, from the labourer to the Chief executive, in public and in private sectors of our economy sits down with discipline to put in a day’s work for a day’s pay. It is then and then only that Nigerians can turn to our school men and women to insist on proper education of our children. No one can teach the qualities he does not possess the ills in our schools today are the ills transferred from our society and from our ambivalent creeds. Those who teach in our schools are members of the Nigerian society,imbued with Nigerian morals and values. If the minds of Nigerians are not reeducated and reoriented towards those values and qualities we wish to find in our children at school and out of school; we in this country are and will remain a country of mental dwarfs and intellectual midgets. it is when the adults in Nigeria have changed their minds on the excruciating hatred they nurse against one another and the ethnic “genocide”they commit against each other,then can we tell the schools;these are the subjects and values you must teach to our children. It’s in this frame of mind that I recommend, apart from our school subjects, the breaking of new paradigm shift titled ” The Reeducation of Nigerians” as we mark another anniversary of independence at a trailing 63 years of experiencing the rigours of Attaining a Bequeathed Nationhood.
Arise o Compatriots for History Beckon on Us to get it Right For the Unborn generations whom will inherit the baton and debts of leadership
Ayobo/IpajaTV.com 