THE SILENT FACE OF INSECURITY
Uncleyat
Peace_lifeseries@yahoo.com
22/03/2018
As I walk forth and back daily between the public space and the confine of my home, my concern and worry add new heights. They grow everyday with no sign of dwindling. My heart bleeds that people are no longer safe anywhere and everywhere in my country.
Hunger, burglary and robbery were the common initial experiences I grew up with as a teenager. These monsters of living experiences were notably pronounced in the late 80’s. One thought it was a violent whirlwind in those hot days that would soon give way to the calmness of the dawn. Sadly, the legacy of that leadership and what followed actually set this nation on a dangerous and destructive path.
Today, over twenty years down the memory lane, we are in a serious mess of insecurity. The monster that visited people in their homes in those days has daringly taken over the farms, schools, markets, highways and workplaces. Cultism which used to be a localized business in tertiary institutions has also become an enterprise in primary and secondary schools. It has even become a pride venture of the boys and girls in the neighborhood. The fear of what these wild notorious children would do has deactivated elders’ senses of discipline and made them indifferent to moral instructions.
Kidnapping for ransom, abduction and killings for rituals, cattle rusting, herdsmen militias, Boko Haram insurgence, militancy, human trafficking, bunkering, political violence and assassination, cult clashes, religion and tribal conflicts, high-way robbery, communal clashes, street banditry etc. make the list of our major security threats. Indulging in these crimes of man’s inhumanity to fellow man has become both a means of fun and funds.
Cattles of people are callously butchered alive and shared with fun. Hundreds of men, women and children are machete and beheaded in cold blood. Lives and freedom of an innocent man is being negotiated with fellow men in our country as if it were Christmas fowl. Many more including innocent girls are still in captives. Where is the humane nature of the real homosapiens? How does a man put a trigger on another’s head saying ‘they’ve paid for your life’? What a transaction from the pit of hell!
Fellow Nigerians! What we all identify as criminalities in this country as listed above are just the noisy parts of our insecurity. They are only the obvious security challenges. There is a latent and silent face of this menace. That is the unrepentant neglect of education. The poor attention given to educational sector has been tolerated for too long. This poses a huge security imbroglio that we may not have well conceptualized. If this attitude continues, I fear our battle with high spate of insecurity of lives and properties has not yet begun!
Our educational sectors are poorly funded. To attend schools is becoming costlier than being an entertainer. The fact that the former is even more tiring with zero net worth is making it discouraging. Education cannot be this costly and we expect security of lives and property to be cheap. Security must be all-heaven expensive when minds of people are darkened with ignorance, lack of exposures and conservatism. Of course, no reasonable person expects something worthy and invaluable as education to be priced for rhinestones. And that is where leadership intervenes. The essence of the government is to ensure that a process that liberates human minds should be the cheapest commodity.
Those who commit soft and hard crimes are victims of fake or zero education. When both the rich and the poor get common access to good and quality education, no one has the right to enslave or hire another for unwholesome ambitions. Both has the course to cherish lives and living. Nothing significant may be achieved on the rising insecurity until the unholy inequality between the children of the rich leaders and the poor masses is addressed, especially in regards to education.
While the educated children of the poor would equally do much good to the country like the educated children of the rich, the neglected frustrated ones would destroy the peace both may be collectively working for. There are practical facts that the larger population educated children of the poor would often time even outshine that of the rich under the same condition. This is because usually, the latter is usually over-pampered and spoilt. This fact fuels the suspicion that perhaps the rich have neglected the public institutions while patronizing private and foreign universities to continue to maintain the superiority of their own children.
Apart from funding, the socio-economic statuses of the teachers have been seriously bastadised. When the personality of academic instructors, tutors and scholars are symptomatic of poverty, destitution and frustration, the profession is devalued. A nation that does that like ours has rendered education or seeking knowledge generally a waste of time. How does anyone stimulate the interests of a student in a career with no promising future which only appears to be taking lives out of those who give life into it? That becomes so serious when the least educated in politics and entertainment industries earn far better and live more comfortably. It becomes more serious when beauty pageants, footballers, musicians and comedians get better attention from the leaderships than the best graduating students. How many outstanding students have been invited for handshakes by any governor or president in the recent years? In contrast, how many footballers and artists have been accorded same gesture?
I remember when some students in a secondary school were asked to disclose their future ambitions. A higher percentage of them indicated interests in becoming footballers and Hip-Hop artists. In fact, the most staggering episode was that the five most brilliant students in the school had already formed a musical team! Each of them played different roles as they performed a brief rehearsal to the glare bewilderment of the teachers.
How can there be interest in education when the best performing graduates have no job? How can the standard be raised when the teachers are not encouraged to do the work effectively due to denial of salaries and allowances? How can any poor youth be enthusiastic about schools, either as a teacher or student in the age when singers readily get sponsored for shows in different countries on the bills of the rich who are unwilling to establish foundations for bursary, scholarship and funds without political ambitions. The praise is all about money, getting rich, having cars, building mansions, flying in jets, marrying beautiful wives etc. That is all the youths are now excited about and motivated for. A censure of the message in the current releases in films and music albums would convince a curious mind.
Apparently, this desperate ambition for wealth, comfort and fame is no longer realizable through education. Then we need not look further as to why hooliganism and big-boyism is the order and pride of our society. Many youths have ventured into that profession with a prospect of being hired by big men in the society for political reasons. The drop-outs and those who poverty denies schooling are automatic candidates. Those who owe nothing to the society are only responsible to themselves and their paymasters. They care less about what happens to the nation. Those whose future the society has invested into would not do that. The educational training undertaken and the knowledge acquired have liberated their minds. They are those who are not enslaved by the selfish political or economic ambitions of the ‘big men’.
In the age of bursary, scholarship and prize awards for students, there were less violent cultist activities on campuses. That was the age poor graduates do not need anything besides merits to get job or opportunity to study abroad. Those were time when employers would storm convocation grounds for an on-campus recruitment and instant issuance of letters of appointment to deserving graduates. There was free or easy access to education.The society was safe and progressive.
The functional view of education projects it as a liberator, enhancer, stabilizer and developer of human society. Experience has shown that the most peaceful part of Nigerian society is the most educated region. Apparently, the destruction of educational structure in this nation is responsible for the destruction of her security architecture. I am yet to be convinced that this situation was not a deliberate plan by the occupiers of power to drag us down this path of ignominy that only they are immune to.
When hundreds are maimed in street rampage or thousands consumed in communal clash, how many direct dependents of those in leadership are involved? While several lives are lost, houses razed and property destroyed, their children and families only read it in the newspapers. When incessant strikes cripple the academic programs in the public schools, they are either in private universities at home or foreign ones abroad.
An average Nigerian lives in an open field either in IDP’s camps or homes that can be easily unlocked by the strangers at any time without hindrance. Everyone leaves his family in search of daily bread with a very low probability of ever returning to see them again. One goes to bed with one-eye opened, apprehensive of sudden attacks during the night. Mosques, churches, markets and farms were no longer safe. They are being destroyed and razed down on daily basis. We are seriously in the most dangerous time. Our situation cannot be more terrible.
In our time and nation, when governors no longer receive graduates at NYSC orientation camps personally, the ‘big boys’ or political thugs have high profile connections. Some got hired faster than the most brilliant fellows! They are in the payroll, drive big cars and occupy high positions in our community.
Sometimes, they hold a position of security advisers to the leadership of our society! They commit crimes with impunity. They are simply unquestionable. This is a time when AK47 is a familiar diction to under aged boys. With political interests, these weapons have become so proliferated that they are more accessible to those in that ungodly enterprise than the learning items for those in schools.
I giggle when they taunt that Nigerian graduates are not employable. Yes, it is an obvious fact to the blind. It is terribly sad. But whose blame? WAEC, JAMB, schools, society, parents or students themselves? In any of these options, your suspicion is as good as mine: All the above. Let us come think of it, was there not a time in this same country when holders of old standard 6 certificates write better, speak more fluently and could do better than University graduates of today in task performance? That was when parents were parents, examinations were examinations, teachers were teachers and schools were schools. Who are the teachers today? What are the schools today? Who are the parents in our generation? What is the value of our society at this time?
‘Throw way the degree lest you die poor’; ‘forget about the certificates and be an entrepreneur’ and ‘be reasonable, you can never be comfortable as a salary earners’ and hosts of many other similar write-ups and opinions that seem to be undermining the relevance of Educational qualifications are part of the syndrome. Such opinions were not popular when degrees and certificates were relevant as keys to purposeful and comfortable lives. They are held today because certificates are now trademarks of poverty and frustration. Such opinions were not relevant when education was not about certificate or degree acquisition only but a life-changing process which enhances leadership skills, creative drives and entrepreneurial ideas. They are held today because the aftermath of educational training is about seeking job to earn salary.
That most Nigerians cannot diverge certification from education is another proof that our teaching-learning structure is deficient. It is a proof that our teaming populace is more of certified ignoramuses that are misrepresented as learned because of their academic degrees. We tend to think one cannot be educated except he attends formal schools and that anybody who has degree is educated!
Education is a behavioral and thought changing mechanism. It may be formal as in the case of the western schools. It may be informal as in the case of a tailor learning in a fashion designing shops. It may be planned as in the case of personal enrollment as a student in a formal school or a tailoring apprentice to acquire relevant knowledge and skills. It may also be latent as in the case of learning unconsciously from the circumstances and situation around.
An example of the latent form of education is a woman who learns hair weaving or making washing soup because it is her neighbor’s occupation. As we live day to day, we learn from news and events accidentally. Most entrepreneurs derive their inspiration from this sort of experience.
Among other attributes, the educated are cool-headed, reasonable, logical, reserved and creative. An educated commercial driver knows when to stop the vehicle and where to open the doors for the passengers to disembark in order to avoid accidents or traffic jam. They neither drive roughly or insults people mindlessly and cause public nuisance in our motorparks.
Hence, the educated may not necessarily be certified or hold any degrees. A degree holder can remain wretched for life while the educated cannot even if he is not paper certified. The larger the population of such people in a society, the more is its quantum of peace and security.
Would anyone show me a successful entrepreneur without education? The one that may exist is that who does not have a certificate. Would any one direct me to the educated who is violent and notorious? The one that may appear to be is that who only possesses certificate. We can begin to see the type of personalities who front as representatives in the position of leadership with much dexterity with which they brandish furnitures to attack themselves in the course of official duty at national and state levels.
In variably, possession of long-chain of titles and qualifications is immaterial. Rather, it is the obvious lack of education that is our greatest misfortune. The illogical comments and submissions of the so-called elites on the social media over matters that begs for serious intellectual inputs confirm that the pride of many Nigerians is all about ‘caricature’ education and ‘honorific’ academic titles.
A public statement of an average Nigeria always fails the test of objectivity as they are either tribalistic or religiously sentimental. Much unexpected of the educated, it is usually noted with apparent logical defects of fallacy of generalization or violating the basic principles of deductive syllogism. A typical example of such logical errors are if Abubakar is a Nigerian and Abubakar is corrupt, then all Nigerians are corrupt or Abubakar is a Nigerian Christian. No one hates the Muslims like Abubakar. Then, no one can deny that Nigerian Christians hate the Muslims!
The above propositions are fallacies. Nigerians violate this logical boundary-limits everyday. Unfortunately, the effect of these unguarded and irrational statements threatens our peace more than ballistic missiles. It is virtuous to be silent than speak with suspicion or ignorance of facts. In plain reality, no one is employable until effective education brings about change of behavior, knowledge, skills, exposures and attitudes. How do we expect such systematic transformation to happen in a moribund system where teachers are frustrated, students are disenchanted, parents are undisciplined and society is lawless?
How would a Nigerian be employable when he left secondary school with WAEC result whose examination questions were dictated to him, admitted with UTME results whose examination was written at special centers and graduated from a University where his entire results have always been upgraded to save the face of the lecturer or department? How would he be employable when the curriculum is rigid and blind to contemporary needs, goals and challenges? How would he be employable when lecturers are conservatively analogue in their approach? They teach same course, use same notes and adopt same styles for several years. Knowledge review and update is typically zero. How would he be employable when only few lecturers attend their classes and a larger percentage of the course content is left uncovered? How would he be employable when industrial training scheme is not effectively supervised and monitored as planned? How would he be employable when test of knowledge does not encourage creative thinking but cramming of some theoretical terms?
What is my point? An employable graduate must have been admissible. An admissible candidate must have been an interested student. An interested student must have been a motivated learner. A motivated learner must have been trained by an enthusiastic teacher. An enthusiastic teacher must have been an encouraged worker. An encouraged worker must have been well paid, catered for and given a suitable work environment to work. A suitable work environment for a teacher cannot be classrooms of over five hundred students with no microphone or projector, library with no books and computers, staff room with no electric power, air conditioners and furniture or where there are no funded opportunities for professional retraining through conferences, seminars and further studies.
It is a time those with criminal charges no longer have right to power and leadership. It is time a more severe penalty become the fate of the criminals and their sponsors. It is time leadership should be a call to service and not to money, mansion or madness. It is time educational qualification and skills define the nature of responsibility. It is time the welfare of the teachers at all levels is improved. It is time education takes the highest budgeting. It is time educational support funds are boosted and disbursed with no political sentiments. It is time highly performing teachers, students and schools are celebrated at the local, state and federal levels. It is time supports for vocational skills are intensified. Then, it will certainly be the time security challenges in this country will witness a defeat more lasting than may be possible with police and military interventions.
Nigerian institutions are not the worst in the world. Their products, students and teachers are making strong waves and impact in various countries across the globe. When there is a refocused effort on the restructuring of these mainstream institutions, the agitation for regional restructuring would have been unnecessary. With the existing NYSC scheme, the quality of Nigerian graduates would have produced Engineers that can guarantee security on infrastructure; doctors that guarantee us security on health, lawyers that can guarantee us security on rights and justice and above all, youths that can give us security on the future of the leadership with a direction, civilization and decent moral rectitude.
With their mutual presence across all regional divides of our dear country, we can achieve tolerance and understanding among religions and tribes. I strongly believe that If better attention is given for provision of formal and informal education, a more decent society is possible. When the society finally evolves, a selfish push, apprehension or false alarm about christianization or Islamization agenda does not arise. What would dominate all minds would be Nigerialization agenda. The country shall once again belong to all and all shall be working for its survival only. Then there shall be no cry of marginalization and the resources shall be collectively owned, not shared. A shared resourced is often squandered while the owned is forever treasured, preserved and bequeathed to generations.
God bless Nigeria.
Uncleyat
Peace_lifeseries@yahoo.com
22/03/2018
As I walk forth and back daily between the public space and the confine of my home, my concern and worry add new heights. They grow everyday with no sign of dwindling. My heart bleeds that people are no longer safe anywhere and everywhere in my country.
Hunger, burglary and robbery were the common initial experiences I grew up with as a teenager. These monsters of living experiences were notably pronounced in the late 80’s. One thought it was a violent whirlwind in those hot days that would soon give way to the calmness of the dawn. Sadly, the legacy of that leadership and what followed actually set this nation on a dangerous and destructive path.
Today, over twenty years down the memory lane, we are in a serious mess of insecurity. The monster that visited people in their homes in those days has daringly taken over the farms, schools, markets, highways and workplaces. Cultism which used to be a localized business in tertiary institutions has also become an enterprise in primary and secondary schools. It has even become a pride venture of the boys and girls in the neighborhood. The fear of what these wild notorious children would do has deactivated elders’ senses of discipline and made them indifferent to moral instructions.
Kidnapping for ransom, abduction and killings for rituals, cattle rusting, herdsmen militias, Boko Haram insurgence, militancy, human trafficking, bunkering, political violence and assassination, cult clashes, religion and tribal conflicts, high-way robbery, communal clashes, street banditry etc. make the list of our major security threats. Indulging in these crimes of man’s inhumanity to fellow man has become both a means of fun and funds.
Cattles of people are callously butchered alive and shared with fun. Hundreds of men, women and children are machete and beheaded in cold blood. Lives and freedom of an innocent man is being negotiated with fellow men in our country as if it were Christmas fowl. Many more including innocent girls are still in captives. Where is the humane nature of the real homosapiens? How does a man put a trigger on another’s head saying ‘they’ve paid for your life’? What a transaction from the pit of hell!
Fellow Nigerians! What we all identify as criminalities in this country as listed above are just the noisy parts of our insecurity. They are only the obvious security challenges. There is a latent and silent face of this menace. That is the unrepentant neglect of education. The poor attention given to educational sector has been tolerated for too long. This poses a huge security imbroglio that we may not have well conceptualized. If this attitude continues, I fear our battle with high spate of insecurity of lives and properties has not yet begun!
Our educational sectors are poorly funded. To attend schools is becoming costlier than being an entertainer. The fact that the former is even more tiring with zero net worth is making it discouraging. Education cannot be this costly and we expect security of lives and property to be cheap. Security must be all-heaven expensive when minds of people are darkened with ignorance, lack of exposures and conservatism. Of course, no reasonable person expects something worthy and invaluable as education to be priced for rhinestones. And that is where leadership intervenes. The essence of the government is to ensure that a process that liberates human minds should be the cheapest commodity.
Those who commit soft and hard crimes are victims of fake or zero education. When both the rich and the poor get common access to good and quality education, no one has the right to enslave or hire another for unwholesome ambitions. Both has the course to cherish lives and living. Nothing significant may be achieved on the rising insecurity until the unholy inequality between the children of the rich leaders and the poor masses is addressed, especially in regards to education.
While the educated children of the poor would equally do much good to the country like the educated children of the rich, the neglected frustrated ones would destroy the peace both may be collectively working for. There are practical facts that the larger population educated children of the poor would often time even outshine that of the rich under the same condition. This is because usually, the latter is usually over-pampered and spoilt. This fact fuels the suspicion that perhaps the rich have neglected the public institutions while patronizing private and foreign universities to continue to maintain the superiority of their own children.
Apart from funding, the socio-economic statuses of the teachers have been seriously bastadised. When the personality of academic instructors, tutors and scholars are symptomatic of poverty, destitution and frustration, the profession is devalued. A nation that does that like ours has rendered education or seeking knowledge generally a waste of time. How does anyone stimulate the interests of a student in a career with no promising future which only appears to be taking lives out of those who give life into it? That becomes so serious when the least educated in politics and entertainment industries earn far better and live more comfortably. It becomes more serious when beauty pageants, footballers, musicians and comedians get better attention from the leaderships than the best graduating students. How many outstanding students have been invited for handshakes by any governor or president in the recent years? In contrast, how many footballers and artists have been accorded same gesture?
I remember when some students in a secondary school were asked to disclose their future ambitions. A higher percentage of them indicated interests in becoming footballers and Hip-Hop artists. In fact, the most staggering episode was that the five most brilliant students in the school had already formed a musical team! Each of them played different roles as they performed a brief rehearsal to the glare bewilderment of the teachers.
How can there be interest in education when the best performing graduates have no job? How can the standard be raised when the teachers are not encouraged to do the work effectively due to denial of salaries and allowances? How can any poor youth be enthusiastic about schools, either as a teacher or student in the age when singers readily get sponsored for shows in different countries on the bills of the rich who are unwilling to establish foundations for bursary, scholarship and funds without political ambitions. The praise is all about money, getting rich, having cars, building mansions, flying in jets, marrying beautiful wives etc. That is all the youths are now excited about and motivated for. A censure of the message in the current releases in films and music albums would convince a curious mind.
Apparently, this desperate ambition for wealth, comfort and fame is no longer realizable through education. Then we need not look further as to why hooliganism and big-boyism is the order and pride of our society. Many youths have ventured into that profession with a prospect of being hired by big men in the society for political reasons. The drop-outs and those who poverty denies schooling are automatic candidates. Those who owe nothing to the society are only responsible to themselves and their paymasters. They care less about what happens to the nation. Those whose future the society has invested into would not do that. The educational training undertaken and the knowledge acquired have liberated their minds. They are those who are not enslaved by the selfish political or economic ambitions of the ‘big men’.
In the age of bursary, scholarship and prize awards for students, there were less violent cultist activities on campuses. That was the age poor graduates do not need anything besides merits to get job or opportunity to study abroad. Those were time when employers would storm convocation grounds for an on-campus recruitment and instant issuance of letters of appointment to deserving graduates. There was free or easy access to education.The society was safe and progressive.
The functional view of education projects it as a liberator, enhancer, stabilizer and developer of human society. Experience has shown that the most peaceful part of Nigerian society is the most educated region. Apparently, the destruction of educational structure in this nation is responsible for the destruction of her security architecture. I am yet to be convinced that this situation was not a deliberate plan by the occupiers of power to drag us down this path of ignominy that only they are immune to.
When hundreds are maimed in street rampage or thousands consumed in communal clash, how many direct dependents of those in leadership are involved? While several lives are lost, houses razed and property destroyed, their children and families only read it in the newspapers. When incessant strikes cripple the academic programs in the public schools, they are either in private universities at home or foreign ones abroad.
An average Nigerian lives in an open field either in IDP’s camps or homes that can be easily unlocked by the strangers at any time without hindrance. Everyone leaves his family in search of daily bread with a very low probability of ever returning to see them again. One goes to bed with one-eye opened, apprehensive of sudden attacks during the night. Mosques, churches, markets and farms were no longer safe. They are being destroyed and razed down on daily basis. We are seriously in the most dangerous time. Our situation cannot be more terrible.
In our time and nation, when governors no longer receive graduates at NYSC orientation camps personally, the ‘big boys’ or political thugs have high profile connections. Some got hired faster than the most brilliant fellows! They are in the payroll, drive big cars and occupy high positions in our community.
Sometimes, they hold a position of security advisers to the leadership of our society! They commit crimes with impunity. They are simply unquestionable. This is a time when AK47 is a familiar diction to under aged boys. With political interests, these weapons have become so proliferated that they are more accessible to those in that ungodly enterprise than the learning items for those in schools.
I giggle when they taunt that Nigerian graduates are not employable. Yes, it is an obvious fact to the blind. It is terribly sad. But whose blame? WAEC, JAMB, schools, society, parents or students themselves? In any of these options, your suspicion is as good as mine: All the above. Let us come think of it, was there not a time in this same country when holders of old standard 6 certificates write better, speak more fluently and could do better than University graduates of today in task performance? That was when parents were parents, examinations were examinations, teachers were teachers and schools were schools. Who are the teachers today? What are the schools today? Who are the parents in our generation? What is the value of our society at this time?
‘Throw way the degree lest you die poor’; ‘forget about the certificates and be an entrepreneur’ and ‘be reasonable, you can never be comfortable as a salary earners’ and hosts of many other similar write-ups and opinions that seem to be undermining the relevance of Educational qualifications are part of the syndrome. Such opinions were not popular when degrees and certificates were relevant as keys to purposeful and comfortable lives. They are held today because certificates are now trademarks of poverty and frustration. Such opinions were not relevant when education was not about certificate or degree acquisition only but a life-changing process which enhances leadership skills, creative drives and entrepreneurial ideas. They are held today because the aftermath of educational training is about seeking job to earn salary.
That most Nigerians cannot diverge certification from education is another proof that our teaching-learning structure is deficient. It is a proof that our teaming populace is more of certified ignoramuses that are misrepresented as learned because of their academic degrees. We tend to think one cannot be educated except he attends formal schools and that anybody who has degree is educated!
Education is a behavioral and thought changing mechanism. It may be formal as in the case of the western schools. It may be informal as in the case of a tailor learning in a fashion designing shops. It may be planned as in the case of personal enrollment as a student in a formal school or a tailoring apprentice to acquire relevant knowledge and skills. It may also be latent as in the case of learning unconsciously from the circumstances and situation around.
An example of the latent form of education is a woman who learns hair weaving or making washing soup because it is her neighbor’s occupation. As we live day to day, we learn from news and events accidentally. Most entrepreneurs derive their inspiration from this sort of experience.
Among other attributes, the educated are cool-headed, reasonable, logical, reserved and creative. An educated commercial driver knows when to stop the vehicle and where to open the doors for the passengers to disembark in order to avoid accidents or traffic jam. They neither drive roughly or insults people mindlessly and cause public nuisance in our motorparks.
Hence, the educated may not necessarily be certified or hold any degrees. A degree holder can remain wretched for life while the educated cannot even if he is not paper certified. The larger the population of such people in a society, the more is its quantum of peace and security.
Would anyone show me a successful entrepreneur without education? The one that may exist is that who does not have a certificate. Would any one direct me to the educated who is violent and notorious? The one that may appear to be is that who only possesses certificate. We can begin to see the type of personalities who front as representatives in the position of leadership with much dexterity with which they brandish furnitures to attack themselves in the course of official duty at national and state levels.
In variably, possession of long-chain of titles and qualifications is immaterial. Rather, it is the obvious lack of education that is our greatest misfortune. The illogical comments and submissions of the so-called elites on the social media over matters that begs for serious intellectual inputs confirm that the pride of many Nigerians is all about ‘caricature’ education and ‘honorific’ academic titles.
A public statement of an average Nigeria always fails the test of objectivity as they are either tribalistic or religiously sentimental. Much unexpected of the educated, it is usually noted with apparent logical defects of fallacy of generalization or violating the basic principles of deductive syllogism. A typical example of such logical errors are if Abubakar is a Nigerian and Abubakar is corrupt, then all Nigerians are corrupt or Abubakar is a Nigerian Christian. No one hates the Muslims like Abubakar. Then, no one can deny that Nigerian Christians hate the Muslims!
The above propositions are fallacies. Nigerians violate this logical boundary-limits everyday. Unfortunately, the effect of these unguarded and irrational statements threatens our peace more than ballistic missiles. It is virtuous to be silent than speak with suspicion or ignorance of facts. In plain reality, no one is employable until effective education brings about change of behavior, knowledge, skills, exposures and attitudes. How do we expect such systematic transformation to happen in a moribund system where teachers are frustrated, students are disenchanted, parents are undisciplined and society is lawless?
How would a Nigerian be employable when he left secondary school with WAEC result whose examination questions were dictated to him, admitted with UTME results whose examination was written at special centers and graduated from a University where his entire results have always been upgraded to save the face of the lecturer or department? How would he be employable when the curriculum is rigid and blind to contemporary needs, goals and challenges? How would he be employable when lecturers are conservatively analogue in their approach? They teach same course, use same notes and adopt same styles for several years. Knowledge review and update is typically zero. How would he be employable when only few lecturers attend their classes and a larger percentage of the course content is left uncovered? How would he be employable when industrial training scheme is not effectively supervised and monitored as planned? How would he be employable when test of knowledge does not encourage creative thinking but cramming of some theoretical terms?
What is my point? An employable graduate must have been admissible. An admissible candidate must have been an interested student. An interested student must have been a motivated learner. A motivated learner must have been trained by an enthusiastic teacher. An enthusiastic teacher must have been an encouraged worker. An encouraged worker must have been well paid, catered for and given a suitable work environment to work. A suitable work environment for a teacher cannot be classrooms of over five hundred students with no microphone or projector, library with no books and computers, staff room with no electric power, air conditioners and furniture or where there are no funded opportunities for professional retraining through conferences, seminars and further studies.
It is a time those with criminal charges no longer have right to power and leadership. It is time a more severe penalty become the fate of the criminals and their sponsors. It is time leadership should be a call to service and not to money, mansion or madness. It is time educational qualification and skills define the nature of responsibility. It is time the welfare of the teachers at all levels is improved. It is time education takes the highest budgeting. It is time educational support funds are boosted and disbursed with no political sentiments. It is time highly performing teachers, students and schools are celebrated at the local, state and federal levels. It is time supports for vocational skills are intensified. Then, it will certainly be the time security challenges in this country will witness a defeat more lasting than may be possible with police and military interventions.
Nigerian institutions are not the worst in the world. Their products, students and teachers are making strong waves and impact in various countries across the globe. When there is a refocused effort on the restructuring of these mainstream institutions, the agitation for regional restructuring would have been unnecessary. With the existing NYSC scheme, the quality of Nigerian graduates would have produced Engineers that can guarantee security on infrastructure; doctors that guarantee us security on health, lawyers that can guarantee us security on rights and justice and above all, youths that can give us security on the future of the leadership with a direction, civilization and decent moral rectitude.
With their mutual presence across all regional divides of our dear country, we can achieve tolerance and understanding among religions and tribes. I strongly believe that If better attention is given for provision of formal and informal education, a more decent society is possible. When the society finally evolves, a selfish push, apprehension or false alarm about christianization or Islamization agenda does not arise. What would dominate all minds would be Nigerialization agenda. The country shall once again belong to all and all shall be working for its survival only. Then there shall be no cry of marginalization and the resources shall be collectively owned, not shared. A shared resourced is often squandered while the owned is forever treasured, preserved and bequeathed to generations.
God bless Nigeria.
Comments
Post a Comment
Hello!
kindly tell about your experience about our posts.
Thank you