By Emma Okah
emmaokah@yahoo.com
08033211999
Some time ago, precisely December 2011, this column shared thoughts about our dear country as appear below. As many things do not seem to be changing, it has become necessary to reproduce our views, hoping that someday, someone would hear us and take the kind of actions that would advance the progress of our nation.
We said: Nigeria is one nation where everybody is busy for various reasons, some good, others bad or ugly. Some are simply weird and absurd. So, at all times everybody is busy. In the last few months, many people have become busy for the wrong reason. The Boko Haram sect is rewriting the history of Nigeria with amazing fierceness and the security agencies appear totally helpless. In Nigeria today, things are going sour.
Yes! Sour. As true patriots, we have also become very busy. We have lent our voice in the last few years commenting on socio-economic and political events in our dear nation. We have condemned leadership where they did not deserve commendation and praised them where they earned our admiration. We cannot relent. We will continue to join forces with our genuine brothers and sisters in the media, civil societies, charity organizations, churches, mosques, etc. to save the nation from collapse.
We believe that time has come for us to stop and take stock as a people and ask ourselves some basic questions in the light of recurring negative developments in our national life. Leadership may not admit it because it favours them, but the truth is that Nigeria is gradually but steadily slipping into the garb of a failed nation. The nation is at war. The leadership and the led; the rich against the poor; Muslims against Christians; light against darkness; Boko Haram and the people; ASUU against the FG; etc.
Everywhere there is war and the Nigerian womb is tormented by atrocities of the enemies of goodness and fair game. For Mr. President, this is time for duty call. Yes, even though he did not cause these problems, he has a moral and legal duty to solve them and this is where great men make the difference. He has to save this failing nation. Nigeria is plunging into the unknown. Yes, Nigeria is failing. The signs are clear.
The route to perdition is predictable, dependable, and certainly inevitable once a series of well-known landmarks and thresholds have been attained. The rise of leaders and cabals that are motivated by incurable greed for money, power and with scanty regard for the rights and needs of the majority and where life is very cheap; escalating human rights violations, sometimes resulting in self-help and violent disorder or ethnic cleansing; poverty and economic hardship, which subject majority of the people to malnutrition, starvation and penury; base sentiments powered by intolerance and illimitable discrimination on grounds of ethnicity, politics, religion, intercourse and class.
This is the point where the nation is operating today. So, what is the way out? This will be the thrust of this column in the weeks ahead. Education A society that values its future accords the highest priority to providing quality education for its entire young people. Education means developing the faculties of a person's mind, heart and body in such a way that one would be gradually prepared to take one's place in society as a useful citizen.
Therefore, education should be for all, but it is common knowledge in Nigeria that only the children of the privileged class receive qualitative and quantitative education in a nation that aspires to be one of the first 20 in 2020. The sad part of all this is that it is the children of the poor, especially the rural poor, who are receiving this ineffectual type of education, which doesn't even give them an opportunity to go to college or university and compete favourably with others. There is simply no possibility for our country to be great unless we create a solid resource base of well-educated citizens from all the ethnic nationalities, with the skills, experiences and motivation to build our country.
This is the fundamentum. It is the basic norm. But Nigerians must build their country and mould its image in the manner they choose. This choice will prescribe hard lines, but requires commitment, sacrifice and focus by everybody under laws that fear nobody and respect no institution. It is not possible to solve all our national problems in one day, but we have written and talked enough to start positive action. The starting point is to change the mindset of Nigerians through functional education.
To do this, primary school education is the starting point. It is possible that if we get it right there, we may get it right in the other levels. The Rivers State example of building gigantic structures is commendable, but it is just one segment of the entire problem plaguing primary education in Nigeria. Positive attitude is the key to success. Schools are a reflection of society and if the society is rotten then the schools cannot be different.
For an effective primary education in Nigeria to have meaning, the teachers must be passionate and committed. It is not enough for any Tom, Dick and Harry to pick up chalk simply because he cannot find job elsewhere. On the part of the government, those who teach should not be seen as mere consignees for hell fire on earth. Teachers must live well and have a good reward for their work so that they can truly put in their best to teach the pupils.
A return to the old style is instructive. Inspectorate divisions of the Ministry of Education should be strengthened to check and balance the effort of Head Teachers and ensure optimum compliance with existing regulations and standards. Various communities should ensure that the schools in their domain do not become a dumping ground for trading and itinerant teachers. Consequences should attend objectionable behaviours on the part of teachers irrespective of who their godfather is and the political party they belong.
This is the way to prepare good pupils for secondary education. Next is secondary education. The situation in primary schools in majority of cases also applies here, and so the solution also applies. The failure of secondary school education in Nigeria is encouraging exodus of Nigerian students out of the country with consequential economic implication. Many Nigerian children are in secondary schools overseas, including some African countries for the simple reason that the cost of educating a child here in many private schools is equal to what it costs to do so overseas.
The truth is that secondary education is also passing through a delicate web of mixed problems that defeat its essence in our shores. The shameful JSS3 terminal examination results tell it all. The alarming degree of failure shows that the nation is operating in the high sea like a vessel without a compass. Rather than prepare and pass their exams, many students now buy guns and knives to secure cheating environments during examinations in nearly all the states of the federation with the active connivance of compromised principals and invigilators.
The result is that when their scripts are subjected to random markers that they are not able to reach, the futility of their cheating strings is exposed. Question is why has nobody been punished for cheating in a terminal examination in Nigeria? The answer is simple. Those who lead us at all levels; even in churches and mosques, are not ready to build a great nation, but if examples are set with some students and teachers facing proper prosecution in a determined national crackdown against examination malpractices, others will learn a lesson and toe the line of righteousness. This is why many people regret that Brig Gen Tunde Idiagbon did not stay long in office.
In him, Nigeria got its first restoration leader with the aim of rebuilding a true Nigerian Nation. Sadly, children now boldly demand special examination allowances from their willing parents and guardians to enable them bribe invigilators and sort out those undergraduates who help them to write the terminal examinations. What a shame! What a nation. University education is a topic for another day, but we believe that we can get it right if leadership and the Nigerian people say "...yes, we can".
Via: Sun News Online