The Exigency To Educate Nigerians

By

Emakoji Ayikoye

Ayikoye@lehman.cuny.edu

 

 

In the face of our mounting and colossal nationally challenges; in the midst of our appallingly collapsing educational institutions, which in fact, is at the root of most of our national calamities that currently threatens our national cohesion and development, I write this piece with a clear intent in mind - to provoke a new line of thinking among all Nigerians at home and abroad. I write this piece to sound the trumpet, to gust the atmosphere with an urgent message for social, economic and political redress of our collective irresponsibility that has thus far made an open mockery of us among nations. I write this piece to beckon on all Nigeria's intellectuals, politicians, religious leaders and all citizens to pause and think about our history, and make succinct assessment of the legacies that we have built for our generation and the ones to come. For too long, we have blamed one another; we have accused one another; we have fought political, social, and economic battles together. Now is the time to collectively fight one more fight - the fight to offer every Nigerian citizen, the unequivocal right to quality education.

 

Seeing the ever-increasing youth unemployment, insecurity, arm robberies and terrorism being perpetrated with the involvement of energetic youths, who should either be productively engaged in employments or educational trainings that ought to advance Nigeria, but are not; and observing the reality that thousands of qualified young Nigerian secondary school graduates are unable to gain admission into our universities yearly because of the lack of adequate educational institutions and the failure of JAMB as a system, I cannot, but urgently alarm the nation that such unacceptable development in our beloved nation holds nothing, but a sinister future for us should the pattern be allowed to continue.  Thus, if we continue to ignore the exigency to educate Nigeria's children in the midst of our vast wealth, the 21st century would witness the irrevocable failure that will make our children and us the shame of the black race. Should we continue to neglect our primary, secondary and higher institutions of learning as in the last few years, we would have succeeded making slaves out of our children in the 21st century. Therefore, as a concern Nigerian, I make avid humanitarian plea on behalf of all Nigeria’s children, young men and women that we must address the quandary of our primary, secondary and university education. In the spirit of solidarity for our nation and its quest for development and peaceful coexistence, I lay the case of our primary, secondary and university education at the doors of our political and religious leaders, as well as at the doors of every parent and all Nigeria's intellectuals at home and abroad.

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In this 21st century and under our current democratic dispensation, where for the first time, Nigeria’s President  - Goodluck E. Jonathan, holds a PhD level of education; and unlike any other time in our national history, we have the unique opportunity to redefine the quintessence of our primary, secondary and university education; we have the golden chance in a life-time to idiosyncratically re-invent a systematic education that is unique to us, and yet, use it as a force for the much anticipated timely transformation of every cradle of our social, political and economic existence. Not only must we re-invent and redefine a new pragmatic philosophy for our university education, we must do so, and offer it to all Nigerians as a way of giving each person a chance at life - a chance to progressively and proudly exist as Nigerians, who are capable of making our livelihood in our only God-given home land, and at the same time contribute our various quotas to build a vibrant and competitive Nigeria.

 

When I refer to a new pragmatic philosophy of education, I mean we must think of our primary, secondary and university education as a tool necessary to instill our citizens with an education that teaches and stresses critical thinking, which is required to deal with all the issues related to our national development and peaceful coexistence. Our education must emphasize novelty, hard work, and creativity and, it must seek to maximize our children's inherent potentials, which will foster the atmosphere for progress in our economy, politics and social lives. Beyond the malevolence created by our colonial masters, that seem to perpetuate our differences, we are responsible for our dilemma today, and we must mend it by ourselves. One way to do so, I insist, is, by providing quality 21st century-type education for our children.

 

The 21st century-type education I am referring to is the compelling education that is capable of informing, changing, reversing, and transforming the lives, worldview and the destiny of our young people and make them productive citizens of this great nation of Nigeria. This type of education is an undisputed paramount gem that is unreservedly indispensable for Nigeria, a nation that desperately is in dire need of total transformation. To pursue this path of national transformation, we cannot for example continue to under any circumstance, allow our educational system to incessantly suffer from strike actions by the universities' faculty and other staff members. We cannot at all afford to allow our young men and women to constantly suffer as the victims of our government/universities staffs' disagreement. The least we can offer our young men and women is their well-deserved fundamental right - stable education. We have all it takes to make that happen. We cannot possess such enormous oil and gas wealth and not be able to offer quality, stable education to our children; yet, they are suppose to be the future of our long-lasting existence as a great nation. No nation can emerge from the shackle of primitive backwardness, poverty and underdevelopment without a vibrant educated population. Western Europe, America, Japan, Singapore have all immensely invested in educating their population, and now South Korea, China, and India are greatly investing in educating their population and seeing commensurate dividend of an educated population; why shouldn’t Nigeria emulate this proven path of national development? Unfortunately, because Nigeria is lagging behind on education, thousands of Nigerians are spending millions of Naira each year in pursuit if expensive education in some of these foreign nations.

 

To consign this piece into our collective conscience as a nation, I would suggest that among other intellectual theories of education that we may be operating on, we must begin to incorporate the teaching of our constitution, creativity, novelty and hard work into our philosophy of education. We must educate our children - teenagers, young men and women, about our constitution, creativity, novelty and hard work and sternly discourage exam malpractice and all unethical practices within academia. Let every parent and every teacher begin to teach Nigeria's children about our constitution, and about creativity, novelty and hard work; let our intellectuals, politicians and religious leaders set a clear incorruptible example that progress and prosperity comes only through dedication, commitment and hard work in our various fields of endeavor. Let our leaders recognize that one way we can forge forward as a unified, progressive and civilized people in this 21st century, is by making clear what our constitution is, and fulfill the promise of it's substance to all the populace of Nigeria.

 

Thus, this piece is intended to be a compelling political and social statement on the Nigerian situation; it is humanitarian plea that I hope every ear would hear. It is a statement in our national interest that should pierce into our national consciousness and awaken us from the state of mediocrity, despondency and slothfulness to a state of excellence and promptness in dealing with our collapsing educational system. Politicians, religious leaders, privileged Nigerians, and Nigerians abroad, if we don't act now to redress the deteriorating state of our education, we may soon awaken to a tragic and horrendous dishonor known to any nation on earth.

 

To our local, state and national government, I bring to you the words of John Locke, a 17th century enlightenment philosopher, whose ideas incredibly influenced the ideals of democracy which we claim to have now. In two of his Treatise on government, he postulates that men in their state of nature were reasonable, had a moral sense and the rights to life, liberty and property. He also said that, people must act reasonably and responsibly, but they can be educated to do so. He added that if government violates the people's right, they may in the last extremity rebel. I believe passionately that if there was any time in history where these words by this wise man, Locke, are ever relevant to the Nigerian situation, this is the time! These words are self-explanatory for every sensible politician to heed to, and begin to apply it to the democratic governance of our nation especially in dealing with our educational predicaments, not to talk of our social, political and economic troubles.

 

Furthermore, it is extremely important that our government should understand that denying our young men and women the right to stable and quality education does no good, but it creates tension, psychological frustration and hatred for the government in the minds of our young people. Unfortunately, tension, frustration and hatred are the raw material for individuals to begin to act insanely as criminals and terrorists as we have seen recently in this nation. Therefore, I make bold to say that our disintegrating social lives, and the increasing crime waves in our society is clearly the by-products of these terrible tension, frustration and hatred created by denying our young men their fundamental human right - quality and stable education. Thus, one simple way to reduce the rates of crimes and terrorism in our society, which in turn would create the safe atmosphere for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and economic growth, is to stabilize our educational system at all levels. Not only that, government must provide scholarships and educational loans for our university students since our university students need funds to buy their books, feed themselves, cloth themselves and transport themselves to school back to their respective places of residences. This is the least our government can do for our young people because we have the oil and gas wealth to do so. Most parents who fall under the category of our 80% poor population can barely feed themselves and so cannot do it alone as the case has been for many years. If our local, state and federal government would become responsible to credibly invest in our young people, much of our social, economic and political troubles would certainly be solved over time.

 

Furthermore, if government can stabilize our educational system and make it what it ought to be in the 21st Century, Nigerians would not need to go to Europe, America and Asia in search of expensive education as we do now. Rather, we may attract other fellow Africans to our educational system, and that is good for our economy. America, Canada, Australia, Western Europe and other Asian countries are making huge money from foreign students by having a stable and developed educational system. Why shouldn’t Nigeria? If we stabilize our system, then, we would begin to serve as the beacon of light for the rest of Africa. We can become the "United States of Africa" to the continent of Africa as the United States of America is to the Continent of North America and to the rest of the world.

 

Should I foolishly assume that it is the sole responsibility of the government to stabilize our education and encourage our young people to be educated? Would I make sense if I suggest that our intellectuals and wealthy Nigerians have no part in this business? Can I religiously suggest that our religious leaders have no part in this struggle? Absolutely no! Every religious leader, every Nigerian intellectual and all wealthy Nigerians at home and abroad have part to play in this issue. The question is how, and what are we suppose to do? Well, here are some suggestions:

 

1.         Our religious leaders and their various churches, shrines and mosques must now begin to help sponsor whatever number of students they could in our Nigerian Universities. They can do so by taking offerings to set up scholarship foundations for this reason. Thank God our churches collect tithes and offerings, and thank God our Muslims brothers and sisters are charitable. It may not be much but a little here and there can go a long way.

 

2.         Wealthy Nigerians at home and abroad can look beyond their immediate family members and assist their neighbors by way of setting up some type of scholarships to annually assist any given number of students. I am not really speaking of what I have not done; rather, I am still doing it at this moment even though I am not wealthy. Living in America where a little dollar converts into a lot of Naira, I have been able to assist several undergraduate students in Nigeria universities.

 

3.         To our intellectuals, especially our universities' officials, we must learn to compromise and possibly make sacrifices so that our children can be given the same opportunity you had to be university-educated. It is as simple as that. The University faculties must learn the need for sacrifice for nation building as they have an indispensable role to play to move our educational system beyond the menace of seasonal strikes, which is extremely disruptive to our educational stability.

In conclusion, I don't claim that my suggestions are easy or that they may not require time to execute. However, if we do, that would mark the beginning of a new dawn for our educational, economic, social and political lives. I hope this article make sense to someone, who would dare to make a difference in the lives of other fellow Nigerians.