Dear Chinwe Obaji,

This maybe, a harsh comment to make however, it is not far from the truth, infact I see it as the truth. There is this book titled School Is Dead, it is a sociological text, and old one at that written in the good old 70's when we had money and spending it was a problem, it falls under the category of those books one possessed but it just gets missing one day and you never can tell how and whom was responsible for it.

A friend of mine owned the book. The book according to my friend with who were discussing told me the book was about the fallacy of school, it debunked the value of school in the society, and it talked about schools having empty walls.

For a book that old it must not just be a sociological text, but a prophetic piece today in the light of where we are in our educational journey and I am sure the author had Nigeria in mind. What makes our case sad is that we have a government that has only paid lip service to educational issues, when you hear educational matters or read them in the newspapers it is only scandals, examination fraud, cultism, non-motivation of teachers, school closure, bribe for budget…the list is endless.

Chinwe…my Ibo brothers tell me that you name means ‘God owns’ and that is true, even the education, He owns the brain and all that it requires, but the PDP government of which you are a part of, has forgotten that fundamental truth, they think it is them that owns it, not Allah. To further emphasize the contempt you all brought in Amadu Ali as we all knew him in the Ali must go days to be Chairman over a party with no educational manifesto.

Dearest Chinwe, I hope your husband is not cross at me for addressing you so, if he is, then, I must chide him for allowing you to serve this government of lies. Only last week your boss Obj was talking of a dream he had…no sorry a vision, he called it a new slogan, Vision 2020... I burst out in laughter as he talked about Nigeria getting into the list of top twenty industrialized nations. I do not know how we plan on achieving that, but with a comatose educational sector, with the ‘olodos’ and empty headed spaghetti and jeans wearing young people that litter our dead buildings called schools. That is a tall order

I have my soft spot for you, especially regarding the confusion you brought in with you  reinvention in the name of post UME tests for University, I even hear now some persons are asking for both post NECO and WAEC test. So many Vice Chancellors will always remember you for the opportunity to fatten their accounts, while others sincerely will see it as your own little quota in improving standards. But with poor funding both for research and infrastructural development, we are still far off.

The motivation for this letter to you several fold and I hope I can touch at least several of them if not all. One, this letter is because I have always argued that we cannot have a nation with a generation of young persons who lack qualitative education baptized in the waters of the 3E’s Enlightment, Exposure and Experience.

Also I am hoping that you will have the humility to respond and at least prove us the sceptics wrong. Beyond those well prepared speeches at convocation grounds and occasions, the Nigerian School system is dead and most of us cannot see any reason this should be the portion of a nation that has produced a lot of foirst class brains nationally and internationally.

My sister in governance, once more it is that time of the year when students of the neighbouring University of Jos sends out its students on the mandatory Student Industrial Working Experience (SIWES) popularly called attachment to gather experience. The students are expected to put to practice all the theories they have learnt in the classroom, while they are supposedly given a feel of the workplace, and the workplace broadens their horizon and perceptions.

Sadly, school is dead, these students come with their smiles bur little to offer for all the years of numerous assignments, group work, candle light burning and handouts buying. Even the basics of their chosen field seem very alien to them when mentioned to them. It’s sad that I do not know exactly how some of our so-called schools feel when the let loose these calibre of empty headed products.

Madam and your Oga is scoring himself high, telling us his ‘god’ is not that of abandoned projects. The bitter fact is that where are the projects, how much more abandoning them. Take for example, we are told some of the people preaching the doomed gospel of third term apart from you is the private sector called ‘Corporate Nigeria, butt the same group only last year lamented that the quality of our graduates is appalling and unemployable, so what has changed suddenly.

The quality of university products now evokes the question, any hope for the future? The other day Babs Fafunwa, one time Education Minister revealed that he was not computer literate while he was a Minister and that is excusable but my dear Chinwe what do we make of Computer Science students that are not computer literate.

At the primary school level it is not longer attractive to send wards to school especially amongst the masses. The children are sent out to family and relatives in what I call modern day slavery, after some years the females are married out, the males…business off course. Besides what is the value for school of which you will not get a job. Do you need a qualification to own a pay phone business, so why waste the time going to school. Someone even said hence Baba Sunday said that his boys at the mechanic workshop were better than graduates why bother send the boy to school instead send him to Baba Sunday’s workshop.

The UBE thing has been all propaganda with most States Primary Education Board serving as conduit pipe for educational donor agencies’ money to State CEO’s, between 2000-2005 more than 48.3 billion have been expended on the UBE yet little to show. Does it really occur to you that there are no longer schools in Nigeria…the type you went to, the same Baptist Secondary School, Ansaru Deen, unity schools and many such in which discipline, morals and intellects were treated? Today what we have are prestige schools were the school fees run in millions of Naira, infact some of these so called ‘good’ schools charge their tuition fees in hard currency in our own country and no one is saying anything. The poor man wey never see Naira were im go see Dollars.

It may interest you to know Madam that as I write this, the recent UNESCO report places us as the fifth least educated nation in the world. Any comments on that or like we often reject every unfavourable ranking and accept the favourabble ones.

Now young graduates do all sorts of things to make a living when their paper qualification cannot fetch them the big break or the executive seat and all the years at the University or Polytechnic did not prepare then for the task ahead. The society itself is not ready for them and yet all you and almost all you Ministerial colleagues do is to watch Baba bellow that he is waiting on God for a decision on an extra term. All of you sit at the Federal Executive Meetings on Mondays or whichever day and no one can tell the headmaster the truth.

The truth that in 2006, four years away from the magical 2010 and the MDG year of 2015 barely a decaded from now, pupils still receive classes under the trees, and during the rains…Ma’am you already know. That most of our higher schools of learning only offer worthless papers. That after Grammar school our young ones cannot spell their names or that they cannot do an English narrative of the road from home to school.

Chinwe, Chinwe, Chinwe…how many times have I called you? School is dead, so no one cares cultists have taken over and all your colleagues Nweke and Fani-Kayode does is abuse Wole Soyinka as if that is a solution to the problem. Colonialists called lecturers are playing their own game turning the ivory tower into an all comers affair, it is enter as you pay or pay as you enter, the course determines the price, admission racketeering is a rave, JAMB has been jammed, there is no belief in the system. Half of the entire nation’s education has been entrusted into the private school system where standardization and quality are not monitored and are treated as non-issue free education is no longer a right but a privilege, one morning it is six years mandatory primary education by noon it is nine years by night who knows.

The policy makers like you do not even have faith in the system they claim to be reforming.  I end this letter to you asking which school do you children attend, how much do they pay per term or session, how many Nigerians away from you league can pay that amount, the local primary school in your village what is the state. Have you visited even the primary school the President attended…the poor state or is it the Mungo Park look? It is not in granting private universities license left, right and centre, what about the plans to give the ordinary Nigerians that right to education, even as I have said we have the wherewithal to make education from primary to tertiary free, let ability be the determinant.  I will hold my pen and await you reply or that of a trusted aide who will come up with those…

I end by asking you to pass the regards of the ordinary Nigerians to you and your family on top, by way of gossip, how did you get yourself involved in this PDP messed up arrangement, did you really think you could change much? May Almighty Allah show His mercies on you people in government, judgement day approaches, the people’s verdict is Allah’s voice. Thank you for the time.