In response to the increasingly bellicose, illogical, ill-informed and sometimes seditious opinions being bandied about, government spokespersons are now threatening citizens with the “full wrath of the law” if they insist on holding opinions contrary to their official positions on matters. It remains a mystery how the powers that be fail to understand the relationship between all the unpatriotic ranting, inciting posturing, and illogical arguments and the extent to which the educational system has failed the nation.
Successive governments have theoretically upheld the objectives of the 6-3-3-4 system which has been used effectively in Ghana, China and Germany but none has successfully implemented the policy to the nation’s benefit. At primary school level teachers are quite scandalously failing in the elementary task of teaching children how to read and write! The end result is that the bulk of children advancing to secondary school perform poorly in examinations, and over 30 per cent of school leavers are to all intents and purposes illiterate. Mass failure at Senior Secondary School level is now normal. At tertiary level things are no better, with universities in continuous assorted crises of neglect characterised by infrastructural decay, wastage of resources, sordid conditions of service and strikes.
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The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) recently ended their 9-month-long strike, now the Senior Staff Association Nigerian Universities (SSANU), and Non-Academic Staff Union of Universities and Educational Institutions (NASU) are planning to embark on their own! Meanwhile, the National Union of Teachers (NUT) seems to be perpetually in conflict with government. The saddest aspect of these regular strikes is that they are about concern for staff welfare rather than concern for the outdated and irrelevant syllabus, lack of laboratory equipment, decrepit classroom conditions, or a lack of computer facilities and general infrastructural decay.
There can be no denying that university staff welfare and the infrastructural condition of government universities and secondary schools in Nigeria is a national disgrace. The facts speak for themselves. Millions are spent erecting super-gates when libraries are empty of modern texts and book shelves are homes to rats/cockroaches! Millions are spent purchasing exotic “official” vehicles in the face of decrepit laboratories, shortage of basic classroom furnishing and inadequate student’s accommodation. Less than 10 per cent of universities have video conferencing facility, more than 50 per cent don’t use Public Address System in overcrowded lecture halls, and 99 per cent have non-existent or epileptic internet services. The majority of university students use wells as source of water, while 45 per cent use pit latrines. With no relationship between enrolment and the tangible manpower needs universities are grossly under-staffed relying on part-time and visiting lecturers. With development projects mostly abandoned the majority of the nation’s universities are indeed simply “Glorified Secondary Schools”.
Educational experts assert that the Nigerian school system is defective. It unleashes students into the employment market with absolutely no marketable employment skills. Students are examined on their ability to simply recall information rather than their ability to think about and solve real problems. Instead of producing well-informed patriotic citizens with logical minds, the system produces containers of useless knowledge mostly destined for lives of unemployment, despair and hopelessness. Fully aware of this the nation’s political leaders send their own children to be educated overseas where they will be trained to become the thinkers and leaders of tomorrow. While their children will develop new products, new ideas and do things which can contribute to the advancement of their society, graduates of Nigerian “universities of remembering” are left to demonstrate expertise in hairdressing, soap making, barbing, driving UBER taxis, or working as casual labourers! It should come as no surprise that when Nigerian graduates hold political office, rather than excel in reasoning they excel in scheming, stealing, blundering, betraying, immorality and various other acts of unprincipled, bad behaviour. While university graduates are supposed to have been found worthy in “character and learning” Nigerian degrees increasingly encompass neither.
In Nigeria, secondary school education is a total mess. Asking children to “specialise” at the age of 14 years is silly. The core subjects of History and Geography are no longer compulsory. History imbibes patriotism and Geography inculcates knowledge of the different climates, different peoples, and different cultures. Quite ridiculously government expects youths to be patriotic when they are not taught Nigerian history and all they experience is how corrupt political leaders, “repentant” jihadists killers and former militants, prosper while the law-abiding citizens suffer. Technical and vocational education, which every developing nation needs so desperately, is deemed “inferior”.
It’s been postulated that the system remains decrepit because keeping citizens ignorant and frightening them is the means by which those who cling on to political power and retain possession of 80 per cent of the nation’s wealth keep “common people” in check and deny them their entitlements. Hence presidents, governors and their spokespersons constantly threaten political opponents and non-compliant citizens with facing “the full wrath of the law” which routinely involves illegal arrest and detention, torture, or extra-judicial murder. Not equipped with the capacity or the intellect, to develop concepts relevant to the progress of the nation, ordinary Nigerians previously accepted that the best thing to do under the circumstances was to take “orders from above” and hope for the best. Now things are changing and citizens are increasingly less willing to abdicate their rights. True democracy, which depends on shared truths, has never been established in Nigeria instead autocracy is flourishing in disguise.
To end the cycle of failure in Nigeria, future governments must totally revamp the syllabus and increase the budgetary allocations for education and healthcare. The truth is that a nation of healthy, educated and confident citizenry, which is required for progress, is much harder to exploit and oppress. Under various “Amnesty” arrangements ex-militants and “repentant” Boko Haram receive more funds annually than 20 Nigerian universities! To improve the educational system it’s imperative that government appoints a Minister of Education who is a seasoned educationalist with the capacity and expertise to reform the system. If the federal government continues to ignore the challenges of inherent weaknesses in the education system in the belief that they don’t exist, they will continue to be guilty of living a lie that will continue to drag the nation backwards and hinder true progress.
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