I know the biggest crime is just to throw up your hands and say "This has nothing to do with me, I just want to live as comfortably as I can." ~ Ani DiFranco The three month ASUU strike action has come and gone, and in the last one week somehow I have refused to write. I have watched with pain the movie called Nigeria. I have chosen to listen, play dumb, deaf and possibly mute but for how long. The National Assembly has resumed but have not done anything that deserves a thumb up, and may not and this dispensation is already over a month gone. There are millions of hopeful Nigerians, plenty and still there are many that will tell you clearly that the future of this nation is in jeopardy. Our economists, the Soludos and even the new Helmsman Yar'Adua have already started with the usual...which is that the economy is good, improving, bla, bla, bla but then I live in the streets, the masses are my life. Government continually lies, and like strong wind it moves but truth is stronger and has a way of coming against the strongest wind.

The Educational sector of this nation is in a state of "yeperipa". A nation's tertiary institutions have been closed for three months, and they 'just' resume like nothing happened, students go back to lectures like a rainbow that appeared without rain. In some schools, exams would be conducted in the following weeks. All really like nothing happened! Between 1985 and 2005, a period of 20years, our education life has suffered a retrogressive strike of cumulatively 5years and we carry on like nothing has transpired. I have written countless times on the educational mess that we find ourselves, and I refuse to stop, again I repeat those things that we know perhaps that someone may listen. Like the catch 'proudly Nigerian' even when there is nothing to be proud about, I am proudly a public school system product. But today that system largely exist only on paper, and in the imagination of some thoughtless and unfunctional literate leaders.

That system has been abused, misused, disused and left in a a state of disrepair. Show me a leader, a politician with so called popular mandate and I will show you an Oga's madam with her own private Montessori and international schools with fees from the outrightly outrageous to the unbelievably murderous, and off course they patronize themselves. It seems but a fact that the act is intentional, because you educate the children of today and you guaranty a future for tomorrow. But the reverse is the case, they educate their kids, by all means necessary and guaranty a future, a continuos oligarchy of crooks. How much can a system take before we releazie that it may soon be over. We turn a blind eye to the problems and pretend that nothing is wrong and that the only visible thing is success. We face the struggles of a largely employed youths nay graduates, and we dance a masquerade of pretense at the percentage of that number that are unemployable.

Instances make me sound like a broken record but I still will say. How do we reconcile the fact that a graduate of law does not know the sequence of arbitration, I mean at an interview, tells a panel that the Nation's Highest Court is the Court of Appeal. Or a graduate of computer Science with strong theoretical foundation but hardly possesses the practical knowledge. How about the French Linguistics graduate that tells you "BORN JUNE" with no regard to the phonetics and pronunciations of the language. Can we pass the teacher, that has because of lack of funds not taught students any thing different from the same Etuk Udo concept of accounting since 1976 in 2006? Look at the quality of our graduating Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, do we like what we see, do we really like it..There was once upon the good old days of academic glory, what happened? Some of the issues in our educational system are laughable and sadly is that not how we laugh away our future. The number one and two men in the nation are teachers but when last they did really teach anything. The decay in the system is not about phase or the other level, it has become an endemic virus eating the entire system.

Monopolistic capitalists have taken over our conscience so we too have taken leave of our senses and no longer can see the future. In local Primary Schools in the entire nation, there is an embarrassing dearth of teachers, every effort made at remedying the situation with a pragmatic and strong willed solution ends with more problems, as more mediocre find their way into the system. Teachers teach English in local dialects because themselves do not know the language. Others turn the school into on small shop, selling A and B. Does anyone really care at the rate of failure at the Senior Secondary level, certainly no, because we easily see those that come out in flying, racing , footballing and all sorts of colors, very few indeed compared to the droves of failures. In certain parts of the nation, it is not girl-child education but boy-child, in other parts, there is no education be it boy or girl child rather it is the fundamental abuse of these children and yet we call them the future of tomorrow and shaking my head furiously I can only ask what manner of future. For all the drum success of the Obasanjo era, reforms A, B, to Z, what can be said to be an intangible benefit that was derived in education, how much more the intangible. All sorts of educational expos with schools from the UK even domiciled in a storey building seeking gullible Nigerian parents to come and fund the nonsense.

From the U.S to the Caribbean, anywhere but Nigeria. Visit a typical public school somewhere in Lagos, no chalk, washed off blackboards, no tables nor chairs and in many cases there are no teachers. Teaching itself has become a stop gap job before the real SHELL or MTN thing comes. A friend visited the good old Abeokuta Grammar School, the tale is better told by him, best appreciated by those that know the enviable history of that school. And same goes for Barewa College...and many like that. For the better part of the end of Obj's disaster it was the debate on auctioning off our Unity Schools, today we still are neither here nor there. I even at some point suggested that if that is the spirit we could as well privatize government, bring in investors in the National Assembly, Aso Rock et al. At this, sadly there are indeed investors, who are daily mortgaging the future of this nation for even little than a plate of porridge. When will all these madness stop, will it ever stop? Is there any lining in the sky be it blue, red, green albeit silver. Stats may lie, but how often is the truth a lie...We smile at the number of school dropouts, we feign ignorance at the number of school age children that are not in school. We are ignorant of the rate at which some of our institutions produce pirated literate, unproductive literate and in many cases full illiterates.

The technical and crafts schools have been bastardized, degraded and left in a coma, with little or no hope of regaining life. Certain spheres of the Nigerian education life has no hope, neither is it hopeless, just a traffic jam, with cars all moving at the wrong direction in a hurry. I am grieved, Nigerians from all walks may smile, grumble a little but we cannot wish the impending result of our actions or inactions by faith that all is okay because it is not. The Yorubas of South West Nigeria have this exclamation, "Yeperipa"...I wont try to interpret it, rather when you see a Yoruba man ask to know what 'Yeperipa means. The Educational system is in a state of...And it has to do with us all, for the leaders that think, they are in their comfort Zone and even the led that have kept quiet, I say when the finger of the Almighty Allah visits in anger, we will regret because we shied away from His hands of Love, Grace and Mercy by not doing the right thing.

Robot  Villager

# 1 For the better part of the end of Obj's disaster it was the debate on auctioning off our Unity Schoo...Read the full article. Posted by Robot| 17.07.2007 17:28

nigeria we hail thee!  Villager

# 2 You have said it all. What do you expect where most of our leaders send their wards to private schools overseas? Here in the Uk, even Tony Blair's kids attend public schools. There was a brouhaha recently when it was discovered that a serving MP's kid attends a private school. The public outcry only subsided when the MP gave an extenuating circumstance that warranted her kid attending a private school: the person in question is physically challenged. Can this happen in Nigeria? How many governors/ministers/LGA chairmen etc in Nigeria have their kids in our public universities? They don't care because they can afford to send their kids to schools abroad. To say that our educational system in Nigeria is comatose will be tantamount to an understatement. I just read recently that NYSC had to reduce the number of Corpers this year because according to them, they don't have sufficient funds to take care of them. Is there anything called PLANNING in Nigeria? When are we going to stop all these fire brigade approach to solving problems? I know somebody that graduated 3 years ago but has not been mobilised for national youth service and we are told that one can not work without having an NYSC discharge certificate. If the government does not have sufficient funds for this programme, why not scrap it. I was not surprised when no Nigerian university was named in the world's best 500 universities. Our educational system needs to be completely overhauled. Our leaders can instil confidence in the system by sending their own kids to public schools in Nigeria. May be the senate can pass a law barring government or public servants from sending their kids overseas or to private schools. Posted by nigeria we hail thee!| 18.07.2007 05:34