Nigeria @ 47: Laughing Off the Grief

[Robot]

Another day of October 1st has arrived and just like the years before,
Nigerians all over the wo...Read the full article.

[John Igoli]

Following the relief from the Military hand over in 1999, a guest lecturer in a public lecture said; 'let it not be, at any time in the future for Nigerians to say 'in the good days of Abacha!' Unfortunately this statement is haunting us now and the fact that we keep making references to the days of military rule has formed part of our grief.

[STTOPP]

H.B., i understand and appreciate the passion you give to all the subjects you write about, i agree with you that we have a lot of problems but please ease-up a little. The Goverment of the people by the people, the government is not the problem, it is the attitude of most people in government that needs to change, and we are seen some bright spot, i just want to urge you to highlight some of these bright spots in your writings. As these will illuminates some great examples that we have within.
STTOPP

[Felix]

"The second way a government can crush its citizens’ thought is by refusing to adopt free and qualitative education to a certain level. When a citizen is deprived of such education, she is unfairly treated as a citizen. She is dispossessed of knowledge that would liberate her. She is made to suffer throughout her life. She is forced to be a slave and treated like a servant in her own house. She is condemned to the street to become area boys to be used to rig elections. She is permanently restricted to a class of nonentity. She would never know but she would be happy to celebrate October 1st simply because they have managed to conquer her thought.

The experts recent reports about high level of illiteracy in Nigeria serves as illustration here. They have rated Nigeria as having the highest number of illiterates in the world, according to The Guardian newspaper. They have therefore warned that the country might neither meet its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of halving illiteracy by the year 2015 nor its dream of joining the 20 world largest economies by the year 2020"

When you have a very corrupt society that produces tens of millions lacking in basic education/orientation, occupation and as a result starved of patriotism , what you have is a ticking time bomb! Mayhem in the offing! The signs are all over the place already. Mutual conflicts easily degenrate to armed confrontations and in most cases the police have been found wanting for many reasons ranging from the fact that the rank and file are already flooded with half educated touts to the reality that an army of uneducated citizens who have turned to crime can now boast of more sophisticated weapon while also armed with great anger against the state. Maybe this explains the reason why almost every riot/every communal clash/religeous or ethnic confrontations within the past decade or thereabout, needed the intoduction of military men(men trained for first degree warfare) armed to the teeth with amoured tanks to quench!

The point here is that if illiteracy contineus to grow in bounds in Nigeria, someday the ruling elite will regret not moderating tyrany with some goodwill to the downthroden. Maybe because in some parts of Nigeria , like the north, illiteracy and ignorance have played a very important role in prolonging the life of an over dormineering aristrocracy/oligarchy, successive Nigerian governments dorminated by this beleif feels that by ridiculing education accross the country, we all will be a mass of passive beings. But then as is the case in many places, a jobless mass of millions of youths at the right time with the right spur will be the engine , the willing tools needed to uproot a despotic clique. Danger here is that it can all get out of control and you have another Somalia...