SO MANY SCHOOLS

Schools spring up at an astronomical rate in Nigeria; parents invest so much to educate their children - or so they say. Children are sent to school domestically and also abroad; Ghana, Benin Republic as well as Togo are also favourite education spots for Nigerians because of the delay in education arising from strikes, schools closure, etc.

Interacting with these kids can be such a pain because of the short cuts they have opted to take along the path of education. Frightening to see that today's educated people can hardly speak the lingua franca without rocking their speech through dangerous potholes. They dont write letters, memos, essays, memoirs, etc anymore. Many of today's graduates will find it very difficult to write a hand-written receipt or a bank instruction to transfer funds or to request for statement of accounts.

Whats trending today is the Blackberry way of doing things, facebooking, twittering and all the things that make the brain so lazy that it can hardly cope with any mentally involving task. This class is always quick to brand people 'old school'. Ok. What does the new school offer?

Every generation accuses the new generation of being on the path to decadence and so on; it is not the case with this generation but the education of today's generation is more like fast food. Save for a few parents who still get involved and insist on thorough education of the mind for their children; the education being offered by schools today does not go beyond the surface level. Kids today only study to pass their exams and they are on their way. A very shallow way of learning.

The schools abound and the teachers are available and willing to teach but how much knowledge do they impart? There is a yawning gap between education of the mind and the too many schools that are available in our system.

There was once a generation that studied Latin just like people are suposed to study the English language; that course is no longer being taught in our school curriculum today and it is quite understandable. However for courses like Geography and Civics, these are courses that students should not discard. These are courses that have a great impact on the horizon of a student, they affect their ability to aspire to see the world beyond their immediate family and their schools and they also enable students to have a clear picture of how to behave in the midst of decent human beings.

What these short cut approach to education of delivering to us are children who are basically all emotion and iota of giving  any form of help to another person.

DEVELOPMENT, SECURITY AND INVESTMENT II

Still on the South South Economic Summit 2012, thankfully, the issue of education was addressed. I was particularly charmed by the effort of Dr. Godswill Apkpabio, the governor of Akwa Ibom State. The governor made it quite clear that his administration is focused on education for the indigenes as well as all residing in Akwa Ibom State. Dr. Akpabio emphasized that his administration has put in place free education for all Nigerian children of Akwa Ibom origin and all children residing in Akwa Ibom State up to senior secondary school level. A number of state sponsored scholarships are available for indigenes of Akwa Ibom State who seek to study and train locally and in foreign countries.

Without mincing words, the governor emphasized that his administration has set out and is working vigorously to wipe out the scourge of citizens of Akwa Ibom state which in the past put them in the position of house helps. A lot of Nigerians and even expatriates have enjoyed the services of citizens of Akwa Ibom State in the past and it is now very clear why there is a dearth of such services from that end of Nigeria.

I am aware of the rehabilitation of schools project of Comrade Adams Oshiomhole of Edo State. All the schools that had before his tenure fallen apart have all been rehabilitated. A visit to the schools in Edo State will reveal that children are now more comfortable in government owned schools than privately owned schools. Primary schools and secondary schools have all been rehabilitated giving the students and the teachers a new sense of purpose as they approach their schools.

Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers state mentioned that his administration has also embarked on an extensive schools project which is nearing completion and at the summit, he promised that very soon, the state would invite the President to come and launch the schools. These are laudable projects for the citizens of these states and they are well timed as well.

The call for review of the education sector is long overdue. Politicians are not giving schools administration room and reason to function normally; teachers are ill-equipped and mostly ill-motivated and the students just pass time within the school system without having a clear focus of the much desired need to broaden their mind by the experience of education. Where are our values?

The last UTME for 2012 again revealed that the quality of students passing through schools in Nigeria is not presentable in any education system other than in Nigeria. As many as 27,000+ candidates had their results withheld for various reasons and failure was on a mass scale with only three candidates scoring beyond 300 marks and others barely scaling the 200 minimum score. The results are the evidence as well as the proof of decay in the system.

The Nigerian Minister of Education, Prof. (Mrs.) Ruqayyatu Rufai is working ceaselessly to unearth the various problems of the Nigerian education system and only recently created a committee to look into the education sector to see how progress can be made especially among the universities.

The Nigerian universities have been besieged with too many problems and some of them have been identified to include the following:

·        Inadequate funding from the government

·       Erosion of values by a valueless political system resulting in a breach of universities protocol, the weakened internal policies in the area of union presence and activities as well compromised administrative procedures.

·       Government’s poor planning and implementation culture as major impediments to the achievement of university missions i.e. teaching and learning, research and consultancies.

·        Planning and implementation issues

·       Party politics –many lectures and professors shuttling between government positions and the university employment; bringing party politicking skills into the administration of the universities which students, parents and their sponsors at the receiving end of the detrimental effects that follow.

·       Business interest of lecturers in that they are more focused on juicy contracts of government rather than writing papers or carrying out research in their field of study.

Without a doubt, one must admit the strong presence of politics in universities where positions are vied for by suitable qualified candidates; there is also an opportunity for students to cut their teeth in politics while vying for student union positions. Cultism among students and lecturers also has its own position to play in campus politics and these have always been known to be part of the system right from the earliest days of universities. What obtains today however is a fearful departure from what was known to be the case several years ago.

School fees, levies and other costs are never reviewed downwards; this makes one wonder why it is so difficult to equip schools enough to ensure a safe and habitable enough an environment to promote academic excellence.

A complete review of the system and the challenges before the schools will do a lot of good and not just making schools available.

DEVELOPMENT, SECURITY AND INVESTMENT

The theme of the South South Economic Summit 2012 once again brings to mind the need to take a critical look at the present situation of the nation, Nigeria. The many speakers at the summit touched on various areas of human economic needs; the common denominator is the urgent need to address the issue of security in Nigeria.

The Publisher of This Day newspapers who was also the moderator of the summit was very much present and every time he appeared on the podium, one agonizingly recalls that as the summit commenced, the offices of This Day, Sun and the Moment newspapers at Abuja and Kaduna were attacked by terrorists who have held Nigeria by the jugular over the last one year. As with every such attack, lives and property were lost and again foreigners were cautioned by their respective embassies to stay away from Nigeria and from large gatherings.

Too many people in the northern states of Nigeria have one agonizing story or the other tell of how they shared in the grief being meted out against the Nigerian people by terrorists. For a very long time, the terrorists concentrated their attacks on the northern part of Nigeria and it seemed like it was a northern issue. Suleija, a commercial city between Minna and Abuja was hit during the festivities of 2011 and several Christians perished in the attack and every other attempt to hit the nation’s capital has been thwarted by the eagle eyed security operatives of government. The level of alertness is so high that people don’t overlook any form of baggage that appears to be abandoned anywhere anymore.

I had reason to go to the Lagos International airport a few weeks back and I was greatly disturbed because of the current state of security of Nigeria. Inspite of the security alertness, it is only normal for one to exercise some degree of fear.

Some states in the northern part of Nigeria have been delisted by the National Youth Service Corp; youth coppers are no longer being posted to those states for fear of terrorist attacks since the last attack in Bauchi when 15 youth corpers were killed. Many parents would spare no expenses in ensuring that their children are not posted to the north as a whole.

A number of non-northerners who have lived and traded in the north all their lives have been forced to return to the south. Among these are people who have established their businesses and have done well in the north but such businesses must have been closed down or sold at a token in order to return home alive. 

Following security, another issue that was mentioned and deliberated upon is electricity and power supply. This is another area of concern to all Nigerians. Providing alternative power supply is now at great costs and no business or home is spared the horrors of the difficulty of providing alternative power supply. Many businesses suffer the inconvenience of having to divert precious production allocation into providing alternative power supply and many of such businesses have been moved to neighbouring African countries like Ghana and Benin Republic. Much bigger companies are also groaning under the impact of epileptic power supply in Nigeria.

Students of the premier university took to the streets in rampage protesting over the failure of the school to provide alternative power when there was power outage. The students have been sent on a two-week break since Tuesday, 17^th of April, 2012.

Also in the second week of April, 2012, there was another power outage at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International airport which caused an aircraft from London to be taxing on the runway for over 90minutes. And of course there are always official explanations to these incidences by the Honourable Minister for Power, Prof. Barth Nnaji. The great professor has become a celebrity of some sort in Nigeria.

While the summit proceeded, there was another power outage although the governor of Delta State, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan explained that the Events Centre where the summit took place is a new facility and had not been connected to the national grid.

Nigeria is one of the countries that seek to have its economy emerge on the world economic stage. Nigeria seeks foreign investors to partake in the rebuilding of the Nigerian economy. Nigeria still depends on the oil wealth of the nation and not much emphasis has been placed on other forms of economic activities like farming. News is that there are still many areas of economic activity that have not been explored by Nigerians especially we consider the fact that Nigeria is greatly endowed with vast land and enormous human resources.

In the face of all of these, it is of essence that a regulatory framework must be in place to attract foreign investment and the uncertainty of the true status of the Nigerian political terrain makes no room for investors to invest in the Nigerian economy. To a large extent, Nigerians are known to have a lot of regulatory bodies that pay salaries and other costs monthly but these bodies have no format by which they are operated and this gives the impression that there are no structures. If there were clear structures, it would not have been very easy for so many cases of fraud to be discharged without guilt. Also, the government’s position on the issue of terrorism gives the impression that some government officials have compromised the trust bestowed upon them by the people and this has allowed this injury to fester.

There is hope for Nigeria and very fact that the summit is holding at all has provided ample opportunity for some of our leaders to confront the issues that we are faced with. From this summit, the governors seem positioned to carry out some innovative exercises in their respective states and the initiative is laudable.

STILL ON VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

It gets more difficult to understand why there are now so many pending cases of violence against women. Some of these cases involve loss of lives - usually of women; it is not as if it is a new phenomenon but what is disturbing is that there is a steady rise in the incidence of violence against women.

I stumbled on a phone-in programme being broadcast by one of the radio stations in Lagos some weeks back and I was taken aback when I was able to put together that a lady on a marketing call had been sexually attacked by a male pretending to be a prospect. He had intended to rape her but when he discovered that she was menstruating, he forced her to do a blow job on him and when an asthma attack progressed into a crisis, he flung her out of his apartment.

The programme went on for hours but the long and short of it is that some people blamed her for taking a marketing call alone; others blamed her for positioning herself to be raped and still others cautioned her that it would be difficult to prove that she had been sexually attacked.

The attacker is someone the young lady had met sometime in the past through a mutual friend and upon confronting the middleman so to speak, they were able to contact the attacker and she made a recording of the phone discussion - a confession; this is said to be not enough evidence for prosecution. What next? No response.

I feel pained that the law would demand proof from such a woman; it takes courage for a woman to go public about such a disgusting attack in the first place and I dont believe any right thinking woman would jest to that extent. Worse still, the attacker is not even worth celebrating, he is just a complete layabout. A story like this makes me look inward and I say to myself "thank GOD, I am an African woman."

A bus load of young ladies was attacked on Ibadan/Lagos express a few weeks ago and they were robbed and supposedly raped but the school authorities have come out in a press conference to say that no one was raped. We are indeed relieved to hear this; we accept it.

A driver informed me yesterday that his bus was hijacked sometime last week along Lekki/Ajah express by three armed men who boarded on the pretext that they were travellers. They dispossed the driver of his personal belongings and when they demanded to rape the young women in the bus, he resisted and a fight ensued in which he was badly beaten and wounded and his vehicle seriously damaged. He defended the women with his life and fought until the robbers or attempted rapists fled.

I dont know why there is this sudden interest in violating women to the point of raping them; I really cant think of the reason. Hello? Is anybody out there?