Pius Adesanmi and a country hard of hearing

“There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children” – Nelson Mandela.

I did not think I would write about Pius Adesanmi. No, it’s even worse than that, I have battled with myself and resisted every temptation to write about the man with whom I sat in some undergraduate classes and graduated from the University of Ilorin in 1992. Our paths did not cross after graduation, which is really regrettable but memories of the days on the mini-campus of that institution of learning linger.

The Yoruba say the death that snatches your contemporary is a potent reminder of your own mortality. Men love to deceive themselves to think that they have a whole lifetime to do whatever they have to do. So, they dillydally and procrastinate until the bulk of them die unaccomplished.This is why the late Bahamian preacher, Myles Munroe, said to the hearing of everyone who listened to him, that the richest places on the earth are the cemeteries.

That confounding statement is Munroe’s self-created metaphor for the innate talents and endowments that go to waste because a sizeable number of humanity fail to utilise them until they answer to the inevitable visit of the Grim Reaper most often without a fighting chance. Monroe’s untimely death in a plane crash late 2014 would eventually show how much the great man of God and coach of men preached to himself.

When he died at the age of 52 on his way to a leadership conference alongside his wife and eight other people that November day, he was a global phenomenon who had written numerous books, preached loads of messages and coached possibly millions of men and women into destinies they never thought possible. Adesanmi, being an intellectual of a differing clout, might not have read the teachings of this motivator but his life pretty much ventilated all that Munroe preached to wit, the limitlessness of the spirit of man; the untapped possibilities available to the black man and the therapeutic capacities of love for humanity in an increasingly sick world.  His life turned out to be short, at 47, but it was full, fuller than some men and women who lived decades more. But I digress.

But for a man like Pius Adesanmi who was in the face of every Nigerian like he wasn’t continents away in Canada, the numbness that accompanied his sudden transition cannot endure, fragments of everyday life just so bring copious memories of what we can now call his legacy.

The volume of avoidable calamities that the dumbness of the leaders of this country, in particular and the majority of black nations to Adesanmi’s multifaceted, albeit down to earth interventions on the leadership and following deficiencies on the continent, provides recollections that are cathartic even though accompanied by a deep sense of irreplaceable loss.

This extraordinarily talented scholar, humanist and public commentator did not live for himself, he deployed the whole of himself and all the heavens blessed him with to see that the people of Africa develop the capacities to turn their countries around by themselves. People like him, even when they die conquer death much earlier than he visited them and for that, their memory jumps at you in virtually everything around you. Two of such events for which he would have had apt interventions occurred in the week that he passed.

On Wednesday, a three-storeyed building at the Ita-Faji area of Lagos Island, collapsed and at the end of it, no fewer than 12 schoolchildren had lost their lives!

The death of these children exposes the insanity that rules the Nigerian space.  Unlike most saner societies where the education of children is a top priority, Nigeria has reduced education to mere merchandise where traders and mercenaries who have no business are now champions.

Public education, from which today’s leaders benefitted has become a public shame and elected representatives across the country, having given up on their own abilities to revamp the sector, have surrendered the training of the country’s children to private people a lot of who are interested in nothing but money! What is worse is that these leaders have added wickedness to their irresponsibility by failing to provide adequate supervision to the licensed private schools as that is the only reason a building, totally lacking in integrity could house Ohen Nursery and Primary School, Ita-Faji and snuff life out of those little ones.

As if that was not enough, the video recording of seven-year-old Success Adebor, a pupil of Okotie-Eboh Primary School 1, Sapele, in Delta State went viral days later. The video showed the child’s palpable anger and defiance against a system that is bent on denying her the fundamental right to be educated at her very tender age.

She told her interviewer in impeccable pidgin English which is stunning for her age. At this tender age, this child already manifests total disaffection for Nigeria and a system which makes it difficult for her to stay in class as she desires. It is noteworthy that a few Nigerians have come together to alleviate her parents’ poverty but what is the fate of millions of children daily encountering the Success Adebor’s dilemma daily? Isn’t the country cutting its children short of attaining their potential, raising an already disgruntled generation and jeopardising its own future?

Of course, the Delta State Government has taken up this issue as the child is just not one of the thousands of children who are sent back home daily for the inability of their parents to pay these unjustified levies.

These half-hearted, knee jerk reactions from governments, which would see them sacrifice a hapless civil servant instead of owning up to their own lack of vision are the reasons Nigeria currently has 13.2 million out of school children and why, even when the children go to school, they graduate without being able to function and mostly becoming liabilities to the society.

These two events brought back a deluge of recollection of Adesanmi’s pain at the disheartening state of education in Nigeria. In an article, he entitled, “Daddy, paper yes! Paper yes,” said to have been written in 2016, he talked about how his four-year-old daughter, Tise, then just a kindergarten pupil, was beginning to have “paperless” instruction, how she had become so adept at information technology gadgets at that age and how students in much advanced levels in Nigeria are still struggling with outdated instructional methods.  He raised posers about how those who are brought up under Nigeria’s epileptic, rudderless educational methodology would compete in the increasingly sophisticated future ahead of them.

Sadly, Nigerian leaders are still unable to grasp the repercussions of our neglect of education. When asked in one of the television interviews before the presidential election in February, President Muhammadu Buhari said matter of factly that his administration had no intervention plans for primary and secondary education.

His excuse, which is legitimate, is that the country’s constitution puts responsibilities for these levels of education on the local and state governments. But does President Buhari realise that the failure to educate children does not tell on just states, but the country has a whole? When the effect of this failure visits, it would be like the rain, which falls on the good and the wicked, not discriminate.

So, as governments across Nigeria issue statement after statement in reaction to the transition of this great Nigerian, there could be no better honour done him than for the President to lead a national revolution in the education sector. Such a revolution should insist on the compulsory education of all Nigerian children, widespread improvement of public education at all levels, a review of national pedagogy, a sustainable plan to modernise and improve the quality of teacher education, quality of  instruction in schools as well as to decide the definite end that Nigeria hopes to attain with education.

If more attention is paid to the education of the Nigerian child, the country would be killing so many birds with one stone as the evils of poverty, ethnic rivalry, unemployment and so many of those challenges that Nigeria grapples with will answer to a proper education of the mind of every Nigerian child.

A change in the minds of those who lead Nigeria will be a worthy reward for the labour of love that Adesanmi and people like him have sowed in this country. But even if they fail to listen, posterity will remember that enough was said by those who saw beyond the immediate gains that currently drive leadership in Nigeria.

May God comfort the Adesanmi family and a nation denied of a warrior just when it needs one most.

Adedokun tweets @niranadedokun