Restoring public education’s pride of place is the only way forward

By Michael Oluwagbemi

It is not uncommon for Nigerians to bemoan corruption, the collapse of moral values, insecurity, decaying public infrastructure, unemployment or the high cost of doing business in the country. What is most uncommon is the correct diagnosis of the disease rather than the symptom, which all these represent, or its origins.

Once upon a time, Nigeria’s politics was relatively clean. Our best and brightest like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, or the golden voice of Africa, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa, or the Queen English speaking Ahmadau Bello dominated the political landscape of our country. Colossus like the Great Zik of Africa, Aminu Kano, Chief Opara, Anthony Enahoro, Uncle Bola Ige – the Cicero of Esa Oke, with their verbosity and pompous education set the pace. Politics were not for dropouts, 419 kingpins and drug pushers as it has become today. What then happened? How did Nigeria find herself in this mess? How did we become the basket case of Africa?

The origins of Nigeria’s malady can be traced to the abandonment of public education that provided quality learning to ALL Nigerians irrespective of their economic background.  Which can by itself be traced to the trauma of the political 60s, when Nigeria zigzagged from various bloody coups to a civil war that severely damaged the national psyche.

One need not be a psychologist to see how the ruinous civil war, that cheapened human life and left 10 million Nigerians cashless and desperate, broke the bond of communal responsibility that underlined the hitherto strong education system and brought upon Nigeria a generation of educated idiots who later made it into her state house in the last dispensation: a president with a doctorate degree, that never seem to have read a book! If that result were not enough parable for Nigeria to pay more attention to the education of the common man, then one would wonder what will wake us up from our perilous slumber.

Nigeria’s civil war was a traumatic national experience, irrespective of the vain glorious declaration of “no victor, no vanquished”.

First was the traumatized and impoverished vanquished left with nothing but self and strove to nothing but self-enrichment to escape the throes of poverty that the war had brought upon him; of what use is community to such man? Of what use is education, when material acquisition was the route to fame, recognition and honor? Thus a generation of the vanquished that have been educated by missionaries and community scholarships took to trading, and selling- of everything and anything including our values.

Trumping the imperious circumstances of the vanquished was the traumatized victor, whose sense of entitlement to the articles of state led to the abandonment of enterprise and self-sufficiency. After all, he had lost friends and put limb at risk to keep the nation one, why should he not benefit from the spoils of victory? Seeing people die also have a way of making man realizing the brevity of life give to aimless acquisition to which end the Nigerian moral is now bankrupt and crying loud for salvation

The emerging Nigeria after the civil war had no use for solid education system, for it negates the objectives of the new national mindset for materialism courtesy of a deep-seated trauma to which we were all in denial. Perhaps education shone a light of transparency on the racketeering group the new system purposefully developed. In fact, the militocrats and racketeering class of business people created would go to any length to destroy any sense of communal commitment to education and history because it is against their self-interest.  This was how we got here.

Thus developed, the Nigerian penchant for “sharing the national cake”, and creation of alternative truths to justify the privatization of profits and the socialization of losses now emblematic in AMCON, CBN Intervention Funds, Subsidy Payments among others- for after all, the nexus of material acquisition in the absence of morality is corruption. So when we say corruption will kill Nigeria if we don’t kill corruption, we can only mean that until we reverse the trauma that led to the abandonment of education as a value system, Nigeria is dead.

The inflow of dark money courtesy of mineral wealth post-civil war of course did not help matters. Who needs the community when the federal government can afford to pay for it? Thus went out of the window the basic building blocks of our education system when the first Obasanjo led administration forcefully took over our schools from communities and missionaries, and declared Universal Primary Mis-Education! Nigeria is yet to recover from this nightmare.

A generation of community or missionary school trained children decided to debase education for the poor, and instead set up mushroom private institutions for themselves and their children only to fall victim to the overall destruction of the nation’s value system.  The public school system was under funded, children went to schools without shoes and one of the traumatized fellas became president and came to inflict a revenge on the national psyche courtesy of our miseducation!

The education system of any society is the only systematic instrument for transmitting its value system, the only framework for enabling the next generation, its economy and instilling patriotism. All these elements were missing in the post 1970 education system we signed on to, and which is why today Nigeria churns out unemployable individuals from glorified primary schools we call universities.

Patriotism or history are not taught in our schools, most of our school curriculum is detached from the need of real society, and foreign curriculum aside from currencies are now the fad in fast rising puppet elite institutions that rot at their moral core. Of what use is British-American curriculum to a Nigerian child? Are we preparing these children to grow British and American economy?

Our education sector lacks a plan, from the bottom-up and we instead have replaced this with grandiose centralized planning that has no bearing in the real world. We have not managed to connect the town and gown, as we produce graduates that can’t complete Lagos-Ibadan Expressway in 10 years, nor compose a meaningful national treatise on development 30 years after the last one.  Companies keep telling us our graduates are useless to them, and all we do is to send our wards to Ghana and Western Countries, fomenting brain drain and colonial mentality while South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Egypt create great institutions that rival the bests.

It is time for us to say never again. It is for us to realize that no amount of time spent fighting corruption will be meaningful without capturing a whole generation untainted in our schools before the work-life in Nigeria pigeon hole them into vice. No amount of attempt at job creation for under-motivated, unpatriotic citizens will yield the right productivity to drive national wealth in the absence of a re-orientation that starts from our schools, and no amount of investment in police gear and bullets would reverse insecurity created by uneducated and/or unemployable youths.

The only thing that will stem the tide of our inevitable destruction, as a society toeing this ruinous path, is a true re-discovery of bottoms-up education and return to basics. Our communities and religious places must get back to the work of education, our governments must get out of the way and enable them while contributing its quote in funding and policy incentives, and our spending priorities must reflect an investment in our teacher, our schools, our children and re-building museums, galleries and education centers instead of viewing centers, and beer parlours!