The decline in the reading culture was the subject of a recent essay on this page and it attracted divergent opinions as expected. However, the bottom line is that Nigeria is truly bedeviled by a morass of challenges in the education sector with dire consequences for our youth, and national development. And, worse, our governing elite seem not care a hoot about the rot.
The apparent lack of direction in managing this crisis invariably complicates the problem. Our future is truly endangered. A nation that cannot train its youth mortgages its destiny. Some may argue that we have far more universities, colleges, schools and other academic institutions than we had forty years ago. That’s true. The question is: what’s the standard of these institutions? What’s the quality of the teaching staff? Many youth today pass through the universities, but the universities do not pass through them.
That’s why foreign institutions and employers abroad do not rate our degrees more than their secondary school certificates. I am shocked at the mass failure rate in Math, science subjects and English. In this country, there’s no genuine roadmap to effective education. How many public libraries do we have in our cities? Whereas, there are millions of beer parlors, lottery betting shops, ponzi schemes vendors and premiership soccer viewing centers across our towns and villages. People patronize what they see. You buy what’s available.
The human mind must be occupied by something every single minute or we die. That’s how we are wired. If there’s nothing to occupy your mind, the devil will take over. An idle mind is the devil is workshop. Even me, when I am less busy, my mind is besieged by negative thoughts. To fend this off, I either read, listen to music, watch the television, or browse the internet.
You’d feel sorry for our students if you visit the hostels. The decay of the infrastructure and the obsolete, yet inadequate facilities is unbelievable. Students are huddled in squalid, overcrowded dormitories. Toilets and other conveniences are over-stretched. Poorly fed students take to doing manual jobs like barbing and laundry, for students from rich homes, to make ends meet. Always cash-strapped or broke, many girls resort to prostitution to survive on campus, while their male folks go into cultism or street crime.
What’s the way forward? Government tries to deal with the issues by throwing money at problems. They have tried to create funding institutions like the Education Trust Fund, ETF, to finance education. But how efficient and transparent is the ETF? Is it another job for the looters? There’s need for a holistic approach to arrest the prevailing education moss.
Here’s my take. We must take politics out of education. Federal character, quota system, ethnic balancing and other retrogressive concepts introduced by the political elite, to redress the imbalance in education have done more harm than good. They should be abolished immediately. Instead, governments across the nation should build quality education infrastructure like schools, teacher training colleges, libraries, everywhere in Nigeria.
In the short term, we can get science teachers from Cuba and Asian nations of Pakistan, India, Vietnam, China, South Korea; Arab nations and some Western nations where they excel in science education to fill the present gap in our teaching staff. These imports will help the students who perform poorly in Math and other calculative subjects because of lack of competent teachers. Technology is built on the foundation of science education. Art subjects are good, but they shouldn’t be our emphasis at this stage of our development, if we are to make the great leap forward, like the Asian Tigers and China.
Every single local government in Nigeria’s 774 units should have at least five modern libraries, with full internet service. Many countries would be eager to donate facilities to this project if approached by the states and federal government. The United Nations, multilateral agencies and foreign Foundations which support learning should be vigorously mobilized to partner with Nigeria in its quest to revive its decrepit education sector. We must put the over 15 million children who are roaming the streets back to school and educate the 70 million illiterate Nigerians in our borders.
We need thousands of research institutions across Nigeria to solve our diverse problems. We need research and development (R&D) platforms which focus on serial killers like lassa fever, cholera, malaria, typhoid, and several other challenges, such as crop failure, energy problem, etc.
We must reorder our funding priorities to secure the future of our children. The prevailing situation today is that 75 per cent of our revenue is spent on less than one million Nigerians in the civil service and the legislature, leaving about 25 per cent for development. This is the crux of our problem, apart from pandemic, institutionalized corruption. We need a different algorithm if we are to change the social order. Education and other social services must take the largest chunk of our budget. The executive and legislative arms of government need to shed weight in order to secure the future of our youth. It’s a hard road to travel, but we must embark on it, otherwise we’d continue to grope in the dark.
Weekend Spice: You can tell you are on the road to success; it’s uphill all the way-Paul Harvey.
Ok, folks, I am happy to have been with you. Stay motivated.
Ladi Ayodeji is an Author, Rights Activist, Pastor and Life Coach. He can be reached on 09059243004 (sms & whatsapp only).