Wise Nations commit the most of their resources to eradicating, from their landscape, the deleterious as well as debilitating influences of ignorance, disease, poverty and want. They do this by strategically placing education on the top-must rung of the ladder of their sustainable national development programmes. Education, thus properly placed, virtually obliterates the above catalogue of shame.
Here, in Nigeria, with so rich array of obvious national endowments, it is a shame that we remain still unable to appreciate the true value of school at whatever level.
As a result, education is not truly a national priority. The proof of the above assertions, from native intelligence, are there for all to ponder over: eras of inept and epileptic implementations of beautifully captured policies,… centuries of educational blindness across the wild chasm of the historical as well as political northern and southern protectorates; decades of national neglect of sound educational legacies; and years of mindless, politically-motivated shifting of the educational goal posts.
The facts and figures_ available no doubt in the nation’s bureau for statistics and records _ stare us in the face with startling, yet for frightening, clarity. As a result, we cower before, and lag behind our educational peers. And within the comity of nations, we are insulted and branded and blackmailed: “that wealthy, corrupt, swaggering profligate; that perpetual foreign debtor, endlessly waiting in the dole queue, waiting for debt relief and aid!” With all of our professed wealth and resources, we wallow still in the cesspool of poverty and decadence and want. The poverty is now so pervasive and debilitating. Nigerians eke out a living from their wastelands of grime and gore. The want is now so extensive and strangulating her citizens scrounge for food in the dustbins of avarice and greed. We must quench our scorching third, but not a single NAFDAC __ approved drop there is to drink, even water, water everywhere there is.
The future of higher education in Nigeria is feared. We read about it all the time; we hear it said this days, endlessly: “Nigeria is endowed with unlimited and material resources. “Two other variants of the strident monotony say __ “Nigeria is blessed with human and physical resources beyond measure,” and she is “imbued with extremely rich and varied natural resources”
On most national and many a public rostrum, pontificating sages intone the above song. They are, however, usually quick to add that with quality education made available every Nigerian (education, they postulate, is the inalienable right of every Nigerian!), the resources could be tapped maximally to national advantage. In point of fact, at almost every public forum you attend, regardless of the topic of discussion, you have to have this monotones, these clauses, thrown at you, ad nauseam. Then, you stop to ask yourself about the resources being tapped, whether they are being used to national, and especially, educational advantages really. A wise people commit the most of their resources to the promoting of education __ enhancing programmes.
In spite of her manifest potentials and the acclaimed resources at her disposal. Nigeria remains unsteady in her educational gait. She has wealth which should have been in use since the last 50 years (at least since the birth and discovery of Oloibiri); wealth that by now would have emancipated her children from the darkening clouds of ignorance; wealth that now, would have eradicated her citizens from the devastating effects of poverty and want; wealth that, by today, would have been used in getting rid, from her adult population, of the binding genii of superstition and ignorance. In spite of her resources, Nigeria is like doddering drunkard, wobbling inexorably and shamelessness towards his vomit. Who will shake him out of his stupor? What can compel him to become alert to his social responsibilities and especially those that are educational?
Let me present three verbal pictures of real and recent educational events. “Pictures”, they say, “don’t lie” and one hopes that as the sketches are closely visualized they not only shock into wisdom, but help to clarify the reality of Nigeria’s educational decadence which must be grappled with if there if there is to be a future for today’s Nigerian child.
The other night, a private Nigerian television station presented a very entertaining but equally significant news-hour event: final year nursery and primary school pupils in full graduation gowns _ with hoods and capes (and even colours) to boot! They were in an academic procession. Somewhere in Lagos. The news-presenter announced that the occasion was the school’s convocation and founder’s day celebration. Then the camera panned slowly away from the procession. The colourful scene shifted…. How cherub-like the youngish faces donning and doffing flannel hoods in the neonlights of the brightly draped hall! How sagacious the toothy smiles of their perfectly groomed teachers! One could not but notice the nostalgic and, occasionally, demure expressions presented by the parents, as well as the invited special quests of honour…..
Thinking the whole scene over, as portrayed on the screen, one wondered whether what I saw was not the educational utopia I have craved all long.
In soliloquy, one asked: “why can’t the unlimited resources of this giant nation make that television event a truly basic educational norm for every Nigerian child?”
Sometime ago, before that very interesting educational telecast, one private wide- circulating Nigerian newspaper published some rather startling and sobering statistics, figures that seemed to have punched former president Obasanjo’s face, and which had sent him screaming, at a public forum: “This is unacceptable” The jolting editorial revealed that 40 out of every 100 children in Nigeria do not attend school. The implications now, and for tomorrow, are most frightening, most annoying and extremely discouraging, president Obasanjo would, with a gruffy voice, have repeated: “it is unacceptable that this status should remain!” There were three other somber facts, especially in education, published in the editorial of the editorial of the newspaper in question.
Firstly, it revealed that in one particular state in Nigeria, only about 20 out of every 100 female students eventually get educated.
Do the other 80 out of the every 100 female students drop out of school before the end of their educational career? It is an unacceptable reality. President Obasanjo knows it was a shameful reality to have a female student drop out rate that high. Secondly, we gather that two of the 36 federating states of Nigeria have the poorest and the lowest women literacy level. In other words, is in two states of this country that women, who can hardly read or write, will be found in rather large numbers. Let us be more blunt: the largest number of stark illiterate Nigerian women reside in two states of the federation.
Lastly, the editorial revealed, that rather painful reality. That certain dehumanizing cultural practices, in addition to keep-seated and increasing poverty, have driven Nigerian children, not into the warm embrace of the motivating classroom, but out into the wild, cold, yawning streets. Out there, in the streets, they are played upon by human predators who intimidate them, subjugate them, dehumanize them and eventually devour them. What this colossal national neglect portends for higher education a decade or two from now needs no seer’s prophecy to understand. It needs no prophet to fortell the future of the next generation of Nigerians _ citizens of a land of abundant but mismanaged resources.
Weeks before the punchy editorial, a popular, private, newsweekly magazine held in high esteem featured, with rather unusual prominence, ‘the exit speech’ of one of Nigeria’s acclaimed literally icons, especially of the younger generation. One choose for now to ignore the television records and reports of the unique speech event.
Professor Niyi Osundare, after teaching for over 30 years in Nigeria’s first, finest, and decidedly still the best ivory tower, bowed out __ and with grace. But by the time he left that university, the tower at Ibadan was tilting precariously.
Osundare’s speech was evidently addressed to more than merely those present at the occasion. To all who had to be absent from the forum, he had equally charged and without equivocation: “Higher Education in Nigeria is in a shambles?” That was the summary of what he said in his long exciting stand at the podium. Then, the questions tumbled out in torrents: why the depth of educational decay and decadence? Why the magnitude of the decay of structures and of the mind? Who is to blame? What is the way out of the education rot _ the way forward? How do we return to the lost glory of the wasted years? How do we instill hope for the future? How do we make higher education a needful, relevant golden fleece of pursuit?
A professional who was commenting on the don’s “goodbye speech”, said it was a long funeral song __ a dirge for the death of higher education in Nigeria. He pointed out to me, that, by the length, and peach of the speech, Osundare must have been hurting badly and bleeding profusely, inside. The haemorrhage of tears, tears of nostalgia, must have torn him apart, wracking his body because of the UI he knew, but not the university then crouching before the audience or his own gaze.
One agree that UI is a mere shadow of her great and glorious past. I argued that even the current picture of all other universities in Nigeria, especially those owned by the federal and state governments, was not any different from Nigeria’s first university.
Between 1960, when Nigeria wrested independence from her colonial masters, and 1963, when she became a republic, there were universities at Lagos, Zaria, Nsukka and Ife. Today, years on, there are about hundreds Nigerian universities in existence. It is needless here to discuss, except to mention in passing, the exciting birth and diligent growth of other sister tertiary institutions (College of Education), within decades of the birth of Ibadan. We refuse also to look into, or discuss, the educational implosion, which, of late, has thrown upon the educationally impoverished and academically decadent landscape, molten lava of expensive, financially out -of –reach, and religion- bound private universities.
Looking back at the Osundare speech, one realized that UI, including her siblings and nephews, was neck- deep in trouble. But one never knew that the decay of structures and of mind was that deep and that far gone__ a grave danger signal for higher education in Nigeria.
One must conclude. In so doing, go back to the three main issues; the three pictures. From the television chronicles of factual life experiences about our educational hopes and fallacies, from the published print- media documentations of specific educational statistics of life in Nigeria, and from the Osundare verbal graphs and charts, displayed before the audience of his valedictory speech, one knows intuitively, one knows with certainty, and you know it too, that higher education is a contradiction in this land of plenty. Indeed, higher education has a bleak future in this land of abundance. When will the doddering drunk wake up from her stupor? Who will wake her up? What can?
One choose not to end this article on that sad reality, on a note that lacks hope _ hope for higher education, may one suggest four (and perhaps five) things we can do, as a nation, in order to get out of the educational woods and so retrace our steps to the right track. There is a bright future for tertiary education in Nigeria if only: one leader will, with radicalism, re-order the nations priorities and place education (at primary, secondary and tertiary levels) on his topmost priorities. If they will make budgetary provisions for this position every fiscal year. Right now, the education budget does not even meet the United States minimum of 26 per cent. A supplementary education budget should be presented.
Our leaders should make certain that the nation’s pipelines of educational petroleum, and the academic landscape for meaningful scholarship, are no longer allowed to suffer acts of vandalism, or degradation, on account of nit-wits and vandals and still sitting languidly on educational policy chairs; and sycophants and launderers still stalking the educational corridors of power and influence. Our leaders can ensure that Nigeria’s abundant but not unlimited resources are properly mined, sensibly tapped, and strategically as well as judiciously used, for oiling the Nation’s educational refineries, and for lubricating all academic machines situated in each of the 36 states of the federation… If only they will rise to this historic moment of his life to lay unique and solid foundations for the future of higher education in Nigeria…
Wise nations commit the most of their resources to eradicating from their landscape the genii of ignorance, disease, poverty and want… They do this by placing education on the top priority of attainable and sustainable national goals.
