Enwongo-Abasi Francis|20 August 2017
Few days ago, a renowned child rights activist, Malala Yousafzai, was in Abuja, Nigeria, where she met with Acting President, Prof. Yemi osinbajo, in a closed-door meeting.
The outcome of the meeting resulted in the call for a declaration of state of emergency in Nigeria's education system, which Malala said, was crucial to the nation's progress.
Truly, the call is very imperative, considering the numerous challenges militating against the growth of the education system.
The result is the production of half-baked graduates armed with certificates but without skills. It is therefore necessary to address the ugly trend with adequate attention and funding of the education system.
This will restore the lost glory of education system and make Nigerian graduates compete with their counterparts across the globe.
As a lover of education as a key to sustainable development, I join in the call by Malala for the declaration of a state of emergency in Nigeria's education system and state as follows that:
-Education of children and youths has gone short of greater glory.
-For over two to three decades now, less attention and resources are being given to our education system.
-The educational infrastructures from our primary to tertiary institutions have perpetually decayed without repairs, renovations and erecting or setting up of new ones.
-Government schools with well maintained lavatories have virtually vanished and dematerialized from the Nigerian vicinage and are bunt down by bushfire as they are verdant and luxuriant with grasses and no one care to clear them.
-The strong interest and enthusiasms which the first republic government in Nigeria at the capital and regions focused and invested in education is no more evidential in today's governance.
-The educators have introduced corruption into the classrooms and as a result most students are breed and nurtured with crime-traits
Characterizations in their genes.
-The educational infrastructures in our institutions are near extinction.
-The saddening reality remains that most of our graduates leaving the various levels of our school system irrespective of the stage whether primary, secondary or university, they are not worthy of the certificate that they have in their disposition.
-The incompetence of the products of our educational system is detrimentally hurting the Nigerian economy due to the low productivity of the citizens.
-Nigeria's national values on education has been distorted and it prompt the teachers to be despised, neglected, disregarded and rendered inconsequential in their welfare and schemes of things.
-The distortion of the values on our education has made it modish and stylish for elected office holders to earn high salaries 40 times more than what a professor is paid in Nigeria.
-The contortions in the national values on education has done huge-some damages to Nigeria; We are now a country that has supposedly educated citizens who are functional illiterates. They occupy high offices without the requisite knowledge for productivity, growth and development.
-In most institutions, educators are the ones promoting examination malpractice and sorting to pass examinations, thereby inculcating lackadaisical attitudes towards reading and studying on our children and youths. Where then will we have skilled, knowledge and intellectually sound graduates?
-Materialism have taken away academic integrity. Admissions are not done again on merit rather based on who you are or who you know.
– Nigeria has some 10.5 million children out of school — the most in the world — and 60 percent of them are girls, according to the UN children's fund, Unicef.
-More than 85% of school libraries are underfunded and their collections are outdated.
-Academic excellence, quality and credibility as well as integrity is less celebrated by the members of the society.
-Private institutions made it worst by establishing exams centres and not citadel of learning and literacy promotion.
-Our examination bodies are lackadaisical in fighting the anomalies. Supervisors and invigilators are interested in money (Signing of papers) rather than academic excellence and quality assurance.
-The adumbrated and many others are inclusively seen as a challenge and problems of our education system, which if not given attention for rectifications and restructuring, rethinking and change, the later will be worst. Hence, the time to act is now.
We should not forget that once a people and society lacks quality education, their lives will ever remain in utter darkness and doom. Blinds cannot lead the blinds. Let's go back and rediscover ourselves as a nation and commence the process of getting back the lost golden values in our education system.
If we continue like this, the semi-illiterates will still continue to be kings and queens and we will still keep on shouting change without changing anything.
The time to act is now.
#DeclareStateOfEmergencyOnNige
#NowNotLater #TomorrowMayBeTooLate #IStandWithMalala
Amb(Prince)Enwongo-Abasi Francis
Readership Advocate, Education Activist and Librarian
1st August 2017
