Princewill Odidi|20 June 2016|7:22am
To be conservative, the collapse of the Nigerian Educational System started sometime around the regime of Sani Abacha or at most Babangida. There were days when it was practically impossible or unacceptable to sort out a lecturer for grades, or the purchase of handouts linked to grades.
There were times, when students spent days and night in the library, some even slept in classrooms, there were days when with a simple conversation you can identify a University graduate from the rest, there were days when youth corpers attached to secondary schools knew their stuff, could actually teach and defend their degrees. What happened? Why are our ivory towers collapsing?
With good education, we also had a very efficient and result oriented civil service. Move back to the days of Yakubu Gowon and Obasanjo military regime, we had the super Perm Secs. The perm secs were even more powerful that substantive ministers because they actually ran the ministries.
Remember Phillip Asiodu and Hamzat Ahmadu, career civil servants who upheld the their ministries and where so powerful and stringent that they actually provided leadership in policy formulation while elected officials were saddled to project execution?
So just as the educational system collapsed came along the politicization of the bureaucracy. Since then Nigeria has not been the same again. The civil service today has become more political conscious than the traditional politicians.
Some say Nigeria is corrupt, it is in our blood. I strongly disagree. There was a time when Nigerians where upright in Character, if today we are corrupt then we learnt it somewhere. If corruption was programmed into our national consciousness, then with the right anti corruption leadership we can be reprogrammed.
Nigeria has not always been like these. There were days when things actually worked. If we must build a new Nigeria, we have to start somewhere.In my reasoning, two areas of importance. Rebuild our collapsing educational infrastructure and instill discipline, rebuild a more efficient bureaucracy to drive government policy.
While we understand that there are many things to fix, but let us start somewhere. Education and the Bureaucracy, gradually every other sector will follow.
Remember, Education is a human right. And, like other human rights, it cannot be taken for granted. If we deny our people education we deny them everything.
Princewill Odidi
Is a Development Consultant writing from Atlanta, Georgia
