FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF ILLITERATES?

Joshua J. Omojuwa bemoans the crisis of education in the land

We find solace and communion in the general failings and guilt of our leaders, almost as much as we share the comfort of denial – the denial that they aren’t us and we aren’t them. You can’t heal what you don’t reveal though, so, until we see our part in Nigeria as we have made it to be, it is going to be an even tougher road to the future.

We have a crisis on our hands, yet we are blind to it. We are quick to notice the change when the price of fuel rises. Our per capita blood pressure rises alongside the rising inflation rate. All normal and understandable reactions. Our biggest unfailing though is our collective indifference to the state of education in Nigeria. And as much as I hate to put it this clearly, it needs to be said; it is going to be our greatest regret. Except we sound the alarm and keep the noise level up until we are well and truly out of these dangerous waters.

Over the years, as with everything else, we have found our individual solutions to this challenge. Private schools continue to make a kill. Home schooling is thriving as it has been in various forms for decades. The substantially rich refuse to negotiate anything locally, they prefer to send their children abroad, not minding the various costs – financial, social and cultural – that’d come to bear on their bank accounts and the sort of relationship dynamic that’d bear between them and their children. Individual choices matter and we must continue to defend the right of the individual to be and to choose. Sadly though, forgetting about the 20 million or so out-of-school children is a choice too. Pretending that most of our public schools are anything but excuses for schools is a choice too. Like all choices, there is always a consequence.

Faff around and find out. The state of Nigeria today, with its multi-dimensional insecurity challenges, is a result of the choices Nigeria made years ago. By Nigeria, you’d have to not separate the people from the government. They are one and the same. If we are afraid to sleep even with one eye open, if road travel has become a mental ordeal, if death and disappearances have since become the norm, it is because we made certain choices in the past. The fruits of those seeds have germinated and bloomed. And with fruits like these ones, your permission is not needed to participate in their taste. There is no escape for anyone, the poor may suffer physically, but the rich do suffer too, at least mentally. You really think it is normal to live with guards and guns every hour of every day? It is only normal to you because that is what you are now used to. But that you are used to something does not make it normal. Ours is a deeply traumatized country.

Those waiting for a revolution in Nigeria continue to wait because they expect a certain kind. But if the evolution of our insecurity from armed robbers to terrorists, bandits and kidnappers is not revolution enough for you, maybe you should do another take. The conventional revolution requires the revolutionaries to share the same values and speak the same language. The latter has been the most telling challenge of previous revolutionary attempts – because soon enough, they revert to the comfort and trust of their mother tongue. And if the rhetoric around the 2023 elections is anything to go by, language remains a major barrier for change. You’d hate to read this, but it is what it is; the elections have been shaped more by ethnicity than by ideas. Everyone has deployed it whenever necessary, before they remember to tell others not to do same. Hypocrisy is a national pastime, so that’s not a crime. We aren’t out of those tribal trenches. But our failings know no tribe or tongue. Unlike politics, the consequences of our poor choices speak the same language; they make us pay. Payment is a universal language.

A vastly unskilled population is the devil’s factory. Over the years, the priorities of the Nigerian government have generally mirrored the appetite of its people. It is why trillions get spent on fueling our cars whilst paltry billions go to education. Of that lot, basic education, the most essential of the building blocks of life, gets forgettable sums every year, most of those on salaries. The education we refuse to pay for in naira, we will pay more by other means when these children come of age.

Our population ought to be an opportunity, it is currently a liability. The only way to reverse this dangerous trend is to center education, in all its ramifications – beyond conventional classes – at the heart of our development agenda. What is your presidential candidate’s big idea on education? What is their agenda on skill development for the Nigerian people? An agenda without a funding plan is a wish. This is not a game for cornballs.

We are used to kicking most of our challenges into the long grass. The idea being that people will forget and move on. Sadly though, most problems behave like good investments, you get more of what you put in. Our desperate need to revamp our educational system has been held in stasis for decades. What we are reaping today is not what we were repeating even a little over a decade ago. If we insist on doing things the way we have done them to this point, banditry, kidnapping and terrorism will layer up into dimensions that we never imagined possible. What you reap depends on your seeds, not your wishes. Some 75 percent of Nigerian children can’t read or solve mathematics, according to UNICEF. It’s giving, ‘a nation of illiterates.’ If we do not reverse this, our prayers won’t reverse this universal principle, seed time and harvest.

 Omojuwa is chief strategist, Alpha Reach/author, Digital Wealth Book