Prince Charles Dickson PhD

The easiest and most attractive national pastime remains buck passing, especially with the bunch of leaders that we have, who can hardly peel a banana or wash an already white handkerchief. Not many of us want to take responsibility for anything, from personal, to family or national life.

The blame is on the system. We do not need to create demons out of our leaders because they are already specimens of demons, so we hang our sins on them appropriately and inappropriately too. And unfortunately, their behaviour has made it easy for the critic to descend on them.

We at most, talk, write and discuss the Nigerian myth with a sense of fatalism. If everyone thought as much as I did about justice and fairness, life would be better. I am a critic, but I am also the critics’ critic, the unrepentant believer that the best way to keep the government on its toes is to keep harping on their flaws so they can improve.

Often, I say I believe the things I write about, are as important for our nation as they are for other nations, but when it appears to me, Nigerians especially those in authority do not react to these issues as people in other lands do, I repeat them in new essays to remind old readers and recruit new ones to participate in the continuing dialogue.

Sadly, this is Nigeria where nothing works and no one cares, when it works, it is because someone’s interest is about to be served or being served not the people’s interest. We talk about our institutions despairingly. Our leaders do not watch network news except when their faces are there on the occasion of their sons/daughters’ weddings or such. They do not need the newspapers anymore because it is full of their lies, or paid adverts exchanging banters together.

Government bashing remains a national past time and every drinking joint, and suya spot has a sitting parliament with an expert on every and any issue but we forget that no matter the input, if the politicians and actors in our national scene have questionable lives both on a personal and domestic level, nothing will change, the best government policy cannot change the individual. It is because the policies are formulated on a bad foundation and by people with warped thinking.

When a witch proclaims her presence, and an invalid does not make away; he must have money for sacrifices at home.

So, for several weeks, it has been a back-and-forth between the regulator of our education, in this case, the Ministry of Education and parents, on exactly the right age for a child to write the regulatory transitional exams, and let me say whether it is 18 years or 5 years, a dullard or an intelligent kid, it is garbage in, garbage out.

That may sound cold, especially in the light of the exploits of Nigerian graduates in other climes, remember I said other climes and the few who do well here in Nigeria. As my friend Ndo puts it, the quality is scarily dropping.

Have you noticed the ever-increasing cases of graduates and interview candidates having shallow knowledge of the subject matter, poor command of the use of the English language, poor knowledge of the examination techniques, as well disregard for correct interpretation of questions before attempting them?

Or that many candidates lack requisite mathematical and manipulative skills for subjects involving calculations, while the handwriting of some is illegible and their answers scripts are full of spelling errors. (Not that my maths is so good either)

Many candidates try to cut corners by engaging in various forms of examination malpractice to obtain marks.

A good many of us spat on the education we had yesterday, and of course what passes for education today. And there is, certainly, a stratum of our society that looks back, nostalgically, at the quality of yesterday’s education”. How many of us today can argue that this is not the truth, even the generation that had its education in 2000 now looks back with nostalgia.

By and large, however, most of us believed that there was very much missing in the content of yesterday’s education. What we have today, despite innovations and the bold attempts to re-orientate it, remains, as it was yesterday, orthodox, slow foot, myopic.

Our educational system today only sharpens the head to near-pin end quality and this is even rare but it also makes the possessor limb atrophied by long disuse. Our education is money-centered. It is an education which goads the possessor asking “what can my country do for me?”

In 2024, we are left to define the quality of education we want for tomorrow when our peers have gone far in Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, and neighbouring Ghana have even refused to wait for us. To chart out how to tread to win through, we now send our kids anywhere so far it is outside the country the education is better be it Iraq or Zimbabwe.

Do we have an education in which a possessor wants to elevate the less privileged that surge him around, the answer is no. Today what is the value of the education given to a young man who lives or is doing his mandatory service year in a guinea worm-infested area and yet is incapable of causing a revolution in the lives of the villagers by transforming their drinking water into a healthy supply?

Please, what is the use of education given in physics to a young girl when the lights go out, she does not know what to do to get light again. In Nigerian education, how many graduates can carry aloft an oasis of light, very few because the education is short on quality and is therefore poor.

While there is despair, there is hope and despair, a case of “we can” or “we can’t”. While we battle the scourge of local terrorism, bad leadership, kidnap, health, and countless issues, there is a need to come up with some measures that could help both the students and schools improve their output and, by extension resuscitate a nation’s dying if not dead educational sector.

Our students need to develop a good understanding of questions and also learn the basic rudiments of the English language for a better and clearer presentation of their answers. The sex for grade and bribe for certificate syndrome needs to be checked.

There is a need to ensure the appropriate textbooks in all subjects are procured and studied side by side with the examination syllabus and should be completed before the commencement of the examination. Libraries need to go info-tech, not littered with books of 1914. While practical hands-on learning away from just examination should be incorporated.

There is a need to provide basic infrastructure, and a conducive atmosphere in schools, only qualified and committed teachers who will teach their subjects effectively and guide students to become exemplary in their studies should be employed. Not like the teacher in Bauchi State (SUEB) who inherited his grandfather’s grade II certificate and was teaching with it or University dons that have become experts in plagiarism, selling handouts pirated from other works.

The question of whatever happened to the old school inspectorate system should be addressed.

We must move away from the eccentric, conversation curriculum that takes away critical thinking and qualitative reasoning and educates with intention for a future world. If these and even more rigorous steps are taken, we may be saved the irony of the clowns we are churning out these days—May Nigeria win.