By Bankole Taiwo
“When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground”. The declining progress in our education system today is finally calling for alarm and remember, a country that lost its education has lost its pillar and is already a dead country. Over the last seven months things have not really been in good shape, the country’s education system which is meant to be progressing forward, instead is going backwards due to unpleasant situations that surround the system.
Let me start from the angle of Junior College with the recently ridiculous, barbaric and uncivilized incident that happened a few days ago in Ogun State where students were made to write exams while sitting On the floor. Iwopin is a town in Ogun Waterside Area of Ogun State where on Monday 17th, July 2022 students of St. Kizito Senior Secondary School, a public secondary school in Iwopin began their Third Term promotion examination on the bare floor of their classrooms.
This incident is a total disgrace and disappointment to the so-called Late chief Obafemi Awolowo’s legacy on education. When I heard about this news, It hurt me so bad to see the nation falling or to properly put it, “in the process of decline” while we weren’t noticing. It draws back my memory lanes to when Awolowo was fighting so hard for free and sustainable education in this country, but unfortunately, due to the Ambassadors of poverty and corrupt masters of the economy, they have turned the country into a commercial hub to annex the national wealth into their pockets and burry in underground graves in their homes instead of investing into the future of the country.
In one of Awolowo’s famous quotes on education, he quoted “Any system of education which does not help a man to have a healthy and sound body and alert brain, and balanced and disciplined instinctive urges, is both misconceived and dangerous”. I think that is exactly the type of education system we are experiencing presently in Nigeria.
A system of education that lacks the proper facilities to enhance and facilitate sustainable formal education in school. I asked myself” How the fuck will those students be able to comfortably attempt the exam questions properly?, No it must be a total failure”. Let’s come back to Awolowo’s free education legacy. His idea behind the concept of free education is to help close the gap between the rich and the poor.
Awolowo’s general philosophy is based on his Democratic socialism and socio-political thought. Thoroughly idealistic in character, his metaphysical position is a concern for a harmonious universe and the human being’s place in it which I think aligned with Nelson Mandela’s thoughts on education when he says…” Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation. It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.”
In order to make education accessible to all, Awolowo recommends a system of free education. But it seems we people have the misconception of his free education policy. What our parents of today see as free education, to them is something they need not pay for or make any contribution whatsoever. Ordinarily, to me, I see anything free as cheap with no gratitude. The idea of cheap or free education and the misconception of people over the decades have generated the nonchalant attitude of parents towards rendering assistance to schools, especially public schools.
I think it is time we begin to reconsider that the notion of free education is not solely the headache of the government alone, but also our calling to start giving the little we can offer to help the schools. We must understand that education is free but expensive, and in order to get the proper education for our children, we need quality education with the right facilities, not the classroom education under a tree. We need to re-orientate ourselves with the thought that we all have a part to play in ensuring quality education, though the government is not left out.
I remember during my secondary school days, I attended a government school named Molusi college, in Ijebu north of Ogun state. My school is very popular not just because of its large size but because of the standard of quality learning my school offered the community and that could only happen due to parents’ assistance and contributions from the school Alumni.
Now to the second part of the discussion. It is the pressing issue of the six-month ongoing ASUU strike. But first, before we go deeper, have you ever asked yourself the question “ Who are we to blame for the strike”; The federal government that failed to pay the union or the union that fails to think from the aspect of human compassion on the student to end the strike. Truth is, the more I think about it, the more I get confused on who we should blame, the government or the Union itself.
We all know the history behind the founding of the union. On June 22nd, 2022, I wrote and published an article titled “ ASUU’s Incessant strikes: A look into History”, do yourself the favor to read the article, it is a historical analysis of ASUU strike from inception.
Today makes it the 155th day of the strike and yet no agreement has been reached on how to end the strike. Several meetings upon meetings have been held but all end in deadlock. This is a big blow to the government and a bad omen to the future of education across the country. In a country where its education sector has been shut down for over six months, who does that? No nation can survive without healthy mental well-being.
The question is ‘How do we settle this issue?’. Either the federal government should do the needful or the Union should rest their case or end the strike, one of the parties must succumb to the other. But it is very disheartening to see the government failing its people by not doing the necessary. Going by the recommendations made by UNICEF, all countries are required to allocate between 15-20 percent budget to Education. Well, I doubt Nigeria managed to allocate 10 percent.
Going forward, I think It is high time we need to start reconsidering some things and revisiting the constitution which has to do to with the distribution of functions in the Exclusive, Concurrent and legislative lists.
As rightly noted by Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo; Awolowo does not advocate a single pattern of control of the nation’s educational system, which centralizes the system with the federal government in charge. Rather, he identifies with a centralized, decentralized and dual control pattern of the educational system (Awolowo 1970, 61).
His pattern explains the notion of Decentralization of power, that education should be the responsibility of the different levels of government – local, state and federal. The state is to have full control over all the levels of education. Adult education is to be the responsibility of local governments, with the overall coordination provided by the state government. Secondary and teacher education is to be the responsibility of the state government.
The state and federal governments are to have concurrent responsibility for the establishment and management of Polytechnics and Universities. Such responsibility involves among other things financing the system, formulating and executing policies that will regulate the system, and putting controls and monitoring mechanisms in place in the running of the system.
If the Federal Government can reconsider restructuring the Constitution, maybe the load on the federal government might reduce a little bit. The federal government should not be burdened with every responsibility of the country, both the state and Local government should also play some role that would lessen the federal government burden.
That on the part of the government, now to we people, I’m talking about the cabals of the politicians. Sadly, in the middle of this strike, we’ve seen some politicians who raised funds to purchase party forms for one post or the other.
How then shall we write about this?, a country in the middle of tribulations where its political leaders were lavishly spending Hundreds of Millions to purchase party forms while the country is undergoing an education shutdown. This reminds me of that beautiful poem we were told to learn for the WASSCE…’ AMBASSADORS OF POVERTY BY PHILIP UMEH’ maybe I should recommend it to these politicians because they need to hear this because these folks need to be reminded of their mistakes.
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