LET NOT VILIFY THE DONS

The authorities must take determined measures to restore the standards of educational integrity in our schools, writes GBADEBO ADEYEYE

Before public university lecturers in Nigeria are finally written off for their recent nationwide strike, we must first recognize that they are a great people. Unlike their cash and carry counterparts in the National Assembly and other public sectors, most university dons are decent, generous, hardworking people driven by the ethic of individual responsibility, accountability for their actions and empathy for the misfortune of their fellow citizens. Former U.S. President Truman said: “Men make history and not the other way round”.

The university chiefs have finally exposed the crippled administration in the country for what it is – a cold, shrewd, tough-minded enemy of school children and their teachers. And before taking those brave men in the universities to Golgotha, however, it is not premature to first indicate to our political leaders at the highest level, particularly the present clueless commander-in-chief, quickly and with complete clarity that the government’s conduct against university students and their teachers in Nigeria is coming dangerously close to the point at which no citizen of goodwill in our country, particularly in South West, would be able to ignore anymore. Of course, public university lecturers are not without fault; and to come up with a solution to the pandemic undermining university education in our country, the stakeholders must first come together and break down the complex politics in ASUU, or be ready to accept the responsibility for the future demise of the public university system in Africa’s largest economy! However, nothing is more directly responsible for the rot in our universities today than the failure of leaders, especially those in the present government to understand the importance of education and how it works.

Alfred Smith, the former governor of New York State once said: “I never keep anything to myself; I talk it out. And I feel I owe it not to the democratic party, but I sincerely believe that I owe it to the country itself to drag this un- American propaganda out into the public. Because this country, to my way of thinking, cannot be successful if it continues with political distrust. If corruption, distrust and the sister vices are going to succeed, it is dangerous to the future life of the republic; and the best way to kill anything un-American is to drag it out into the public; because anything un-American cannot live in the sunlight.” Since President Muhammadu Buhari came to power in 2015, unfortunately, the crisis in the nation’s educational institutions has worsened more than ever before; and the effects upon our youth are obvious and frightening on a daily basis. The point is that those political sycophants who still find nothing wrong with universities in Nigeria should first compare our nation with other democratic countries of the world where education of their citizens is largely not determined by tribe, religion or quota system. After all, before the British left our country in the 1960s, we were a nation that already had a social structure, an infrastructure, the best housing estate in West Africa, the finest transportation system, the best hospitals, and in many ways, the best public schools; especially in the South West.

Regrettably, for more than 30 years now, our education policies and laws in Nigeria have been driven by the cultural conceit that took hold since the military regime of the counterculture, including a denial of quality educational opportunities for Nigerian citizens. SInce 2015, unlike the founding fathers, General Buhari has failed to take the country’s crimewave seriously and created through propaganda, subversion and aggression, a culture in which appalling large number of our youth are forced out of school to search for opportunities offered by the interwoven world of crime; beginning with the government’s introduction of hijab in public schools instead of computers, and spending N5. 9 billion on telephone repairs training rather than funding the decayed public education system in the country – exactly the opposite of what the Chinese are doing, and what the South Koreans, Taiwanese, and Chileans did. For example, one of the most inspiring stories of the last 50 years has been that of countries who were mired in absolute poverty after World War II but adopted the right economic policies triggered astonishing social and economic progress. China, Taiwan, South Korea, SIngapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Chile and others have succeeded because they stressed basic economic principles such as lower taxes on importation, fewer government regulations and expenses, open market and competitive industries; and of course placed high premium on the education of their citizens. Those principles have opened up their economies and integrated them with developed countries of the world. Whereas, the political consequences of neglecting education in Nigeria are far less than the educational consequences. Young people have a way of outgrowing the fads of childhood, including political fads.

But this blatant substitution of “telephone repairs training” for public university education by the Nigerian government deprives the youth of the intellectual foundation they need to prepare them for life in the 21st century market. In his first inauguration address many years ago, former U.S. President Richard Nixon said, “To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit”. That was true then and it is still true today. The symptoms of the Nigerian educational pandemic are products of the spirit and they require answers of the spirit: Our political system is simply in the gridlock and incapable of addressing serious social and educational problems because the political leadership has become inaccessible and unresponsive, especially since 2015. And to prevent the legacy of bigotry and injustice of this lame-dock government from our education system, the stakeholders must take forceful and determined measures to restore the standards of educational integrity in our schools immediately; otherwise, they will have grossly violated their trust; and Nigeria as a nation will have failed her first responsibility to the next generation: to transmit to them the values, the history, and the traditions of a humane civilization together with the knowledge and understanding to bring those values to life!

Adeyeye is proprietor, Crown Heights College, Ibadan