A few days ago, controversial social media activist Martin Otse, popularly known as Very Dark Man staged a teaching with primary school pupils at the gate of the Federal Capital Territory Administration Secretariat in Abuja. The occasion was to draw attention and even opprobrium to the government over the months-long strike action by teachers in public primary schools within the Federal Capital Territory over the minimum wage.
Now, whether it is the government that is sticking to its guns or the teachers who are refusing to be reasonable, a sobering fact is that for more than three months now, some of Nigeria’s youngest school goers have had their education interrupted and their lives disrupted. For a government that is supposedly doing all it can to renew hope in Nigeria, this is a major disaster.
That it is taking a controversial activist and his unconventional ways to prod a country’s conscience should haunt Nigeria’s memory and posterity. But the fact that hardness of hearing permeates the deepest recesses of Nigeria’s corridors of power means this is not even guaranteed.
What is the fate of a country that shutters its classrooms, lets grass overrun its school playgrounds and allows its children to loiter in the streets vulnerable to the predations of a ruthless society? The fate of such a country is simple: it has no future.
If today Nigeria’s teeth are very well set on edge, it is because previous generations feasted on sour grapes, leaving future generations to contend with the consequences. Education in Nigeria has been crumbling for many years now. Public schools have been allowed to fall into decrepitude. While music artistes, many of them vacant of any moral values or vigilance provide the themes, generations of Nigerian students and prospective students have lost interest in education, consequently casting what is a priceless pearl before swine.
Education is the penultimate leveller. In its role as an equalizer, education plays second fiddle only to death, which is the ultimate leveller. When there is access to quality education, the darkness that ignorance is not only recedes, it also becomes impossible for it to come back.
The sobering reality is that Nigeria is failing those who are supposed to secure its future. It is not just that the hoax about being leaders of tomorrow has now been exposed as a horrible lie, children have scandalously become sacrifices on Nigeria’s slab of incompetence, ineptitude, and insensitivity.
The failings of education in Nigeria unfortunately have a long history. Disgruntled teachers and decrepit school buildings have always stalked Nigerian primary school students. With the rise of banditry, insecurity has joined the fray, making the most important weapon against the scourge of poverty and insecurity a nightmare to obtain.
Perhaps, there are still many who look around the country today and wonder why and when Nigeria really got so bad. They should wonder no more. The script was sealed the moment the country began to abandon its children to the forces of chaos.
The seeds for the harrowing reality Nigeria is living as a country now was sown the day Nigeria started finding it strange that many of its children were dropping out of school and gradually swelling the ranks of out-of-school children that has become such a favourite pool of conscripts for those determined to destroy Nigeria.
To find its compass again, to come off the ruination of this rudderless drift to nowhere in particular, Nigeria must find its children once again. More than finding its children, it must help those children find themselves, since many of them have become lost. Sitting out of school for three months is certainly no way to go about this.
Kene Obiezu,
keneobiezu@gmail.com
