Education ordinarily is meant to provide knowledge, information, and also build the character of human beings. Educating the youth helps to develop a set of values and ideals that guide the adolescents for self-development.
In Nigeria, there has been growing concern over the decline in values among adolescents and the need to empower them through education.
It is beyond any iota of doubt that education is central to the development and improvement of the lives of youth globally, and as such has been identified as a priority in internationally agreed development goals, including the millennium development goals and world programme of action for the youth.
Education is also important in eradicating poverty, hunger and in promoting sustained, inclusive, and equitable economic growth and sustainable development.
In the face of all these benefits, Nigerian leaders seem to have forgotten the need for increased efforts towards education accessibility, quality, and affordability, which is central to global development efforts.
Ours is like the story of Zaccheus Onumba Dibiaezue, a one-time commissioner of agriculture in the then East Central State. He was born with six toes on each foot, and for being born different, his kinsmen rejected him.
His mother was asked to either release him to be thrown into the evil forest or risk being sent out on self-exile with the child. The mother opted for the second option rather than losing her only son.
However, by the intervention of the grandfather from the maternal side, the poor boy and his mother were made to come back to his father to be nurtured by both parents.
Nevertheless, that was not without the ridicules and taunts of the society around him. The shooing of children and shunning of the adults was an extremely difficult experience for the blameless young boy.
The story of Zaccheus brings to mind the life of the contemporary Nigerian adolescent. Those who are supposed to protect and care for him through education have decided to keep the books far from his reach, and in its place have given him guns!
Every year, the Nigerian government budget more money for security and leave education to suffer for all it cares, forgetting in a hurry that the surest approach to obtaining security is educating the masses, especially the youth.
Nigeria is estimated to have 15 million out-of-school children. This without any iota of doubt is a dangerous nursery for future Boko Haram and IPOB recruits.
However, it must be understood that the peril of out-of-school children has become a national stigma and a shame to the nation. It is a growing pan-Nigerian pestilence, a national peril we must tackle head-on.
Already, out-of-school children and youth restiveness have developed, indoctrinated, and radicalised in the north, besides, they have succeeded in shaping the south-south militancy and are progressively shaping the Biafra anomie in the southeast.
Denying the youth books and giving them guns could be seen to be producing an already stream of young hoodlums, cultists, and blood ritual sources of wealth. The idea that these could continue unabated is very scary.
Read also: “Why education system should be given priority”
While the politicians are cruising in (bullion vans) billions of naira as crude from salaries, allowances for sitting in parliament, travelling allocations, and much other government’s extra-ordinary spending, ASUU is struggling to get its members’ salaries upgraded and to ensure that public tertiary institutions in Nigeria are revitalised. Senators earn about N30 million per month whereas a professor earns N416,000 a month, what an economic balance.
Little wonder the senators will sponsor those with guns to return them to power and university lecturers who use books to press home their demands are not taken seriously! Could this be because they (politicians) keep books too far from the youth and the guns too close?
Our graduates have continued to be half-baked, they have taken the ways of fraud, and other criminal acts simply because those who rule in Nigeria are keeping the books far away, and keeping the guns close to them.
There is no doubt that ASUU will win this struggle and others because it is a proven fact that a book is stronger than a gun. Our politicians know this, that is why they keep the books far away.
Like most developing countries, violence, unemployment, poverty and limited future opportunities continue to be a threat to the youth in Nigeria. The challenges of youth unemployment and underemployment, if not urgently addressed, will continue to increase socio-economic exclusion, migration, and political tensions.
The Nigerian education system has undoubtedly failed millions of children and we need systematic change across the country to redress the problem.
It was Octavia Butler who once opined, “Choose your leaders with wisdom and foresight. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be lied to. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.”
