What is the Purpose of Education in Nigeria?

22^nd March, 2014

By: Amir Abdulazeez

I

t has become imperative on us to ask ourselves the questions of why do Nigerians go to school and what do they want to achieve by been educated? This is in consideration of the new dimension unemployment has assumed in the country in recent times. Just over a week ago, we witnessed a tragic situation in which according to newspaper and eyewitness reports, twenty one Nigerians lost their lives and many others sustained different degrees of injuries in search of jobs with the Nigerian Immigration Service. Apart from the dead, fainted, slumped and the injured, hundred others lost all or some of their heard-earned academic credentials.

The aftermath of the cancelled immigration recruitment exercise is no doubt a national embarrassment which did not only went a long way in describing the rate and severity of unemployment in the country, but has also shown the vulnerability of educated Nigerian youths  and uselessness of education when it is only used as a tool to search for employment. Sometimes events like this happen for us to derive some lessons because when they occur, they raise important questions.

Now back to our question: what is the purpose of education in Nigeria? A direct answer to this question is that, as much as arguably 96% of Nigerians get educated in order to earn a living. If that is the case then, is education a way to earn a living or is it a means to gain knowledge and become civilized so as to decide how best to live?

U.S Publisher and politician, Malcolm Forbes once said: “Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”  Tijjani Shu’aibu Adamu, an experienced Nigerian educationist described education as an agent of social mobility which is capable of moving an individual from the lower class to the upper class. Therefore, it is an instrument for developing an individual socially, mentally, physically, emotionally, morally and psychologically. Tijjani went further to concur with Taiwo’s view on education as a process which enables a person to distinguish between good and bad attitudes, right and wrong behaviours, just and unjust tendencies, social and anti-social habits in the society so as to prepare an individual for the future. I would personally define education as a combination of tools and techniques used to gain empirical knowledge about the useful components of life and how best to make use of them, recognize the useless ones and how best to avoid them and to establish a clear cut boundaries between them.

What do we have now? Education in Nigeria has been relegated to the means of livelihood. If not for the expectation of monetary employment, most Nigerians would not go to school. Is this the kind of education we want?  Have we ever asked ourselves why the high number of graduates we produce every year signifies education growth but does not reflect in our national development? This is because most people are not willing to become professionals, develop careers, gain and apply knowledge, understand life from an intellectual point of view and offer solutions to life problems. Rather, we are all seeking for jobs which do not exist.

Now we are faced with two major problems. One is completely turning education into a means of survival and two is completely relying on government to provide direct jobs. As long as we don’t take care of these problems, we are bound to witness more and more scenarios of the immigration recruitment exercise. In fact, we can only expect things to get worse and nastier. As long as we continue to produce graduates whose only objective is to get direct employment, which no government can provide, then we shall witness not only accidental deaths but deliberate killings of each other in order to gain employment. God forbid.

For many years, the Nigerian education system has been suffering immensely simply because it has been completely relegated into a process of providing employment. This is the reason why students graduate empty headed because they were never after the knowledge in the first place but the grades and certificates. Students are being made to believe by their parents, teachers and society consciously and subconsciously that the major objective of school is to work and earn a living.

The best way to get out of this quagmire is to develop reliable means of livelihood as we go to school so that after graduating, any job gotten could be just a supplementary means and a path to career development. This will enable us to avoid bizarre scenarios where an engineer works in a bank or a historian working in a construction company just because they need something to support their lives. Do you want me to believe that a reasonable number of the about 7 million immigration applicants who were made to part with a collective application fees of about 7 billion naira were willing to become immigration officers? The truth is that most of them applied not because they were interested but because they have been prepared from the beginning to have no choice. We must raise ourselves and our children to become farmers, entrepreneurs, traders, and artisans so that we can seek education for the purpose of knowledge and improvement of life quality only. If we fail not only to do this but to do it effectively, we may well regret in the future as I have come to understand that regret is not only about bad deeds, sometimes you regret about good deeds which you should have done better.

The second problem is of solely relying on governments to provide direct jobs which have succeeded in adding salt to our already severe injury. Federal, states and local governments in the country have continued to fool themselves and the people with the illusion that they can provide employment. Some politicians, out of ignorance make promises during electioneering campaigns that they will provide direct jobs for everybody. Other politicians do so deliberately under deceit just to secure votes. But the truth is that no government in Nigeria can provide direct employment to a satisfactory level. At the moment, out of the 36 states of the federation, only Lagos state can fully pay the salaries of its workers without waiting for federal allocations. Few other states like Kano, Rivers and Oyo can pay a reasonable fraction of their salaries without federal allocations. Some states cannot even pay salaries at all without federal allocations. The Federal Government itself is suffering from huge recurrent expenditure mostly accrued due to salary payment of its large work force. Gradually, it is becoming apparent that the burden of salary payments is hugely taking its toll on the Federal Government. How then in the long run do we expect governments to continue employing directly?

What governments should do is to face reality and stop deceiving people with direct employment. They should rather encourage people to be creative and shift their thinking away from ordinary and conventional means of getting employment and try new initiatives. We must understand that when everybody follows established paths, there will be no creativity; we have to think beyond the normal way of doing things.

Secondly, the government should strengthen sectors like power, transportation, infrastructure, security and justice because such sectors have the potential of automatically creating and consolidating direct and indirect jobs. For example, if there is adequate security and power supply, businesses would run for 24 hours. When some people who conduct businesses during the day are asleep, some others who were resting during the day will conduct businesses during the night. Nigerian businesses will work for 24 hours with no valuable time to waste thereby hugely increasing productivity. When power is available, thousands of jobs would be created both directly and indirectly. Therefore, advisably, rather than invest in providing direct jobs which cannot satisfy all, let the government strengthen security and power.  We have seen what the telecommunication and entertainment industries have done to our economy through direct and indirect jobs creation with ripple effects and I think that success can be replicated in many other sectors. When this is done, governments will rely on its happy and self-employed citizens for taxes rather than the other way round.

©2014: abdulazeezamir@hotmail.com

The Autocratic Position of 'Party Leader' in Nigerian Politics

7^th February, 2014

By: Amir Abdulazeez

G

radually, Nigerian politicians are introducing a brand new political system that had probably never existed before and does not currently exist anywhere in the world. It is important to note that, there are two ways to creativity; one, you can create something from the scratch and two; you can modify and re-modify something that is existing, until it becomes entirely different from its former self.

There is little or no doubt that Nigerian politicians have continue to engage in practices that tend to shape and re-shape democracy into an entirely new political system that one will face great difficulties in trying to find a name for it. Can we call it the Nigerian brand of democracy or can we simply call it Nigeriancracy?

Our current political system is neither democratic nor dictatorial. It is probably in-between or a marriage between the two. At the moment, it looks like our politicians are not ready for democracy and they don’t want dictatorship by the military so that’s why they have settled for political dictatorship.

In Nigerian politics of nowadays, the most influential and authoritative position is that of ‘party leader’, whether at the national or state level. The party leader is superior to the party chairman, party executives, party elders, party trustees and even party constitution, and yet no any democratic election is needed for the position. All you need to become party leader is to try at all cost to be a president, state governor or minister. In some parties, a good financial status or an ex-public office holder status will suffice. If you are a party leader, you can do and undo in the party at will, with little or no resistance.

Before the 2003 general elections, this position of party leader was officially non-existent at all. It was formally introduced into this Fourth Republic by former President Olusegun Obasanjo after he secured a second term in office.

In 2003, Chief Obasanjo learnt a bitter lesson from the powerful PDP governors who were alleged to have nearly cost him his second term bid. As a very good student of politics, Obasanjo learnt from that encounter with the PDP governors who nearly ditched him for his deputy that they derive their powers through the sole and dictatorial control of party structures at their various states. Soon after securing his second term in office, Obasanjo began the process of controlling national party structures. After succeeding, he declared himself PDP national leader.

At the beginning, it wasn’t clear who had the final say on party matters, between the PDP National leader and the PDP National Chairman as it was like a situation where two national chairmen are operating under the same party. As events unfold, it was clear that in the PDP, the partly leader is supreme to everyone and everything in the party. This phenomenon rapidly spread to all PDP states with state governors taking it as an opportunity to legitimize their undemocratic control over state party chairmen. From then, other opposition parties with state governors like ANPP and APGA began to operate under the same system where state governors are regarded not as members but as people above the party and its constitution.  Up till now, it is not clear whether PDP has amended its constitution to accommodate the position and assign it with specific constitutional functions, but the position outlived Obasanjo as President Jonathan is actively the PDP national party leader.

This idea of party leader in Nigerian politics is disgusting and overbearing as much as it is undemocratic and unneeded. The position exists in other democracies, but not in the Nigerian format and hardly do you find it co-existing with the position of National Chairman. Furthermore, the position is being subjected to democratic processes in other countries like South Africa and Britain, both in its formations and operations. This is unlike in Nigeria where someone proclaims himself party leader just by virtue of being a president, governor or minister. In China for example, a party leader may be politically stronger than the president.

This issue of party leader is not peculiar to PDP. The newly formed All Progressives Congress went as far as incorporating the position into its laws from the onset thereby undemocratically proclaiming state governors as state party leaders with almost unlimited powers. This was a party many Nigerians expected to behave differently from the much-hated PDP. At the moment, APC has given powers to state party leaders to single-handedly appoint interim party executives which is not only autocratic but a betrayal of justice and fairness.

Not only in APC and PDP, similar instances can be seen everywhere in most opposition parties. Some months back, the National Chairman of Labour Party declared former Ogun State Governor, Gbenga Daniel as Ogun party leader. The LP Chairman is somebody whose position was recently enmeshed in crisis over his alleged refusal to step down after his tenure has since expired, but he is still hanging on to unilaterally appoint people as party leaders.

What is the rationale behind giving party leadership to the custodians of public funds if not base on the expectation that they will use state funds to finance the party? The extent to which people in the executive arm of government at all levels are being worshipped in this country is highly unfortunate.

Let’s take the PDP for example, since when did they actually elected a National Chairman? The chairman is always appointed by the president or state governors who are party leaders. This has rendered the party impotent, with all the party executives directly answerable to the president, who ordinarily should be just an obedient member of that party. How do you expect fairness here?

It is now that we begin to understand why the self-acclaimed messiah party, the APC was running from house to house in search of governors to join the party so that they can have enough custodians of public funds in their fold as party leaders.

This concept of party leaders must stop, elected public officers should run the government and become leaders of the state while elected party officials should run the party and become leaders of political movements and ideologies. Our failure to do this has done a lot of damage to our democracy so much so that, we don’t operate a democracy any longer. If one person under the guise of party leader can determine who gets what, how and when in a party, then what type of political system are we operating under?

All the prominent political parties in Nigeria are not serious; they are not ready for democracy. Until they completely reform themselves or new serious ones emerge, we may not have democracy at all.

©2015: abdulazeezamir@hotmail.com

How Africans Underdeveloped Africa

24^th February, 2014

By: Amir Abdulazeez

T

he late historian, Professor Walter Rodney spent 361 pages of writing in 1972 trying to convince readers on how Europe underdeveloped Africa. The book was a masterpiece, as it was one of the best literatures on European imperialism, especially as it relates to Africa. The late historian did a magnificent job in explaining how slave trade, colonialism and neo-colonialism of Africa by Europe and other western imperialist robbed Africa of development.

Walter Rodney was very much right in his views, as he based his analysis on the prevailing events of immediate post- African independence period of late 1960’s and early 1970’s. He completed his book just about a decade after most African countries got their independence. At the time his book was published in 1972, some African countries like Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola and Namibia were still under colonial rule. Therefore the issues he raised were very much relevant at that time.

We are now in 2014, 42 years after the book: ‘How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’ by Walter Rodney was published. This is almost half a century, yet Africa is still in search of development. This time around, we truly know who are under developing Africa, certainly not the Europeans.

Had Rodney not being assassinated by a walkie talkie bomb in 1980, I have every reason to believe that he would have lived to develop a different viewpoint about the underdevelopment of Africa. Probably, he would have written a new book with the title: ‘How Africans Underdeveloped Africa’. Between the period 1950-2010, the world witnessed some of the greatest transformations ever to have happened to this place called earth. However, Africa is not going along with the world and we should have no one to blame but ourselves. In the world of today, it is every man for himself; no one can develop you, no matter how much he wants to if you don’t want to develop yourself.

Since Rodney was not opportune to witness the Africa of today, we must take it as a duty, to bring out the role of Africans in the massive underdevelopment of contemporary Africa. This is by no means an attempt to sweep under the carpet, the brutal, selfish, exploitative and inhumane roles played by the western imperialists in Africa’s underdevelopment.

We must tell ourselves the bitter truth that what happened in the past belonged to the past and those who are still thinking of the past are wasting the present and would therefore have no future. Currently, Africans are the cause of Africa’s underdevelopment. Slave trade and colonialism are things of the past and they did not occur only in Africa, they happened in Latin America, North America, Asia and other parts of the world. Can we compare those regions with Africa today? Are countries like India, Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil, Singapore and the likes still blaming the Europeans for their past misfortune or have they transformed themselves into powerful economic and political blogs. Brazil is now the 7^th largest economy in the world, 37 places above their former colonial masters Portugal who are 44^th.

In the history of the world, every civilization as well as every country has had its ups and downs. Europe bounced back from World Wars I and II, the U.S.A bounced back from civil war and racism, Asia and Latin America bounced back from colonialism, dictatorships and political turmoil, why will Africa not bounce back from salve trade and colonialism?

At present, it is obvious that Africa is the least developed inhabited continent of the world. The region suffers from all sorts of problems, 90% of which are man-made. Naturally, the region seem to be the luckiest, because it is the one of the most geographically stable continents with least occurrence of natural disasters like earth quakes, vulcanicity, hurricanes, tornadoes, acid rain and the likes. Most parts of the region don’t have unbearable weather like the extremely cold Polar Regions or extremely hot Arabian regions. This is in addition to the abundance of mineral and other natural resources. Africa is the global chief source of raw materials because rather than process and manufacture its raw materials, Africa exports them for others to process and sell finished products to them at exorbitant prices. Nearly 10% of the world’s known oil reserves are in Africa but all for nothing.

The most prominent problem of Africa is leadership failure. Most past and present African leaders have failed the region woefully and their brutal sit-tight phenomena have made it very difficult or impossible for them to be replaced. More than 85% of African elections are not free, unfair and not credible. Only Ghana, Senegal, South Africa and some few other countries can boast of relatively free and fair elections. Until very recently, elections were not even conducted at all in almost the entire North Africa.

African leaders steal public funds in millions and billions of dollars and invest same in European economies. How many leaders in other continents steal public funds and invest in Africa?

Another problem in Africa is the failure of its citizens to recognize themselves as each other’s natural brothers by virtue of being human beings. Hardly, could you find an African country that is completely devoid of religious and ethnic crisis. Every year thousands of lives and properties are being lost in Africa in the name of religious and ethnic differences. Just 20 years ago in Rwanda, more than 800,000 people were estimated to have been killed just because they belong to a particular ethnic group. Currently in Central African Republic, people are being massacred in their hundreds because of their faiths. According to Wikipedia, between 1.2 to 2.4 million Africans died during the Atlantic Slave Trade over a period of about 360 years. In my estimates, the amount of those who died as a result of ethnic and religious crises in Africa between 1980-2010 have since exceeded that figure. The people who died in the 34 months old Nigerian civil war alone are close to the entire number of Africans who died in the 360 years of Atlantic Slave Trade.

When we look at the very few African countries claiming to be recording progress in economic growth, we find out that their people are in deep suffering, as if increase in national economic growth is directly proportional to increase in poverty and suffering. What these African nations are having is development in irony, a development that increases the suffering of the people, makes the poor poorer and the rich richer. For example the minimum wage in Venezuela is about N80,000 but in Nigeria workers are struggling to have a minimum wage of N18,000. Venezuela has a labour force of 13.5 million people with 5.6% unemployment rate while Nigeria has a work force of about 52.5 million people with 24% unemployment rate. With this analysis, why will Venezuela’s minimum wage more than quadruple that of Nigeria?

Despite these problems and troubles, Africa still has a chance to develop. The resources, manpower and all the potentials are there. What are lacking are the will and the determination. Let all Africans put their hands on deck to make sure the region is pulled out of this mess and placed in its rightful place in the global development map by the year 2030.

©2014: abdulazeezamir@hotmail.com

A Season of Hate Messages Across the Country

                                                                                                                                     11^th March, 2014

By: Amir Abdulazeez

T

he biggest problem in Nigeria is not insecurity, corruption, illiteracy or poverty. Forget about $20 billion, kidnapping, Boko Haram and fuel scarcity. Our biggest problem is disunity. Disunity has been with us since pre-independence while all other problems joined us in the course of our national journey.

Disunity among Nigerians has basically played and is still playing three negative roles in our development as a nation. One, it has directly and indirectly created so many problems that have prevented us from moving forward; two, it has refuse to allow us to understand our problems and identify those specifically responsible for such problems and; three, whenever there are solutions at hand to our problems, our disunity will never allow us to embrace them.

Nigerian disunity has spread like wild fire among men and women, rich and poor, old and young like never before. But the most unfortunate thing is that, it has spread among youths, educationists, elites and even Nigerians in diaspora. Nigerian disunity is being made worse by hatred. For a very long time, most Nigerians are aware that we lacked nationalism, brotherhood and love of each other which are integral to the survival of any nation. Infact, some are of the opinion that we were never really united right from the beginning.

It is true that we have a lot of divisions due to our different histories, structures and multiple ethnic groups. It is also true that national disunity is not a new phenomenon particularly in Africa and the world at large. But why can’t we express our divisions maturely without deadly hatred and irresponsible abuse? Why can’t we try to bridge the gap between us instead of widening it so that we can leave a fairly united Nigeria to the next generation?

I never knew how much and how severe Nigerians hate themselves until the advent of the social media. The social media in this country have been turned to a platform of spreading hate messages. News media blogs and public pages on Facebook are being used for character assassination and spread of abuses among each other. Most average Nigerian Facebook users cannot comment on a news topic or issue without abusing a southerner or northerner; a Muslim or Christian or an APC or PDP. It has reached an embarrassing extent to which administrators of public pages will write ‘please no abuses’ at the end of a proposed Nigerian topic of discussion. Our level of hatred for each other on the social media is just a reflection of the level of our disunity on ground.

There is no doubt that we are proving the late elder statesman, Chief Obafemi Awolowo right when he said: “Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no ‘Nigerians’ in the same sense as there are ‘English,’ ‘Welsh’ or ‘French.’ The word ‘Nigerian’ is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not.”

This problem has gone beyond normal limits; it has gone to the dangerous extent that some people among us only need to know a person’s tribe, religion or region for them to judge him. They don’t need to know his character, level of education or family background. If some people are not followers of your religion, as afar as you are concerned they are destined for hell, as if you are not sure of going to hell yourself. At the height of killings in one of the numerous religious crises in Nigeria, Mahmud Jega had this to say: “Wherever you may think a man is heading to between heaven and hell in the hereafter, it is not your right to send him packing from here.”

A southerner is being seen as an enemy to the northerner and must be fought at all cost and the reverse is the case. This is indeed unfortunate.

I have made an analysis of hate messages among Nigerians on Facebook for some time and I am going to reproduce some few of them here. I have censored them to remove highly abusive words, therefore, I am not producing them word for word and I am not going to state the authors for obvious reasons. Here are some of them;

“All northerners are members of Boko Haram. It is only that some of them are doing the killings on behalf of others. They created this violence to make the country ungovernable for a southern president, but thank God that has not happened and they are killing themselves. By the time they finish themselves, we shall see what they will do next.”
- Southerner

 “Southerners are kidnappers, hypocrites and oil thieves. Most of them are militants and now that they have power, they are impoverishing the north and enriching the south. They are doing that so that by the time they are done, they can call for the disintegration of the country and by then, the north would have been left with nothing to survive.”

- Northerner

“Most Muslims are terrorists not only in Nigeria but all over the world. Only few of them are not terrorists. Here in Nigeria, they have formed an Islamic party called APC and they will not succeed.”

- Non-Muslim

“Nigeria has been Christianized. All major appointments are been given to Christians. Therefore Muslims supporting this government are not only the enemies of Islam but the promoters of Christianity.”

- Non-Christian

What do the above statements tell you about Nigeria and Nigerians? This is what some Nigerians are using the social media for, at a time when other countries are fighting bad governance, promoting positive change and advancing good religious teachings through the same platform.

If we were united in Nigeria, we would have collectively fought and defeated bad governance and unaccountability in leadership. A united Nigerian nation would have fought and defeated poverty, insecurity, illiteracy and corruption. A united Nigeria would have forced the National Assembly to do what is right. We wouldn't have wasted valuable time and resources in organizing a fruitless national conference.

Unfortunately, in Nigeria, we are only united when the national football team is performing well and winning trophies. If the football team is not performing, you will hear the northerners claiming that the team coach is fielding only southerners, that is why we are loosing. The other situation in which Nigerians seem to be united is when there is increase in fuel pump price. You will see everybody from everywhere in Nigeria protesting. However, that also seems to have gone because in the last fuel subsidy removal protest, some people shamelessly refuse to protest not because they believe in subsidy removal but simply because the president is from their region or from their party.

My fellow Nigerians, let us stop fooling ourselves. We can go nowhere in this way. We can never move forward like this even if the whole world’s infrastructures and economic wealth would be deposited in Nigeria. We can only develop if we replace ethnicity, tribalism, religious bigotry, profanism and sectionalism with integration, religious tolerance, nationalism, education, dialogue and love. If you want someone to join your religion, it is not by abusing him but by embracing him. If you think your tribe is so important, teach other people your language and culture and make them develop interest in your tribe and not by abusing their own God-given tribe.

Fellow countrymen, we have tried disunity for over 50 years and we have seen the results; let’s try unity even for the next 50 weeks and see the results.

©2014: abdulazeezamir@hotmail.com