NIGERIA AND HER USELESS EDUCATION SECTOR
By Oyesanmi Yusuph
If 2y(5x-7y) -6y X +6 = 45 find x.
Yesterday, I was in the sitting room watching a programme called China24 on CCTV NEWS. An electric lamp manufacturer was interviewed together with his workers in his factory. The workers are kids between the ages 12-18. The most beautiful part of it was that the kids can on their own manufacture same.
Now, let’s come down to Nigeria. Nigerian students are busy searching for “x” while students in the developed countries are manufacturing things for the development of their country.
In Nigeria, our engineering students spend nearly all their time solving difficult equations and searching for “x”. In Nigeria, students will be asked to search for “x” I do smile and ask myself how can we use Algebra and simultaneous equation to boost the economy.
How can we use the located “x” to solve the challenges facing us? In Nigeria, teacher will draw a circle having dots in it on the chalk board and tell the kids “this is an Orange”. Imagine!
In Nigeria, a teacher will be in the classroom using acid to change litmus paper to red on the chalk board. In fact, in Nigeria, the best place to mix acid with base is on chalk board.
In Nigeria, a teacher will be in the class teaching rock and its types and expect the students to be able to identify them in real sense. How possible?
However, the above are some of the reasons why at 50+ as an oil producing country we are still importing tooth-pick and matches. Our brain has been channelled to the fact that failure to go to school will end one up as a domestic servant of the educated ones, which I seriously disagree with.
We can’t all be in the classroom at the same time and expect us to catch up with the developed countries. It is never done. We will keep depending on them with such barbaric idea.
Let those that are willing to go into sport be on the field or track not in the classroom. Christiano Ronaldo of Real Madrid FC was expelled from school at the age of 14 and today he is a world footballer.
Let’s take those that are good in construction to factories or workshops not classrooms. Let’s take away pen from our engineering students and send them out of class.
Let’s take away pen from those that are willing to take hoe, cutlass, hammer, saw, screw driver etc.
Our too much dependent on the pen is sending us backward.
To me, spending 5, 6 or more years in tertiary institution is nothing but a total waste of time, 3 years is enough for engineering courses.
12 calendar month is enough for food related courses and 3 or 4 years is enough to be a lawyer.
Imagine our youth spending 8years of their lives in university and still our Government don’t trust on their expertise. Rather, they travel out of the country.
At this juncture, I will like to call on the government at all levels to look into this and find a lasting solution to it.
Lastly, our government should stop sending the talented ones away by sending them abroad for training and failing to establish/provide where they will be discharging what they’ve learnt or the skills they’ve acquired upon their arrival.
If we can do this, I believe that few years to come Nigeria will be the greatest country of the world while others will be on the queue at our back.
But before then, I remain my humble self. God bless my fatherland.
Oyesanmi Yusuph writes from Lagos
