Who Is Actually Educated In Nigeria?
The issue of who is actually educated in Nigeria has been an
over-flogged matter in our midst and we’ve not yet come to conclusion of
buttressing this matter. Being sagacious in this article, I would state
that Nigerians are biased of who is educated and who is not. This
misconception has militated to the snail speed with which we grow as a
people, mentally, economically, physically and spiritually. The question
or quest to be called a university graduate has really made Nigerians
forerunners in the world’s most primordial educated peoples. And no one
seems to bath the eyelid; because of the negative effects this issue is
causing Nigeria.
So, a HND holder is not educated? I didn’t know about this till in the
recent past when the Ministry of Education was spending its vital time
echoing the need to make Nigeria’s polytechnics, degree award
institutions, because of ‘the let down’ habit from the degree holders to
the HND holders in the office. This means that Nigerians have relegated
EDUCATION to the background but keep SCHOOL in the front of events.
Haba! I couldn’t say anything when I heard of this Education Ministry’s
gesture, but I moaned that even among the degree holders there is still
a chronic segregation among them. The ‘modern day universities’ degree
holders are not respected as educated people in the eyes of those who
went to the ‘ancient universities’. This has made me come to know that
Nigerians respect School and not Education.
Now, among the government office holders, how many of them are educated?
They only went to school. Because if they were educated, the spate of
stealing public fund would be minimal or zeroed? It is because of this
stealing that was making people to go to the university so that they
could work in the offices and steal? But is knowledge only found in the
university? Tell me which school Jesus Christ or Mohammed went to that
they remained untainted!
The issue of EDUCATION and SCHOOL has to be fractioned for our
betterment and for those who would come here after us, especially now
that Nigeria is meant for the so called graduates, of which some of them
did not know when they graduated from the university. Their joy today is
that they are called graduates.
If Nigeria is only for the graduates, what about the educated others
roaming the streets without any voice? What about the milling school
leavers roaming the streets who are educated but perhaps hadn’t the
wherewithal to further their education up to the university level?
However, we shouldn’t make that professor the king of his land because
he is a professor whereas there are well-baked locals in the culture of
the land than the professor who may have lived all his life abroad. What
does he know about the culture of his people? Here is the confusion! Are Nigerians not confused about this education thing? Imagine that an
engineer could work in a bank just because he has a degree, but that
school leaver, who may have gotten the basics of accounts while in the
High school, is left unemployed because he hadn’t a university degree.
Is this not sheer madness? Tell me!
By Odimegwu Onwumere
Odimegwu Onwumere,
Poet, author and founder of Poet Against Child Abuse.
Rivers State. +2348032552855