The Nation Newspaper

Category: Segun Gbadegesin

  • What makes this Friday good?

    What makes this Friday good?

    According to convention, this is a Good Friday. It is also a Holy Friday. And convention is what human beings create and stick to. It is our tradition of doing things and naming events. There is a paradox here.

    From the perspective of the God who ordained the birth and death of Jesus the Christ, whatever He does is good, and that includes the sacrifice of a son. But for us as humans, we tend to see things differently. We would not be humans if we don’t. So, we consider death in whatever form or shape as bad.

    In the particular case of the death of Christ on the cross, it is not only the manner of the death but the intrigue that caused it that was extremely bad and evil. He was wrongly accused of treason and blasphemy. He was maltreated by his accusers. He was mocked. There was a palpable miscarriage of justice. In the midst of it all, he was calm and cool. In that regard, the day on which his unjust killing occurred must be judged a bad day for all intents and purposes—that is, from our human point of view. If it happened to any of us, and we were in a position to pass judgment, we would curse the day it occurred. Therefore, if by convention we have come to recognise the day on which the messiah was crucified as good, there better be a good explanation and justification.

    There is an explanation and, humanly speaking, it is a selfish one. For Christians, the death on the cross is even a happier and merrier occurrence than the birth in the manger because without it, salvation is impossible. Therefore, for the salvation of humans, Christ must die on the cross and resurrect from the grave. The assumed consequence of death on the cross—the salvation of humans—is good. Therefore the means to that consequence is good. Even the elders who prosecuted and judged Christ made the point that it is alright that one should die so that the many may be saved.It is a utilitarian reasoning.

    Let us assume that this is a valid reasoning and there is something good in the death on the cross and therefore this is indeed a Good Friday. Shouldn’t we also expect at least believers in the sacrifice that made possible the salvation of souls follow suit? Shouldn’t the example be a model for leaders and followers at least in Christendom? His was a life of simplicity. His armour was truthfulness. He delivered a message of hope and redemption. He not only empathised with the poor, he also blessed them with sustenance. And while he abhorred sin, he did not reject sinners; he dined with them.

    Two thousand years after the supreme sacrifice of the one we claim to follow, many Christians, including those in the leadership rank of all stripes and collars have only paid lip service to the creed of the messiah. They complicate what is a simple message of love and sacrifice. They are pretenders and impostors who draw crowds of sycophants through means other than Christ. They court satanic powers to attract membership to their congregation and expect the spirit of Christ to fall on them! They sell their halls of worship to the highest bidder and hope that the God who noticed and recognised the widow and her mite is not attentive. And while they condemn corruption from the pulpit, they are not ashamed to receive the bounties that corrupted hands deliver.

    No one preaches or expects perfection. Even the messiah who reflected the perfection of God was humble enough to attribute perfection to God alone. But there is an expectation that spiritual leaders have the responsibility to lead by example and not just by words, in the observance of the teachings of Christ. Instead, in many congregations, the human inclination to division by rank and the promotion of inequality instead of the egalitarian teaching of Christ has been the order. We identify spiritual kinds with some higher than others and the concept of the priesthood of all believers is jettisoned. Christ taught his disciples that he was their only Teacher and they shouldn’t call anyone on earth teacher. He told them that their only Father was in heaven and they shouldn’t call anyone on earth Father. He taught them that whoever was greatest among them shall be their servant. And he demonstrated this by washing their feet.

    Christ lived a simple human life but was not a proud and haughty human. He dined with sinners; he drank wine; he associated with an adulterer without condoning adultery, and he revered the Sabbath day without worshipping it, which was one of the reasons he was rejected by the Pharisees.

    On our part, we have substituted for Christ’s teachings the Big-man philosophy of religion. In this philosophy, what really matters is how big the followership is, and how much power and resources we are able thereby to control. No wonder that even as churches litter the nooks and crannies of our streets, the evils of cultism, kidnapping, and armed robbery are on the rise. Sure, we condemn the evils that eat at the soul of the individual perpetrators without harming others, but we condone those evils that harm others but benefit the perpetrator.

    On this remembrance of an otherwise bad day which by convention we have come to regard as good because we believe that it was the moment our salvation was bought with the blood of the innocent, it behooves all Christians to truly imbibe the teachings of Christ and the lessons of the cross. If we truly believe that He sacrificed his life so we can gain salvation, it is our obligation to make humanly possible sacrifices so the downtrodden, the rejected and forgotten in our midst may live a live that is dignified and decent. It is not the magnificence of a cathedral that matters; it is the spirit of giving that we imbibe in the hearts of men and women that God appreciates.

    If the foregoing sounds like a sermon; it isn’t. It is only a sober thought and reflection on our spiritual heritage in the age of ostentatious spirituality, an oxymoron in itself.

  • The state as family writ large

    The state as family writ large

    The Presidency has spoken and the nation ought to listen and obey. The state is the family writ large, the President is the patriarch, and the citizens are the children. As the father of the nation, the President knows best what is good for the nation. As such, it is impudent of citizens, his children, to query his judgment. Where did we hear this before?

    The idea that the state is comparable to the family is as old as political philosophy. The structure of the state has been explained in terms of the structure of the family and Aristotle viewed the family developing into the state. Interestingly, in The People’s Republic, Chief Obafemi Awolowo also explored the analogy with approval, viewing the paterfamilias as the benevolent patriarch who, on the basis of his knowledge of the interests of his children, negotiated with other families for the purpose of becoming a state. And Confucius celebrated the harmony that characterises the model of the state as family, a harmony that is ensured by the naturalness of the obedience that flows from bottom to the top: from citizens to the sovereign. A number of modern states exemplify this model with the attendant stability.

    Too bad for the Presidency, Nigeria opted for a different model of the state. Before independence, the founding fathers, Awolowo included, knew that in view of our history and culture, and the experience of colonial rule, we would fare much better with a republican model of governance. This model is antithetical to the family model because it doesn’t treat citizens as children or subjects and it doesn’t credit the president or governor with a superior intellect, or a superlative moral sense. Indeed, in this model, the citizens know best their interests, and the purpose of elections is to register those interests. Political parties sponsor candidates with like minds and interests, and the party that emerges gets the nod to rule on behalf of all the citizens.

    Of course, each model has its advantages and disadvantages. The first treats citizens as eternal children who can never grow. After all, even our various traditions acknowledge the progression from infancy to adulthood and respect the decisions of adult children of the family to find their own voice and make their own plans. That the family model of the state doesn’t give due recognition to citizens’ rights to question the judgment and actions of the government is one of its most egregious limitations and whatever advantage it garners in terms of the stability it provides is incapable of making up for this anomaly.

    What some may find offensive about the republican state is its raucous character, occasioned by sometimes riotous debate and debilitating factionalisation which could slow down decision-making. Since every interest has the right to be placed on the marketplace of political ideas for acceptance, republican governance doesn’t favour one person or a group, no matter how well-placed, to impose a position on citizens. If this happens, the right to complain cannot be taken away from them.

    In the matter of the power of the President to grant pardon to convicted felons, no one denies the constitutional privilege. The complaint, which the President as a reasonable and intelligent citizen also recognises and presumably appreciates, is that that power and the right come with huge responsibility and precaution against abuse. And when citizens sense a breach of the responsibility, they have the right to register their disapproval without being seen as ungrateful kids.

    Take a quick look at the sensitivity that another privileged individual in the President’s position displayed recently in the matter of presidential responsibility. Former aide to the Vice President of the United States, Lewis Scooter Libby, was convicted for his involvement in the disclosure of the identity of a CIA agent, Ms. Valerie Plame Wilson. On March 6, 2007, Libby was found guilty by a Federal Court. On June 5, 2007, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison. President Bush used his Presidential power and commuted the sentence on July 2, so that Libby did not serve the jail time. However, the fine of $250,000 and the felony conviction remained till today. Libby is still a convicted felon. Bush’s refusal to grant full pardon was born out of his conviction concerning the gravity of the felony committed by Libby. By this decision, he received a full measure of the fury of his party and especially his Vice President. While Bush was rightly chastised by the public on other weighty issues, many believed that he acted right in the matter of Libby, though many liberals wished he didn’t also commute the sentence.

    What can we say about the action of Mr. President, which has been the subject of vibrant media discourse the whole week? The President pardoned individuals who had had a brush with the law at one time or the other. They belonged to different categories. There were the Abacha phantom coup plotters who were believed to have been framed up and wrongly convicted by a phantom court. No one complains against the pardon of those in this category. Indeed, former President Obasanjo, himself, a victim of a wrongful conviction who also received state pardon should have done the right thing during his two terms in office. Jonathan must be applauded for pardoning General Diya and his group.

    There is the other category of individuals convicted of corruption, among which is former Governor of Bayelsa State, Diepreye Alameyeseigha. There are two issues involved. First is the nature of the felony committed by the former governor. It is now too depressing to recount the details of the embarrassment that his arrest in London, his escape and jumping of bail caused Nigerians in general, and Balyesians in particular. Without any remorse, the former governor went back to his gubernatorial palace, praised God for his dramatic escape and life continued. That was until former President Obasanjo bared his fang and the EFCC went after Alam. To the relief of Nigerians, the former governor was arrested, prosecuted, and convicted. So he paid the price. As explained above, so did Scooter Libby.

    Second, there is the issue of the relationship of Mr. President to former Governor Alameyeseigha who was the former boss of the president. A Presidential spokesperson alluded to this relationship which according to him, everyone knows about. It’s as if, we shouldn’t have expected anything less, given the nature of that relationship. As someone who worked well with the President, given him the opportunity to be his deputy, which later translated to his becoming the governor and now the President, he owes Alam the proverbial one. This sad aspect of this reasoning is that it has been the bane of our social and political history. We feel enslaved by primordial instincts and we see our obligations to the country from the blinkers of those instincts. The President acted in good faith with his boss but in bad faith with Nigerians.

    I just claimed that the President acted in bad faith with Nigerians in this matter. This is because they look up to him to lead the struggle against corrupt practices with vigour. Pardoning the epitome of the wrong side of that struggle looks to Nigerians as a sell-out. It isn’t that Alams had not paid the price; it’s simply that pardoning him sets a precedence which cannot be ignored. What about others convicted of felony corruption since Alam? What prevents a new President granting them pardon in ten years? If this becomes a trend, where is the deterrent effect of prosecution and conviction if you know that with good rapport with the President you can receive state pardon? These are the issues which Mr. President and the National Council of State ought to weigh more heavily in their minds.

  • An institutionalised assault on human dignity

    An institutionalised assault on human dignity

    A Commissioner of Police was gunned down just yards from his home. A rising artist was the victim of cult rivalry. Kidnappers are having a field day in all regions of the land. And while Boko Haram still beheads and maims, we are seeking amnesty for the yet unrepentant sect. Even when there are genuinely uplifting stories such as the one that was the subject of this column last week, the disgusting nature of the sad ones can overwhelm. They are the ones that catch the attention of outsiders, including those that we need for investment. Thus Nigeria has again made the United States “travel advisory list” countries. So, while foreign students flock to Ghana on Summer Study Abroad programmes, they would have nothing to do with Nigeria.

    Thomas Hobbes’s social contract theory characterises the state of nature as the hellish situation that motivates the creation of the political state. For him, a political state is morally justified to impose obligations on members because, given the egoistic, calculating, acquisitive and possessive character of human nature, life without such a state would be nasty, brutish, and short. It is in recognition of this tragic reality in the state of nature without political authority that rational human beings would agree to combine their resources to establish a political state with authority.

    A standard textbook critique of Hobbes is that since philosophy is a reflection on experience, and since the only experience that Hobbes had was with his native 17th century England, his theory must be limited in its applicability. And in this part of the world, our first generation political leaders used to remind the Western world of the paradise on earth that was traditional Africa. Leopold Senghor and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere are only two of the most outspoken defenders of an African heaven on earth that was disturbed by the marauding forces of imperialism. They presented the West as the bedrock of individualistic dog-eat-dog mentality.

    Two questions arise: First, how much difference is there between African and Western value systems? Second, are African societies exempt from the state of nature account?

    With regard to the first question, I contend that a genuine comparison of Western and African value systems must take place at the same level: traditional values with traditional values and “modern” values with “modern” values. The traditional is an endangered species in both contexts. Therefore all we have for genuine comparison is the modern version of our value systems. In this, it’s clear that there is no difference in kind between the values that motivate an American in New York and what enervates a Nigerian in Lagos.

    The difference is in the constraint in the way of each. The New Yorker wants what Michael Jordan has. He knows if he tries to ambush MJ to rob him of his property, the law will quickly catch up with him. So he refrains from that option and tries to work hard at improving his basketball skills. Otherwise, he’d just have to limit his ambition. Of course, there are daredevils who would try an ambush and risk going to jail. That’s what prisons are for and there are plenty of them, including the maximum securities.

    On the Nigerian side, while the values are not different, the contexts cannot be more diametrically opposed. The opportunities that exist for the New Yorker are hardly there for the majority of Nigerians. So with similar ambitions, the opportunities are quite dissimilar.

    In such a circumstance, there is a need for even a greater focus on constraints. Make crime so unrewarding that people without opportunities would not be lured into a life of crime. Unfortunately, however, no state in Nigeria has what any of its US counterparts has. In addition to, or perhaps because of the opportunities that are made available for those who care to take advantage, the security system is effective in the US. In Nigeria, however, a state is not in charge and cannot effectively secure itself. Therefore there is little or no check on a would-be criminal in a world without opportunities. This is what the state of nature account depicts: where human nature is as described, and there is no effective authority to constrain individuals, it would be a war of all against all.

    My second question pertains to the applicability of the state of nature account to Nigeria and other African countries. To be sure, Hobbes is not the only contract theorist with an account of the state of nature as its basis. John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau provide their own accounts. But while Locke’s state of nature is not as dire as Hobbes, Rousseau’s is the most idyllic. For Rousseau, the state of nature is a state of peace and innocence; what is missing there is the moral virtue of citizenship. For Locke, the state of nature is a state of peace, where anyone can punish violators of the laws of nature. What is missing is the impartiality of an independent magistrate. Hobbes is the most realistic of the three.

    Hobbes’s realism is in recognising, even as our traditional thinkers do, that no one is beyond criminality if they think they can get away with it. That’s why humans are not saints. This is why, wherever human life is valued, and human dignity is respected, it is protected against abuse by a code of laws that is systematically enforced.

    Cultism is alive and well in Nigeria. We even idolise the cultists and we are not ashamed of the implications for the country’s profile of sharing horrific images of their decapitation in the hands of rivals on the front pages of our national newspapers. A state governor made a succinct observation early this week on the pattern. Two days later a national paper featured another grisly image of the shattered face of a human being.

    We may pretend as we want; but there is no denying the fact that our present situation is that of a genuine state of nature unlike any that the philosophers imagined. In another pathetic narrative, a woman who lost three children to Boko Haram gunmen who also forced her into widowhood overnight recently brought tears to the faces of prominent men and women. They wondered what kind of a people we are and what kind of nation would allow the dignity of humans to be so sullied. We have resources to squander but not enough to provide security for citizens. This is contrary to reason. But reason assumes we value human life; the truth is that we don’t.

    Which brings me to the question: What values do we really espouse? Does it make sense for us to continue to demean Western individualistic values when we don’t even approximate the value Westerners place on human lives? We do not make provisions for bringing our children to their God-given potentials. We neglect the aged and the homeless; and we make no provision for widows while those without children are on their own. Poverty eradication programmes for the poor have become wealth enhancing programmes for the rich. Our religions place premium on the poor. But our clerics now preach the gospel of wealth; and so, armed bandits and assassins prowl for their own share, without restraint.

    Who will save us from our home-grown inhumanity and devastating assault on human dignity? Who will offer the Change that we desperately need?

  • Greatness in our future

    Greatness in our future

    It is undoubtedly very easy to give in to despair. You work hard with little to show for it, and very soon you convince yourself that cruel fate is at work. Just as it is for an individual, so it is for a collective. The narrative of the past fifty-two years, which has almost always been about the avoidable road bumps that characterise our journey as a nation, would appear to justify a pessimistic outlook on life. What with an inept and ego-driven leadership and a wretched and submissive followership always content on the crump from the table?

    A leadership without the proverbial fire in the belly cannot dream greatness for the nation. A followership that resigns itself to the hopelessness sanctified by a fatalistic belief system cannot be the gadfly that leadership needs. And so we trudge on aimlessly and despondently, leading ourselves to believe that there is no greatness in our future.

    That is, until such a time when one or a few of us defiantly challenge the tale that we tell about ourselves and inspire us to unlock the door of greatness in us and uncover the greatness in our future. They ask of that which is not, why it is not and then call upon the deep that inheres in them to bring it into existence.

    Great leaders who leave behind enduring legacies work at greatness. They are disciplined and well-focused. They have no room for small-mindedness. They are dreamers. The greatest need of our society, the most good we can do for its perpetuation, is to understand the psychology of the dreamers and visionaries among us and create more of them.

    Regrettably, we have taken a different path, choosing to reward mediocrity and honour small-mindedness. Even the honour and merit systems we designed are crumbling under the weight of political and bureaucratic incompetence. We not only disparage high-achievers in positions of leadership, we also endeavor to ruin the reputation they build over a lifetime of commitment to goodness. Think of the Golden Era of the West and the inspirational leadership that wrought it.

    These thoughts overwhelmed me as I read about the Eko Atlantic City Project and there comes gushing in an exciting stream of hope that the spirit of the 50s is once again beckoning us to greater heights. The first skyscraper was built with a similar vision. So was the first Olympic style stadium. And virgin land was turned into an industrial estate. What the visionaries of the day saw as the greatness of our future, detractors saw as wastage of resources. And now we are reliving the same old intriguing tale of vision versus blindness, foresight versus shortsightedness.

    The Eko Atlantic City initiative by the Lagos State Government under the visionary leadership of Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola is becoming a reality even in our lifetime. The project, continuing the tradition of Public-Private Partnership for development, which the state government has launched in other areas, including transportation, has been described as an engineering marvel. Former United States President Bill Clinton saw it as “an ingenious engineering feat” and excitedly predicted that “there will be countless numbers of people coming here to study (it).” And for President Goodluck Jonathan, “Eko Atlantic City is bringing us happiness.” So the happiness that this project generates is supposed to be a bi-partisan one. We should all be in celebratory mood in a renewed hope for a changing narrative. Why?

    The pride and celebration that Eko Atlantic City project warrants is not just because it is a gigantic project. I can think of two more fundamental reasons. First, in the midst of our national malaise, with our disproportionate share of angst, we are now able to point to such “an ingenious engineering feat” as Bill Clinton describes it, coming out of the vision of an indigenous leadership. It is redemptive. It is a spirit-uplifting narrative.

    Second, there is a more practical reason. While the project has been described in idealistic terms, we must not forget the pragmatic dimensions that make it a worthwhile investment. Lagos has an estimated population of more than 15 million people and still growing. As a typical African population without the sense or discipline of population control, with a projected rate of growth of 2.7 per cent, Lagos is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. Sound planning demands that adequate account be taken of the pain that comes with growing and appropriate steps taken to cushion its impact. With a projected 250, 000 homes and offices on 10 million square meters of reclaimed land, this engineering feat, and idealistic city project is also a practical solution to a real problem.

    In spite of the tangibility of its projected results, and the happiness that, in the words of the President, the project is bringing us, not everyone is in the mood for celebration. In a rather caustic statement, the Lagos State branch of the PDP accused the state government of misplaced priorities with respect to the Eko Atlantic project. The party, well aware of the praises from President Jonathan and former president Clinton, implied that both presidents were simply ignorant about the intentions of Governor Fashola and his ACN administration. According to media reports, the PDP suggested that the reclamation of the beach was only done for selfish reasons.

    Not being a utilitarian myself, I can see where the theory makes sense in this kind of context. What has motive got to do with this? Assume that Babatunde Fashola was motivated by self-interest, the question is whether the end result of the policy that he has put in place benefits the greatest number of people. And while the answer to this kind of question cannot be fully known prior to the full implementation of the policy, a utilitarian would argue that we have history as reference. We cannot wait until after the fact to make a determination. If we do, we would never know what to do. The question is whether this kind of action or policy has the tendency to promote the most good. And the answer is yes, it does. And the Presidents are right.

    Let us then celebrate our collective achievements in a bi-partisan spirit. Let us applaud the creative genius and the visionary leadership that gives us something that we “can be very proud of” even as we look forward to the successful completion of the project.

  • An Olu Omo @60

    An Olu Omo @60

    This weekend I go back to Houston, Texas. Followers of the adventures of Egbe Omo Yoruba, North America and its struggle for democratic norms in this nation, may recall that it was in Houston that this organisation was first introduced into the consciousness of Nigerians with its Houston Declaration of 1997. With that declaration, the organisation resolved to, among others, “adopt a Yoruba flag and anthem in return to the tradition of regional autonomy in the years before the first military coup in Nigeria; work for a constitutional arrangement and political restructuring in which the Yoruba nation, along with other nationalities in Nigeria, has an unfettered autonomy that will advance the development of Yoruba civilisation as well as those of other nationalities; and use all legitimate mental and material resources of Yoruba people world-wide to advance the realisation of cultural, economic, and political autonomy for the Yoruba within the context of a multiethnic Nigerian democratic state.”

    Note that the spirit of the declaration was consistent with the practice of a true federal structure and nothing in it could be rationally interpreted as a threat to the unity of the nation. But of course, irrationality ruled the minds of those in control of the levers of power in those days. And the emphasis of the Houston Declaration on regional autonomy and political restructuring, regional flag and anthem hit the Nigerian military rulers and their civilian allies like a thunderbolt. They cried foul and threatened fire and brimstone. The Egbe rubbed it in with series of activities including launching the Yoruba Radio, Ijinle Ohun Odua. A number of individuals raised the bar of loyalty to that cause and served as the catalyst for whatever success was attributable to Egbe Omo Yoruba today. I go back to Houston this weekend to honour one of those individuals.

    Olu is his name; if you prefer its full length, Oluwamuyiwafunwa, (God brought this one to us). That was how his parents saw him as they welcomed the bundle of joy into their world sixty years ago. What they saw in his half-opened eyes on that day, we all can attest to sixty years later. As they acknowledged him then, we all do today. For we all see in Olu McGinnis Otubusin what God has brought to us-the love and care of a husband and father, the loyalty of a friend, the compassion of a boss, the professionalism of a learned gentleman, and the dependability of a comrade. In short we see in Olu an Omoluabi to the core.

    Naming in Africa, especially in Yorubaland, is a special gift that the ancestors as progenitors of the nation bestowed on the elders. Names have meaning, and as they would have us believe, names push their bearers to actualise their encoded meanings. (Oruko a maa ro omo). So you don’t find any Yoruba parent giving to their babies names that embed evil meanings.

    God never brings evil to His creatures and in the case of Olumuyiwa Otubusin, what God brought to us has been goodness personified.

    I first met Olu in January 1995 at the second Convention of Egbe Omo Yoruba in Los Angeles in the thick of the struggle for the redemption of our dear country. We were all passionate about the cause. We wanted the military out of our lives. We were embarrassed by the guts of the uniformed folks in annulling an election that was adjudged the freest and fairest in the history of the country. We wanted to restore democracy and shame the military. The meeting was a success as decisions were made to move forward with the struggle.

    As in every such event, however, you cannot rule out self-serving posturing. There were too many lizards lying on their bellies. I am reminded of the story that was once popularised by D. O. Fagunwa in Irinkerindo Ninu Igbo Elegbeje. The story was one of three stories that Irinkerindo claimed to have been told by Itandiran. It was the story of Ega (palm-bird) who had built her nest on a corn stem in a large corn farm and kept her babies in. One morning as she set out to look for food for the babies, she instructed them to listen carefully to the conversation between the farmer and his children regarding when they would harvest the corns. Back in the evening, the babies told her that the farmer had sent for his friends to help him the following day. Responding to this news, mother Ega was unperturbed. She told her babies to relax because the farmer’s friends will not show up. And they didn’t. The following day the babies gave another report. This time the farmer had sent for his relatives. Still, mother Ega was unmoved. This went on for days until finally the babies reported to their mother that they heard the farmer resolve that he himself would harvest his corns the following day. It was only then mother Ega panicked and moved her babies to another farm.

    The story is about dependability and trust. You’ve heard it: there are untrustworthy friends. Relatives are undependable. Comrades may betray you. But if you have the gift of discernment, you could tell. While the passion of a speech may not help, there is always something within that finds its way out in action. With Olu, it wasn’t long before a number of us discovered that fire in his belly. After the meeting, Olu called daily to make one suggestion or the other. He volunteered resources. It was clear to us that this young man was going to be a great asset to the efforts.

    Indeed, the Houston chapter couldn’t have had the longevity that it does without the committed leadership of Olu Otubusin. As few as the membership was, there was a cohesiveness of ideas and consistency of practical action in support of the cause of the larger Egbe.

    I can attest that Olu is a friend that does not disappoint; he is one that fulfills his promises; he is a professional that stands by his clients, and he is a comrade that doesn’t put his interests ahead of the group and the cause. I appreciate his dependability; I respect his intellect; I adore his selflessness; I am amazed at his generosity of spirit; I stand in awe of his humility; and above all, I applaud his Godliness. As the Word has it, there is a lot of reward for the Godly and contented. For Olu, the reward is certain.

    It was at the Houston Convention that I was elected President of the Egbe Omo Yoruba, serving from 1997 to 1999. It was in the thick of the struggle when we had to deploy all resources to fight the aggressors and defend our people. Olu was in the cabinet as the Legal Secretary. He put everything he got into the activities of the Egbe and more. He was behind every decision. He was relentless in his advocacy for the cause. In 1999, he took over as President and carried the Egbe to greater heights. When I chose to retire from active participation, I confided in him and he understood and agreed to stay on to ensure that the struggles of those years didn’t come to naught.

    For the Yoruba, Omoluabi is the height and depth of good character. Olu Omo is the one that stands out in the family and among friends as the epitome of courage, decency, generosity, charitableness and friendliness. Olu Otubusin is an Olu Omo. I salute him on his 60th birthday and welcome him to the club. Igba odun, odun kan. Ire owo, Ire omo, Ire aiku pari iwa. Ase.

  • A progressive agenda

    A progressive agenda

    With the announced merger of four political parties, there is a renewal of our hope in the political stability of the nation. We have to thank the leaders who put aside their private interests in pursuit of the nation’s interest.

    In a democracy, there must be a viable opposition that can stand as a viable alternative to the party in power. This is true of a parliamentary system as it is of a presidential system. Where there is a proliferation of splinter groups competing for the support of the people against a massive well-oiled single party that intimidates with its network of the mighty and powerful, the outcome is predictable. We can expect avoidable instability in the system as groups and individuals move in and out of splinter groups to seek out their fortunes elsewhere. With a system of two or three strong political parties, aspirants presented by such parties for national offices know that they have as good a chance as any other candidate.

    In another more important sense, however, the announced merger also renews the hope of progressives that the principles and ideals they live for finally have a good chance of not only gaining national attention but of also serving as the policy direction of the national government. Of course, there is still a long way to go and many treacherous rivers to cross with externally-induced intrigues and internally generated crisis to contend with. So we are well-advised not to count our chicken before the hatching of the eggs. Still there is hope and we must keep it alive.

    Were the merger to sail through and the nay-sayers shamed, the question that readily comes to mind must be how the new party must differentiate itself from the old Leviathan, the self-acclaimed largest party in Africa. For starters, the new party cannot afford to be known just for that kind of title without having anything to show for it. It is tantamount to having the title of the king of vultures without the ability to hunt for a chicken.

    The size of an entity, whether it is a political party, an academic institution, or a social club, cannot by itself be the standard for judging its efficacy. There are good-for-nothing behemoths. This is where the name that it has chosen to be known by must be the basis of its being, and the motivation for its actions and policies. An All Progressives Congress must embrace a progressive agenda as its article of faith and stick to it with religious fervor. If it does, it can be sure of winning the hearts and souls of the masses, and with this, it can be assured of victory at the polls.

    All things being equal, there is really little or no magic to a party or a leader’s acceptance by the people. Understand their challenges, feel their pains, make visible efforts to offer efficacious relief without demeaning them, and you can become their hero. The most recent example for us is the last presidential elections in the United States. While the masses perceive one party as the party of hope with an empathetic understanding of their plight, they saw the other as hostile and out of touch. Thus even with a high unemployment rate and a depressing economic outlook, there was an unprecedented turn out of voters for the man and the party they believed understood their condition and was adjudged best to deal with it.

    I am the first to admit that all things are not equal, but it is only a difference of degree not of kind. Recall that in many jurisdictions, American electorates had to overcome human-made hurdles in order to cast their ballots. Voters patiently stood in line for six hours to cast their ballots. A 102 year-old woman was on queue for four hours. The wealthiest democracy is still in search of the solution to election malpractices. The point worth noting is that the people are always going to be the ultimate decision makers in terms of who governs them. And no matter how much funds are disbursed, if they do not believe that a party or candidate shares their interest, they are more than likely to reject such party or candidate.

    A progressive agenda is necessarily a populist agenda and it is a winning agenda not just for the party or candidate in a selfish way, but also for the nation. On the latter, we have the example of how a region excelled in the fifties even as the colonisers made efforts to frustrate the agenda. Focusing like a laser beam on the education of the youth enables a government to invest in the human resources that are going to take on the challenges in all other areas. The policy yielded visible dividends. We can do it again and we can do it for the entire country. Our present structure that privileges the centre in the distribution of resources does not make it possible for the regions or states, which are nearest to the people, to fully implement all the ideas embedded in a progressive agenda. Thus while the progressive governors are doing their best with the resources available to them, it would make a lot of difference if a progressive party were to control the central government.

    The priorities of such a government would include huge investment in education that would see the country moving away from a paltry 0.85% education expenditure as a percentage of Gross National Income (GNI) and a ranking of 167 out of 168 in the world. We must improve on our public spending on education as a percentage of GDP. Of course, there are competing demands in health, power, transportation and road development, and employment. But no one can deny that all these are related and investment in education must have a domino effect on every other. A progressive party must understand and articulate the connectedness and champion policies that are implementable for the overall good of the masses.

    The experience of the country thus far is that the privileged minority have had their backs covered by various administrations at the centre since independence. And the masses have had to depend on the good will and charitable disposition of the powerful. An All Progressive Congress that hopes to take control of destiny of the nation in the centre must have an agenda to reverse this course and in doing so undo the curse of human tragedy that has been the lot of the nation.

  • Family involvement in education

    Family involvement in education

    In the past several weeks, I have argued for the need to bet on our innocent children whom we voluntarily choose to bring into the world. I submit that we bet on them when we create a future that is worthy of them and the country which they in turn can be proud to call theirs. We create that future by investing in their education from the cradle so that from the first time they open their eyes, they see a nation that cares and educates, just as they behold the love of an extended family of mother, father, siblings, uncles, aunties and grandparents who first welcome them with loving hands and cheerful faces. Today, I discuss how this initial joy of welcoming a new member of the family must lead to a lifetime of involvement in the education of that original bundle of joy.

    The idea, popularised by former First Lady, former Senator and now former United States Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, that it takes a village to raise a child is originally an African belief and no indigenous African brought up in the tradition of the ancestors can escape its practical import. We come from social settings in which any older person in the village, whether a blood relation or not, has the traditional authority to discipline you so you don’t bring the village into disrepute and so that you don’t cause yourself avoidable harm. We all have stories of great uncles who are more fearful than our fathers. But more to the point, we have cases of perfect strangers who, on account of their consideration of our best interests, may choose their own way of bringing us back to our senses. I have one such story, which weaves together in an interesting way, the elements of my thoughts for today.

    It was my last year in the elementary school, the Okeho Literary Society—a group of young men and women who had advanced in the education ladder—put together a program of after-school study group to prepare us for the final regional examination, the Primary School Leaving Certificate Examination. My cousin, Iyabo Ojeleye and I were enrolled by our parents. On our way to the evening class one day, we chose to walk by a fence littered with broken bottles. Unbeknown to us, Mr. Longe, the local pharmacist, sitting by his shop had been watching us. Now Mr. Longe wasn’t an indigene of Okeho. However, having been persuaded that we were endangering our lives, he knew what to do. He secured a horsewhip hanging on his door, and as we neared his shop, he pulled up his almost 7-foot body frame, with the horse whip in hand and shouted at us: e fee foju ara yin sera yin? (“do you want to hurt yourselves?”) Iyabo has been a sprinter all her life and before I knew what was going on, she had left me behind. I too managed to escape. But of course, the matter had been reported to our parents and what we escaped in the hands of Mr. Longe, we eventually received in the hands of Papa. Later in life, Isaac, Mr. Longe’s son, was one of my very good students in every respect, an outcome that I attributed to good family background and parental involvement.

    The event that I just recalled is narrated to underscore the point of this discourse. First, it takes a village to raise a child. But second, as our people also understand, there has to be a demarcation of ownership in a matter of joint property. Parents have to take effective ownership of family responsibility in the education of children. And this has always been our tradition even in the pre-colonial days when our focus was on practical education for skills that were considered essential for a successful life—farming, trading, crafts, and family professions. Parents secured apprenticeship for their children, and developed good relationships with the masters training their kids. And when “western education” was introduced, in spite on their deficit in that area of knowledge, many parents understood that the future of their wards was in the hands of the teacher and the school. So they got involved in various ways.

    My father was a self-taught reader and writer and was always proud when he would converse with me in English in the presence of his friends. In my student days away from home, I always enjoyed reading his letters in what I thought then was an archaic cursive writing until my children had to learn cursive in the elementary school in the United States. My friend, Bisi Adesola’s father, and my father became close on account of our education. They never missed a Parent-Teacher Association meeting and, interestingly, even after each of us had left the schools, they would still attend those meetings. For them, just as there are student alumni, there are parent alumni with responsibilities to be involved.

    I followed my father’s lead almost to a fault. While he had no choice but to let me leave home for higher education, since there was no secondary school or secondary modern school in Okeho after my completion of the elementary school, I had a choice, and my wife and I decided in favour of keeping our children close to us. All our children gained admission to the popular Unity Schools when those schools were supposed to be the best. But we decided that they would be better off with us if we were actively involved in their schooling. We chose to be active in the Parent-Teachers Association of Moremi High School, Ile-Ife, a public school located on the campus of Obafemi Awolowo University. I served as the Chairman for a couple of years. I knew that the school had a dedicated staff led by Deacon J. A. Ogunwuyi who is now a proprietor of his own school. And of course, my children still tell tales of how hard it was for them in the house when they had to study for several hours a day. The point is that a school is what its clientele makes it and these include the teachers and the parents.

    The literature on parental involvement in education is convincing. There is copious evidence that when the family is actively involved in the education of their children, it has a positive influence on the achievement of the children not only in school but throughout life because it enables them, not only to do well in examinations and earn good grades, but also to develop better social skills which help them in life. Initiating and nurturing family involvement in the education of children is a double-lane approach by parents and schools because there is a lot at stake for both but certainly more for the parents. A school where accountability is taken seriously and where there are consequences for failure would leave no stone unturned in getting all hands on the deck for successful students outcomes. On the other hand, parents know that the future of their kids, and their own happiness and peace of mind are at stake. They therefore have a lot more reason to get involved. Careers are important, but as the elders remind us, the probability is very high that a child that is inadvertently let untrained and unskilled may end up destroying whatever legacy an illustrious career has succeeded in building.

    Surely, not all parents have the patience, skills, or self-confidence that are essential to an effective involvement on all fronts. A parent may not be able to offer direct help for a child’s home work. This is where the entire family structure has to be deployed. We pride ourselves as communal in orientation. We create the phenomenon of aso-ebi. And as I recalled above, it has also been our tradition for community organisations to get involved in the education of their members. What it requires is a new orientation that privileges the very idea of community which our urban-centered individualism has jettisoned. Then what one lacks, others can supply and together we can build a new coalition of committed family and community for the education of our children.

  • Teacher quality and student outcome

    Teacher quality and student outcome

    The four most crucial pieces indispensable to the all-important task of educating our children include the parent, the government, the teacher, and the student. My comments in the last four weeks have focused on the government and its responsibility to educate citizens. Last week, I dealt with the need for a public-private partnership for which the public sector has to provide leadership and direction. Some may be troubled by the disproportionate focus on government in this matter. After all, parents who brought children in the world ought to be responsible for their upbringing, and some are against the provision of free education at any level precisely on the basis of such reasoning. I think that they are wrong but I will not pause to pursue this argument here. Today, I take on one of the other pieces in the puzzle, namely the teacher.

    I should start with a confession. Having been a teacher all my life, I have a bias in favour of the profession because I have not had a sustained experience of any other. One of the greatest joys of a teacher is to be pulled aside by a former student who you now don’t remember and who has apparently done well, and be reminded that you were his or her teacher. This is why, for me, student outcome is the most important affirmation of the teacher’s success. The joy of a teacher, the motivator-in-chief, is the achievement of his or her students. I see myself in the accomplishment of the students that pass through me and that is why I make extra efforts, many times beyond the call of duty and at the expense of personal welfare, to ensure that my students have the quality of instruction from me that puts them in the path of success. This was what I received from my teachers. It is what teaching is about.

    Teaching is often referred to as the noble profession. If education is about molding the nation, the teacher is the most important molder and the nation’s children are the clay. If we continue with the metaphor of the potter and the clay, it is instructive to note that the quality of the pottery depends on the quality of the potter. Is the potter knowledgeable in what she does? Is she patient? Is her aesthetic sense so trained that she appreciates beauty and pursues it? Then the works of her hands should be of high quality. So it is with the teacher as the potter of the nation.

    As I went through my first training as a Grade III teacher, I was exposed to a large number of literatures on teacher preparation. In 1962, Randall Butisingh, a life-long teacher, wrote that a “teacher must know that he or she is teaching, not only a subject, but a child. A good teacher, by his or her methods will be able to motivate the pupil, waken his interest, and arouse his curiosity. Teachers can make learning pleasant. They must exhibit energy, enthusiasm and cheerfulness, and never cease to learn themselves. A teacher who ceases to learn becomes irrelevant.” This last point cannot be stated more forcefully. And the question is,” what is the state of our teacher preparation?” And “what is the quality of our teacher cadre?”

    If we take education seriously, and if the future success of our children, and thus of our nation is important to us, then it must be reflected in the emphasis that we place on teacher preparation and teacher quality. This is not just a task for the government; it is equally the task of the teacher’s union. And it is the focus of attention and efforts in nations that we have considered advanced in the matter of educational attainments.

    The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) recently released a report on teacher preparation and teacher quality. In her foreword to the report titled “Raising the Bar: Aligning and elevating teacher preparation and the teaching profession,” Randi Weingarten, AFT President comes out forcefully against what she refers to as a “common rite of passage, whereby newly minted teachers are tossed the keys to their classrooms, expected to figure things out, and left to see if they (and their students) sink or swim. Such a haphazard approach to the complex and crucial enterprise of educating children is wholly inadequate. It’s unfair to both students and teachers, who want and need to be well-prepared to teach from their first day on the job.” In the case of this country, we are worse off. For what we do is toss our classroom keys to anyone—trained or not—and we leave them to see if they and their students sink or swim. How many of our classroom teachers are trained teachers? How many have adequate (not to talk of superior) knowledge of the subjects they teach?

    It is interesting to note that the AFT is the professional organisation of teachers in the United States. It doesn’t see itself as just a trade organisation only interested in the struggle for the welfare of its members. It also recognises that as a professional organisation, it has to worry about its end product—the student outcome. This is why it insists on “raising the bar” of the teaching profession. Consider the following recommendations from the organisation: First, it recommends that the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards must take the leading role in bringing together all stakeholders to define a “rigorous entry bar for beginning teachers, just as it has established a process for becoming an accomplished board-certified teacher.”

    Second, the AFT recommends an entry bar for the profession that must include “rigorous preparation” and “a demonstration of teaching ability through performance assessment.” Third, it recommends that the “process of establishing the bar and ensuring its professional standards are maintained should involve all stakeholders but be driven by teachers and teacher educators.” In other words, what AFT is recommending for the teaching profession is akin to what lawyers and physicians have in place for their professions. No lawyer is allowed to practice unless he or she passes the Bar. No doctor is allowed to practice unless he or she is certified by the Board of Physicians.

    The Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has the responsibility to move the teaching profession forward not by standing in the way of reasonable standards but by leading the effort to improve teacher standard and thus student outcome. Some recent stories on positions taken by the NUT against specific actions of state governments suggest a rethinking of the organisation on its role as the champion of the noble profession. In one such story, the Bauchi State chapter of the organisation went on strike for three weeks in protest against the decision of the state government to “send about 5,000 unqualified teachers back to school.” If it was established that these 5,000 were truly unqualified, and they were being sent back to school for proper qualification, why would an organisation that promotes quality teaching protest such a decision? And why would the union stand against continuous evaluation and assessment of the classroom effectiveness of teachers through periodic testing?

    Surely, governments need to work with the NUT and other professional organisations in coming up with policy measures for the improvement of teaching in our schools. But in the final analysis, it is the responsibility of the government, as the custodian of the public trust, to promote quality education through appropriate policies to ensure successful students outcome.

  • The national interest in education

    The national interest in education

    Last week, I raised and addressed the question, “how have our contemporary society fared with regard to discharging the grave responsibility to educate its offspring?” The question presupposes an affirmation of the society’s responsibility to educate. For it is only with that presumption that we have reason to evaluate its performance in discharging that responsibility. The presumption is not difficult to defend, as I did two years ago.

    “While the provision of good education is just one of the many functions of a government, it is one that is central to the challenges of any nation including that of violent disturbances that have overrun African nations since independence.

    “Education is central in several respects. It gives an individual a sense of self-esteem and self-respect. It gives an assurance that he or she can make a contribution to the society. It is a mind-opener enabling the individual to see the many aspects of the complexity of the human predicament. Even when an educated person is a radical critic of the establishment, he or she can make relevant distinctions, giving the proverbial Caesar his due. Above all, a good education stands an individual in good stead to see other human beings for what they are as humans with inviolable dignity. It is this ability to make distinctions and to move back and assess from a judicious perspective, and to bring to an issue a sense of proportion that prevents an educated person from engaging in senseless acts of genocide.

    “Surely, history is replete with highly educated persons that have led their nations in genocidal campaigns. Hitler is the most famous. I do not deny the eccentricity that even good education can produce. What I deny is that such is common or rampant. What is common is for a few educated eccentrics to mobilise and use mobs of less educated or uneducated gangs with less hope for their future and virtually no self-esteem. This is the common phenomenon. A person with good education who is dissatisfied with her position can channel her frustration to useful purposes and will not be easily cajoled into regrettable path. A frustrated person with no functional education is an easy prey for rabble rousers. It’s just a fact of life borne out of our experiences. Politicians know better.”

    Now, while there may be a tiny minority of the leadership cadre that does not share the foregoing reasoning, I am pretty sure that most leaders appreciate it and they are very passionate about the responsibility of society to educate its citizens. But when we look at our national score card, it’s pretty grim. And it doesn’t just exist in research reports; it’s out there in the street corners of our downtowns and inner cities in the sea of heads that we contemplate every day. How the spectacle doesn’t prick our conscience and we are unmoved by the obvious irreparable damage to human dignity is mind-boggling.

    For the majority of those who care, the issue has always been the scarcity of resources. This is no doubt true. Ours is a nation that appreciates the joy of large families. Whether from a religious or cultural perspective, we cannot see ourselves imposing limitations on the reproductive freedom of citizens and so, we rightly leave the choice of reproduction to individuals and families. I think it’s the correct policy. What comes with it, however, is an adequate planning that enables us to project for the needs of those children for their first twenty one years of life, that is, from elementary to tertiary education.

    Of course, while such planning and projection may tell us what we need in terms of resources, they are not substitutes for those resources. In other words, with adequate planning, we may come to know that in 2023, we would need ten trillion naira to provide good primary education for the nation’s children. We still have to source for those funds and start doing so right now. It is the nation that has to do the planning, the projection, and the search for the funds, even when it is clear that the public sector cannot do it all alone.

    The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Article 18, states that (1) “Government shall direct its policy towards ensuring that there are equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels. 2. Government shall promote science and technology. 3. Government shall strive to eradicate illiteracy; and to this end Government shall as and when practicable provide (a) free, compulsory and universal primary education; free secondary education; free university education; and free adult literacy programme.” We have the constitutional provision; we must summon the vision and the will to effectively implement it.

    Statistics don’t lie and ours go a long way to demonstrate the correlation between the underdevelopment of the mind and the pathetic underdevelopment of the nation. Eight years ago in 2005, education expenditure in Nigeria as a percentage of Gross National Income (GNI) was 0.85%. As a result, the country was ranked 167 out of 168 in the world. In comparison, Brazil’s education expenditure was 4.09% of GNI with a ranking of 83. Nigeria’s public spending on education as a percentage of GDP was 0.89%, with a ranking of 136th out of 136. While the duration of our compulsory education is 6 years, Brazil’s is 8 years. Of course, it is needless to add that we do not enforce the 6 year-rule in any way and we have a majority of under-6 who never attend school. While we rank 104 in the completion rate of primary education, Brazil ranks 13. While our adult literacy rate is 48%, Brazil’s is 82%. (NationMaster.com)

    What Nigeria fails to put into the education of her citizens, she cannot expect to get out of the economy. Thus while the number of Brazilians living with under $1 a day is 11.6 million, with a ranking of 44th in the world, Nigeria has 70.2 million living with less than $1 a day and a ranking of 2nd in terms of poverty. In other words, Nigeria enjoys the infamy of ranking 2nd in the incidence of poverty. While Brazil has 1.82% share of world’s poor, Nigeria has 8.03%; and while the Human Development Index of Brazil is 0.792, with a ranking of 63rd, that of Nigeria is 0.452 with a ranking of 159th. (NationMaster.com). It is the whirlwind that is naturally stirred up by these grim statistics that we experience on our streets on a daily basis.

    While public education suffers neglect, private education blossoms because government has outsourced its responsibility to educate its citizens. When officials at the highest level of government applaud private education, assessing it as the model to embrace, it appears that the nation has lost an important moral bearing. Private investment in education cannot be and has never been altruistically motivated. The closest to altruism in motivation were old mission institutions. But we always knew that they had their primary mission (no pun intended) which was not necessarily the national interest. On the other hand, individual private entrepreneurs in education have never been ambiguous in their mission, which is to fill the gap created by the inaction of the state and in doing so, make some profit.

    The reasoning in the preceding paragraph is not to suggest that all private involvement in the education of the public is ill-motivated or to be discouraged. What it means is that the public sector must be the driver of the nation’s educational vehicle, and public schools must take the lead. There is room for public-private partnership in every aspect of national life, including education. However, the cart of private initiative must not be allowed to pull the horse of national interest in citizen education. For the nation, like the individual, is the best source and judge of its interests.

  • The nation and the education of the public

    The nation and the education of the public

    Last week, I ended my comments with a reference to Nyerere’s idea of the purpose of education, which, for him was to transmit from one generation to the next the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the society, and to prepare the young people for their future membership of the society and their active participation in its maintenance or development. I then suggested that traditional communities of old paid serious attention to this important area of their responsibilities within the scope of the resources—tangible and intangible—available to them. And I suggested that we must ask ourselves a pertinent question: “how have our contemporary societies fared with regard to the discharge of this grave responsibility?” Today, I deal with this question.

    Let me first try to explain and defend the view that traditional societies paid attention to the responsibility to educate, which again, is simply preparing the young people that society brings into its world for meaningful membership of the society and for active participation in its maintenance and development.

    Whatever little doubt there is about the theory of a fundamental selfishness in the motivation of individuals and societies for wanting children and bringing them into the world is removed if we pay close attention to the very idea of reproduction, which connotes the act of producing again the same entity. We want to reproduce ourselves because we crave immortality. Bina ba ku a feeru boju. Bogede ku a fomo e ropo. Death must not be final; there must be continuity. This was and still is the understanding of traditional communities. This is why individual families and communities at large would always place a premium on preparing their young for their future membership of the society so they can carry on; so families and communities do not suffer extinction.

    The preparation of the young, which is what education is about, takes different forms but with the same goal and objective. Thus families prepare their young to take over the traditional role that the family is identified with in the community. Music making, crafts making, hunting guild, and healing are activities for which particular families are known and the children of such families just grow into the activities and thus maintain the horizontal division of labor within the society.

    A second but complimentary approach to preparing the young is the transmission of the family’s and society’s values of the dignity of labor, honesty, self-respect and dependability. No family wants its family name put to shame through the actions of any of its sons and daughters. Preparing the young for membership of the society is arming them against the disease of shamelessness. Note that preparation for the acquisition of material possession has nothing to do with this philosophy of education. The major goal is for the values of society to be transmitted and sustained, that everyone is empowered to make meaningful contributions to the society, and that the society is thereby primed for perpetuity.

    The foregoing enables us to understand why none of the samplers of our traditional communities boasted of overly rich or overly poor people. And in none of those societies did we ever have loafers and idlers. This is not romanticism. There was the full engagement of every member of the traditional communities in one form of activity or another. That was the outcome of the system of traditional education. Thus, unless during festivals, it would be very unusual to behold a sea of heads in the central square of any traditional village community, roaming about aimlessly and hopelessly.

    Ponder then over the present condition of our downtowns, inner cities and urban communities and ask yourself the question: “how have our contemporary societies fared in the grave responsibility of preparing the young for meaningful membership of the society and for its maintenance and development?” And the answer is not in doubt: Our contemporary record has been woeful and absolutely not comparable with the achievements of traditional society in the education of the young.

    Surely, we cannot compare apples and oranges, it might be argued. The world of traditional society was/is parochial and closed, with little or no ambition. The transformation of that world into the modern nation-state is something to appreciate and celebrate. But with that transformation come the difficulties of reconciling different outlooks and mobilising opposing forces. The fact that our own particular mode of transformation was mediated by foreign forces, which had little to no regard for the antecedent value orientation did not help matters. Indeed, it may be noted that, through the instrumentalities of those foreign forces, we moved away from the traditional notion of education as preparation for meaningful membership in society to one that emphasises the goal of individual advancement.

    I am not persuaded by the kind of defence of failure that is represented in the preceding paragraph. The point is this: whether we accept the traditional conception of education as preparation of the young for a meaningful membership in the society or we affirm the so-called foreign mediated version that sees education as the promotion of individual advancement, our contemporary efforts have failed to produce results. We have failed to prepare the majority of our young for meaningful membership of society and we have not quite succeeded in putting the majority of them on the ladder of individual advancement. In fact, I don’t see a serious conflict between the two conceptions. A young person that is successfully prepared for individual advancement does not thereby stop being a meaningful member of society provided he or she is not ego-centric or ego-driven.

    The caveat just entertained is the crux of the matter. There is a shortsighted mentality that views individual advancement in clearly egocentric terms and it is represented in the majority of those who took over from the foreign forces. To this group, the good of the self takes precedence over the good of the whole and their educational policies reflect this mindset. That was why even in our nation, it took the courage and foresightedness of only one regional leader to uphold and argue the view that human beings are the most important resource and must be the subject of societal and national investment so they can become meaningful members of society.

    This philosophical position was then combined with a visionary planning that ensures that the policy of Universal Free Primary Education (UFPE) was successful. Teacher training, schools construction and classroom space were prioritised. Additionally provision was made for the products of the UFPE to proceed to post primary institutions with the establishment of secondary modern schools and technical and trade schools. This was why the phenomenon of area boys was a rare occurrence in the fifties and sixties.

    That vision has only been furthered in a few progressive islands that dot the ocean of intellectual and political stupor that makes up our national existence. And it is not a surprise that our young ones are hopeless and aimless. We brought them into the world without a plan for their becoming meaningful members of society. We don’t seem to have a clue as to how to make provision for the masses of drop outs from every level of the system so they don’t become useless to themselves. And the ones that make it through the systems become despondent because they have no jobs and they have no means of self-employment. Until we come to the realisation that the nation must educate its public for meaningful existence, we will continue to live with the consequences of our collective denial.