A focus today on what I call social engineering and have the cheek to give my own definition of that . It is a way of interest groups in society at large trying to mould their society to reflect their way of life and values and getting political power to boot . That surmises the three concepts that form the topic of the day and I will illustrate with examples from our Great Nigeria , Germany and the so called champion of democracy , the USA .
In Nigeria there is an accepted gap in education between the North and the South and that is the genesis of our national character syndrome and the zoning political accouterment . If federal positions in government and its parastatals are based on merit , the North would be eating dust and the south will be blazing the trail in such appointments . But politics and the concept of unity in diversity , our motto , interceded and we are where we are today . The North is ascendant and dominant in federal political and bureaucratic appointments and the south is left holding the can in a manner of logic turned on its head . But then that is the goal of unity in diversity in a federation handed to us in 1960 at Independence , when and where the British colonialists wanted the North by all means to call the shots in terms of power and politics , after their reluctant exit from a lucrative colonial outpost . The British never forgave the progressive elite from the south that challenged their authority fearlessly in Lagos their capital , and in unforgiving retaliation , they gave empathy and approbation to the Northern aristocracy , indeed the Fulani hegemony that held the North head bowed in full obedience to British colonialism in the administrative colonial apparatus they dubbed Indirect Rule .
Nevertheless the pre and post Independent leadership of the North was alive to the educational deficit with the south and was keen on bridging it in the shortest possible time . That was to be expected because the Sardauna of Sokoto , Sir Ahmadu Bello and his loyal deputy Abubakar Tafawa Balewa , the first Prime Minister of Nigeria were both teachers and knew the value of education in economic and political development and knew the North at Independence was far behind the south educationally .They used crash training programmes in some of the world’s finest universities , management and strategy and diplomatic institutions to position freshly trained Northerners in the federal civil service and the dividend yielded enormously till today , the Northern domination and discrimination not with standing . Unfortunately both leaders were executed in the military coup of Jan 1966 and since then the North has been in limbo on catching up on the educational gap between the North and the south .Until the advent of JAMB which was aimed at slowing the widening of the educational gap between the North and the south .In the aftermath of the demise of these two pro education leaders of the North , a famous Northern musician Bala Miller claimed at a political rally in Kaduna , that if the North had spent the money and funds it used for hajj and lesser hajj on education in producing engineers , lawyers and doctors it would not be lagging so much behind the south in terms of political and economic progress .
It is not enough to go into the history of social engineering in Nigeria from colonial times till independence because the fruits are still ripening right in our time today and before our eyes . The North is still reluctant to give up the power the British fondly gave to it and the basis is the census . Now on the eve of the 2023 elections we want to conduct a census and that again is another political distraction with its political consequences . Look at the list of presidential contestants from the south and you will see the northern policy of divide and rule against the south very much at play . It is an old game and the fact that some aspirants will not resign when holding public positions as the electoral law demands , is part of the educational gap between the north and south and that makes politics a do or die as usual in the Nigerian political terrain .
Anyway , while ethnicity and north south divide are the sore points of our federation and unity , racism and sexism have become the bane of western civilization . I will use the examples of Germans fleeing from their native Germany to Paraguay in Latin America and the Education Ideology of the US Biden Administration reportedly using funds approved for covid comfort to further anti racist educational policies it says are inclusive ,promoting equality and eliminating discrimination from a historical perspective , to boost the topic of the day .
I watched a video interview on BBC and was aghast at how the BBC interviewer brazenly tried to label those she was interviewing as racist . The interviewer had asked the German migrants to Paraguay why they fled Germany as the news was that thousands of Germans were running to Paraguay . A German couple had replied timidly that they were not comfortable with many Muslim men harassing Germans for German women not covering their heads in Germany . The German couple said it would be dangerous for them to say this in their own country . Then to my horror the BBC reporter said that what they were saying was racist . That to me was a good example of the cancel culture that made these Germans flee their nation Germany because of hostile Muslim migrants , to Paraguay which they see as an accommodating Christian nation where they are welcome as free migrants and not discarded as racists for expressing their opinions .
In the same vein I read that three Democratic US states , namely California , New York and Illinois have used covid 19 relief funds to promote Critical Race Theory in their schools .The Democrats passed what they called the American Rescue Plan –ARP – to reopen schools in 2021 during the pandemic but they are using the opportunity to redraw history and do some educational social engineering in the process and sell their Critical Race Theory that teaches school children that the white race is responsible for slavery and racism and white children should accept that from school age . I have disagreed before on the grounds that two wrongs do not make a right and that Martin Luther King and his civil rights movement took care of such racism emphatically and with dignity and respect .In particular the California Dept of Education reportedly used funds to ‘ increase educator training and resources in subjects such as anti bias strategies , environmental literacy , ethnic studies and ‘ LGBTQ plus cultural competency ‘ There can be no better example of cultural befuddlement and disorientation with a political flavor to reward those who the government of the day thinks were responsible for putting it in power by voting for it in the 2020 presidential election . It is a shameless lesson in political social engineering .