Let me quickly congratulate on your appointment as helmsman of arguably the most important sector of a nation’s social fabric. Your successful screening and subsequent appointment form the crux of your first victory. But there is an overwhelming deluge of battles ahead. As a topflight scholar, I am convinced that you understand the prodigious weight of your portfolio and that Nigerians would empty their acerbic venom on you should you fail to reposition the sector for good. This is no threat or an attempt to inspire fear.
For many of us, we have waited for this day to come. We have waited for a time when we will have the attention of a listening Minister of Education; one who is ready to bend backwards to restore glory of a tainted narrative. For now, we can’t confidently say you are the messiah until you prove the very letters of your portfolio. Time definitely remains the best arbiter of all human fate. In the meantime, I am sure we won’t be disappointed just the same way a slew of your predecessors blew our hopes into smithereens.
I am sure you know that our education system has been a huge joke; a costly joke that mocks our common sense more than it afflicts our understanding of the drivers of a free and prosperous nation. Trust me, I won’t lump this letter with those boring, predictable statistics. But I am sure you understand the blatancy of the stench more than the back of your hand. So I am briefly going to lay emphasis on a few things you need to fix with the best of swiftness you can possibly muster.
One, curriculum. Let’s consider secondary education, for instance. How come our secondary schools’ curriculum has remained the same for over 30 years? Is that to say that education is static like a shore of still water? Or are we saying there had been no significant breakthrough in secondary education all these years to have warranted an overhaul in the curriculum? We all are testament to the fact that the world has changed considerably. So why would education sleep while the world purrs with the contest for pace and inventions?
Again, curriculum. This time, the lens zooms on tertiary education. It hit all of us like a bolt from the blue few years ago when former CBN governor, Prof Charles Soludo said that over 70% of Nigerian graduates were unemployable. It came across like an exaggerated claim tempered with political undertone. But while the world growls at the sorry fate of a Nigerian graduate, the emphasis shifts rather too quickly to the effect rather than the cause. That the curriculum is faulty and archaic is a cause. That lecturers dish out half-baked knowledge is a cause. That there is decrepit infrastructure on our campuses is a cause. That cheap handout has replaced the measured excitement of research and quality service delivery is a cause. That lecturers deliberately desecrate the sacred tang of knowledge by way of sex-for-grades and all what not is a cause. But we have decided to mourn our collective misfortune without commensurate probe into why the tragedy befell us in the first place.
To solve these riddles, we do not need the luxury of committees. We all know how committees have turned out to be merely talk shops whose reports seamlessly find solace in the dustbin of history. Posterity will be harsh on you if you fail to maximise the revolutionary aura of the Buhari government to rewrite the story of the Nigerian education system. It is only then that the swarm of Nigerians and the world will brand you a deserving champion.
Three, ASUU unrest. One issue that remains baffling over the years is the trajectory of strike actions by the Academic Staff Union of Universities. While you may be unable to fully satisfy their cravings in the short term, you must be quick to evolve a working model that answers the very questions of distrust and neglect that characterised the style of previous administrations. Previous administrations won accolades for mongering hyperbolic talk with no clear plan for execution. So ASUU turned out as a lady jilted and bruised by the fawning tongue of her lover.
No serious nation will allow students to remain idle at home for six months or more all because of a government that cannot keep its own portion of a bargain. And here is the caveat: the enormity of the problems with ASUU is far more menacing today than it were during the past administrations. To avoid a repeat of our sorry past, the situation deserves no less than sweeping measures or the vicious circle continues.
Sir, we do not need grand plans and elaborate reform conventions, closed-door meetings and briefings. We do not need promises and all the faint optimism they can stir. We have seen spells of that in the past, plunging us further into ruins. What we need is a tempered grace and willpower to roll up the sleeves and work. What we need is a speedy, comprehensive overhaul of the content and context of our education curriculum.
We understand that thriving economies are powered not by moving speeches, grand intentions, skin colour, gender or geographical location. They are powered squarely by the miracle of knowledge speckled with the discipline of execution. Education remains the only leveller of the social stratum, creating a perfect template for everyone to compete. And if we get it right, our redemption story finds a fertile ground to fruition. We must not fail.
- Gilbert is a content writer and digital story-teller.
