Las Las school na Scam

When I was younger, I was taught that education was the key to a better life, this was even more reinforced by tales of graduates of old getting a VW beetle upon graduation and a government job on the ready, books like “No longer at ease” and later “There was a country” by the legendary Chinua Achebe painted a glamorous life of what it was like to be a graduate in the 60’s and 70’s. I always envisioned that would be me. My dad was a staunch believer in formal education; a combition of the civil war and financial constraint having interrupted his, he made sure that all his children got the type of education he never got and made sure we understood the importance of a formal education. It is safe to say that from a very young age I had understood the power one weilded with the right education.
My 9 year old would be utterly shattered at the state of graduates and educations today, so where did it all go wrong for Nigeria?! It would be difficult to pinpoint the exact time education started to suffer but the truth is that with every regime the importance laid on education depreciated as the importance placed on finding crude oil grew and thus slowly education died a tragic death. So the question at the moment becomes: “Given the state of the country at the moment, is formal education really important?”
I mean a quick browse of the annals of time and you could cite a few cases that negates the importance of a formal education or in these cases; a university education, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg are the most popular cases but then again, the educational system in the US and Nigeria are on two opposite spectrums. But it isn’t exactly as if it is any effort is made to make education attractive down here in Nigeria, with important government positions occupied by stark illiterates and ill educated graduates, it is no wonder the country looks and feels like a bus driven by a blind driver, headed only for a wall or some immovable object.
The educational system in Nigeria has flatlined, with its antiquated curriculums and its corridors filled with half baked, ill equipped teachers/lecturers “impacting” knowledge on “tone deaf’ “merchanized” students. Year after year the universities churn out millions of “under cooked” graduates into a systematically saturated labour market that is already busting at its seams. The educational system in Nigeria is greatly under funded and swarming with men and women who have no business overseeing affairs connected with education or its welfare, yet are there and will be there, administration after administration because they know a godfather or support a certain political party.
Education has become so poor that Nigeria now “exports” students to neighboring countries; Ghana, South Africa, Benin, Cote Ivoire and even as far as America, Europe and Asia, anywhere as long as it is not Nigeria. The sad truth is that as soon as these students touch down in these countries, they would have to be re-educated, as they are either under educated or not even “educated”. There have been cases of Nigerian Masters degree holders having to redo their courses again because they do not meet the standards of the school they hope to further their education at. It is only in Nigeria that you find electrical engineers who have never had to replace a circuit, not to talk of building one or a mass communication student who has never had to read the news or write a detailed report. As long as it is not law or medicine, practicals are almost unheard of in Nigerian schools. Many students would better understand a subject matter if they had to experience it first hand via practicals but Nigeria is a country that thrives on theory, notes after notes filled with formulas and permutations but never having to apply them in real life situations till they have graduated.
Nigeria has a large number of Phd, Masters degree holders but neither has invented or developed anything that would be beneficial to the country or human race in general. I have come to the conclusion that Nigerians have come to terms with the fact that the system is rotten, corrupt and self serving and thus many get educated just because. We get Bsc degrees to be called graduates, Msc is what we do when a job is not forthcoming, so we get a Masters degree while we wait, after all an Msc on your CV would ensure you get choice jobs, especially the NGOs, where we go to earn millions while doing nothing, our certificates accumulating the sweet scent of moth balls at the bottom of our mother’s huge boxes sic. Phd is what we get so we become senior lecturers and earn bigger salaries and get opportunities to speak in huge air conditioned auditoriums on topics we researched using Google. I can bet that if Nigeria has 70 Phd holders, only a handful have a working thesis but somehow these men and women end up being called Professors and are running affairs in various arms of the educational system.
But who are we to blame?! These are men and women who are products of a corrupt system, working and learning under harsh conditions, with little or no government aid whatsoever. It is a cut throat system, eat or be eaten and one must do what they can to survive.

Recently a picture of the living conditions of the students of the famous University of Nsukka, Nigeria, (UNN); which has amongst its alumni the charismatic Chimamanda Adiche, Prof. Chinua Achebe and the enigmatic former governor of Anambra state Peter Obi, to mention a few, went viral on the internet, calling it appaling would be putting it nicely. The buildings; a hostel block, looked dilapidated, with blocks exposed in various parts, its plaster covering having been eaten away by elements of nature, the toilet facilities had become so brown with age and use, that it would have been hard to convince anyone that it had once being pristine white, the ground around were slowly rotting away. The domitories were no different, with students crammed into a small space, windows covered with torn mosquito nets, ceilings; caved in and hanging by a few inch of nails , pot-holed floors. No lights, no water, somes times for weeks on end and this is the same with most of the universities in the country. Many Nigerian students have to acquire knowledge under these conditions, add into this mix the uncertain timeline of the school curriculum which can be abruptly interrupted by striking unions and the menace of cultism and you have a catalyst for disaster and the educational sysem never fails to deliver on that.
So where do all the millions they quote in national budgets end up, what are they being used for, what are the government’s plans to rectify the perilous course the educational system is charting?! Unfortunately, I do not think the educational system in Nigeria is going to be revamped anytime soon with the government fixated with finding oil in the sun scorched sands of the North and marking out settlements in various parts of the country for privately owned cattle and the never ending battle against insecurity in the North East, education has got to take a back seat for now, after all it is not that important and like the Artist sang “Las las, school na scam”.
We went to school to get the keys that opened many doors, instead we graduated and left our parents heavily ladened with debt, the government jobs go only to those who are extremely lucky or have the right connect and the private companies are no longer employing, as government has made the commercial environment very volatile and are now preaching entreprenuership to all who can hear, yet doing little to create an enabling environment for small businesses to thrive, thus pushing many Nigerian youths towards unscrupulous activities via which they try to survive. A fine line can be drawn between the rotten educational system, unemployment and the various criminal activites in the society.
They told us education would be the bridge that got us from where we were to where we wanted to be but unfortunately they did not tell us the money meant to build and fortify the bridge had been looted and in its place a rickety, termite infested bamboo makeshift bridge was erected with no guarantee that you would make the perilous journey and when you made it, there was no gaurantee that you could reconcile the fantasies you stayed up most nights dreaming with the reality that you were faced with, so with no help from the government, you were left feeling your way through the dark, murk of nothingness that Nigerians call life, hoping your lot is better than your next door neighbor whose shoes now look like a loafer, because he has spent the last 24 months traveling cross country looking for a job with a master degree he got from a Nigerian university after 6 years for a four year course.
Recently I found myself thinking about how I learnt to draw and Label an eyeball, the human cell and a mosquito and what use has that done me in my adult life? Zilch! Why did I have a guidance and counseling staff in my school, who never guided or counseled me? At one time I wanted to be an astronaut, then a lawyer, then a minister (still possible) and now a film maker, a nuturing hand would have helped steer me in the right direction in my formative years, instead of leaving me shooting in the dark. The problem is not only the government but the system as a whole, it needs a total facelift or else all it will keep producing is half baked lecturers and graduates and some of our best minds will be lost to foreign countries who are reluctant to let their “investments” go to waste in a land where they can make little or no impact.

In conclusion, education in Nigeria is something you do not because you necessarily want to make the world a better place but to give yourself the title of Bsc holder, MSC holder or Professor. Education is no longer the key that opens doors; at least in Nigeria, it is the chain that keeps you shackled to a dying corpse, cold and tight, a time waster, something you regret doing long after you are done and wondering what would have been if you had bitten the entrepreneurial apple instead of wandering the cold halls of classrooms. Nigerian youths are fast losing faith in education and the educational system, it is rigged to keep them in perpetual servitude and at the mercy of a government who does not give a hoot about its people but hell bent on filling its coffers, so they have turned to gambling, internet scam, armed robbery, cultism and other nefarious means just to get by, at least their fates are in their hands, wrested out of the cold hands of an uncaring monster.