PART 2: FOR OR AGAINST OUR CHILDREN’S BETTER TOMORROW.

It took action, not mere optimism, for the attainment of racial equality in South Africa as well as in post-independence United States of America. It took action for democracy to be achieved in parts of the Arab spring. I hate to make you think that I am a revolutionary (even if you think I am, I shrug it off) or that you should act like one, but exactly that is the problem. No one wants to act the hero. Everyone seems comfortable with the status quo. We want change, yet scared to death to face up to the challenge. We seem to embrace the meagre privileges that accompany subservience. Well, some want to act and actually do, but no one wants to be seen as acting too much, speaking too loud, or fighting too hard. No one wants to hold out for long but we would rather thread the disheveled road of cowardice. Like two lovebirds, we want kisses, hugs and romance; we implore a romance with the oppressor, our enemy.

Our Parents had refused to deal with their own obstacles and now it is a full-blown problem. They refused to deal with their own differences; consequently, it has metamorphosed into a cancerous conflict. They circumvented uttering civil speeches, now we have to voice angry yells. They shied away from fighting small battles, now we have to deal with a full-blown war. These, unfortunately, are some of the inheritance we have in the ‘will’.

My peers in U.S., Japan, South Africa and even Ghana are not busy fighting for basic human rights and an efficient democracy, they are not clamouring for free and fair elections, their schools do not have disrupted sessions and unwarranted breaks which we have code-named 'strike'. Their Parents already fought these battles, my peers have moved on to research, exploring their creativity, improving technology, making the world a better place. But here I am, fighting my parents' battles, battles that should have been fought several decades ago, battles that I should be reading in the history books, in the comfort of a well-equipped library . Howbeit, here I am, fighting these battles and with the same blind optimism as they, hoping, no, wondering when I would start to face mine.

You may not know, but the most tiring of battles are those which you fight while the one being helped out seems unwilling and reluctant to fight his battle. How much worse is that battle in which the beneficiary becomes a direct obstacle to your victory, that in which the one being done a favour decides to join forces with the enemies against you?


There is unpopular government legislation, a protest is announced and our parents would call us on phone, begging, cajoling, compelling and persuading us not to go anywhere near the protests or the protesters.
There is an on-going mob action and your dad walks by, dragging you along, ordering you not to speak against the ravaging violence. Your neighbour descends upon his spouse like a beast on drugs and your parents advise you not to call the police, they tell you to mind your business, and if you refuse, citing that the victim's scream is getting louder, they simply increase the volume of the Television set.

Your parents deny you the privilege of text books, but are ever willing to pay the examiner to have you assisted during the examinations. Parents do not want you to have relationships with the other sex, yet they cannot tell you why. They do not want you to read books with sexual content, yet they will never get to tell you anything about sex and sexuality. Parents give you pittance as pocket money, yet they borrow to give to the CHURCH, because stating that they are giving it to the Lord may amount to blasphemy, considering the type of atrocities perpetrated in these religious houses.

Election is tomorrow, dad activates a total lockdown of the house today, until after the elections. They neither vote nor want you to. You tell them about speaking up, you tell them about honesty, about paying the security guard a little more, about talking to the house help a little more nicely, about giving the driver some time-off, you tell them about respecting the human rights of the domestic staff, about obeying the red lights. You ask them if they saw the 'NO U-TURN' sign, you tell them to slow down for these young school children at the Zebra crossing zone. They always say no. They tell you that is how life is, “it's a battle”. They leave the real oppressors and marginalize their fellow oppressed neighbor. They hit the wounded, spite the domestic staff, splash mud water on the beggar and still scuttle away shamelessly.

They leave the real battles for us to face and even when we try to, they ask us to stop. They become obstacles, they tell us the government is sacred, they tell us not to say this beyond the confines of the house, but we are tired. If we act like them, then our children would have to fight two generations’ worth of battle.  We must act-up and stop leaving problems as inheritance for our children.

PART 1: FOR OR AGAINST OUR CHILDREN’S BETTER TOMORROW.

An inheritance is supposed to be an asset or a commodity of value which one receives from parents. In other words, inheritance is supposed to be an addition, something of worth, a valuable item, commodity, or set of assets which should ideally aid and facilitate the progress of the beneficiary.

However, when an inheritance turns out to be the exact opposite of what has been described above, then there is an giant cause for alarm. The question arising from this scenario, however, would seem more like this: should one inherit a bunch of bad debts, bad public image, illegal businesses and other liabilities that the parents may have left behind upon their death? Most people would respond with a resounding 'No'. But we should not forget the fact that some things do not just go away with a snap of the fingers. They just have to be dealt with if there would be any hope in the horizons.

Unfortunately, one of such things is your state of mind, your parental upbringing, the years of training and grooming which your parents have invested in you, the religious dogma, social and cultural opinions as well as the political ideologies you have imbibed. The latest of which is the essence of this essay.

It is no secret that the majority of the citizens of this country are very poor, with the population of these indigents growing with each passing day, while the minority referred to as the privileged class occupies positions which guarantee them immense wealth and a wide range of far-reaching political and social influence. These few go about with a claim that they achieved these feats through their hard work. However, the great Nationalist and former Tanzanian president, Julius Nyerere, seemed to have a dissenting view to this. In 1968, Nyerere, in his essay "Ujamaa, the basis of African socialism", said, "Defenders of capitalism claim that the millionaires’ wealth is a just reward for his ability or enterprise. But this claim is not borne out by the facts. The wealth of the millionaire depends as little on the enterprise or abilities of the millionaire himself as the power of a feudal monarch depended on his own efforts, enterprise or brain. Both are users, exploiters of the abilities and enterprise of other people. Even when you have an exceptionally intelligent and hard-working millionaire, the difference between his intelligence, his enterprise, his hard work and those of other members of the society, cannot possibly be proportionate to the difference between their 'rewards' as a thousand of his fellows can acquire between them". If this assertion by Nyerere is anything to go by, and I strongly believe it is, then these rich, flamboyant and extravagant cliques of political, corporate and religious elites have attained their status not merely as a result of hard work, but by the continued exploitation of the masses. Their immense wealth was achieved at the direct expense of the larger society.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the word parent could be defined even far beyond the popular biological implication to also mean 'the material or source from which something is derived' or better still 'a group from which another arises and to which it usually remains subsidiary'. These definitions, especially the later has afforded us the opportunity to evaluate how important a parent is. It is the origin, the source, the fountain from which something emanates and to which it usually remains 'subsidiary'. This, probably, is the closest explanation we can get to the cancerous situation of the present Nigerian state.

Our parents had remained sober, quiet, calm, peaceful and indifferent to their political environment for too long, they have voted more out of coercion and routine than of interest and practical optimism, they have believed in the possibility of the evolution of bad into good on its own accord. Our parents have watched arms akimbo and folded hands over their chest, helplessly waiting with naked pessimism in their eyes for things to change and for bad to evolve into good of its own free will. In the words of Edmund Burke, “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”.

A pessimist or optimist you may be, but history has no use of your opinions or wishes. History is an indifferent, inconsiderate, blunt persona but plays out the script already written, just as it was written. Therefore if history itself, the most impartial of all, could tell us that there has never been a situation or occasion where the oppressor of his own accord releases the oppressed from his bonds, but that the oppressed must rise up and vehemently fight for their freedom, then I wonder why our forbears have decided to voluntarily become victims of history.

THE MISERY OF OUR HALF-BAKED EDUCATION SYSTEM .

THE MISERY OF OUR HALF-BAKED EDUCATION SYSTEM

Many people believe in the concept of coincidence, very few have a contrary belief, a category to which I belong.
What is happening, however, therefore between the government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is, by all ramifications, a consciously conceived action which we can in no way justify as coincidental or accidental. Just like most controversial issues, it has been brewing for a very long time, but just gone sour of recent.

We should not be averse to the fact that no goal-driven individual would embark on any activity, honour any agreements or make any such promises as would constitute a barrier to his laid out plans. It is, therefore, an insult on the JEG-led Federal Government of Nigeria, if we think it would go out of its way to honour an agreement that would ensure the delivery of quality education and intellectual emancipation of its young populace.

The Federal Government of Nigeria is comprised of very intelligent individuals. These special advisers, ministers and other members of the executive cabinet cannot be said to be ignorant of the vital role of quality education in the development of any society.

Why then do they build schools and award face-value scholarships? You may ask. In a rhetoric reply, I would also ask, why did the colonial lords of those days establish schools in Nigeria and in their other colonies? Just like our government, they realised the immense opportunities accrued from a half-baked education, they know it is an even greater weapon than illiteracy. They give you schools, but pay your teachers miserably well that they would lack all necessary and required motivation to teach. They put at par 'tuition-free education' and 'free education' to suggest they are both the same.

Half-baked students are graduated every year, possessing nothing but the ability to read and write, purely deficient in any skill and totally dependent upon the magnanimity of the government and its capitalist financiers of white collar jobs. This, in turn, leaves them dependent on and subservient to the exploitative and corruptive tendencies that come with these jobs.

The Federal Government is not lost on the fact that quality education would punch a hole in that hot-air balloon of corruption and 'beyond the law' status they defiantly assume, so they give us half-baked education, just enough to keep us literate but intellectually docile, just enough to get us on the queue of job-seekers without asking any questions, just enough to make us believe that if we had a better JAMB score, we would be in a University now, as if there are enough universities to absorb every intending student. Just enough half-baked education to make us believe graduating with a third-class amidst a very anti-human school environment is entirely your fault.

The amount of time left till Election period decreases rapidly with everyday this ASUU strike progresses. What better campaign instrumentalities would our idle undergraduates be for these self glorified political messiahs who would show a feigned sympathy and interest in quality education!  But that is exactly the problem. We have a population of educationally half-baked graduates at their beck and call. If a government does not treat you well, Of course it will never expect to be re-elected. If it knows this for a certainty but still proceeds to the polls, it is only a pointer that our intelligence, as far as they are concerned, can be overridden with impunity. Well, now that you know why they do not care about our welfare, we had better address the issues of our half-baked education system and political apathy by starting to concern ourselves with the electoral process and those we should elect to steer the affairs of our beloved country come 2015.