Have you ever heard your teacher or
lecturer says that when he/she was in school, education was not like this, it
was much more organized and accorded with more respect for it was highly valued
- it was interesting and worth its standard or “during my time things were far
better than this”. Have you ever asked why it was so then and like this now? What
happened to the system? What went wrong? Have you ever
tried to envisage these
differences that these teachers are trying to strike out? Don’t you think there
is need for its rejuvenation for prosperity sake?
Nigeria once enjoyed the privilege of
being a great nation where everything was next to perfection, and went on
smoothly at least to a reasonable extent At this point in time, Nigeria was breaking
grounds and attaining higher heights in Africa and even in the world as a whole
due to her unalloyed passion to attain greatness. This undoubtedly earned her the
status “Giant of Africa” because things were put in good shape and Nigerians
worked tirelessly and selflessly for the betterment of the country. Even shortly
after independence, Nigeria as a country remained one of the best place worth
living - social amenities were standard and indeed functional, the economy which
was beginning to hinge on oil was booming and doing wonderfully great. To some
extent, government can indeed be trusted and counted on. Unfortunately shortly
after then, development and progress were truncated, things took u-turn, and
everything began to grow from good to bad and now at their extremes. Majority
of the things our great grand fathers struggled and laboured for were
unknowingly but selfishly damaged by our fathers.
During their early time, our fathers
live(d) in the comfort of the properly structured economy and well equipped
educational system that were designed and laid down by their fathers. With a
relatively adequate knowledge of the origin of these good fortunes, our fathers
enjoyed so much of these without a comprehensive and well calculated plan of
sustaining the progress which was already visible. Their attitude on the
development that was initiated by our grand fathers left them with the sole
choice of leaving nothing behind for us to enjoy. They either damaged them and
knocked them out completely or left them in an irreparable condition.
Let’s start from somewhere, take for instance,
I have heard my father said that he boarded train from one place to another
during his early days, but how many of our generation can boast of having been
transported by rail. What happened to the railway system? Railway
transportation was introduced into Nigeria in the late 19th century,
against all odds, it was sustained and our fathers were able to benefit from
the comfort and safety of rail transportation. Our fathers enjoyed it but
didn’t give us the privilege. They failed to maintain and sustain it and today
the railway transport is now a history.
Majority of our fathers are products
of free education, they enjoyed free education and scholarships, aside that,
the standard of education then was of a very high quality with the
students-teacher ratio very compatible. They enjoyed free textbooks and writing
materials, their libraries were stocked up with recent books with regards to
that point in time, their laboratories were updated with standard apparatus and
well equipped and they enjoyed the best of education. However they failed to
maintain the system and left us with nothing to be proud of about our
educational system. The same fathers of ours who enjoyed free education now
place exorbitant fees on schooling, while our libraries and laboratories are
now being inhabited by spiders as a result of their being left scanty.
Ajaokuta steel industry is one of the
many industries our fathers met in good shape but damaged completely. Today so
many industries in the country have folded up because of negligence, corrupt
mentality and bad governance of our fathers.
We would not also forget so soon that
our fathers met the refineries in good and proper working condition but what are
their statuses today? What our fathers are now known for is the everyday
increase in the pump price of petroleum products.
From history, there was a time when
the economy of our dear country Nigeria was better than that of the United
States. At that time a Naira goes for about two dollars. Our fathers enjoyed
this. But today the story is no longer the same, our economy and currency have
been bastardize, denigrated and dragged in the mud and we are left with no
choice than to continue to fly out of our blessed land full of resources - in
the search for something – Dollar, which once had no value in our land.
Our fathers left us with no legacy, and
it’s appalling that their generation could not be proud of, as long as the
history of Nigeria is all about. They introduced massive corruption into the
land, they completely knocked out the whole system and damaged most of the
things which they met intact and enjoyed, leaving us with little or nothing to
hold on to. The sad story is - they are not still ready to leave the system
they are still there committing their atrocities.
With little they met, the likes of
Chief Awolowo, Alhaji Ahmedu Bello and Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe were able to inject
fresh air into the country, left a lasting legacy and made Nigeria the great
giant of Africa. With surplus they met, the likes of OBJ, IBB and BUHARI,
showed their unarguably high level of mismanagement, individualism and
selfishness to the world by dragging the stellar name of the country in mud. To
substantiate the above statement, It is germane to pinpoint the fact that much
of the achievements of Nigeria that took her to the commanding height as the
giant of Africa could be traced to the era of the likes of chief Awolowo and co.
Simply put, Nigeria as the giant of Africa was practical during the era of
Awolowo and theoretical at present
Little wonder why Prof. Wole Soyinka
– the 1986 Nobel Laureate in literature, declared his generation, the
wasted generation.
This is the time for the present
generation to deviate from the ways of our fathers, set the ship of sustainable
development in motion, make good impacts and write good history for ourselves
so that the next generation can speak well of us and not to follow the “wicked”
paths of our fathers that have brought more harm than good to the country.
GOD BLESS NIGERIA!
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