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Growing up as a child in
Nigeria in the early 80s,
education was celebrated above all things. In fact, parents would not let their
children talk about money until they had finished their grade school education,
and for some even college. Education to them was both a guarantee of success,
and in the worst case, a guarantee of survival. It was very cool to be tops in
academics. You were not only recognized by the school and teachers, but even
your peers wanted to be your friend. If fact, you were hot cake for marriage.
Families wanted to associate themselves with a family that valued education
because it did not only signify a good living; it also meant that their next
generation would be educated.
By the late 80s to early 90s,
just before I left for the
United States, education
became a cough out. They was so much corruption, bad governance, and
devaluation of the Nigerian currency that money itself because the symbol of
wealth. This mentality, which was perfected by the administration of General Babangida, destroyed the moral, cultural, and social fabric that once held
Nigeria in awe in the
International community. A cultural that once supported and emphasized
discipline, honesty, hard work, and creativity was popularly rejected by the
masses for the worship of ill gotten money and the celebration of political
thieves. It did not matter anymore how you acquired your wealth, as long as you
were going to share it around freely to buy some sycophants. In fact, many
women in agreement with their parents are not prepared to marry a man from a
family that does not have that money. Many college girls have been reported to
have told their boyfriends, who are courting them for marriage lately, that
education is not what they and their future children will eat. The Africans
have always said that a woman is the home, and that they help dictate the pace
of societal culture. Money has now become the prerequisite for procreation and
not education like it used to be.
Can we blame these women?
Will you help me drag them to the world court? It is obviously not their fault,
but that of the respective Nigerian governments. The purpose of formal and
informal education was never an issue of degree and employment, but an issue of
independence and sustenance. The purpose of education was to equip their
children (informal) or citizens (formal) with the adequate knowledge of their
laws, their rights, and how to ultimately utilize their resources through their
field to study to better themselves and their communities. But the colonial
education the colonizers left for Nigerians and their puppet leaders, which has
not been changed after over 40 years of independence, is that which emphasizes
degree and dependence on government. The Nigerians are trained to read to have
degrees for status, but not to reason out how they can use it to provide
services to their community on their own. The educational system does not teach
the Nigerian to create his job or his business, but to rely on a government that
still gets its economic instructions from
Europe directly or indirectly. Majority of the
jobs available for their citizens are not locally created jobs, but from
international companies, who come in to exploit our resources and labor force at
very low returns on investment. Knowledge will forever be the
highest form of wealth for any nation, but must be applied with understood laws
and rights for the betterment of self and society. The second form of
wealth is networking or people, which is where you use your knowledge to assist
and encourage others to reach their goals. This gives birth to the third form of
wealth, which is money. This is the stage where people are interested in
compensating you for the services of your knowledge. It is because
of the unmodified colonial education that has failed woefully in Nigeria that
have encouraged the people to first acquire illegal wealth that is used to
attract people, who end up becoming sycophants. Nigerian people are
going backwards instead of forward, because they begin from the third level of
wealth to get the mirage of the second level, while they claim the most
important level, which is knowledge, is no longer necessary. |
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The Political & Spiritual Purpose of the
Holy Land
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They was once a rich Nigerian
who invested $1 million into stocks, but did not have the knowledge to know that
he had to watch his stocks, so that when he had made enough money, he can remove
his profits and reinvest the capital elsewhere in order to avoid loss. Instead
he left his money in the stocks for years believing its growth was guaranteed,
until he got a letter one day stating that he now owed a quarter of a million.
There was another rich Nigerian, who was going to Oliver de Coque’s concert. He
and his mistress where going in the latest Mercedes in the rain. A student, who
was going to the same event, saw that they were stranded on the highway and he
identified with them based on the man’s cultural attire. When he got there, he
found out that the problem was that the man who bought a $60,000 car did not
know that his car had a front and rear defroster. The student had to stand
partially in the rain to educate the “millionaire” in front of his disgusted
mistress what each button in his car was meant for. Do you still want to buy a
Mercedes or a bicycle?
For education to be valuable
again in
Nigeria, the people and
their truly elected government should redefine their educational systems to be
the knowledge that provides services to generate an income. All high school
students in the summer must work for any small local business which should
receive a summer stipend from the government to expose their student employees
to the nature of their business. All College students must be given a stipend
from the government to start small business in their field of study and try to
make it successful before their graduations. Any citizen who also has money
should contribute to these programs, because the more experience and success our
students get in transforming their knowledge to income, the quicker our country
will be transformed from a consumer to a producer. |
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