Prof.
Timothy Wangusa in his poem, The
Taxi Driver on His Death wrote about a taxi driver who when with prophetic eye peered into the future and saw
what the future held for him. I discuss the future of education in Aguleri
obviously not with prophetic eyes because I
am neither a prophet nor a son of a prophet but an ordinary Nwa Aguleri. I discuss it using the
observable facts of the past and present. A friend of mine can boast of many
informed quotations in his repertoire but his most favoured quotation has been
that when the past is studied and compared with the present, the future could
reliably be predicted.
This
article might be criticized of highlighting the doom while disregarding the
boom in education in Aguleri. This is far from the truth. It is self evident that the great leaders and
sons of Aguleri have in their various capacities promoted education in Aguleri
either by their selfless motivational deeds or by attending to countless
financial needs. We pray God’s blessings on them; amen.
The
stance of this piece is a call to unflinching actions from Ndibeanyi because the state of affairs in education in Aguleri today
leaves more to be desired. Pessimism in some cases is preferred to optimism.
The taciturn president of Russia, Vladimir Putin in a conference differentiated
between an optimist and a pessimist thus: a pessimist drinks his cognac
and says, “It smells of bedbugs,” while an optimist catches a bedbug, crushes
it, then sniffs it and says, “A slight whiff of cognac.” Putin said that he would rather be the pessimist
who drinks cognac than the optimist who sniffs bedbugs. Everybody laughed.
Aguleri is our own. I could still
remember at the age of 10, how I appreciated God for creating me an African, a
Nigerian and an Agulerian! I wonder if I can still do so today. At that age, I
couldn’t imagine another place that was better than my Africa, Nigeria and
Aguleri.
Let me give you this surprise, I
still appreciate God for my Africa, Nigeria and above all, Aguleri because Home is home, they often say. I extended
it further that home is home, even if you live in Rome. It is our
responsibility to build Rome out of Aguleri; and it starts now. Rome, they also
said was not built in a day. If Romans could build Rome, then we can build
Aguleri.
Mandela once wrote that
education is the great engine of…development. Based on this, one could
safely conclude that the journey to developing Aguleri rests squarely on the
health of education in the community. The one million dollar question here remains: Is education in Aguleri
healthy?
Observable Challenges to
Education in Aguleri
Some of the challenges to education in Aguleri discussed
below are based on personal observation of the writer and the shared concerns
of friends and colleagues who are also Ndibeanyi.
They lay no claim to any formal statistical ancestry. Even at that, we are
convinced that no valid investigation would disprove these positions.
1.
Increased Secondary School Dropout
Rates: In one of the previous volumes of Asa Voice, yours sincerely wrote a
title, “Brain Drain in Aguleri.” It was written in limerick form, lamenting the
exodus of the youths of Aguleri that were within school age, to foreign lands
pursuing money instead of education. Personally, I am not against pursuit of
money but it needs not precede the pursuit of education. As a matter of fact,
money is germane in life. The Latinists would say, “absque argento omnia vana;”
(Without money, everything is in vain). But, first things should come first!
Most of our youths could not complete
their secondary school education either because of pursuit of money or
marriage. Education generally is seen as a waste of time. Given this
orientation, is education in Aguleri healthy?
2.
Low Enrolment Rate into Tertiary Institutions: Consequent upon the increased
secondary school dropout rates as well as other factors, the rate of enrolment
of Agulerians into tertiary institutions is low. Rev. Fr. Dr. Ekwenze of the
blessed memory was glad when I invited him to address Aguleri Students
Association, ANSU, Igbariam Branch. He asked of our number and I told him. “Wonderful, so good, so our people now go to
school,” he said. I was surprised that even with our low number then, he was
impressed. And yes, that was during the golden years of enrolment of Agulerians
into tertiary institutions which was made possible by Mr. Anthony Okagbue,
Prof. A.B.I Udedibia and the host of others. These personalities have not
relented. Their efforts need to be complemented so as to achieve the required rate
of enrolment of Ndibeanyi into
tertiary institutions. The enrolment rate is still very low and if such is the
case, is education in Aguleri healthy?
3.
Lack of Community Sponsored Library: No one denies the fact that the
provision of education facilities such as schools, laboratory equipments,
libraries, etc, is in the domain of the government. Suffice to here also is
that no legislation on education in Nigeria gives government the exclusive
power in the provision of education facilities. Communities, villages and other
groups often times take to self-help, providing themselves what the government
could not provide.
My interest here is on the library.
Aguleri has none, and Aguleri needs at least one. The presence of a community
library would ignite the zeal to read in the mind of our youth. Aguleri has all
it takes to build, equip and maintain a functional library. If Aguleri could
not muster a functional community library, is education in Aguleri healthy?
4.
Unsatisfactory Students’ Attitude to Education: The poor attitude to academic
excellence on our side as the students is unimaginably, devastating. The
younger ones that look up to us, more often than not, get disillusioned. They
are fed with wrong signals about education. Would they be motivated to go to
school where the ‘seemingly educated’ brothers and sisters could not excel in their
chosen field? Academic excellence gives you the qualities of a golden fish. You
would be sought after and the younger ones would be motivated to be like you! Zik
promoted this as a slogan; “Show the light and they will follow.” If we couldn’t motivate our young ones to join
us in school, is education in Aguleri healthy?
5.
Absence of Community Sponsored Bursary
and Scholarship Awards:
I am aware of scholarship awards accessible to a village in Aguleri; and also
another one available to Ndibeanyi that
chose to study Accountancy. These are good; but, nothing stops Aguleri from
having a pool of resources for bursary and scholarship awards. The resources
could be made available by individual persons’ donations, age grades’
contributions and solicited government’s nominations. There are Ndibeanyi that love education and
perform excellently in it but, who are presently out of school due to their
financial standing. If such is the case,
is education in Aguleri healthy?
One needs no soothsayer to tell that
the future of education in Aguleri and the overall development of Aguleri are
in danger given these ugly trends discussed above. Two things one could do with
the future are either to predict it or to invent it. We have attempted the
prediction while calling for the invention. We can invent what the future of
education in particular and development in general, of Aguleri would become; and
the time is now.
Malignant diseases in the early stage
are difficult to diagnose but are easy to cure while in the later stage are
easy to diagnose but are difficult to cure. We have run the diagnosis which has
prepared grounds for the therapy on the education in Aguleri.
This is a call to duty from Ndibeanyi. Everyone has a role to play.
Aguleri kweenu!
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