3 months ago
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Now, the sad reality with Nigeria is not that these three legs have been paralysed. The sad reality is that these three legs have been amputated by habitually bad judgment on the part of those who hold the reins of state. With these three legs amputated, the Nigerian society has come down crashing to pieces.
In the absence of education, in the absence of effective law-enforcement within the ambit of good legislation, and in the absence of an independent judiciary, the Nigerian society is bedeviled by widespread disregard for civility. Amputation of the three legs of societal tripod largely explains what we have just witnessed, where exercise of the constitutionally guaranteed right to protest is maligned and peaceful protesters are infiltrated by sponsored miscreants.
There is widespread discontent in the land. But those who wish to express their discontent are demonised, their constitutionally guaranteed right to protest is delegitimised by pronouncements of government officials, while miscreants who infiltrate them are, for the most part, left to go free.
What concerns us here is education. For if we fix education, we shall be able to fix other societal institutions. The need to reconstruct education has never been so urgent. However, if we are to avoid a quick fix, we must begin by re-envisioning education. An adequate vision of education will instruct us on what we are about to reconstruct.
It is in this regard that I wish to share with you a vision of education somewhat replicating the analogy of the tripod. Just as society stands on a tripod, one of whose feet is education, education itself stands on a tripod. And, be it remembered, if any of the three legs of the tripod is tampered with, the tripod and whatever it bears will be subject to destruction. What then are the three legs of education?
The tripod of education consists of intellectual formation, technical formation and ethical formation. Good education worth the name is, respectively, formation of the mind, formation of the hands, and formation of moral character. To use three Yoruba words, education is, again respectively, a matter of iwe, owo and iwa. It is necessary to be intelligent. But intelligence of itself would be insufficient. It is necessary to be technically competent.
But technical competence would be, of itself, insufficient. And it is necessary to be ethically competent. But ethical competence, as necessary as it is, would be insufficient if its possessor were bereft of intellectual and technical competence. These three legs stand on the ground of spiritual formation, a formation of utmost importance in contemporary Nigerian society where all sorts of things are said about God and supposedly in the name of God which are false, blasphemous and cacophonous. Ours is a society suffocated by toxic fumes issuing from a deadly mixture of corrupt politics and corrupt religion.
Education must be integral if it is to promote the human person in his or her integrality. It is this formation of the human being, of the whole person, that Catholic education is about. It is not about converting its recipient to Catholic beliefs, not compulsory affiliation of its recipient to the Catholic faith community, but the formation of the whole person, because the word “Catholic” itself stands for “wholeness”.
This was what the Catholic Church was providing before the ill-advised and morally unjust takeover of schools in the years after the Nigeria-Biafra War. Those who are familiar with the history of that war would understand that the policy of takeover of schools was a vindictive policy directed at a Catholic Church perceived by the faction of the military that won the war—a war all Nigerians lost, despite the “No Victor, No Vanquished” sound bite of General Yakubu Gowon—as having sided with Biafra because missionaries carrying out the pastoral care that Christian charity obliges dared to take care of wounded, starving and dying civilian victims of a totally avoidable war, a war the two sides ought to have avoided if they had allowed wise counsel to prevail.
Today, the onus is on our generation to repair the incalculable damage repeatedly inflicted on education in our land. And the road to that repair must necessarily pass through partnering with the private sector. For, if we want to be candid with ourselves and with each other, whatever government runs is run badly. And while the assertion may come across as harsh, innumerable instances serve to buttress it.
Once upon a time, this country had only one airline, run by government. It took forever to book a flight, even longer to board it, and even longer for it to take off. But officials of the airline received their salaries and emoluments as and when due in fidelity to the adage “Oga o ta, oga o ta, owo alaaru a pe.”
Now the aviation sector is not yet where it ought to be, and that, largely because the investment environment in Nigeria is one of the most hostile on the African continent. The cost of aviation fuel in Nigeria represents a scandalous contradiction of Nigeria’s status as an oil producing country.
Still another example. Once upon a time, this country had only one telephone company. It took forever to get a phone line that very rarely worked. However, whether or not it worked, functionaries of the phone company got paid. That was the narrative until the telecommunications sector was liberalised. And now, how much and how long, one should ask how low and how short does it take to get a phone line? Employees of those private phone companies know that if the phones work, there would be profit, and their jobs and remuneration will be secure. But if they do not function, their jobs would be on the line.
I began my secondary education at St Finbarr’s College in 1974. Father Denis Slattery, SMA, founder of the school, was still Principal. That was four years after the war. Almost immediately after the war, the Administrator of the defunct East Central State, Mr Ukpabi Asika, kicked off the game of government takeover of schools.
Even though he was one of the state governors kicked out of office by the Murtala-Obasanjo-led military junta, his idea of taking over schoo.ls from the Church and voluntary agencies was given a national application by the Obasanjo-led military regime in 1976. It was at that point that Father Slattery retired.
Slattery was an Irish-Nigerian nationalist who, alongside Nnamdi Azikiwe and Michael Imodu fought for Nigerian independence from the British. His love for Nigeria, not any monetary profit, led him to establish the school. He founded the school in 1956 as a step towards forming the manpower a country about to be independent would need.
He got the land on which he built it from Muslims in the Akoka neighbourhood. For that reason, not only did he make the school grounds available for Muslims to use during Muslim festivities, he also ensured that, every Friday morning, he reminded Muslim students in the school about their obligation to be at Jumat prayers in the afternoon.
Concluded.
Father Akinwale, OP, Professor and Deputy Vice Chancellor, Augustine University, Ilara-Epe,
Lagos State, delivered this lecture at the 70th Anniversary Dinner of Loyola College, Ibadan recently.
English (US) ·