UNTIL NIGERIA INVEST MORE IN EDUCATION, SHE WILL STILLBE FACED WITH MANY CHALLENGES.

In a nation where more than half of its population are not educated, what would you expect? We won't blame this on our colonial master. Should we? Education is not all about seeing the four walls of an academic institutions but it entails mastering and the development of the mind and structuring the individuals not just to be doctors, engineers, lawyers,teachers,but to acquire the rudiments necessary for an adaptable future. ..,passing through the school system and the school system passing through one. The negligence melted on the Nigerian educational sector have made a U-turn on our country. This decay have long started and can only be corrected by a long term objective stagemanaged by those grinded in the subject matter.
Though our dear country is rich in policies formulation, she have not been able to manage a pass mark in implementing them. The Nigerian policy on educationalis a laughable one. It is a mixture of both the British and American with emphasise not laid on domestic factors. This have made it possible for the epileptic structure notto be able to accommodate arising issues in our education. For instance, the language aspect of the Nigerian policy as it concerns educational is a flaw that can only be corrected on the drawing board. While it stated that the child should be taught (between primary 1and 3) with the mother tongue, the police failed to specify what mother tongue will be in environments wherethere are more than ten ethnic languages eg, university environments. it also failed to inculcate the different languages as a course studyable in schools.
I believe that the ever decaying nature of the Nigerian education is part of what made late professor Chinua Achebe to write his popular novel, "Things Fall Apart". The education standard has in turn fallen and now all we can now boast of is "paper certificates".
I can still remember how my aunty who saw only primary school used to teach me. she could make a correct sentence and tell me which is noun, adjective or verb. Now, the reverse is the case as university graduates cannot write the English alphabets correctly. We are all victims of this circumstances.
The government will no doubt take the lion share of the blames. I mean our politicians who send their children abroad and turn around to cripple our education. None payment of teachers salaries and failures to provide basic apparatus for learning are key factors to this imbroglio. The paper policy on our education as a philosophy, stipulated that no nation can grow more than the qualities of its teachers and yet, teachers are not given a place of pride in the polity. WHAT AN IRONY? So much of a time in the past, public schools have been shut down and just recently, polytechnics gates were shut behind students for three months and who knows if the universities's won't be so. In the history of Nigeria, no administration, state or federal have borrowed money to finance education but many have done so to finance White elephant projects. I pity Nigeria.
The Nigerian system which is naver a fertile ground for improvement and excellence, have made the impoverished population to go extra miles to have a "certificate". As an option, parents now pay huge amount of money for their wards to be aided in examinations. This have eroded pupils and students' remain zeal to read, after all,they will be assisted.
I cannot stop crying that Nigeria have left the search for a black goat till night fall.
Ostensibly to revamp education in Delta state, our animal doctor of a governor handed over some schools to their original owners call missionaries. what Good will this bring since the average families cannot afford the fee. Private schools as the remaining opium, students and pupils are left under the tutelage of frustrated young school leaver who May not be proud of the job owned to the stipends as salaries. If you have ever been to Marry Mount College Agbor before now, a re visit will explain more. Which way Nigeria?
...to be continued

Written by Jegbefume Onyekacha juliet