By Femi Onakanren
This writer published an article a while back regarding the need for a holistic review of Nigeria’s academic curriculum and positioning education appropriately in discussions on national development.
Recent national developments have further exposed the poor quality of reasoning amongst our teeming youths and allegedly educated folks. The impact and influence of uninformed narratives have exposed that as a nation, we may be no better than a people whose measure by academic receipts (certificates) is not matched intellectual rigor and reasoning.
This is quite alarming considering Nigeria boasts a large continent of educated people in the diaspora who do not reason any better than those who are stuck on this shore.
This realization compelled this writer to seek a critical review of how we as a country ended up in the current predicament with a view to finding redemption and right-aligning our challenged collective progress.
It is time to examine the disease rather than the continued lamentations around the symptoms in Nigeria.
Nigeria’s education history
Before colonial times and the advent of Western education, we operated an informal education system that focuses more on the advocacy of sound social values, sound character, hard work, communal development, and veneration of experience and wisdom.
We had developmental issues, but as a people, we were making collective economic and social progress. The reliance on oral transmission and storage of history and information as against developing literature meant we subjected successive generations to the nuances of personal biases, understanding, or the vicissitudes of periodical developments.
An upside of this development we mustn’t forget is that this practice also improved the memorizing capacity of successive generations. However, it established a form without substance such that many can recall but do not understand the principles that guided and created their recollections.
The colonial era and the importation of religion, Christianity, and Islam, ushered in academic learning in Nigeria. We started learning letters and putting forms into words.
Concepts became concretized. Our already robust imagination was given wings and in no time, we bested and excelled more than our colonial masters, even in the use and application of words.
Academic excellence became a gateway to a better life and a statement of achievement and social status. This marked our national academic intellectual Renaissance with several brilliant minds and luminaries emerging.
Post-colonial evolution
After independence, Nigeria sought the indigenization of opportunities. We wanted to build a country based on excellence and the only measure of excellence we had been exposed to was academic brilliance.
This sparked further interest in promoting academic pursuits as it offered an easier route to a better life. We had more opportunities than qualified people to fill them. A merit-based reward system that celebrated, nay deified, academic excellence was created.
Then life happened. The Civil War in Nigeria exposed the fragility of our national identity and introduced us to a dark ideology of ethnicized nationhood.
Although the quality was diluted, the damage was still manageable throughout the 70s. The 80s was when the proverbial shit truly hit the fan. We succumbed to the dark arts of the monetization of values.
A Generational Paradigm Shift
Previously, Nigerians obtained degrees for specific jobs. There were far too many opportunities
This benefited the inherited academic curriculum, which spoke more to parts fitting into a whole than independent and innovative knowledge application. We had qualified people who couldn’t think outside the box.
As time went on, our population continued to grow. The population growth was not matched with opportunities for growth.
The various military regimes corrupted our thinking so much that less and less value was placed on academics beyond the opportunity to roll with the elites. Power and might became the ultimate right.
The Nigerian generation that grew up in the 80s became certificate opportunists. Degrees and qualifications afforded one a seat on the table, not as a solution bringer, but as one of the privileged.
With the cloud of monetization of values hanging over our heads, increasing poor productivity, and easy money from crude oil, we didn’t have enough jobs to meet the burgeoning volume of certificate holders.
This reduced the value of certificates and academic qualifications even further to a social status symbol. Suddenly, foreign degrees, regardless of the quality, surpassed local, distinguished degrees and qualifications.
The generation that grew up in the 90s and 2000s only venerated having a degree or certificate. They did not care about the substance behind the qualifications. This further eroded the value of our education.
The advent of democracy via the 4th Republic offered us an opportunity to revisit and review several national structures and entrenched disconnection of ideological values. None suffered more than education.
In an evolving world, our curriculum kept to the ethos of memorization far more than the values of curious, creative, and innovative thinking.
Our growing population only added to social infrastructure inadequacies and because we hadn’t developed our people to be problem solvers, we became a nation of perennial wailers who know what is wrong but somehow couldn’t muster the intelligence or will to turn things around.
The generations from this point onwards developed apathy towards education especially as they could see many ‘success’ stories who hadn’t put in the requisite work.
Currently, education in Nigeria has become an inconvenience to suffer through to obtain a certificate. It has become a meaningless rite of passage for social status before one starts life properly—a tragedy.
The late 2000s generation in Nigeria is the most fearful. They have inherited all our corrupted values and disjointed worldview (money is everything, religion, and moral values mean nothing, follow the herd to survive, etc.). Our ancestors and fathers of the nation must be rolling in their different graves.
The Road to Redemption
There is a popular Yoruba adage which says, O ba ni, ko ti baje.”
We are once again on the cusp of history. There is still an opportunity for us as a nation to escape the chasm of determined social and economic nihilism.
The first step is a critical review and amendment of our current academic curriculum. We are not producing thinkers.
Nigeria also needs to re-incorporate nationalism into our academic systems. A man who lacks identity will always be a stranger in every land.
We need to reinvent our values beyond material gains, political shenanigans, and ethnoreligious narratives.
Education offers the road to redemption and a prosperous future. There is a saying that “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – Chinese Proverb
Failure to take corrective measures timely will only lead to further deterioration of our waning values. Tomorrow starts today.
Femi Onakanren is a Business Consultant and a Socioeconomic Policy Analyst. He writes from Lagos
