Saturday, 13 May 2017
Nigeria is a
land of opportunity. And I do not mean this the way Nigerian
politicians usually mean it, as a cliched speech for the campaign trail.
I mean this from the bottom of my heart because it is true and I have
benefited from it and I can prove it.
Nigeria
ought to change her educational model. Our educational system is still
by and large a colonial model where the occupying colonial power merely
trained a select few natives for the purpose of having clerks and
translators to run their exploitative government. It was never designed
to transfer knowledge that prepares the recipient to add value to
Nigeria.
Quite on the contrary, it was designed and still
remains designed to train Nigerians to take value from Nigeria and give
it to the West. This is one of the reasons why we have more Nigerian
medical professionals practicing in the West and Saudi Arabia than we
have in Nigeria.
Our
educational system is also designed to train the bulk of its intake to
be nothing more than paper pushers who daily clock watch, while waiting
for the end of the month to collect salaries that enables them to their
insatiable lust for foreign goods.
Our
educational system does not make us productive. It does not teach us to
seize initiative. In fact, it kills initiative. Many Nigerian children
who show initiative at an early age are made to feel ashamed of their
initiative by their teachers themselves who call them ITK (meaning I Too
Know). The subliminal message underlying that common label is that it
is not our place to be overly intelligent or curious. We ought to leave
that to the oyinbo man.
It is for
this reason that Nigerian youths feel it is the job of the government to
provide jobs for them. Pay attention to what I said. Our youths do not
think it is government's responsibility to provide the enabling
environments for jobs to thrive. No. They believe, because of the type
of education they have received, that it is the responsibility of
government to provide actual jobs for them.
They have
been falsely taught that the secret of success is to go to school, get a
certificate and that that certificate acts as a receipt that you hand
over to government in exchange for a guaranteed life of ease, laziness
and entitlement, along with an official car, a driver, official quarters
and domestic workers that do everything for you except help you do your
business in the toilet.
That is the
life their grandparents saw the colonial masters live. When their
grandparents came of age, they chose to live that same life forgetting
that the colonial masters where little more than an army of occupation
whose mindset was to take and not necessarily to build except to the
extent of building railways and roads from mines and farms directly to
ports for onward transportation of the wealth of Africa to Europe and
teaching (perhaps brainwashing is a better term) the natives to accept
their particular brand of Christianity (which invariably has their
monarch and not Christ as the head of the Church).
This is why a
Nigerian youth who lives in Kaduna can complain that the government has
not provided him or her with a job. Yet, Kaduna rice sells for almost
double in Lagos. The government that he or she complains against has
built a railway and train that will take them to Lagos for less than
₦2,000. They do not need a visa to go to Lagos.
Even the
Bible says "my people perish from lack of knowledge." Yes, the Muhammadu
Buhari administration is inept, but this clueless government is not
your problem. The problem of the Nigerian youth is an educational system
that has robbed him of initiative and pumped him full of entitlement to
the extent that he or she is expecting manna from heaven. The problem
is mental laziness. The problem is YOU!
Probably the
best thing that ever happened to Nigeria's economy and her educational
system is the second coming of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and her brilliant
imitatives with former President Jonathan, chief of which was the Youth
Enterprise With Innovation in Nigeria (YouWin) initiative.
I just
finished writing a book on the Jonathan administration titled Facts
Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years (Chibok, 2015 and
Other Conspiracies). In it I devoted a whole chapter to YouWIN.
Even though I
was somewhat involved in the process, I was nonetheless impressed when I
took in the bird's eye view of the scheme and how successful it was in
creating jobs and changing the mindset of Nigeria's youth.
It was not
that YouWIN gave grants, although it did give grants ranging from
$12,000 to $100,000 to over 4,000 Nigerian youths. The beauty of the
initiative was that it provided business and financial education to tens
of thousands of Nigeria's youth and hopefully changed their outlook
from one of entitlement to one of self reliance.
Unknown to many Nigerians, YouWIN is actually the world's largest business plan competition ever created.
When David
Mackenzie, a Senior Economist at the World Bank, did an Independent
Impact Evaluation on YouWIN, which he published in 2015, McKenzie found
that YouWin was two and half times as efficient as a 2013 management
consulting program in Mexico, four and a half times as efficient as a
2014 wage subsidy program in Jordan and almost ten times as efficient as
a 2011 vocational training program in Turkey.
That is why
it was rather disappointing that President Muhammadu Buhari could not
see beyond politics to understand the need to retain the initiative.
Rather, his administration reduced Nigeria's most successful job
creation effort to "a weekly print media enterprise education programme
designed to assist entrepreneurs start, plan and grow their businesses"
which it christened YouWiN!Connect, an aberration and a bastardization
of the original idea which has gone the way of other harebrained ideas
that the current administration came up with including Change Begins
With Me and the N-Power scheme (emphasis on scheme).
It is very
sad to see what has happened to initiatives like YouWIN and the
Presidential Special Scholarship Scheme for Innovations and Development,
Almajiri Schools etc. Sound policies, patriotic initiatives and
powerful ideas that should have been consolidated into Nigeria's
educational system have been either canceled, watered down or left to
wither away. And look at the impact such actions have had on the
economy.
Speaking of
the economy, the last time Nigeria had a Coordinator was in 2011 when
President Goodluck Jonathan nominated Dr. Mrs. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala as a
minister and upon her confirmation named her the Coordinating Minister
of the Economy.
How sad that
in 2017, six years after that event, Nigeria has now got her second
Coordinator and no, it is not another minister. It is no less a
personality than the incumbent Vice President who has been reduced, in
the estimation of his boss, from an acting President to a Coordinator.
In his first
letter to the Senate on February 10, 2017, before going on medical
vacation, President Buhari had used the correct nomenclature to describe
the role that would be played by the Vice President, Professor Yemi
Osinbajo.
In the said letter, the Vice President was to 'act' on his behalf.
How very
strange that in his second letter to the Senate on May 7, 2017, before
going to see his London doctors, President Buhari curiously changed the
wordings of his letter and named the Vice President as someone who would
"coordinate' rather than 'act'!
And to those
who are saying that the nomenclature does not matter, go home and call
your father 'my mother's husband' and after he has slapped you back into
reality come back here and realize that if it is not panadol it is not
the same thing as panadol. Vice President Osinbajo did a very good job
the last time he was acting President and as such no one who loves
Nigeria should hesitate to accord him the respect he has earned even
though by reason of his peculiar situation he cannot complain about this
shabby treatment meted out on him for fear of playing into the hands of
the 'Cabal'.
I think the
President was not too happy with vice President Professor Yemi
Osinbajo's good performance the last time which out-shined him hence
this Coordinator of National Affairs business. Where are our
constitutional lawyers? Can't somebody approach the court to stop this
nonsense? Coordinator of National Affairs is unknown to our
constitution! Our constitution was not made for President Muhammadu
Buhari. Rather, President Buhari was made by our constitution and must
be subject to it President or not!
Finally, on
the recent release of some of the kidnapped girls, let me say that
anybody that is not happy that 82 Chibok girls were released must be a
monster whose humanity should be called into question. I thank God that
these girls have been released and I commend the Federal Government for
the feat of ensuring that these girls are reunited with their families.
May God bless President Muhammadu Buhari for providing the leadership
that enabled this to happen.
Having said
that, there are some factual observations I want to raise. What you are
about to read is completely devoid of any opinion. I am just stating
facts. You may not like the facts. You may not even like me. But one
thing you cannot do is ignore the fact.
Why should a Presidential spokesman turn himself to a praise singer for a terrorist group? Read the following quote:
“To be
honest, without appearing to speak for Boko Haram, from the outlook of
these girls, they appear better in terms of their physical outlook than
the 21 we received before."-Garba Shehu, President Muhammadu Buhari's
spokesman.
What can one
even say when a Presidential spokesman praises Boko Haram for looking
after Chibok girls well! What can I say? I am speechless!
On May 7,
2017, when the girls were ferried over to the Nigerian Presidential
Villa at Aso Rock, Abuja to meet with President Muhammadu Buhari,
photographs released showed them looking very well fed and robust. In
fact, the next day (May 8) Africa's top blog, Linda Ikeji's blog
published a photo of the released girls side by side with a picture of a
woman and her baby in one of the Internally Displaced Persons camp in
Borno state for a side by side comparison and these Chibok girls, who
had been living rough inside Sambisa forest looked well fed, well
groomed and buxom while the woman in the IDP camp looked haggard and
hungry. It leaves you questioning who has been in captivity and who has
been free. How is this possible?
This is not
the first time Chibok girls have been released. Almost exactly a year
ago, just a week before the current Nigerian administration marked its
first year in office some Chibok girls were also released. Another batch
were released in October 2016. The thing is that when these girls are
released there is a media blackout on them. No one is allowed near them
to interview them.
I understand
that they have gone through an ordeal, but Malala also went through a
similar or even worse ordeal and no one shielded her from the press.
Malala Yousafzai was shot at age 15 by the taliban and left unconscious.
She survived and she was threatened by the taliban who threatened to
kill her should they catch her. Her case was one of clear and present
danger. Yet she was not sequestered from the public even though, like
the Chibok girls, her English was not so good at first. In fact, an
international press tour was arranged for her placing her on the world
stage and kickstarting the activism that earned her a Nobel Prize making
her the youngest person ever to be so awarded.
One would have thought that that is what would have played out for the released girls.
Last
October, 21 Chibok girls were release by Boko Haram after negotiations.
Till date, these girls have been kept from the press. Even their own
parents are not allowed access to them according to a New York Times
piece on them published on March 11, 2017. The girls are kept in S safe
house according to the New York Times. During the Christmas holidays
they were allowed to visit Chibok but were housed in the home of a "top
politician". Their parents were only allowed to 'visit them'. Soldiers
guarded the girls and after some hours asked the parents of the girls to
leave.
Let me say
again that I am glad that they have been released and I pray that the
remaining captives are also released but questions remain and when you
attempt to raise them, you are shouted down by suspected members of the
Buhari Media Center that Farooq Kperogi warned us about.
Reno's Nuggets:
And now for my nugget of the week.
A woman who
is looking for a perfect husband will never marry, for there are no
perfect men, few good men and many regular men. In fact, foolish women
fall for men who know how to pleasure them. Wise women go for men who
know how to treasure them. A refined girl is better than a fine girl
because fineness fades fast with age but refinement improves as you
mature. And finally, whether you are a man or a woman, don't be ashamed
of your background. Focus on improving your future. Jesus was born in an
animal barn but now lives in heaven #RenosNuggets
Reno Omokri
is a Christian TV talk show host and founder of the Mind of Christ
Christian Center and the Helen and Bemigho Sanctuary for orphans. He is
the author of three books, Shunpiking: No Shortcuts to God, Why Jesus
Wept and Apples of Gold: A Book of Godly Wisdom. His book, Facts Versus Fiction: The True Story of the Jonathan Years: Chibok, 2015 and Other Conspiracies, is set for release in June.
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