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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