Out of everything we were told in camp before we got posted to our PPAs (Place of Primary Assignment), one thing always stood out.
The fact that Ekiti is known as the ‘Fountain of Knowledge’.
It was sung every time someone stood up to speak. References were made to the numerous professorial juggernauts that the state had produced locally and internationally in various fields of life.
It actually also gave us the impression that the state was particularly serious with education. Since most of us were going to teach anyway, we started looking forward to it.
And now, months after we were posted, it’s obvious that commitment to education was just built on tendencies of the past with very little bearing on the state of events today, at least in the hinterlands that I have grown to know.
Other colleagues in the bigger towns aren’t enthused either about the state of things. Ekiti still has the frame of making the “fountain of knowledge” tag count but there’s a lot of work to do.
This is also an eye opener for me. Nigeria as a nation is so far behind where education is concerned. We have gotten to that point where only the rich and those living in the big cities can afford proper education. The rest may just as well sit at home.
The government has succeeded in casting education to the list of projects unimportant to handle. Schools are not well equipped and taken care of. They lack everything from teachers to a funnel in a chemistry laboratory.
When a student in secondary school can not express him or herself in proper English, or write a sentence properly, then we are in trouble. When teachers don’t care anymore about their jobs and refuse to do anything about it, and concentrate on their businesses outside the school, it becomes even worse.
When Corps members, who are untrained, become teachers themselves, delivering the critical assignments – that’s another problem. When a child, in secondary school, doesn’t know and cannot identify correctly the complete alphabets, a catastrophe is in the works. Everybody simply trudges on as if there is no problem.
From what I have gathered and seen, it seems no one cares anymore; the government, the teachers, the parents and sadly, the students. Whatever these kids go to school to do, learning is evidently the least of them.
Adaeze Ifejilimalu (@Dazee_Zita)
dazeetah's Blog 