1. ANTI-EDUCATION EDUCATION MINISTER!
This is how we roll in Nigeria: I turned 16 this year and I have secured admission to study Geography at the University of Ibadan. I should count myself lucky, in fact very fortunate. Meanwhile, my immediate younger sister who will turn 16 next year (and is starting her Senior Secondary III year this month) will not be that lucky as she will not be allowed by the government to go to university next year; not because she will not pass her examinations but because she will not be eligible by age to attend a university. Universities are for the mature minds, we’re told; you must by law attain the age of adulthood to attend a university in Nigeria. So, my sister will have to wait until, not 2026 when she will be 17, but 2027 to be able to go to university.
However, our last born girl, who will be 14 next year can legally get married now! It does not matter that the institution of marriage is by far more complicated and complex than university systems. Though she is expected to figure out all there is to know about marriage, her senior sister should be too dumb to understand how to be a university student. This is the society that the Honourable Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, wants Nigerians to live in.
If this thirteenth century idea is allowed to stand because our professor of law wants to enforce a policy he claims was enacted years ago, here are some immediate and direct implications:
A. Most private universities will fold up as they will not have students to get into year one in the 2025/2026 academic session and thereafter. Walk into any private university in Nigeria and you will realize that majority of the students are teenagers. Somewhere between 50 percent and 80 percent of year one students are between the ages of 15 and 17 years. Private universities (and secondary schools) are a thriving sub-sector of the education sector. Ogun State alone plays host to at least 10 private universities in Nigeria. Combined, private universities employ no less than one million teaching, non teaching and support staff. Despite the high level of graduate unemployment in the country, most products of private universities get employed or start their businesses within one year of completing their compulsory national youth service.
Doesn’t this tell a story that these young minds know what they are doing? Professor Mamman should be told that these days, most primary one pupils are ages four and five; only few are older. If he uses his calculator well, he will realize that majority of students will be finishing their secondary school education by ages 16 and 17. Even in rural Nigeria, primary one pupils already know quite a few things before getting into primary school; thanks to flourishing kindergarten, and other preschool institutions in the country. Professor, times have changed; this is the third decade of the twenty-first century! I expect private universities to take up gauntlet.
B. More parents with means will send their children abroad for university education. If you’re a responsible parent, you cannot afford to keep your 16 year old child at home for two years doing nothing in order for him to grow up and enter Mamman’s idea of a university. Apart from universities in North America and Europe, which are quite expensive due to the massive devaluation of the Naira, many African universities will be the major beneficiaries of this draconian and costly policy. Already, it is a major multidimensional concern that hundreds of thousands of Nigerians are studying abroad; but this government wants to worsen it. Let it be known that a year after his appointment, this minister has not yet pointed to any major achievement he has recorded in his ministry.
2. PRESIDENTIAL LIFESTYLE AND THE POVERTY HIGHWAY
I have argued repeatedly that the current political system is not working. It is incapable of delivering good governance for Nigerians who have for decades been starved of good governance. The larger majority of Nigerians have never experienced governance in the real sense of the word. Anyone born after the civil war cannot tell you experientially what good governance in Nigeria looks like. What they have experienced is semi-imperial rulership camouflaged as governance. Make no mistake, this mentality is not localized in the presidency. Governors, federal and state houses of assembly members, chairmen of councils and political appointees live large, very large on tax payers’ money. They think they matter a lot and that the world revolves around them. They have a ballooned sense of self-importance and ego. The word SERVICE is not in their dictionary. A minister (or a commissioner at the state level) does not know that he or she is there to minister (which means to serve) to all Nigerians so long as that government department is concerned. The same applies for the President (you can call him or her Chief Minister) who is there to minister (serve) to all Nigerians. Because they have unbridled access to power and public funds, they have everything there is to life at the expense of the people they are meant to serve.
The “new” $150 million presidential jet, the N1Billion car, the presidential yacht and the N21 billion for the renovation of the house of the Vice President are the latest examples of the kind of leadership we have. How come the President and his Vice did not include the procurement of these toys in their manifestos when they were campaigning for votes? They should have told Nigerian voters that they would procure these things upon their election since they were necessary for the good governance of Nigeria.
That Nigerian politicians have chosen to live in obscene opulence at the mercy of the over 30 million Nigerians suffering from starvation and famine (mind you I am not talking of poverty but acute hunger because over 140 million Nigerians are already living in poverty) speaks volumes of the kind of people who have been ruling this country.
With this kind of mentality, there is absolutely no way the country can develop. The National Orientation Agency’s job is well cut out for it; which is to leave the ruled alone and focus on orientating the rulers to change their orientation.
3. CORRUPTION IN THE TEMPLE OF JUSTICE!
Last week the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) held its annual conference in Lagos. It was just an annual ritual for a professional body. But the conference was presaged by two important and related happenings in the country: the swearing in of Kudirat Kekere-Ekun as the Chief Justice of Nigeria, and the result of a vote that tipped the judiciary as the most corrupt institution in the country. If this is true, when a nation reaches this adverse crescendo, you should know that the Game Is Up for such country because its decadence is now in the high heavens!
And it should matter to the NBA because lawyers are the pipelines and the funnels through which the judiciary gets this corrupt. You need to know how much governors spend on lawyers to prosecute their cases in electoral courts. In a year where there is general election as happened in 2023, to have all their cases disposed of at the Supreme Court, sitting governors would have spent hundreds of billions of naira combined from the trial courts to the Supreme Court.
With such damning reports, you know by now that in Nigeria, the lie that the judiciary is the hope of the common man has always been a lie.
4. THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY JUMBO PAY
I want to jump into the fray of the jumbo pay that our National Assembly members earn monthly. Since the salaries of our federal legislators are still shrouded in secrecy (just as most things about governments in Nigeria), let us assume that senators who are not senate leaders earn N25M a month while their house of representatives counterparts take home N20M. On the surface, this is humongous, even satanic in that minimum wage is still N30,000 a month (the President recently signed into law a N70,000 minimum wage which has yet to be implemented; and which some states will never pay!).
Given the type of democracy that we practice (which is not practiced anywhere else on earth), I dare say that the salaries our legislators earn is small! Wait for my explanation! I heard of someone who was said to have spent over N500 million on a failed election to go to the House of Representatives. It is probable that the “winner” spent more. Let us assume that it costs half this much to go to the lower house: That’s N250m. This is a clear example of the fact that the intention of aspirants going to parliament is not to represent their constituencies, but a full fleshed business investment where they expect to recoup their investment with huge profit within four years. Tell me, what then should be the annual salary for this office!
Secondly, a Nigerian legislator is a Father Christmas primarily in his or her constituency and secondarily in the state. The last thing expected of this modern day legislator is law making. Instead, the person is expected to donate money for most burials, children dedications, naming ceremonies, medical bills, weddings and house warmings in the constituency. The person is also expected to come home and “empower” his people with the procurement and distribution of wheelbarrows, bicycles, tricycles, motorcycles, sowing machines, rakes, machetes, hoes, and all sorts.
Again, tell me, what should be the salary of such a “legislator”! The problem is not the salary our legislators pay themselves, but the ingenuity of our logic-defying “democracy”.
Esiere is a former journalist!©️2024
