Former National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Adams Oshiomhole, has charged Nigerians to rebel against the government to get priorities like education right.
Gatekeepers News reports that Oshiomhole gave this charge while raising the need for an improvement in Nigeria’s education system.
The former Labour leader, while speaking at the unveiling of the Transforming D’ Intellectual Firmament of Africa-Community Development Initiative (TiFA-CDI), urged Nigerians not to be carried away by politics but to seek ways to ensure that initiatives to keep children in schools are developed.
He said, “That is the law of universal compulsory education, but as we speak, we have children who are being taught under the tree, that is if they are being taught at all. And we have teachers who can’t even spell their names and they can only spread illiteracy.”
Oshiomhole, who stated that education is the key to Nigeria’s development, stressed that Nigeria appears to be failing in its national plan for growth with the lack of basic education.
He noted that there is a need to train, educate and skill up her people for possible development.
“It is about harassing, engaging, terrorising and if I may quote Obasanjo even behaving like a rebel to force governors and governments to get priorities right with regards to education.
“It is not right for us to boast of an ultra-modern government house and have the most dilapidated schools and even employ teachers not to pay them.
“You have angry and hungry people in the classroom, they can’t be nice to our children and when they show no kindness to those children those children grow up without care without feeling, believing that the society is uncaring,” Oshiomhole said.
The Executive Director of TiFA-CDI, Taiwo Akerele in his address said the organisation decided to dedicate its core mission to education because the number of out-of-school in Nigeria was growing every day.
Akerele who described the situation as a national embarrassment stated that its 2020 report showed that for every child of school age kidnapped or abducted anywhere in Nigeria, at least 1,000 kids will be scared away from class for at least a minimum of 30 school days.
According to him, the fact is detrimental to the growth of Nigeria’s national economy if the security situation in the country is not immediately addressed.
He further called for a state of emergency in basic education across Nigeria starting with the vulnerable geopolitical zones of northwest and northeast Nigeria.
“We call on the government to embark on a comprehensive and radical educational curriculum review across Nigeria and prioritize skills rather than old fashioned theories and colonial educational systems that do not help human economic growth, skills acquisition and small-scale industry expansion,” Akerele said.
