Few days ago, Oluwasegun David Ogundipe (a young Nigerian lawyer and African writer) aired a friend’s opinion on Facebook which stipulated thus: (sic) “what will you do if offered N15, 000.000.00 (Fifteen Million Naira) and then asked to slap your mum?” I followed the comments to the latter, and it gave birth to two schools of thoughts: those that believed it stemmed out of poverty and others that deemed it fit that it is stupidity that made the original owner of the post to come up with such.
Still in the same atmosphere, one Aiyelabegan Abdulwahab asked on Unilorin Students Union group that: (sic) ‘for $80, 000.000.00 (Eighty Million Dollars), you are asked to set your B.sc certificate on fire, what will you do?’ And to my consternation, while almost all the comments that followed were in the affirmative, I found that of Temitope Oluwaseye Ibiyo Odeyemi more fascinating, hear what she says: ‘Pls how do you want me to burn it? With kerosine! Petrol? Gas? Matches? Fire wood? Or what? Just name it and it shall be done asap. Haaaaa!!!! Na 80 Million Dollars oooo!!’
Should we also say that this also came out of stupidity? If knowledge is power, are we to subsume that the commentators are in dearth of knowledge? Truly ignorance is not an excuse, but certainly those commentators know what they want. In fact, let call a spade a spade and nobody should try to sit on the fence on this issue, I’m scared to buttress the fact that as a result of how dilapidated and incongruous Nigeria and Nigerians are, that the response might also be in confirmation perhaps certain percentage of parents are directly asked whether they can allow one if not all of their children to pass a stink or for the sake of the saints a holy slap on them for certain amount? Not because they are not aware it is a taboo to our culture but because of the notion of the survival of the fittest. More so, some parents would even go a long way to let it be known that it is God doing and hence marvelous in their sight and to this a lot of Holy Books references would be exhumed to back such incident.
Left to me, I do not agree it is stupidity that led to such an act rather poverty. And if I’m forced to still hold the same opinion, then poverty must be the parents that gave birth to one and only offspring and named it stupidity. Or what is the essence of finishing school and nobody to employ you? What is the essence of being an entrepreneur full of ideas when nobody is ready to make available capital to start a business? We can continue with what and what till God knows when and here is an opportunity where there is a short way to the known heaven than the unknown one.
In Nigeria today, no one or say few of us still hold the dream of becoming Wole
Soyinka, Ola Rotimi, S.Y. Omoiya, Ayo Salami, late Chinua Achebe, and host of others of our time, not because we are not in dire need of money, not because we are not aware of the stipend pay to them during their service time, neither are we short of the fact that they need to queue for that same allowances when old age set-in if at all it would be paid to them, but because this is where our passion lies, because we are convinced it’s through impacting positively that we can improve our science and technology, because we know that the future of this great nation is in education and not entertainment. You will agree with me that gone are the days when you ask a child what he wants to become in future and echo such noun as doctor, lawyer, lecturer among others but it is either such child tells you he wants to become Olamide (YBNL), Tubaba, DoroSavage, Dbanj, politicians or the new trend in Africa: Pastor and Imam. The reason for this is physical to the blind. There exist millions of award to those in that category for their efforts in airing “assorted rubbish” and when it come to education and its products, the number of stakeholders that award students for the job well done can be counted and even compare with the formal.
So, when slight opportunity present itself, we don’t need preachers to tell us which to choose, after all it is only how to enrich their pocket the said preachers are concerned about. And as the situation stand now if the government, the stakeholders and the sui generis that have the credibility and ability to act fail to do so in time, the bitter truth is that if not all of us, majority of us might be forced or willingly give in to terrorism which promises a huge amount of hard-earned currencies without considering the long-term effect it will have on the nation as a whole. After all, the concern bodies never thought of the long-term effect of pummeling capital into entertainment sector and the likes in jettison of education sector with the large testimony of seventy percent failure recorded by 2014 West Africa Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).
THE INQUISITOR 