"Nigerian public varsities graduates cannot compete with my secondary school students" - Atiku Abubakar
Nothing could be more believable than former VP, Atiku Abubakar's statement above. It's a truism that's as hurtful as falsity. Abubakar's ABTI-AMERICA UNIVERSITY is among the best not only in Nigeria but on this part of the globe. It's our local version of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore or Columbia University, New York both made exclusively out of reach for the less privileged.
Yes, AAU is simply 'the best education money can buy' in Nigeria. Congratulations to VP Atiku Abubakar for his success to add such value to the upper class Nigerians. Let's pray someday the less privileged could enjoy the benefits.
However, where Abubakar's success ends, there starts Nigeria's sad, pitiable and repulsive story of avoidable failure. Truly, a graduate of Abubakar's secondary school is by far ahead of a Nigerian public university graduated student; those caught within the period when universities were degrading while private universities were doing wonderfully well while being managed by the same set of managers on different terms though.
The truism here is that: public universities used to be just as good (or even better) than any private university of today as could be proven by the intellectual, commercial, political, social, and academic finesse of the founders of today's private educational 'wonder centers'. By their uncanny ability to hold Nigeria to ransom for best part of the century, one need not to be convinced about the quality of the system that produced them which they replaced with something exclusively for the high and mighty.
My generation couldn't be luckier than the generation of proprietors of today's private universities yet, even in my preparatory years, a primary school certificate could pin to the ground university degree of today. Something that always flash into my mind each time I came across a situation depicting decline of education in Nigeria was a personal incident. I was in primary 3 in LEA Unguwar Rimi, Kaduna, then a very beautiful educational environment which is now sandwiched in the noisiest part of U/Rimi.
A new class mistress was brought to my class. As was traditional, she went round assessing the class. When she reached me, she asked me to spell 'hymn' which I did correctly. I think she chose me for 'hymn' seeing I was Muslim and couldn't have learned 'hymn' by accident but by learning which would give her a fair assessment of the class. 'Hymn' is one of those words that a non Christian could never know without being taught. Nobody could know 'hymn' without knowing what it means. I still can visualize her expression when she patted my head and said "well-done".
That was the story of education before Nigeria lost it to 'pocket-instincts'. By the way, (in-between this article) I just called my 'English-Graduate' niece and asked her to spell 'hymn' which she failed unabashedly. The lesson: If our rested system of education could inculcate even knowledge of seeming irrelevant (as 'hymn' is to a Muslim kid) at such an early stage, only God knows what was relevant knowledge was installed in brains of students of my generation. Perhaps, that's the reason 'private school' was alien to my generation and couldn't have make any sense back then whatsoever.
The big question facing Nigerians is whether to laugh or cry faced with the inconvenience of a lone option of watching private schools structured to serve the needs of only the nouveau riche soaring high while institutions catering for the needs of he larger majority are barely able to roll out 'half-done' graduates that would be so ill-equipped hence, would remain a liability to themselves and the society. Is it not absurd that Nigeria has since graduated from unemployed to unemployable graduates despite the acumen and dexterity of an ungrateful generation who exploits our sad situations rather than nurse it back to health.
It says a lot about our carelessness to details that within the leadership triangle of OBJ, IBB and Atiku exist the best 3 private educational institutions in Nigeria when it's provable that public educational institutions suffered the most under their collective supervision. And these are the same people whose hefty bills are still being picked by the government in the name of pension when teachers and university lectures who exhausted the best part of the muscles and brain fuel keeping public institutions afloat by 'patch-work' daily are being denied incentives for their sacrifices.
Why shouldn't private secondary students beat public university graduates under these terms? The atmosphere is conducive for that. It is neither magic nor business dexterity that tilted the result in favour of the private institutions. It's simply business logic - create a need and fulfill it. Public institutions have been raped, bastardized and hopelessly trapped in a vicious cycle of deprivation and neglect by successive regimes. Th end result, over stretched facilities, depressed teachers and lecturers. Is it any wonder we are harvesting graduates that only pass through educational institutions without educational institutions passing through them?
Solution:
Let's go back to the drawing board and start afresh to catch up with the best of the privileged. We have a duty to give back what we were given in kind - that which made most of us what we are free of charge.
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