The elite are killing education — Prof. Adesanmi Pius Adesanmi | credits: File copy In this interview withGBENGA ADENIJI, Professor of English, French, and African Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, Pius Adesanmi, speaks about the challenges facing university education in Nigeria among other issues What do you think is the problem with the education system in Nigeria? There is a fundamental disconnect between leadership and followership in this country in terms of what education means. For the irresponsible political elite that is determined to sustain Nigeria as an example of how not to run a country, there can be no greater threat than the sort of informed citizenry that qualitative public education produces. To rig elections or steal public funds on a stratospheric scale that suggests mental illness, to acquire unquestioned impunity, you do not go about investing in qualitative public education. Useable mass ignorance and poverty are the raw materials you need to manufacture a followership ready to defend your perversities to death on the basis of ethnicity or religion. If you receive high quality education, you will no longer go and dance in gratitude whenever President Goodluck Jonathan decides to tar a road with remnants of your money that have thankfully not been stolen. You will demand and expect performance as routine. The need to manufacture largely ignorant masses explains the perverse consistency with which successive generations of political leaders have waged war on public education. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation says any country that wishes to become part of the 21st Century should be devoting 30-40 per cent of her total annual budget to education. You will weep for Nigeria if you knew how much these guys are currently devoting to education. Then you jump up in the middle of all that rot and start nine new federal universities, locate one nepotistically in your own village, and begin to partially fund it with hostel donations from your mother. For ordinary Nigerians, education means the exact opposite of what it means for the ruling elite. For us, it is not a threat. It is empowerment. Sadly, only the elite have the means and the resources to impose their own meaning of education on Nigeria. Hence, they underfund and destroy it while sending their kids abroad to acquire that which they deny the people at home. As a student in UNILORIN before becoming a lecturer abroad, what were the challenges you noticed in Nigeria’s school system which still exist today? Where does one begin? There were overcrowded hostels and lecture rooms, dilapidated infrastructure, libraries with no new books and zero subscription to world-class journals, underpaid and under-motivated lecturers, incessantaluta(students’ protests), and police brutality. I do hope that the police have improved upon the standards of their brutality when quelling students’ demonstrations. I recall onealutawe had in 1988, we picked up teargas canisters that the police had used and some of them had expiry dates all the way back to the early 1970s. I hope they no longer use expired tear gas on students these days. As someone who earned a First Class in his graduate degree, how would you advise those planning to attain such academic feat? My case was a little peculiar. I acquired a lot more erudition at home under my father’s supervision than I acquired in the formal school system. Classroom instruction was always a supplement to the extensive reading I did in our family library. So, in a way, the road to that First Class started at home. I was the sort of student who, answering a 100-level question on a novel by Cameroonian writer, Mongo Beti, could reference a very broad range of literary and theoretical traditions. At 100 level, I could cite the sources and references that my lecturers were using. However, I did not take that background for granted. Your First Class is made in the first semester of your first year. From the beginning, I studied as if my life depended on it. I was never content with what was in the syllabus. I did twice, thrice, as much reading as was required. Hard work and long hours in the library, aided by coffee and kolanuts, worked for me then. They’ll still work for anyone aspiring to earn a First Class today
Posted on: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 12:03:02 +0000
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