It is a little bit difficult to believe that the whole question of the education in the so-called disadvantaged areas of the Nigeria still wears certain peculiar features,so many years after many hot debates both locally and internationally on the desirability or not of the catching up,had been settled.
Thus,the government in those areas have had to plead,beg or even threaten on the matter of parents withdrawing their children-particularly girls-from schools in order to give them out in marriage or simply that such children are needed to help the parents,or even that special religious schools are preferrable.When it is not all of that,many parents have been saying they just cannot pay the fees,levies e.t.c
I,believe sincerely that this problem is national in it's implications and should not be treated as the business of the affected areas only.The reason is simple. As long as it is now accepted that Nigeria is one large,indivisible community, with definite national aspirations and ambitions in the matter of progress and development,it is not acceptable that education-the immutable,constant factor of all such progress and development-should be allowed to suffer any sort of experimentation in obedience to so called local peculiarities and different pace of the development.As Abraham Lincoln said on the question of freedom in another context,this Nigeria cannot remain half educated, half uneducated. if that should be so, then we shall not be talking of the one nation,one destiny.
I therefore believes that this government stands the best chance in solving,once and for all time, the peculiar problems of education attributable to insufficient funds and uncooperative parents in the so-called disadvantaged areas of Nigeria.
A more determined programme of public enlightenment should be mounted to convince those recalcitrant parents that the social system that satisfactorily sustained them is crumbling fast and that their children do not have to be trapped in its ruins;that there is nothing just or culturally admirable in a 13-year-old girl becoming a wife,and that mere numbers will not always and automatically gurantee a fair sharing of the nation's responsibilities - and priviledges.
As for funding,it is always painful to listen to government in the so-called disadvantaged areas complaining about insufficient money for education.Theirs is thus a double disadvantage.And in some of these areas,the attempts to reduce state expenditure on education by making non-indigenes pay higher fees at the tertiary level has given rise to complaints of a certain type of discrimination that an indivisible Nigeria with one destiny should very well do without.It seems quite clear to me that this particular problem ought to be treated as a national emergency,with the fedreal government playing a leadership role.The problems arising from spillage and pollution in the oil producing areas of nigeria, for instance,are a national concern,considering that the whole nation's unifying economic interest lies in those areas.
Similarly,Nigeria's investment in the future translates into the education of it's people-all of them.In one word, where money is the identifiable,single most important constraint on education in the so-called disadvantaged areas,the federal government and the concern citizens must unhesitatingly go to it rescue.
This way of looking at this particular problem of course does not mean that the so-called already advantaged areas must be held immobile.It simply means that the whole nation cannot afford,out of consideration for the sensibilities of our so-called foreign creditors,to down-grade the importance of the education.
I have this believe that infleuntial people in some certain parts of this country have not seriously tackled this problem of the educationally disadvantaged areas for a very selfish reason:they have always enjoyed a social system where there is a large reservoir of serfs to continue polishing their views of themselves as heaven-ordained masters.To maintain such system,it is neccesary that the large majority of those serfs have no opportunity to advance on social ladder - through education.The present government and generation should try to put a full stop to this monstrous illusion.