how can we progress when every single dine of taxpayers fund is used on senseless and often unmerited causes.Nigeria holds potentials of being one of the greatest nations ever on earth but insatiable greed and untended corruption has placed this astonished nation among the league of sapling economies.it bleeds my heart that wrongdoing is celebrated with the normal ''chop,i chop'' mentality that has crippled the very foundations upon which the most populous black nation was built..As
much as I hate to generalise , something always worries me about the way
we react to issues in Nigeria. We are a terribly impulsive people. Ever
ready to arrive at conclusions without deep thought. We pass judgment
almost always too soon. Even when awkward things happen in our society,
we do not reflect on them, we rush to
take sides and in no time, move on like nothing has happened and then
wait for the next record -breaking ignominious event. We are like the
drunkard who constantly forgets the indignity of the previous night.
Earlier this week, allegations filtered in through an online media
platform that Nigeria's current Aviation Minister, Ms Stella Oduah,
might have made bogus claims about her qualifications. According to the
report, officials of St. Paul's College Lawrenceville, Virginia, United
States where Oduah claimed to have gained a Master's degree in Business
Administration (MBA) told the news platform that no such programme ever
existed in the institution. The report further insinuated that the lady
may not even have obtained her first degree from the institution.
Although the silence of the Minister and allegations that she has gone
to work online in a bid to pull off any information related to her
educational attainments smell of guilt, I would still treat this as an
allegation until we hear Oduah's side of the story. I would also advise
commentators to tarry a minute and let us reason together, just before
you cast a stone.
Thinking about this matter, I recall that the
Oduah case, if it turns out to be true, would be the third high
-profile false educational claim scandal in the 14 years of Nigeria's
return to democratic rule. The first was blown open by The News magazine
some weeks into our new democratic experience in 1999. It involved a
young man with the name Salisu Buhari, who was just elected Speaker of
the House of Representatives. The News reported that Buhari did not
attend the University of Toronto in Canada as he had claimed and that he
falsified his age. After a series of denials and the magazine's
insistence on its scoop, Buhari admitted that he indeed forged documents
and perjured himself.
Not long after, Tell magazine went to
town with the alleged fraudulent educational claims by the then Lagos
State Governor. In some sense, the claims against the governor were a
tad more grievous than Buhari's. The former governor was alleged to have
lied about information regarding his primary, secondary and tertiary
education.
That is where we are now, a point where two of the
most prominent examples of falsification of records are not just walking
the streets but are back in national prominence. The former, after a
"go and sin no more" Presidential pardon was recently appointed to the
Governing Council of the University of Nigeria (UNN), Nsukka, Enugu
State, while the latter is the current poster boy for what is the most
progressive of Nigerian politics. Only God knows what reward Oduah would
get if she is eventually proved guilty of this accusation
While condemning the detestable act of taking Nigerians for granted, the
point must be made that what we see in high places is the simple
manifestation of an infested system. We have a system which has
decimated merit, a polity that has devalued morality and slaughtered all
known values. In this country, I have seen different levels of
compromises. I have seen parents buy examination questions for their
children, just to give them an advantage over others. I have seen
parents pay for their children to be coached in the middle of
examinations. I have heard of false oath-taking in our courts, I have
heard of false marriages in our courts especially by graduands who want
to evade National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) postings, that is not to
mention the almost widely accepted lack of capacity of Nigerian artisans
to speak the truth. I have heard of teachers giving marks in exchange
for one form of inducement or the other. I have seen people falsify
their age to fit into the requirement for a job or some other benefits.
There is just no end to what a lot of our compatriots would do to get
their heart desire.
But do you really blame them? Resilient as
they are, Nigerians will always find ways to circumvent and survive the
frustrating collapse of institutions of the state. In Nigeria, children
would pass matriculation exanimations but not get into institutions
until someone bites a carrot. Here is a country where students end up
spending six years to complete a four-year course as lecturers are sure
to embark on ceaseless industrial actions in the course of their
academic career. Then they graduate two years later than they
anticipated and employers, including governmental organisations, would
place some age requirement that they no longer meet. So what do they do?
These graduands approach a ready court clerk, claim to have lost their
birth certificates and swear to an affidavit claiming that they were
born two years later than their actual date of birth! It is called
Declaration of Age and that gets them ready for any age requirement by
companies, but then, they have perjured themselves. Only God knows how
many people in top positions in today's Nigeria are guilty of this
infraction. It is a country where companies without any iota of academic
roles insist on employing candidates with first class degrees or at
least a second class upper degrees. To beat them at their game, some
dumb blonde whose only aptitude is a pretty face would seduce a
lecturer, settle herself and curiosly come up at the top of her class.
Not to be left in the cold, the young man who is not so endowed would
bring out some money, (usually nothing enough to prosper anyone), and
buy any class of degree that he wants ready for sucker companies that
value certificate over the quality of the personality that they intend
to employ. No wonder so many companies end up employing incompetent
impostors who cannot help themselves when confronted with the reality of
the task at hand.
This is the tragedy of a nation without
class. A nation which stifles the ability of its people to attain to
their best potential would most definitely breed manipulators, some of
who will falsify things just to survive or for an ego trip, a desire to
lord it over others. The latter is the reason why public officials lie
to us since you can be anything and everything in this country with your
school certificate.
Although perpetrators of these acts are
most certainly sure to end in ignominy, the ultimate loser is the
country and its future. The tendencies described above engender the
failure to build a society capable of competing in the technological
world of the 21 century not to talk about the future. While we wait for
the latest case of deception in high places to play out, we need to
rededicate ourselves to excellence in spite of the brickbats that our
politicians are throwing at each other. Unless we reorder our priorities
and put merit over parochial considerations, generations after us will
have no idea what it is to be meritorious. They will celebrate
mediocrity, lies and vice, tendencies on which no country can survive.
And just before you get self-righteous and cast that stone, check
yourself and see if you are guilty of some little infractions that may
one day blow up in your face..where is law and order? where is morality because from where i stand i see people take oaths with the holy book like some nursery pupil rhyming his/her favorite book.... come 2015,God help nigeria...rex john
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