What Adamu Adamu should do for Nigeria

Education minister, Adamu Adamu, will surely be numbered among the top three ministers that will be bombarded with dozens of petitions about the wrong doings of critical actors and stakeholders in his sector; memos on the way forward; lamentations about the sheer rot to be confronted or addressed and wordsof- mouth advise from friends and well -wishers about the pitfalls to avoid and well-meaning patriotic suggestions about the urgently needed reform to undertake. Knowing this, I ought to have spared Adamu the trauma of having to read yet another suggestion about what he needs to do.

But I cannot because the issue I want to draw his attention to may look minor but is nevertheless a very serious national matter that deserves not to be glossed over.

The matter has to do with the lack of civility in our public discourse. I want to add my voice to those of those who may have already written to him suggesting a review of our entire school curriculum to include in it a course whose objective will be to train our compatriots, especially the young, in civility. Many of our younger ones are too abusive, too disrespectful, too rude, too intemperate and too selfopinionated.

A subject by whatever name called that is biased in favour of African values of respect for age, status and attainments; respect for the other person’s point of view and respect for the rule of African public discourse in which a high premium is placed on wit and disarming proverbs, is urgently needed in our school system. We need in our curricula a subject aimed at producing the TOTAL MAN who will graduate from our school and be a spirit-filled man imbued with the skills and the character to contribute meaningfully to our quest for growth and development. Today, we largely churn out young men and women with certificates and not sabiticate (skills) and absolutely without character.

I am not an educationist and so cannot claim some expertise in curriculum development. I therefore leave it for experts who are more knowledgeable than me about how to go about the business, to advice Adamu Adamu on what to do to solve these and many other problems plaguing our teaching and learning.

I am really concerned about civility because in its absence no reasonable discourse can take place. When I read some of the reactions of our young ones to topical issues of the day, I ask myself: what is it in their psyche that predisposes them to easily recourse to abuse as a substitute for argument? I am deeply concerned because, as a person, I live on arguments. My business as a commentator is to canvas certain viewpoints and I know that one of my occupational hazards is that sometimes some may not share in my line of thought. But the way some of our younger ones violently disagree and abuse you, beats my imagination. The way they react to the arguments of commentators make you think you may have offended them unknowingly in the past and they have been waiting patiently, looking for an opportunity to get even with you especially now that you have said something they do not like.

And boy, those boys know how to abuse. If they find one or two things they disagree with your line of reasoning, they will abuse you; they will abuse your father and mother, one or all of whom may have died and who have in no way offended them or endorsed what you have said that has offended them so; they will abuse your wife whom they have not met and who they, mercifully, are never likely to meet till kingdom come; they will abuse your grandmother, a noble progenitor of yours you may not have been born to see and know; they will abuse your ethnic group which did not mandate you to say what you have said that has irked them so; they will abuse your school, that one, I guess, for producing a monster like you to bestride the surface of the earth and for effect, they will abuse your religion. If they are not satisfied, they will proceed to abuse Nigeria, call it a zoo and say it is your country because it is only people who think like you that have ruined the place.

Our education system has truly given birth to a very strange generation whose main tool of discourse is abuse. If Adamu Adamu is intimidated by the sheer volume of work he must do to correct things and he cannot therefore do anything, he should at least try to do something about this because it is, as I have said earlier, a very serious matter. As a notable commentator himself I am sure he fully understands what

I am saying here because he must have himself, at one time or another, been a victim of this unpalatable testimony.

Some of these young persons that some have dubbed ‘’internet warriors’’ seem as if they are always by their computers waiting eagerly looking for whom to devour with abuses. Some will completely leave the subject matter in discourse and embark on what they know how to do bestreigning abuse and curses on you for no apparent reason.

Some years ago I did a piece for the popular Nigerianbiased news website

nigeriavillagesquare on a topical issue I have since forgotten. Some seriousminded readers sent me several complimentary comments. There was however a young fellow who disagreed so violently with some of what I had said in that very piece that he could not restrain himself and called me a nitwit. I was forced to re-read the piece thrice to see wherein in my lines I had exhibited nitwitry. I am convinced he did not understand what I said. But instead of humbly seeking clarification from either me or somebody else he thought understood what I was saying, he thought the best way out for him was to shut me up with a baseless namecalling.

I do not know what effect abuses have on someone but universally no one likes to be

a victim of abuse. Even if someone is saying something that is outrageous or very untrue of you and you know it, you still feel bad when you are attacked with abuse!

But suffice it to say that since my unpalatable encounter with that

n i g e r i a v i l l a g e s q a u re fellow and many others, I have decided to be very careful. I am on facebook and have many friends but rarely to I like, share or comment on any post lest I unintentionally offend some people and attract for myself undeserved abuse.

Discretion, I have been taught, is the better part of valour. My teachers, God bless them all, have also taught me that selfpreservation is the first law of nature.