Education Mayday!

When you hear “Mayday! Mayday!” during a flight, say your last prayers. You might just be seconds from eternity. Pilots in distress make the call to alert air traffic controllers to give them top priority to land, plus any further help people on the ground or in the air can offer. If the pilot eventually succeeds in landing the plane and you somehow manage to get out alive, you may never be the same again.

Although the most glaring problem confronting Nigeria at the moment is the wholesale insecurity in the land, another more fundamental quandary is quietly compromising our collective future while we spend valuable time on inanities and exchange of diatribes over the social media.

Our educational system is dying. We should all be screaming “Mayday! Mayday!” now while some kind of restitution is still possible. When the military government secretly removed History from our school curriculum, we shrugged. Now the younger generation of Nigerians don’t know much about their country, relying inevitably on the salacious lies, half-truths and ancient stereotypes they pick up in the cyberspace.

Now, I’m told the problem is even deeper: Many of our university-bound students are computer-illiterate! This is not a fib. A scandalised patriot who invigilated the recent Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) computer-based test, told a shocking story of how many of the candidates in his centre did not have a clue about how to use the computer. As usual, we delight in sharing such stories on social media to amuse our friends. But we are in deep trouble.

According to the story credited to Victor Ogunyinka, a good number of the students in his centre did not know the difference between the computer monitor and the mouse. Some even behaved as if they thought the computer could bite!

Take this excerpt from his account:

“In a hall of about 250 JAMB candidates, only 10 can successfully use a computer system.

The rest cannot just understand how the computer works, they are terrified at the sight of a mouse.

“They cannot left-click, they cannot pick their answers using the mouse or the keyboard, they cannot scroll, they cannot delete when they make a mistake, they cannot locate letters on the keyboard.”

“And JAMB has tried because the candidates have the opportunity of doing mock exams. The purpose of ‘mock’ is to expose them to computers and let them know what to expect on the day of their exams. Before they start the exam, JAMB has provided a short video for them; the video shows them how their questions will look like, how to answer questions, how to use the mouse, etc. But some of them will call you and insist their pictures and registration numbers are not on the videos…

“The front page of their rough sheets

also has instructions on how to use the computer…

“They still don’t understand how to go about it.

“One of the candidates called me and told me he wanted to submit. I looked at the screen and realised he hadn’t answered any question. Apparently he had been double-clicking on the letters of the options, and when it highlights and he thinks he has picked the answers…. At that time they had just 10 minutes to go. Now, tell me, how does he want to pass the exam?”

Alarmed, I called a professor at the Obafemi Awolowo University. Could things be that bad? I asked. Surprised at my question, he wondered if I had forgotten that as far back as 2008, we had ruminated over the problem at a public lecture organised by the Great Ife Alumni Association during my presidential tenure. “Do you remember the conclusion reached by the guest lecturer, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe, on the issue of education and the elitist structure of society ?

I remembered the lecture quite well. It wasn’t just Kingibe’s erudition or charisma or ability to argue for both sides of the divide that captured the imagination of the packed Oduduwa Hall, it was his perspective. Nigeria, said the guest lecturer, was on a precipice and sitting on a social and political time bomb as the country’s educational system promoted polarisation between the rich and the poor.

“Whereas the rich and powerful purchase quality education at great cost for their children, they cannot guarantee the security of their offspring who have to live in the same society with the children of the poor who receive little or no education”.

Kingibe, while observing that the educational sector was plunging into total decay, called for a stakeholders’ forum to take a critical look at the factors responsible for the decay and proffer urgent solutions aimed at reviving the sector.

My professor friend asked, “Don’t you see what is happening today?” Before I could answer, he continued, “Haven’t the children of the poor, society’s dregs (who have no access to good education and computer literacy) taken up arms to make life a nightmare through violent robbery and kidnapping? One government after the other, we keep on parroting the cliche, “Going back to the drawing board” as if it’s a magical invocation. We discussed all these 11 years ago. Oh, please don’t compound my headache!”

I am an incurable optimist, believing that no situation is beyond remedy if we all put our hands to the plough. I am screaming “Mayday!” in respect of the education sector as is the duty of any chronicler. If we don’t give these youths proper education that would empower them to compete with the rest of the world and take us out of our present stasis, our old age promises to be miserable indeed.

Anyone listening out there?