the nation needs and deserves.
The crucial point, which I want our rulers, planners, and official advisers to bear in mind, is that man is the sole dynamic in nature; and that accordingly, every individual Nigerian constitutes the supreme economic potential which this country possesses.
It is axiomatic that man can create nothing. But, by an intelligent and purposive application of the exertions of his body and mind, he can exploit natural resources to produce goods and services for immediate consumption, and for capital outlay.
Therefore, other things being equal, the healthier his body and the more educated his mind, the greater will be his morale and the more efficient and economical he becomes as a producer an consumer.
The Japanese, the Russians, and the Chinese appreciate, to the full, the truth of this position; and that is why Edmund 1. King in his book, entitled ‘World perspective in Education’, is able to say the following about these three countries: ‘Modern Japan has been made by education within the lifetime of people still surviving. The Soviet Union’s strength is based even more remarkably upon its educational system, and has reached its present level within two generations of scholastic advance. The revolution in China is still too recent to justify prophecy but without star-gazing we cannot fail to be impressed already (if not alarmed) by the tremendous technological and social upheaval going on there—all intricately bound up with educational reformation … EDUCATION CANNOT BE PARTIAL, RATIONED OR SELFISHLY ENJOYED. ANY ATTEMPT SO TO RESTRICT IT WILL DEEPEN THE CHASM BETWEEN THE ‘HAVES’ AND THE ‘HAVE NOTS’. Our nemesis will be all the more catastrophic when it occurs, as soon it will. Nothing could be more dangerous than ignorance, indifference, and ideological isolationism. We cannot afford not to see our educational aims and practice in their true world context.
With this quotation, and the foregoing remarks, I would like to make the following three suggestions for the serious and favourable consideration of the Federal Military Government:
FIRST: AS FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE NEXT ACADEMIC YEAR, EDUCATION SHOULD BE MADE FREE AT SECONDARY AND POST-SECONDARY LEVELS THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY.
This is one of the ways to ensure the smooth take-off and the successful operation of the compulsory universal primary education itself, when it comes, say, in four years’ time. If it is considered necessary to give counter-balancing or matching education grants to the so-called educationally backward parts of the country between now and the actual introduction of the compulsory universal primary education, by all means, the Federal Military Government should not hesitate to give such grants.
On this issue, it would be untenable now for the opponents of free education at all levels to plead ‘lack of money’ as they used to do, dogmatically hitherto, without making any effort to marshal convincing arguments in support.
For, thanks to our God for the oil that flows in a flood for everybody to see, one does not now need to be an economist or financial expert to appreciate that we have the money – the abundant means – to finance free education at all levels, if we have the will and the vision to do so.
It follows, therefore, that if our rulers, planners, and official advisers continue to set their minds against this policy, it will simply be because, for reasons best known to them, they are unwilling to embark on a golden enterprise, which more than anything else, made it possible for Japan, the USSR, and China to achieve rapid and self-reliant economic development and growth, within the span of twenty-five short years.
SECOND: AS A COROLLARY, THE REPAYMENT OF ALL LOANS: HITHERTO GIVEN TO NIGERIAN STUDENTS FOR THEIR EDUCATION BY ANY OF OUR GOVERNMENTS, SHOULD BE WAIVED.
This will put all educated Nigerian youths, regardless of their States of origin, on the same footing in the race of life. A state of affairs in which, by way of analogy, some start the swimming race of life free from debt, whilst others are made to enter the same race with heavy stones of debt tied to their feet, is anything but egalitarian.
THIRD: As a further corollary, and on the principle of SOUND MIND IN SOUND BODY, steps should also be initiated now for the provision of curative and preventive medical facilities, including the provision of pipe-borne water supply and mass immunisation against endemic diseases, throughout the country.
It is these three measures that will constitute the psycho-social (or, if you like, ideological) rock-foundation on which all other social edifices, be they economic or political, can be securely and permanently erected. It is my unshakable belief that neither time, nor strife, nor even a change of Government can destroy this rock- foundation. And it should be realised before it is too late, that any other foundation, however solid-looking, is quicksand.
Indeed, it is the introduction of these three measures, far more than such measures as the creation of more States, the fashioning of a new Constitution, and anything else, that will satisfy the deep yearnings and aspirations of our entire people, promote their individual welfare and best interests, and, at the same time, immortalise for good the tenure of military rule in Nigeria and all those associated with that rule.
and then