PATH TO NIGERIAN GREATNESS: Under The New Dispensation On the right to education*

Continued from  last week

THE Family has an unwritten constitution which is essentially the same for any family in any part of the world. Under this constitution, the affairs of the family are presided over and administered by the paterfamilias, materfamilias or both of them in some sort of esoteric partnership. Here in Nigeria, it is the pateramilias, advised and assisted by the materfamilias and the other adult members of the family, who keeps the reins of the family in his firm control. He combines in himself legislation. The affection, however, is mutual between the paterfamilias and other members of the family. Because of this, these other members trust of the paterfamilias completely in all he does with the affairs of the family.

Many rights are enjoyed within the family; these rights are fundamental and inalienable, because the urge for their enjoyment is inherent and instinctive in man. In other words, the strong and irrespressible desire for their enjoyment is embedded in the subconscious mind of man for the survival and propagation of his species. Because of their inherent and instinctive nature, these rights cannot be permanently suppressed, In the short run, they can be held in abeyance, but even only at great risks to the peace, harmony, and cohesion of the family. These rights have been variously termed — inherent, fundamental, human, and inalienable. Some of them are:

1. Right to life.
2. Right to freedom from torture and inhuman or degrading punishment or treatment.
3. Right to freedom from slavery or servitude, and from deprivation of personal liberty.
4. Right to freedom from interference with privacy.
5. Right to freedom of expression.
6. Right to freedom of assembly and association.
7. Right to freedom of movement.
8. Right to freedom from discrimination.
9. Right to education.
10. Right to work and just reward.
11. Right to support in the event of sickness, disability, or old age.
12. Right to personal property, and to protection thereof.

It is generally appreciated that parents have an instinctive urge, and because of the urge feel compulsively impelled to consider it their bounden and inexorable duty, as much as it is within their competence, to instruct their offspring to the best of the abilities of such offspring. They impart to their children the experiences which they (the parents) had acquired in their lifetime, and those which had been transmitted to them by their ancestors. They also instruct their offspring of the new ideas which have occurred to them (the parents). The parents teach their children family and other histo- ries, as well as the lores, customs, mores, and culture of their clan, tribe, and ethnic group. And so on, and so forth, all free of charge, not in a regular formal institution, but in a completely informal manner at home, or on the way to and from the farm or place of trade.

The point cannot be seriously disputed that a man is at his happiest when he ensconces himself within his family circles. But the family is an enviable social entity. The family cannot produce all that it needs. It has to exchange goods with other families. Every family soon discovered that it cannot live in isolation from the other families without running the risk of extermination or enslavement by warlike and strongest neighbours.

Therefore, because of economic necessities, and for reasons of personal safety and of protection of its property, a number of families have had to enter into an unwritten compact for mutual defence against external foes, and for the purpose of benefiting from the tremendous advantages of the division of labour which is brought about by living together. It stands to reason that, when two or more families amalgamate voluntarily, they will want to retain as many of the rights and liberaties which the members enjoyed in their respective families before amalgamation, as will be conducive to the viability and permanence of the union. The rights which I have mentioned are undoubtedly among the rights which the contracting families would like to preserve for every member of the families. We have referred to the right to education as one of the inherent and inalienable rights. This must be so, because it is a right which arises (1) from the duty which Nature herself imposes on the parents, through instinctive urges, to protect his offspring; and (2) from the offspring’s instinct of curiosity which compels him to want to acquaint himself with all the phenomena that come within the field of his awareness and consciousness.

From the foregoing outline, it is clear that an inescapable duty is ideologically imposed on the twenty Governments in Nigeria to ensure that every member of the constituent Nigerian families is educated to the limits of his ability, free of charge, in any of the institutions of learning and instruction in the Federation.

The ontological basis of free education at all levels is straightforward. Man is an animal; but an animal with considerable difference. He has something in him which puts him apart in a class by himself. The Christian Bible says, correctly in my view, that God forms man from the dust of the ground. He then breathes into his nostrils the breath of life, and man becomes a living soul. He is not a body with a soul, but a soul covered with body. He is ordained to have dominion over all other created things, and to be monarch of the earth.

On these grounds, his body must be made as sound as suitable and adequate food, shelter, and clothing, as well as health care, can make it; and his mind must be nurtured and polished by his being educated to the full extent of his capacity. His body is like an electric bulb; his mind like the filament in the electric bulb; and the breathe of God in him is like the electric current which flows through the filament, and is reflected to the outside world by the bulb.

If the bulb is broken; or if the filament is unorganized or disorganised, we cannot have the effulgence of electric light. In order, therefore, that every Nigerian may be elevated beyond the level of the lower animals, and reflect his unique status as the image of God, and monarch of the earth, it is imperative and urgent that our Governments should educate him free of charge, especially as the majority of Nigerians cannot, in any case, procure the wherewithal to accomplish this goal for themselves.

To be continued