The blessings of courage

CONTINUED FROM LAST WEEK

LOOK in whichever direction you like, and you will see for yourselves that in the long saga of man’s multifarious adventures, nothing worthwhile has been initiated and achieved without the motivating impulse and sustaining direction of the man of education, science, and technology.

From the earliest days of man, and centuries before the establishment of institutions for formal education or health care, we see the slave-owner and feudalist, in all parts of the world, taking great pains to develop his offsprings, whilst he sedulously forbids similar facility for his slaves and serfs. The early capitalists also took after the feudalists whom they had displaced. They made sure that their own children were sufficiently developed to take over from them, and that the working classes and their descendants remained as mentally underdeveloped as was compatible with the functions and operations they were called upon to perform.

Some of us do speak glibly, indeed thoughtlessly, of the Industrial Revolution in Britain as being the precursor of Britain’s rapid economic development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

But such people carelessly overlook the fact that, without the men of education, science and technology, like Richard Arkwright, James Hargreaves, Revd Edmund Cartwright, James Watt, and a multitude of others, the Industrial Revolution could not have taken place.

Some of the main charactreristics of the Revolution can be mentioned as proof of this assertion. These are:

1.) the discovery and utilisation of new energy sources;

2.) the invention and fabrication of new machines and other mechanical devices; and

3.) the invention and development of faster forms of transportation and communication.

The very rapid development of Britain in late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, of the USA in the nineteenth century, of Japan in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and of the USSR in this twentieth century, has been brought about primarily by the men of education, science and technology in’ these countries. And the examples of these highly developed countries, among others not mentioned here, are enough for us to reiterate categorically that at every stage of human development or advancement, the moving spirits are invariably the men of education, science and technology. The more of them a country has, the brighter are its prospects for rapid economic progress, for social justice, and for political stability.

It is generally agreed, and in any case the fact stares us in the face, that in spite of her enormous economic potentialities, Nigeria is one of the poorest and most underdeveloped countries of the world. She has been in this shameful position for very many years. We must not allow her to remain this way for much longer. All those who share the view that RAPID DEVELOPMENT OF NIGERIA BY NIGERlANS FOR NIGERIANS as a matter of urgent necessity must agree to do first thing first, no matter to which political party they may belong. And that FIRST THING is the lull development and full employment of every Nigerian citizen.

Already, most parts of the country have lost twenty-five years in the matter of the development of our people. The reason is that many of our leaders and so-called intellectuals, instead of girding their loins and doing likewise for our people in their respective areas of influence, have elected to spend a-quarter-of-a-century in deriding and jeering at a great scheme which was introduced here in 1955, and which has in the course of years produced many of the most brilliant and ablest Nigerian youths who abound today in the professions, in industry and commerce, in parastatal organisations, and in Government.

I seize this auspicious occasion to appeal to those Nigerian leaders who may still be inclined that way, to desist NOW from playing a stupid and dangerous game which experience of twenty- five years has shown to be fit only for nation-wreckers, and for ‘the 188 envious and asses that bray’.

We must always bear in mind that our Constitution enjoins us, as and when practicable, to provide free education at all levels for our children and adolescents. I declare for the umpteenth time that

all the good things of life provided for in our Constitution are practicable now.

CONTINUES NEXT WEEK