Opinions

The rot in Nigeria’s education system

“There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune… Or lose our ventures.” (William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene III, Lines 218-224)

Caveat: This is not an academic discourse spun by the canonical approaches to Literature. We are perturbed that the decay that has made incursions into education continues on into the mainstay of our existence. Of course you cannot divorce one from the other in spite of the huge success of the Onitsha Market Literature. That continues on in the garish pamphlets vended in most suburbs (try the pedestrian bridge enrouteKetu – Mile 12 and Oshodi market for size) in spite of the numerous online reading platforms, pirated copies of celebrated writers and that mainstay of voracious readers – books bought in the flea market.

From our lowly seat at the bottom of the rung, we are emboldened to write this cautionary tale in the vain hope that sanity could be restored. It would be a shame to watch the rot in the system that feeds the bedrock of education continue unchecked. Of course in all truthfulness the litmus test of your education is your writing. But in this great age where the dark art has been co-opted into education as everything else, anything I am told is possible.

Just so we are clear as we will consistently do: we are of the old school. Or as a kindly young lady put it: “a museum relic”. Now we are better situated, we are in total agreement. We were born into a world that was schooled and read not just out of the necessity of making excellent grades but to perpetuate the pedigree of family.

For this generation though we feel real pity at the antics especially in the academics. You only need to read through the papers to understand how much their loss is. Books are an old friend. One we intend to indulge for as long as we live. We have watched the generation that we derived from heart-rendingly pack up their books either in despair or resignation due to the proclivities and temperament of their progeny.

I wonder if these young ones understand the implication in this world lost in the celebration of a middling to nix talent and a total lack of appreciation for the written word save for pecuniary reasons– ha!

Sorry folks, this is coming real late. We had penned it down as a diatribe for a nation that threw the education of its kids into the drain in pursuit of cheap, quick-fixes that never panned out. Each is almost a diabolical attempt to bury any semblance of sanity in the educational system without a re-alignment of our priorities. This continued until the children got royally bored with the kinks and false starts and buried their heads in the LED television screens, smartphones and computer games. Note that the computer itself is still the special preserve of the intelligentsia, the high and mighty and their kids.

Responsible, mature parents calmly observed the apathy to the academics and engaged any intelligent, enterprising (and there are any number), bespectacled, educational consultants ready to plough this field, peddling expensive tutorial programs, high-tech gimmicks or educational toys. Desperate to engage a disillusioned child after school hours or in an equally expensive private school run along the British curriculum with an arm-long list of extracurricular activity to kick-start or boost the young brain lock-jammed in a cranium that houses nothing but self-conceit, acute boredom, advanced cheating skills in examinations (101) – this surreptitiously taught in school and reinforced by parents from the preschool level.

We will remain the generation awed and wooed by discipline and foresight to read and excel through long hours of diligent hard work. Not so these. We watch and wonder at the casualties that would spring from this freewheeling-dealing onslaught on life. We refuse to be the conscience of the world but in our own little world we have seen the craters hastily papered over and wonder just how long before we fall over on our faces.

I have a long-running romance with hardcopy. My eyes run across my meager hoard every now and then. But luckily too we have been initiated into the more accessible and extensive online library and see the same mistakes replicated. What is the yardstick for passable writing?

By my layman submission – when there is an elemental response as the reader connects not just with the subject matter but the style of writing – that oomph that is the signature of the writer. Only a pardner would understand the graphical, visceral response gnawing at your innards.

We come from a “reading” family. Frequently swopping gems we borrowed from a compatriot on the outside. We have been blessed to read several copies of “light” literature as first kids then adults desperate to escape the hassles in our turbulent world. Though then we learnt to stay clear of what even in our innocence, we came to identify as the “bad” books – there is a darkness we do not pursue.

It did not take us long to agree on the shopping list for bad books. “Bad” in content if it was long-winded, loosely structured or just plain boring (NB: Nothing of the mechanics is included). Magic was born by a tale of an almost prosaic nature burnt around my young heart and my eyes opened to a world far removed from my more utilitarian existence.

The e-books are not exempt. In fact their culpability is unforgivable. They came as a panacea for pirating, a technological haven to access books cheaply (if you can afford the cost of data, which I mostly cannot). There are visible lapses even now. Let us hope they are merely false starts…this late in the day.

Stumbled on a gem online. A six –word short story purportedly written by the maestro, Ernest Hemingway, “For sale: baby shoes, never won.” That powerful narrative aptly tells the tale…it has a beginning, a middle and an end.

There is a wealth of meaning and emotion encapsulated in that single line about the excruciating travail of a woman barren especially in the African setting.

We stand as custodians of a tradition that would most likely die away if we continue in this vein. We must adhere to a standard to ensure we do not flagellate the already flagging spirit. A book comes to life because of the labour of love put into it not just by the writer but the team that put it to “bed”. That rarity, the “bestseller” is a masterpiece. The product of teamwork from writing, editing, proofreading, printing, publicity design to marketing and distribution.

Hunched over the loo, I chortled. I reeled in shock. I have been at a loss like it was personal. I have bleated furtively, my imagination captive by the strange meanderings of a master I most definitely might never meet. I have travelled to foreign lands far removed from a humdrum existence at the borderline of humanity. I have seen an age that beckoned to my imagination and yet cautioned of the blitheness of the cacophony of voices in the distance.

Even now, those same voices trapped on the pages are failing to touch and speak with the same clarity, intensity and purpose. They have lost their sparkle. They are strewn carelessly – feverishly strapped for industry. Now with the poverty in Nigeria who said that was a crime?

My writing sprung from an introspection with the mundane. I discovered I had a preoccupation that came through the word, for those words of my youth but were still “cool” and had a sound that sculpted pictures in the air. Justice Wendell Holmes (the American Jurist) said: “A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged. It is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in colour and content according to the circumstances and the time it is used.”

This is the conversation: we refuse to continue to see these eyesores turning up and clogging our space with a mindless frequency that shows that we have lost our calling. Our vocation as a vanguard of society in driving its issues and peoples to strange far-flung lands.

We would continue to enjoy and read those excellent books that look and speak with resonance of imagery and language. Hey brother, why would you do less than you can when it would look like you? I still live for the day when I can run into one of my revered writers and instead of shaking hands, hug closely to show the wealth of love and respect from reading an artist’s portrayal of a dying art.

Dying in spite of the millions of copies mindlessly churned out in a continent where the new challenge in the past fifteen years is to be a published writer…do place an order.

Hot-heads have co-opted writing into a predilection “to get rich or die trying”. The class-conscious Nigerian maven has arrived at the threshold of adding authors to an over –subscribed resume. It is a huge selling point.

“Creative” entrepreneurship is milking an ever – increasing pool of unwary budding writers. Some unscrupulous brothers have taken up the mantle of shoddy jobs in perpetuation of our vanity. Like everything else Nigerian, there is a distinctive shift. Mediocrity is the rule of the day.

Just like the Nollywood at inception, opportunists, dreamers, scholars, everyone who can spin a line is artlessly culpable. Content to fill the ranks of published writers “after all we can bear the cost of publication”. Their writing is tainted by hybridity, the bane of Nigerian society.

We have come full circle in writing: let the reader be the true test of its success. We refuse to be herded like cattle to the slaughter. The ranks have been polluted by the same self-serving, unprincipled mercenaries who insist on pushing certain books as a success. Beware of the raucous cacophony of praise –singers ramming the fine points of a protégé’s work down your throats. Being told severally that too could be arranged. God bless Nigeria! This led to this present state of affairs.

We must look to the ranks and attempt if this late in the day we can still address some of the inherent flaws in the system. Publishing has been hijacked by quacks and we do nothing…roll over and get shafted by every Dick and Harry. I should know. I was burnt on my first outing. I am still seething and reeling from the shock.

Where are the writers in Nigeria? Agreed it might not be an exclusive career. We all have talents each according to his own calling but not all of us are trained doctors attending to patients in our waiting rooms nor engineers building bridges across the 3rd mainland bridge. Anyone without a primary job commitment as a lawyer is not “learned” and not allowed to practice the “noble profession”. I do not see teachers going to court to represent clients. Needless to say the presiding judge would convulse with apoplexy.

As cliché as it sounds, we also confess to singing in the shower. But thank God our decidedly precarious financial strait is yet to force us to join the hordes of budding musicians plainly gearing to “blow” as the next Grammy award winning singer from Nigeria – but then you would have to scrounge I am told for studio time.

We all might have a latent talent for writing but we must agree not all of us are trained professionally. From a very humble experience you can be trained in the mechanics of writing as a vocation. The rudiments are taught. The intrigue of the craft instilled in you. Unlike buying and selling, the real magic does not happen from rigid training. Like Merlin, it comes with the distilling of the spirits; an evocation that implodes into pure magic. It is a gift given to very few … the bold scrawls of a fluidity of spirit that comes through freedom and strength of character to be different and accountable in the melee of discordance.

That is why society still parts the way for the born writer. That wordsmith, whose jousting is poetry in motion – that analogy almost escaped me. A true writer like the poet is born not taught. We hold a spirit captive by rules. The versification of writing flees in the face of strictures.

Writing is fine-tuning the imaginative use of language intrinsic to an embellishment and exposition of the social, cultural, historical, economic and thoroughly educational experience. Effortlessly filling the pages with fleeting thoughts artlessly caught from the air and translated into those simple emotions arching through sinew and bone in a fevered crescendo.

The narrative unraveled by the reader, a powerful voice arcing through a void and pulling on the heartstrings. The reader sated; unfurling its vice-like hold on the mind (for the duration of the telling), from the wealth of meaning springing from the exchange. At one with the writer. You see, smell, touch, hear, taste the essence of a life far removed from your reality but more real right there and then than your own name. Captive in a microcosm of language. That is the master beckoning.

The success of its execution is the harmony of its resolution. There is an instinctive reaction when we see the dignity in knowledge dressed up in sheaves…mind-boggling silence, fear even, definitely respect. The rascally have corralled the market for adulation. They pay pipers to ring up encomiums and put us on a payroll to write up their imagined and real achievements.

In spite of the sheer volume of work excoriated not all of us would end up with the Nobel Prize for Literature. The smart alecs have come up with flogging a plethora of awards from some obscure source…”Niger no dey carry last!”

A word for the wise: be cautious. Do not be in a hurry to publish a book like is the norm in Nigeria. Experience an expression buoyed by imagination, reality, introspection, anchored by professionalism. Be responsible about the publishing. Co-opt the services of a thoroughbred professional. Trust me from experience it does not always come with a price tag. Herein is the difference.

You put your name on it that is you are walking down the street clutched in the hand of your consumer. Though in all fairness like everything Nigerian we very rarely care. I have seen books that made me squirm when I saw the personage involved. Thank God those with fiduciary duties are aware of the culprits…and do not care.

An excellent book will call to you, hold you captive even before you are wooed by the content. Thank God you can bluster your way through the spectrum of production but it is an art you cannot fake. The fine print will show you up even when millions are baying in pretend approbation.

For the neophyte bent on starting on this path,no need for cultural imports. Africans have a natural propensity for the arts. It is from internalizing suffering (don’t go all slave on us), the burden of citizenship and scything through unscathed, pitting your wits against the vicissitudes of life. All that emotion explodes with pulsating authenticity found in good writing.

That is why we have Wole Soyinka, Femi Osofisan, BuchiEmecheta, J.P. Clark. Masters eminently qualified to use the English Language in projecting their experiences and perceptions. Kindred spirits all, with an adroitness of imagination, intelligence and a sensitivity inviting the pique of the world.

Even a cheeky personal account that encapsulates your pummeling the life-force of your environment till you corral its essence on the pages will do the magic. Dispensing a style that is flawlessly executed by the educated, cultured mind.

For a nation easily seduced to a double standard, the standard for a good book is under threat of extinction. Originality sacrificed on the altar of commercialization. Art is an inbred mindset. A living, breathing collage of imagination, innovation and brilliance that pulsates with creativity. A miasma of conceit, lack of professionalism, imagination, inordinate ambition and greed that permeates the society has been allowed to pollute the hallowed brotherhood of scribes.

I stumbled on a hideaway e-library and resource centre on the same floor as the Ministry of Information, Rivers State. I ran into a copy of “My Private Part” by Charles Oputa. I chortled at the gem. The coffee-table book doled out excellent colour separation, a reader-friendly exciting layout and of course the content, the lush persona. The beautiful book by Charly Boy Oputa was published by Helen Sosu.

Puritan that we are, I am a latter day convert to his loud-in your- face alter ego. Obviously he had not skimped on cost, quality or professionalism. His taste was evidently on display. His larger than life personality tastefully unfurls through each page.

Wondering how I could charm the staff to allow me borrow the book, I chortled as I rifled through each page taken by the bold narrative that sensitively revealed the man behind the media hype. That is magic. Beautiful, tasteful and real as only a thorough-bred professional can achieve with so many words. The hardcore professional, did the professional…put his name on it.

Brethren, time for a reality check to ensure that the sustained clamour about the dwindling reading culture is not as a result of our antics, studied insouciance or lack of a code of ethics, which is “mala in se”. A discerning palate would turn away and sneer at what justly should be far removed from the reading public. Be a professional…do the professional.