MUST READ: "NIGERIA IS SERIOUSLY FRUSTRATING TO LIVE IN" --- simon Okwori

 Head Your Books, Heart Your Skills; the best way to seeing through present days Nigerian Educational System

 We are in the days when the smell of the anus is better than the aroma of human sanity. We are in the late matured times of repeatable success stories. Stories of when some fellows were fed for free in their University days with a major focus of leaving ashes behind for the present ones. We were told of the annoying chronicles of when chickens were shared on the feathers of gold for poor and rich children. The gist of how different companies would parade fresh graduates on their convocation days is not alien to our hearings. Yet, after spoiling the fun and damaging the heat, you still stand in our classes and smile off in your rhythms of winking acerbity.

 It is obviously not our fault that those chickens you got for free had now travelled to a land jampared with oblivion. Also, we are not uncertain that those places, eateries and halls where you ate free foods then are now our classes where we take hard lectures. We are not left with beautiful ashes and hall of shames that were formed during the match of your cradles.

We are not lazy Nigerians! We read and study at the same time. We also attend classes in atmosphere void of love and joy. In fact, some of us drink ailment to read and breathe hardship to study. We ramble in a fumbled Nigerian educational system where leaders are idiots and idiots are leaders. Our ‘so called’ political and functional leaders have spoiled our balcony of wealth with ill-nut beahavious and attitudes in the face of national and international standings.

Alas! Those days are not far from us! Days when graduates were good examples to emulate and corps members were gold to imitate. But now? Graduates are beggars and beggars are graduates. Going to school has now become a compulsory assignment needed to carry out in other to collect the long papered receipt called certificate. A certificate that would confirm the fact that a graduate has successfully paid school fees for four, five or six years.

Wait! Come to think of it; a young graduate who has been on the track of strike in the University for close to two years making his/her stay on campus seven years instead of two- such graduate on a search for a good job would be asked to provide an evidence of job experience for at least four years. What a failed country!

It is sad enough that some of our teachers and lecturers are also managing the system. A system whereby salaries have travelled to ‘loans-land’ before being collected as cash. The system is so frustrating! This is the same lecturing job that most graduates who have already gone to the altar of ‘masters-degree’ programmes are eying. Big companies now recruit graduates who have ‘long legs’ as well as those who are very exceptional (first class graduates).

It is quite remarkable to also note that some first class graduates are not first class citizens. They graduated from school as first class students not with a first class human living skills.

Dear students and graduates, the problems and challenges at our doors are glaring; we are not to sit on the fence and see our stands failing. Survival is key in human living especially in a country like Nigeria. However, education is still the best tool to change the world, Nigeria inclusive. See, education and schooling are alike but they are different concepts swimming in different notes of philosophy. Education is the teaching and learning that a person experiences throughout his/her stay in the world. That is, education brings about learning. Learning is a relative permanent change(s) that occur(s) in humans’ behaviours and attitudes. Schooling is an arm of education that describes learning in school under the supervision of a teacher.

Good still, books and schools are not to be thrown away regardless of the challenges facing Nigerian educational system. Books are good and are best put to work when the principles therein are practiced. Therefore, we are to put our books in head, pass our examinations as to add to the beauty of our certificates. Also, we are to heart and create affections for our talents as well as turn them into skills through training and practice. In short, be academically sound and ‘skills-matured’. From findings, it has been observed that after graduating from schools, we are all left with those stuffs and crafts that we practiced when in school not the jargons and concepts we crammed.

It is not bad to be the best student in the class academically, but it is insane not to learn any skill that align with your passion. Better put, it is a crime if you are embedded with the theoretical blends of your discipline without the practicable push of it. Therefore, when your head takes in the concepts and generalizations being taught in class, your heart should be able to work it through and practice. This is when you can come up with a product that can make you shun unemployment afterwards.

Listen, as far as the government is not in the business of job creations anymore like before, it is now our duties to put our books in our head, our skills at heart and our practicable crafts in our hands. This is how to be a functional graduate in Nigeria! So, I submit---Nigeria is seriously frustrating to live.