INDEPENDENCE…The POST(EPILOGUE)
I, The Preacher speak today The POST Independence treatise, keeping a promise he made three(3) days ago…

I, The Preacher in this third treatise, reserve his main burden for the last, that he may be sober on his knees on this LORD’S Day.

I fear for our precious children and the future ahead of them…

Inasmuch as I fear of everything for the precious children of the lower crust of the society, I fear more about their education…

I fear for their outright exclusion and partial inclusion…

By outright exclusion, I refer to the fact that 10.5 million precious Nigerian children are excluded from school today…

By partial inclusion, I mean that research has shown that the precious Nigerian children are not learning the basics that will make them relevant for life and workplace…

I, The Preacher, facilitating Core Skills and Competences for the British Council and working with teachers and school leaders found by reason of my engagement that there is a global crisis within the educational sector…

Findings eloquently show that Sub-Saharan Africa is two generations behind schedule in catching up with global standards…

The educational sector seems to be in state of comatose as a result of abandonment in the hands of the State and her actors(principal or minor)…

Standard, which is a prerequisite to meaningful educational engagement of our precious children is lost to lack of regulation, lack of regulation is lost to obsolete national policy on education and obsolete national policy on education is lost lack of political will to do the needful and lack of political will is lost to class oppression…

What is class oppression? I, The Preacher understand from my many studies as a conscious inhabitant of this continent for close to 5(five) decades now that those who sit at gates of affairs in Africa are in most cases members of the upper echelon of society and they know the liberating powers of education as a leveller. Therefore the strategy to keep the poor poorer is to exclude them from education or offer them partial inclusion by way of TOKENISM…

Those who sit at the gate of affairs, understand by socialization the words of Nelson Mandela, which he declared in Long Walk To Freedom, thus: ‘education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that the son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farmworkers can become the president of a great nation…’

Those who sit at the gates of affairs also know for sure the words of Adebayo Williams, who said in 1993 in his article published in Tempo Magazine, commenting on the people’s resistance to the annulment of June 12 Elections that ‘a properly educated mind will not accept an act of tyranny because to accept an act of tyranny is an act of intellectual self-dispossession…’

I, The Preacher, I am an evidence of what can happen when the State takes education seriously…I was a public child, as I went to public schools all my life, from Primary to University…My education was never a burden to my indigent parents…It was the burden of government in collaboration with religious bodies by way of providing same and sundry as Organized Social Services, without which every system will remain awfully incomplete…

Now, that the celebrations of independence has ended and we are washing the nets of our pleasurable moments, I, The Preacher ask, what shall we do Nigerians, men and brethren to educate the Nigerian child, solving the problem of exclusion and partial inclusion?

What shall we do both private and public sectors to meet the educational hopes, yearnings and aspirations of our denied, yet precious children in a continent that is two(2) generations behind schedule?

All it takes for the evil of exclusion and partial inclusion to prevail is for men and women of goodwill and good conscience to fold their arms and do nothing…

History and posterity watch keenly today to see whether we are going to sit down passive and unconcerned in the face of this national tragedy, breathing hard and festering at the speed of light to engulf us all irrespective of where we occupy in the society, upper or lower crust.

I, The Preacher remains sober on my knees on this LORD’S day, doing justice to a service, compelled by my social conscience and knocking hard on the door of your social conscience and consciousness, inviting you to join the conversation and also keep it alive also…

GREAT is the Nation, who EDUCATE ALL OF HER PRECIOUS CHILDREN, LONG shall she LIVE…

Do have an INSPIRED week.

Yours IN THE BEST INTEREST OF THE PRECIOUS AFRICAN CHILD,
The Preacher
C) 2016 by Taiwo ‘ODINAKACHUWU’ AKINLAMI…All Rights Reserved
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