Educate the people and they will rise. Yes, education is catalytic but advancement goes beyond education. Let us go back to history. In ancestral Igbo, kids were named Nwaoha [child of the community], Adaoha [daughter of the community], Ekeoha [son of the community]. Most other African tribes have similar names.
Simply, a child is born to the community and will be raised by the community, and not just by the parents. A nursing mother in the village was like a mother to all kids because neighbours would bring their kids to her, while they go and fetch water, firewood, and other quick errands.
Typically, when you drop that kid, you would assume that the kid is under the care of another mother. Young men, from time to time, will fetch water from the village stream, to re-supply water for the elderly or the weak with no support. Young women will also help with their shopping on the market days since they may be unable to go to the market. In rotations, yams, garri, and other foodstuffs are sent, making sure they do not even know they have limited means.
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On special mornings, boys will sweep the village square. Before the yam festival, married women will weed the roads to the stream. Men will take care of the roads, most connecting to the neigbouring communities. On the market days (Orie, Eke, Nkwo, and Afo as set by the community) over palm wine, elders will take stock of members who need special help.
Recall that the free palm wine served on those days are provided FREE by the village wine tappers, who statistically are pre-paying their kinsmen for potential lost wages, as they are expected to fall at work [unfortunately], and men will lose working days looking for them in the bushes!
Hunger was fought in many ways. In some villages like mine in Ovim, a place (Agbongele Ugwunta) is dedicated, and any farm crop planted there, by ordinance, is allowed for anyone to consume for personal consumption, but never to sell. People are encouraged to ensure no person goes to bed hungry!
Where am I going? Africa had a solid communal system which worked! But when colonialism came, that system was destroyed, replaced by a “pseudo western government”. Magically, district officers transmuted the minds, positing that help does not need to come from your neighbour but from the “government”. [In the western world, governments are like neighbours and everything, via their retirement programs, social security payments, etc].
In Africa and specifically in Nigeria, the “government” over decades has not lived to replace that communal African system. Yes, the support system is low and that is one of our problems; no education can fix that if we hope to advance as a people.
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Comment: You cannot have a working system with a dead education. You cannot develop a human being or a society without quality education, it’s impossible. Naija is the only country where development is considered as a possibility outside or beyond ‘education’.
My Response: We overrate “education”. The US literacy rate is 79%; Nigeria’s is 77% [Lagos State has literacy rate of more than 90%, better than the US average]. But US support system is more than 95% while Nigeria is less than 30%. The problem we have in Nigeria with mass graduate unemployment is not because of lack of education, but lack of support mechanism. If you ship those grads to US, within 18 months, they will become stars.
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