CREATING A BETTER SOCIETY….. By Dotun George

Reading culture among  Nigerians is nothing to write home about. It is a pity our people are no more reading, especially our youths. Nigerian youths spend more time with their electronics toys, smart phones, watching movies and football, rather than investment in education. The system is destroying education. In Nigeria, the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) examination debar youths and our children access to education. It is antagonist to the progress of the nation.

If i had my way, i would like us to remove every bottleneck by building enough educational infrastructures and allowing our children enter school after their Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSCE), and only impose other examinations thereafter. This would help stop our children from staying at home for 3-5 years doing nothing other than waiting for JAMB before having access to education. It will equally assist to minimize crime and laziness, because, when children have to wait for JAMB for 5 years after leaving school, they lose interest in education and reading further.

This is why today every child wants to become a footballer and musician. Which country has developed with football and music? It is through education and technology countries are being developed. But we are forcing our children into music and foot­ball to develop because we run a faulty systems and structure.

It is lamentable that politics today is the propagation of churches. I am not really happy that churches are telling people that salvation is in the hands of God for a nation endowed with enormous resources from the same God. Of course salvation of souls is in the hands of God but salvaging our land is our collective responsibility.

This is another barrier to the progress of our nation. This is everywhere, including Ghana, Benin and Togo, where people indulge in propagation of prosperity and salvation without applying themselves to reading books where we have every solution to problems. Karl Max said, ‘Philosophers had interpreted the world in different ways, what is important is for us to transform the world for our own existence.’

How do i combine scholarly work with human rights advocacy? It is not an easy task but at the same time one has to create time to educate the populace on the need to create a better society than the one we currently witness. We are better than this and therefore we deserve to be treated as a dignify being, who has a sense of belonging in his/her country.