In this interview withGBENGA ADENIJI, Professor of English, French, and African Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, Pius Adesanmi, speaks about the challenges facing university education in Nigeria among other issues. What do you think is the problem with the education system in Nigeria? There is a fundamental disconnect between leadership and followership in this country in terms of what education means. For the irresponsible political elite that is determined to sustain Nigeria as an example of how not to run a country, there can be no greater threat than the sort of informed citizenry that qualitative public education produces. To rig elections or steal public funds on a stratospheric scale that suggests mental illness, to acquire unquestioned impunity, you do not go about investing in qualitative public education. Useable mass ignorance and poverty are the raw materials you need to manufacture a followership ready to defend your perversities to death on the basis of ethnicity or religion. If you receive high quality education, you will no longer go and dance in gratitude whenever President Goodluck Jonathan decides to tar a road with remnants of your money that have thankfully not been stolen. You will demand and expect performance as routine. The need to manufacture largely ignorant masses explains the perverse consistency with which successive generations of political leaders have waged war on
Posted on: Tue, 29 Oct 2013 07:55:17 +0000
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