The Equality Ideology - A Key to an Egalitarian Society The second to the last training I had in my Political Shadowing Scheme is Equality. Except equality is consciously driven by State instruments, we can never have an egalitarian society whereby every individual have equal access to opportunities. Also, equality ensures that the weaknesses and/or strengths of each individual could be assessed beyond their gender, race, class or religion. The questions that Equality deals with is what can we do to ensure that protected groups/individuals have equal access to opportunities be it work, study, recreation, education etc? Protected groups/individuals could range from the disabled, children, women, pregnant women, fathers, people from the lower class, ethnic persons, religion etc. What is equality? All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood - Universal declaration of Human Rights Article 1 Most nations have citizens rights as a phrase, sentence or paragraph in their Constitution but securing an act or a law, like the UKs Equality Act 2010 is very essential foster conscious adherence to the rights of others as a communal society. Equality Act/law helps the employers and employees to know their obligations to one another beyond work-and-pay relationship; there must be dignity in service. The effectiveness of the Equality Act is not just in making the law but the creation of several platforms to ensure easy accessibility to seek redress, that being an Employment Tribunal, while also ensuring that a companys complaint procedure has been exhausted before the case could be brought before the Tribunal. Another interesting aspect is the creation of a mediation organisation to help in-between peradventure the issue could be resolved without going to the Tribunal. Nigeria, at the moment is grossly swimming in inequalities, the women, children, disabled, even men are discriminated against and certain opportunities are restricted to the wards of the affluent; a nation, taking advantage of the vulnerable can never prosper even if all the sand of its land are pure gold. Equality is about valuing lives but Nigerians dont value lives, they value material wealth. A wealthy man is a person of value in Nigeria but in other nations, the fact that you are a human being makes you valuable. Those nations understand that a wealthy person could be a criminal that must be put in prison for the rest of his/her life while recognising that a school drop-out or a disabled person could be the best person for leadership. Nigeria must return back to the basics of equality otherwise, the implication of its ignoring and deliberately taking advantage of the vulnerable, especially the children, for the selfish greed of the high and mighty, will be its continuation to grope in the darkness of its own wickedness.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 15:19:30 +0000
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