Niran Adedokun
As
much as I hate to generalise , something always worries me about the
way we react to issues in Nigeria. We are a terribly impulsive people.
Ever ready to arrive at conclusions without deep thought. We pass
judgment almost always too soon.
Even when awkward things happen in our
society, we do not reflect on them, we rush to take sides and in no
time, move on like nothing has happened and then wait for the next
record -breaking ignominious event. We are like the drunkard who
constantly forgets the indignity of the previous night.
Earlier this week, allegations filtered
in through an online media platform that Nigeria’s current Aviation
Minister, Ms Stella Oduah, might have made bogus claims about her
qualifications. According to the report, officials of St. Paul’s College
Lawrenceville, Virginia, United States where Oduah claimed to have
gained a Master’s degree in Business Administration (MBA) told the news
platform that no such programme ever existed in the institution. The
report further insinuated that the lady may not even have obtained her
first degree from the institution.
Although the silence of the Minister and
allegations that she has gone to work online in a bid to pull off any
information related to her educational attainments smell of guilt, I
would still treat this as an allegation until we hear Oduah’s side of
the story. I would also advise commentators to tarry a minute and let us
reason together, just before you cast a stone.
Thinking about this matter, I recall that
the Oduah case, if it turns out to be true, would be the third high
-profile false educational claim scandal in the 14 years of Nigeria’s
return to democratic rule. The first was blown open by The News
magazine some weeks into our new democratic experience in 1999. It
involved a young man with the name Salisu Buhari, who was just elected
Speaker of the House of Representatives. The News reported that
Buhari did not attend the University of Toronto in Canada as he had
claimed and that he falsified his age. After a series of denials and the
magazine’s insistence on its scoop, Buhari admitted that he indeed
forged documents and perjured himself.
Not long after, Tell magazine went
to town with the alleged fraudulent educational claims by the then
Lagos State Governor. In some sense, the claims against the governor
were a tad more grievous than Buhari’s. The former governor was alleged
to have lied about information regarding his primary, secondary and
tertiary education.
That is where we are now, a point where
two of the most prominent examples of falsification of records are not
just walking the streets but are back in national prominence. The
former, after a ”go and sin no more” Presidential pardon was recently
appointed to the Governing Council of the University of Nigeria (UNN),
Nsukka, Enugu State, while the latter is the current poster boy for what
is the most progressive of Nigerian politics. Only God knows what
reward Oduah would get if she is eventually proved guilty of this
accusation
While condemning the detestable act of
taking Nigerians for granted, the point must be made that what we see in
high places is the simple manifestation of an infested system. We have a
system which has decimated merit, a polity that has devalued morality
and slaughtered all known values. In this country, I have seen different
levels of compromises. I have seen parents buy examination questions
for their children, just to give them an advantage over others. I have
seen parents pay for their children to be coached in the middle of
examinations. I have heard of false oath-taking in our courts, I have
heard of false marriages in our courts especially by graduands who want
to evade National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) postings, that is not to
mention the almost widely accepted lack of capacity of Nigerian artisans
to speak the truth. I have heard of teachers giving marks in exchange
for one form of inducement or the other. I have seen people falsify
their age to fit into the requirement for a job or some other benefits.
There is just no end to what a lot of our compatriots would do to get
their heart desire.
But do you really blame them? Resilient
as they are, Nigerians will always find ways to circumvent and survive
the frustrating collapse of institutions of the state. In Nigeria,
children would pass matriculation exanimations but not get into
institutions until someone bites a carrot. Here is a country where
students end up spending six years to complete a four-year course as
lecturers are sure to embark on ceaseless industrial actions in the
course of their academic career. Then they graduate two years later than
they anticipated and employers, including governmental organisations,
would place some age requirement that they no longer meet. So what do
they do? These graduands approach a ready court clerk, claim to have
lost their birth certificates and swear to an affidavit claiming that
they were born two years later than their actual date of birth! It is
called Declaration of Age and that gets them ready for any age
requirement by companies, but then, they have perjured themselves. Only
God knows how many people in top positions in today’s Nigeria are guilty
of this infraction. It is a country where companies without any iota
of academic roles insist on employing candidates with first class
degrees or at least a second class upper degrees. To beat them at their
game, some dumb blonde whose only aptitude is a pretty face would seduce
a lecturer, settle herself and curiosly come up at the top of her
class. Not to be left in the cold, the young man who is not so endowed
would bring out some money, (usually nothing enough to prosper anyone),
and buy any class of degree that he wants ready for sucker companies
that value certificate over the quality of the personality that they
intend to employ. No wonder so many companies end up employing
incompetent impostors who cannot help themselves when confronted with
the reality of the task at hand.
This is the tragedy of a nation without
class. A nation which stifles the ability of its people to attain to
their best potential would most definitely breed manipulators, some of
who will falsify things just to survive or for an ego trip, a desire to
lord it over others. The latter is the reason why public officials lie
to us since you can be anything and everything in this country with your
school certificate.
Although perpetrators of these acts are
most certainly sure to end in ignominy, the ultimate loser is the
country and its future. The tendencies described above engender the
failure to build a society capable of competing in the technological
world of the 21 century not to talk about the future. While we wait for
the latest case of deception in high places to play out, we need to
rededicate ourselves to excellence in spite of the brickbats that our
politicians are throwing at each other. Unless we reorder our priorities
and put merit over parochial considerations, generations after us will
have no idea what it is to be meritorious. They will celebrate
mediocrity, lies and vice, tendencies on which no country can survive.
And just before you get self-righteous and cast that stone, check
yourself and see if you are guilty of some little infractions that may
one day blow up in your face
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