By Ayodele Fagbohun

“Education is a powerful weapon with which you can change the world” – Nelson Mandela, the late elected First Black President of South Africa May 10, 1994- June 15, 1999).
The staccato and discordant strains which tailed the conflicting directive of our Education Minister, Mallam Adamu Adamu and minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajuiba concerning the early resumption of pupils in terminal classes both in the primary and post primary institutions preparatory to the forthcoming final school certificate exams should be taken with a pinch of salt.
It is shocking and reprehensible to say the least that Mallam Adamu Adamu countered and overruled the earlier directive by the Presidential Task Force to states commencing the process of reopening of schools for the resumption of pupils in the exit classes i.e in primary six, Junior Secondary School (JS III) and Senior Secondary School (SSS III ).
These sets of classes in their respective institutions are due soonest to write their final examinations.
To start with, lack of unanimity and proper coordination among the agencies especially in an imponderable and vital education sector is prima- facie evidence of unrestrained levity and slipshod attitude with which some political functionaries approach the earnest and weighty responsibilities attach to and inherent in their official duties.
What it boils down to is this, the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu is not up to the task of presiding over the Education Ministry. What is more, Adamu read Accounting in the Ahmadu Bello University (ABU) Zaria. He later received a Master degree in Journalism from Columbia University’s school of Journalism.
President Mohammadu Buhari must endeavour to put a round peg in a round hole in the distribution and allocation of his portfolios. Some might say the late President Alhaji Shehu Shagari appointed Liman, a university don as Minister of Education in the NPN federal cabinet during the second republic. That is how it should be.
President Shagari’s administration however collapsed like house of cards due to its ineptitude, planlessness, economic mismanagement and outright ideological sterility to govern.
The difference must now be clear and not to be business as usual in the new dispensation beset with strange unusual happenings and tremendous challenges around the world unfolding rapidly before our very eyes.
Adamu Adamu should be re-assigned without further delay. A suitable person who has the requisite discipline with post-call experience as astute educationist to take over from Adamu, a trained accountant and relatively unknown practicing journalist.
Besides, any responsible government must always be very proactive for any eventuality in the care of the present COVID-19 unwanted global visitor, a deadly virus we all grapple with and with no solution in sight. However, the precautionary measures ram down the people’s throats are only observed in the breach, for lack of enforcement of the rules and regulation. More so, the failure of government to extend grants to the citizenry without discrimination that commensurate in checkmating the devastating impact of coronavirus.
The government policies and programmes ought to have worn human face to all intents and purposes to heal the land. Government be it federal, state and local should have declared total war on COVID-19 and deployed available weapons arms and ammunition in the arsenal to mitigate if not totally eradicate the effect of the scourge on the land.
It is a point of duty and national sacrifice as displayed to crush the Nigerian civil war, to now marshall all that it deserves to curtail the further spread of the virus.
We must follow suit the experience of the so called super powers that deliberately foist the conflagration of the epidemic on us by injecting incredible funds on the national economy to revive small scale industries and create job opportunities to wipe out hunger and mass poverty, illiteracy and superstition across the country.
If the implication of definition of education by our inimitable Nelson Mandela, first elected Black African president in the former Apartheid South Africa who voluntarily relinquished power having served one term only, advocate of good governance and a beacon of hope and enlightenment for the entire black race, is anything to go by. The levity of the federal minister on re-opening of a schools to only conduct examinations could exact adverse effect and retard our education it will further impact far reaching consequences on the changing world.
It is most disheartening and unspeakable that the niggardly allocation of N691.07 billion constituting 6.7% of the annual budget allotted to education is a far cry to the approved UNESCO education budget 26% of the total budget in a developing/third world countries Nigeria inclusive.
If we are to meet with the Nelson Mandela’s description of education as a powerful weapon to change the world. It stands to reason therefore that none of the advanced or fast developing nations would tarry behind and wait for Nigeria or any part thereof, in the supersonic rate to make more progress opening of uncharged terrains regardless of the self inflected human problems or nay other incumbrances whatsoever.
It is simplistic, naïve and an arrant nonsense for Adamu Adamu to asset that he would prefer that the pupils lose an academic session to expose them to danger.
Assuming the ministry has done its home work, liaise with federal government, all stakeholders in education and key into the policies and programmes of the ruling All Progressives Congress that guarantees uninterrupted across to good education at affordable cost.
This resumption of schools and writing of various examination we are talking about could not have been insuperable task provided there is high quantum of self disciplined industrious and public spirited public men and women at the helm fighting tooth and nail and spiritedly too, to exploit the unfavourable and hostile environment to conduce to teaching and learning process of effective desirable results.
There is need for political will amongst the political aspirants or at best the political gladiators to test their strengths and weaknesses with a view to making their points within the populace.
That perhaps what drove some titanic man of public affairs like Obafemi Awolowo, Adekunle Ajasin, Awokoya who later became minister of education and few other founded a formidable platform, the Action Group (AG) and invested on education giving filling to universal free primary education started in the Western Region in 1955, the first in Africa.
Education was described by the erudite late sage Obafemi Awolowo as a systematic course of instruction, giving intellectual and moral training to persons, bringing –up the young; helping the young to develop; to lead out the best that is in him and to evolve an integrated personality.
Education is based on the familiar principle of principle of a sound mind in a sound body “Mens Sana in corpore sano.”
Adekunle Ajasin who wrote the policy papers of free education and Awolowo were unanimous in their philosophy and intellectual expositions that :other things being equal, the healthier the body of man (or the women as the case may be) and the more educated his mind, the greater would be his moral and the more efficient and economical he would become as a producer and consumer.”
In his book, voice of courage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo drew the following quotation from the book, “World Perspective in Education written by Edmund J. King: “Education cannot be partial, rationed or selfishly enjoyed. Any attempt so to, restrict it will deepen the chanson between the “haves” and the have-nots’.
If follows in the foregoing “Education is a political instrument for bridging the yawning gap between the rich and the poor and hence, for advancing the cause of democracy.
Hence, an attempt to mishandle in charades this laudable, imponderable and unique education sector and surrender or sacrifice it either by act of commission or omission to political charlatanism on the altar of political expediency will spell doom for the country’s democracy in the ultimate.