Every man desires to know. It may be to know why, when and how mangoes ripe. It may also mean to know why there is something instead of nothing. It may be to know why the sizes of our genitals are not the same for individuals. Knowledge which is arrived at through unwarranted means is called superstition. Some knowledge may be warranted; and we called it science. Science commands universal validity. Formal education is preferred to informal because it demystifies nature and empowers man to be the best of what he can be.
Self development is the generic expression for what education does to man. Education creates self consciousness. The consciousness is not just consciousness for its own sake; it is consciousness of innate possibilities, the power to become what one can be. Critical consciousness is the bed rock of every consciousness. It even makes learning possible. One discovers his potentials only through consciousness. When consciousness meets needs, it is called an invention. Nobody develops what is not useful to the society. It is in serving the society that one finds one’s satisfaction. Entrepreneurship begins with consciousness of what people want and attempt to supply those things at one’s own gain. Needs spur up entrepreneurship. Hence, necessity is the mother of invention.
Education ignites critical consciousness which is awareness of one’s social and physical environment. This awareness is not for its own sake. It is awareness that activates rather than deactivates. It ignites in man passion to conquer things that are conquerable and courage to accept things he can’t change. Invention is always a product of man’s attempt to dominate his environment. Man has dreams which nature tries to surmount. When man imposes his will on his environments with correct formula he breaks stereotypes and moves closer to invention.
If necessity is the mother of inventions, why is Africa yet to invent meaningful things when we have more necessities than other races of the world? Why are African still falling palm trees when people are hoisting their national flags on the space? What of our mosquitoes which we have not been able to invent something to ward them off? Why did it take Whiteman just few months after arriving to invent mosquito nets? We have crude oil which is refined with exotic technology. We have crude mentality which is ruled with set of procedure called democracy.
African rationality accounts for the way we are. Generally, Africans are too reluctant to take risk. The society discourages risk and surrounds nature with a lot of protective dogmas. Africa’s nature is not meant to be conquered but to be adored. An African sees blue water, instead of bending down to analyze the bluish content he bends down in worship and lays down religious dogmas that protect the water from possible intruders. With this mindset, all mineral deposits were seen as manifestation of gods who must be worshipped. Every attempt to invent was viewed as acts against tradition and culture and therefore against gods. Africa killed many who attempt to break the belief systems and discouraged people who had it in mind.
Perhaps, more deadly than the first but also the offshoot of weak rationality is Africa’s magico-religious world-view. Every discovery was protected with religious mythology. Cures for diseases were not just personalized but religiously patented with esoteric language and incantations. Cures for snake bit would not be given till some rituals were performed nor would the native doctor allow any person to know them since it was gods who would show the herbs. The effect was sad. Powerful doctors died with their medicinal knowledge buried in their graves having failed to neither transmit nor subject it to objectivity.
Again, invention is directly proportional to societal reward. The way society punishes failures and rewards successes ignites or kills passion to invent. Africa strictly speaking does not reward invention. It rather discourages it. People had been ostracized because they broke societal stereotypes.
Sad enough, Africa’s first attempt to overcome magico-religious world-view was guided by wrongs hands with ulterior motive and wrong pedagogy. In the words of Paulo Frère, colonial education suffered narration neurosis. In its subject-object dichotomy, the learner was like an incinerator where the refuge of knowledge was dumped. He was not given chance to evaluate and decide on what to accept and reject. European education was education for subjugation, subordination, enslavement, creation of mental confusion and development of underdevelopment. It was not meant to serve the interest of the student but the need of the master. It was necessary to keep business going through easy communication. Europeans were here on economic mission of running a company nicknamed ‘government’. Education was to produce cheap labour who would facilitate this running.
And when it was no longer lucrative to run the company, they handed it over to local champions who immediately assumed indigenous overlords in the name of independence leaders. The struggle to occupy Whiteman’s position ensued in the continent and since education was the only qualification to ascend, the mad rush to acquire western education was laden with interests that were all but critical. The test of education became what job it fetches and not what thinking it provokes. Utilitarianism overtook consciousness.
In Izzi the situation is worst. Education is politically oriented. For an average Ebonyi man, education is useful if and only if it secures political position or appointment. This trend is not without history. The creation of Ebonyi State came at a time Ebonyians were not educationally prepared such that at creation the state lacked technocrats that could engineer polity and steer it in favour of the mass for whose sake the state was created. The available became the desirable and many who were police recruit, Grade II classroom teachers, and office clerks in matter of months became senators of the federal republic. Every Ebonyi father believes that his son at school will one day become a governor. Every undergraduate of Ebonyi extraction is confident that before 50, he/she must have tested one elective post or appointment or both.
The danger is that when everybody wants to be a politician, such society faces dearth of talents because politicking discourages professionalism. A medical doctor who has abandoned stethoscope for four years because of appointment or political position may not likely take it up again nor will think of becoming a consultant again in his life. A lawyer who drops his wig to play politics may not return to bench again. The examples are many.
More than this is the trend where many Ebonyians rush to graduate and not to study. If university certificate is the only green card to rosy jobs, education for personality development is no longer necessary. The result is that inefficiency is growing. I am indeed awe for the clan where everybody wants to politician.
