REVAMP-YOUR-ROOT

"Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country" - John F. Kennedy.

Education system in Nigeria today, needs a total overhauling and restructuring. We can only achieve this by triggering a "REVAMP YOUR ROOT" programme. This reform which is self-induced is required to improve the performance of our primary, secondary and tertiary education in the country. Abysmally, the nation entered the 21st century insufficiently prepared to cope or compete in the global economy, where growth is based even more heavily on technical and scientific knowledge. It is also a well known fact that the inadequacies always observed among many undergraduates and graduates alike is as a result of the inadequacies associated with the primary and the secondary education system in Nigeria.

What do I mean by Revamp Your Root? This is a proposed revolutionary measure which I suggest will take us back to our alma mater - primary and secondary schools especially where we were groomed to become what we are today and make positive impacts. We can help them in diverse ways: Provision of books for library; Provision of infrastructural effects; Scholarship; Bursary in form of cash; Provision of sporting materials; Agitation for government intervention etc.

We can not afford to leave the destiny of this nation in the hands of a moribund government that is self-seeking, insensitive and timorous. We/you can achieve this as an individual or group as we are already doing in Aquinas College Akure (ACA). Kudos to the initiators. Converge virtually or physically and discuss what you can do for your Primary and/or Secondary school. Just take a stroll to these schools...you will be marveled at the level of dilapidation and retrogression that have engulfed them. Go and see that library that you left behind, check the laboratories, the classrooms, the sport pitches etc. You may unwittingly shed tears by virtue of what you will see. Unto government, we can wait no more.

For instance, UNESCO has recommended that 26% of the total budget of a nation should be allocated to education. But Longe Commission of 1991 observed that the percentage of recurrent budgetary allocation to education in Nigeria has never exceeded 10%. Hmmm...are you saying that the present government is allocating more to education? It is a blatant falsehood. On paper, yes, but the implementation is defective for political reasons that are precipitated by corruption.

For an educational system to be classified as functional and effective, it must be all encompassing and all embracing. Thus, a well focused and define pattern of educational system that is all embracing should be fashioned out where vocational and technical education will be well developed and every child given the proper and kind of education he or she desires, base on the psychomotor, cognitive, and affective domain. And that is my clarion call to you this morning:

Embrace the "REVAMP YOUR ROOT" programme and play a laudable developmental role in your alma mater - primary and/or secondary school. And we would be glad to read your testimonies and stewardship accounts here. I am compiling mine.

Remember, if God be for us, no government can be against us.

Thank you.