Growing up, I learnt some morals essentially at home, in church, and at school. At home, I heard proverbs like “remember the son of whom you are”; in church I heard a scripture like “train up a child in the way he should go; when he grows, he will never depart from it”; at school, I learnt a lot of good sayings, fables and moral songs such as “wherever you go, do not say yes when you mean to say no”, “parents listen to your children, we are the leaders of tomorrow”(needless to say that our tomorrow never comes but we are still the leaders of tomorrow),”education is the key to success”, we were also taught. However, the narrative has changed now. The padlock to success has been changed, education as a key is thrown into the lagoon. I’m still looking for it. Success is under lock and keys only to education as it is alien to success. Childhood days were filled with naiveties, yes, but the curriculum was worth it. An adult who saw you misbehave in public space, gave you a remarkable whack, and God blessed you if he didn’t go to your house to report you to your parents, your punishment could have been doubled. Today, who dares that? Beat my child in public? You’re done for.
I may not be too old but I’m old enough to know that there was a time when teachers stood as loco parentis to the child, but all that is in the past now. I remember serving as an Academic Administrator in a private school in Edo State, as part of my terms of engagement, I was to bring sanity to academic endeavours. Recounting my ordeals is like a tormenting nightmare dangerously truncating my ability to wake up. A set of twins, one brilliant, the other dumb, wrote an essay and submitted to me alongside their mates. The brilliant one aided the dumb. Unfortunately, the answer script of the dumb came before me first, therefore, I gave her a commensurate score. When her brother’s script came before me, I spotted the copying machine, therefore I wrote on his script “copied”. When the boy got his script, he came back to me, I could have been lynched.
This brings me to the question, where the reward system for education? A lad once dressed up to go to school, and his mother inserted books and other learning materials into his bag, in her remark, she said, “son, make sure you don’t lose everything in this bag, all you need to be great lies in it”. In a quite shocking response, the lad said,”mummy, do you know Sir Gabriel Igbinedion, Bob Izua? Are they educated? How come they have so much wealth?” His mother shuddered in amazement. Today, there are graduates everywhere but, according to employers of labour, none is employable. Why should I embrace education? A teenager once asked my brother, “why should I go to school when I can actually become a hacker, hack all the banks and make my money? “
Only recently, two men returned a huge sum of money found at the airport to the owner, the only reward they got was “media hype”. What happened next? The security officer who also gave back the money found to the owner in Tony Elumelu’s UBA was used for fundraising, what happened afterwards ? No one knows. Where is our reward system? Moreover, let me quick opine that to fight corruption, there must be machineries put in place to uphold and defend our value, punishment and reward systems. These three systems must be functional. If the cost of doing good is higher than that of doing evil, then it is only natural for an individual to do evil.
In the 1990s, a popular musician from the Igbo extraction visited a certain village in Enugu State, where young men and women were struggling to be educated at least to BSc level, and serenaded their ears to his “anenwe obodo enwe” tune. All the young men seeking to be educated, backtracked and diverted their mission to “hustling on the street”. Their mission statement became “to hustle on the street and become the wealthiest in my community in particular and Enugu State at large”, their mantra being “on the street till I die”. Their initial mission statement changed because two of their brothers who were complete dullards, made their ways to Lagos and became fraudsters at the time. After making the money, they returned home in a grand style, contracting Oliver De Coque as a guest artiste to perform on the occasion of their “arrivals” in life.
In conclusion, nowadays ,evil is becoming good and good evil. How do we correct these social anomalies? There must be a formidable reward system, if there must be value system. The National Orientation Agency must do well to educate, create awareness, sensitize the citizens about national core values. Every adult should be responsible for a child. Schools must imbibe in their curriculum, courses that are relevant for employment and technological advancement. Morality must also be upheld in schools and all institutions. If we are sincere about the fight against corruption, then we must imbibe the principle of reward.
Moses Einstein Felix
© 2018.
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