Being a talk given by Dr. Ndubuisi Osuagwu at the Seminar Organised by the Akwa Ibom State Chapter of National Association of Seadogs, in Ikot Abasi, Akwa Ibom State on December 19, 2004.
The child as a human person has all through the ages occupied a central position in the discourse of universal humanity. Across cultures, religions, in politics, in the economy, in law, the welfare of the child has been given prominence. In recent times, given the various dimensions of dislocation and aberration, arising from industrialization and its collateral impact on the nature and operations of human society, civilized humanity seems to agree that the welfare of the child has been or might be seriously undermined. As a consequence, various efforts, programmes and projects have been carefully designed and put in place to protect the child. At the level of the umbrella body of the nations of the world, the United Nations Organization (UNO), several commissions, funds and projects have been put in place to cater for the welfare of the child. Various governments of the world are doing various things, guided by the same concerns for the child. Non-governmental Organizations (NGO's) now proliferating around the world, even private persons are equally contributing enormously.
These child welfare-driven efforts are as diverse in their emphases as the propagators are in their diversity. The emphasis range from child education rights, to health, survival and protection. Each theme or emphasis often encapsulates several concerns, all in the interest of the child. Sometimes there is an overlap in concerns between organizations; at other times, there is outright duplicity in efforts. The point is that there is profound awareness among civilized humanity of the urgent need to protect the child. The awareness itself is not in anyway an accident but a product of clear appreciation of the place of the child in the development of quality humanity and the human society of the future.
Nigeria has, to be fair, had some flashes of these concerns for the child but largely through the efforts of some non-governmental organizations and individuals. Governmental action has largely been, either non-existent or entirely feeble. The nature and character of governmental attitude have therefore rendered the flashes of NGO concerns for the child not only isolated and feeble, but seriously impotent, unsustainable and ineffective. Indeed, without affirmative, committed and sincere disposition, which would imply the creation of honest structures (legal, economic and social) at the level of government, such isolated efforts as those of the few NGO's involved would remain like the proverbial water poured on the back of a duck. As a matter of fact, because of existing governmental structures, which are inherently anti-child, pro-child efforts by non-governmental groups are like a feeble pull in a direction opposite that of a vicious and powerful pull by government itself.
Why, one might ask, has the bug of child-care failed, refused and neglected to bite the Nigerian State? The answer is that the said bug has bitten and bitten until it has lost its teeth. The operators of the state have a skin of steel lost a long time ago from decades of conscience-losing drills in their gymnasium of corruption, greed and idiocy. They emerge from such drills completely impervious to reason and totally lacking in humanity. They ordain their successors after assessing their performances at the infamous gymnasium, and so, the heartless merry goes round.
From a talk about the Nigerian child as an endangered being, one might ask: why the diversion thought to the Nigerian government and its operators, and in such scathing fury? There are two answers: the first is that the root of the endangerment of the child in any society cannot easily be reached in isolation of the government. The second is that the endangerment or absence of it of the child or any other member of the society is largely initiated by governmental irresponsibility or action, as the case may be. It all starts from there then trickles down to the family. Even when it starts from the family, the sustenance or otherwise, of the endangerment is completely within the capacity of government to ensure or reverse. We shall return to this presently. The topic of our talk makes logical sense only as a dictate of profound concern with the lot of the child (as a segment citizenry) within the context of the Nigerian social, political and economic realities. These realities naturally constitute the experiential placenta, which feeds and nurtures the lot of the Nigerian child and gives that lot both form and character. In a sense, it is a concern, which implies, but does not overtly express in many words, that given the lot of the Nigerian child, the future of the country called Nigerian is not only endangered but indeed doomed. After all, the child is the operator of the future to which he or she belongs.
THE POLITICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC REALITIES IN NIGERIA
The political, social and economic realities which the Nigerian child must pass through would naturally form him, determine his character and his quality as an operator of the future Nigerian society and state. If these realities are extremely vicious, he might not even survive them. If he does, the experiences of his childhood would abide with him forever (may be) having given him his character and ensuring that he remains an embodiment of viciousness in all his interactions and in all that he does. There lie the two problems: the danger of survival for the Nigerian child in the vicious complexity of the Nigerian socio-political reality, and the danger upon survival of becoming part of a vicious future Nigerian humanity.
THE NIGERIAN POLITICAL EXPERIENCE
The endangerment of the Nigerian child by the Nigerian political experience can be clearly illustrated with the level of criminality associated with cultism, which has ravaged institutions of higher learning in Nigeria. Between 1980 and 2003, institutions of higher learning were overrun and held hostage by a generation of Nigerian citizens who killed (often in broad day-light) maimed, raped, looted and robbed; engaged in drugs, gun-running, examinations mal-practices and certificate forgeries. Society was at a loss as to the cause of the social scourge which has really not gone away.
An examination of the ages of the criminals would reveal that they belong to the generation of Nigerian children whose political sensibilities were shaped partially by the viciousness of the Biafra-Nigerian war (otherwise called the civil war), the decade of socio-political experiences of the aftermath of that war, military coups and military rules, with their collateral damage to civilized behaviour and emphasis on might and survival of the fittest. They belong to the generation of Nigerian children who had only one brief encounter with civil rule (the Shehu Shagari rule). Even then, that brief civil rule merely sharpened their sensibilities on the possible dimensions of corruption and greed.
The point is that the Nigerian child who was born and matured within the context of a militarized Nigeria naturally developed a psyche fully dyed by the law of the jungle which recognized only force, guns, and such other weapons which they assumed ensured that they were among the fittest who must survive. That is the extent to which nurture can go in its effect on the quality of humanity.
On its return to civil rule some five years ago, the country has experienced new dimensions of political viciousness, assassination, barbarism, outright dictatorship and brazen disdain for law and due process; fraud, corruption, violence (political, religious, armed-robbery-induced). Thuggery, broad daylight electoral fraud in all its brazenness, victimization – all manners of power recklessness, have once more become part of the Nigerian political reality. The perpetrators have children who watch their odious gyrations and are internalizing these in the process of their acculturation into future Nigerian leaders. The victims equally have children from whose memories we shall find these hurts, tortures, brutalisation and dehumanization too indelible to erase in future.
What manner of Nigerian people would these children become in future.
There are several other dimensions. One politically induced policy which endangers the Nigerian child and of course the Nigerian society of the future is that on citizenship. The policy, which encourages segregation and discrimination on the basis of religion and ethnicity, can only endanger the development of the Nigerian child into a Nigerian patriot. In all my adult life, I have lived in Calabar having gone to the University of Calabar in 1976 where I did my undergraduate and graduate studies. In the same University I have been teaching since my graduation. All my children were born there and have really known no other Nigerian society beyond Calabar. One of my children sat for the Federal Common Entrance Examination and was adjudged to have performed well. However, he was not admitted, into any Federal Government Secondary School. When he realized that several of his classmates had been admitted, even though they scored far below his own score, that child confronted me and demanded an explanation. For two weeks, I hedged until I could hedge no more and had to tell him that the reason for his non-admission was that he was Igbo. The implication, I further explained was that he must work thrice as hard as his peers to survive in Nigeria. Really, did I have a choice?
The policy of discrimination on the basis of educational advantage or disadvantage does not have to be based on heredity; it should be environmental for it to make sense. In otherwords, if Cross River State is educationally disadvantaged, all Nigerian children within the Cross-River State School System should be treated equally. The treatment based on his Igboness which my son received at that tender age certainly destroyed something in him about Nigeria and there are very many such Nigerian children today. Need we say more?
Legislative action in the interest of the child is normally imperative as a point of departure in child-based affirmative action. It requires patriotism and political will. The Nigerian government has done very poorly in this direction. There are no serious or sincere laws on child health, protection and education. The burden of the Nigerian child is fully borne by the parents without enablements from government, which does not appreciate the need for child care. The few feeble efforts we have seen in terms of immunization, etc are essentially sponsored and funded by international organisation. Our embrace of the programmes has largely been dictated by the greed desire to make fraudulent and warped-minded gains off the distress of our own children. Infant mortality rate has remained high just like maternal death at childbirth.
Part of the social realities is education. The education of the child is an engagement in human development for the future of the society. Human development is easily the most important concern of any government that is willing to look beyond the immediate selfish benefits of its operators. It is on record that the Nigerian government is amongst the most lethargic in Africa in its attitude to child education. Its interest in the education of the Nigerian child is best seen in the volumes of reports churned out from the numerous commissions it has set up. Obviously, the desire to set up the commissions was borne out of the desperation for connering public funds, not from any sincere intentions to implement the emergent reports.
UNESCO had several years ago prescribed that a minimum of 26% of the annual budgets of Third World Countries should be devoted less than 10% to education. Even then the figures have largely remained on paper with less than half of that actually spent. Is it a wonder then that there has been such outcry about the decay in the Nigerian educational system? The Nigerian leadership which should care is unconcerned because their own children are comfortably ensconced in foreign institutions (including nursery schools). The idea appears to be to give the less privileged children make-believe education to ensure that they continue in their poverty and misery and servants to their own children who would be better educated and better placed in society as bosses of the underprivileged.
The enthronement of the IMF/World Bank in ASO Village right in the presidency has not helped matters for the Nigerian child. That world financial body does not subscribe to the development of tertiary education in Third World Countries. Their prescriptions articulated in various documents show that in their pursuit of globalization, it is expected that Europe and America would continue to supply the rest of the world with technology and skilled man power, while Third world countries, Nigeria inclusive will provide unskilled labour and markets for the products of their technology. Consequently, development of tertiary education in Third World Countries would mean the encouragement of competition. In otherwords social policies involving such social developments as only the government can fully fund and which are at the center of human development (including the development of the Nigerian child) are unacceptable to these vampires. The sad thing is that the unpatriotic leadership of Nigeria enthroned by these international interests cannot but act the scripts of their masters. A puppet has no life, except that given to it by the operator of its strings.
ECONOMIC REALITIES
Nigeria is for sale, has been on sale, nearly fully purchased now. The Nigerian economy has been a major source of the endangerment of the Nigerian child. Our economic policies are neither articulated by Nigerians (even though we have the expertise to do so) nor really implemented by us. What we have are proxy articulation and proxy implementation. It is all about slavery – slavish and incompetent leaders, slave drivers, slave mentality. A thoughtless debtor is indeed a slave; his children are slaves.
In spite of the abundance of oil and other natural resources, the leadership of Nigeria has over the years been lured into unending borrowings from IMF/World. No amount of public outcry has deterred them. Each borrowing comes with conditionalities including how to spend the money borrowed, who spends it, on what and when. Is it not idiocy for a man to accept to borrow money from another man who insists that the borrowing must remain on paper and what to buy with the money must be products owned by the creditor and no one else? That has been the nature of our borrowings. Our creditors dictate what we must buy (that is what they themselves sell), where we must buy them from (their own outfits), etc, they impose interests on their loans and make profit from their sales-all at our expense.
Over the years, Nigeria has been unable to ascertain exactly how much it owes.
Debts incurred decades ago are merely being serviced by way of payment of interests alone. More money is being borrowed virtually every year. We cannot properly educate the Nigerian child because a large chunk of our annual budget goes into servicing loans which were not used for his benefit. We cannot give him good health facilities, good social security for the same reason. We cannot create jobs to employ his parents because our creditors would not hear of it. We must retrench his parents and uncles and aunts because our creditors insist.
Parents therefore cannot feed their children, buy clothes for them or give them decent education. Social amenities are grossly lacking: the child is further abused – he must trudge long distances in search of water; traverse markets, motor parks and streets hawking groundnuts, oranges and garden eggs to help his impoverished and miserable parents make end meet.
Public utilities are auctioned by Nigerian leaders to themselves, while parents and their children become slaves in the new concerns.For the Nigerian child, it is a litany of woes. There is a mythical creature called Sisyphus. He was a creature reputed to have been doomed to perpetually roll a mighty boulder up the hill. Each time he struggled with his eternal burden up the middle of the hill, he would lose control and the boulder would roll back to the foot of the hill. Sisyphus would start all over again. The children of Sisyphus must indeed be in perpetual agony – endangered and doomed, don't you think? I think that given the nature and character of the Nigerian government and its operators, given their succession scheme, the Nigerian child is indeed endangered. There is certainly a way out for the Nigerian child but that is not part of this talk. It is a story for another day. For now, the awareness must be created that the Nigerian child is like a child of Sisyphus.
DR. NDUBUISI OSUAGWU
