The Boys are dropping Out

A few years ago, it would have been very strange to be discussing this issue. Perhaps it sounds strange to you even now. What with the age long challenge of girl child education still remaining un-surmounted and a million and one NGO’s registered solely to address gender disparity in school enrollment in the country.

Nobody however seems to be taking note of a disturbing new trend. There is an alarming decline in Boy child enrollment in schools especially in eastern parts of the country to such extents that I believe it should now be the concern rather than the earlier issue of Girl Child education.

No body seems to be asking any questions why there is an increase in the number of boys dropping out of school especially in eastern Nigeria. This is a trend which is so obvious but to which there is unfortunately no figures to prove. It is something we know is happening but which we are either pretending not to have noticed or we don’t seem to have accorded it enough importance to begin to address it.

In the past, parents sent only their male children to school, believing albeit erroneously, that the education of their daughters was a waste. Then, the gender disparity favoured the male child as many more boys had the opportunity of accessing western education.

Today however, following an erosion of societal values and the increased pursuit for quick wealth which brings about greater acceptance and reverence in the society, education and the need to acquire it seems to have lost its attraction. Indeed, wealth itself now buys certificates and positions of leadership. The average young man therefore is increasingly not seeing the need to spend so many years in pursuit of what he can achieve through other means. Spending the same measure of time chasing money seems a more fulfilling endeavour.

The situation is not helped by the very poor performance of the Nigerian Government as regards education. At the moment, Federal Government college teachers have downed tool. Their colleagues in primary schools in about nineteen states have equally refused to resume for the new academic session due to the failure of government to implement the agreed Teachers Salary Scale. The deadlock in the Tertiary wing is now a National embarrassment; I need not bore you about it here.

Unfortunately and ironically, after many years of expending our resources including grants from international agencies like the United Nations, we can not boast of having made significant success in redressing the issue of Girl child education.  It would not therefore be far from the truth to state that whatever data on a reduction in the gender disparity which the government has to flaunt is not actually based on more girls enrolling into school, but really about more boys dropping out.

These boys drop out not to go into apprenticeship in any trade or craft, but straight into the scramble for what ever they can grab which leaves them either perpetually at the bottom rung of Maslow’s chart or with a desire to do something criminal to rise in it.

Ever wonder who all the army of Okada riders are? Or the bus conductors and Motor Park touts? What of the boys who harangue you to buy their wares in the traffic? Okay, let’s bring it closer home. Who are the guys robbing the buses and the banks? What is the gender of those taking people hostage?

It is not rocket science to note that we are sitting on some kind of time bomb here. A nation that toys with the education of her children as we seem to be so obsessed with doing at the moment is sure headed for doom. It becomes even more worrying when it is her male population that is increasingly dropping out of school.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

Photo credit: photoblogmagazine

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The Drawing Board is now full

There is a drawing board located somewhere in the country to which our administrators always claim they are returning to each time they mess up.  They sound like this drawing board was responsible in the first instance for their failure and that ironically their return to this drawing board was going to make their next outing a success.  What we always get however is another failure and another promise that the drawing board will be re-visited.

For example, each time any of our National sport teams flops, our sport administrators stare into Television camera’s and tell us glibly that they would return to the drawing board and come up with something better.  But it never gets better.

It is to that drawing board that Coach Amodu Shuaibu and his now expanded technical crew have promised us they are returning to after their lackluster, stomach retching performance in the world cup qualifying match against the cartage Eagles of Tunisia.

It was to that drawing board they returned four years ago when we failed to make the World Cup in Germany. After fouling their preparations and superintending the sham in Kano which saw little known Angola pick the world cup ticket ahead of us based on the head-to-head rule, the men at the helms of affairs at the then NFA told us they will go back to the drawing board to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

After going to Mozambique in the earlier stage of the South Africa 2010 qualifying rounds and coming home with a point, they told us it was all a matter of going back to the drawing board and all will be made right. On that occasion, the Super Eagles had played like a pack of pregnant women escaping with a draw only by the grace of a rather incompetent referee who denied the Mozambicans two clear goals.

I don’t know where this almighty drawing board is located or of what size it is, I am only certain that that board should be full by now.  Given the number of times it’s been visited and re-visited, there shouldn’t be any space left on that board by now and surely, the board has nothing positive left to offer.

I thus make bold to say, not just to our football administrators who have become to say the least, classical models of corruption and incompetence, but also to all our leaders, that the drawing board is now full. It is time to get to work.

Stop making excuses for your failures. Stop postponing your responsibilities. Stop leaving for tomorrow what you can accomplish today. Stop compromising standards. Stop cutting corners. Stop justifying your irresponsibility. Stop branding your incompetence. Stop giving us that old gist. Its now stale news and quite irritating to hear. Keep your damn drawing board to yourselves. Give us results.

What other justification is there for the existence of a sports commission and various sports federations complete with fat bellied members if the Country can not win laurels in international competitions? What are they doing with all the money if I may ask? Recently, we went to the world athletics championship in Berlin and did irreparable damage to the re-brand campaign. We did not just waste tax payers money in what was clearly a jamboree, we also had our athletes testing positive to banded substances.

If we don’t make it to South Africa 2010, the first time the competition is being staged on African soil, I suggest that we should not just throw bottles of water at them; we should match to the football house where they sit around and sketch on the mysterious drawing board and sack them. They deserve nothing more, than to be openly ridiculed.

So enough of the blames on the drawing board and please, could you stop giving us that bla bla bla of going back to it.?

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

Picture credit: http://thebsreport.files.wordpress.com

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The Drawing Board is now full.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

There is a drawing board located somewhere in the country to which our administrators always claim they are returning to each time they mess up.  They sound like this drawing board was responsible in the first instance for their failure and that ironically their return to this drawing board was going to make their next outing a success.  What we always get however is another failure and another promise that the drawing board will be re-visited.

For example, each time any of our National sport teams flops, our sport administrators stare into Television camera’s and tell us glibly that they would return to the drawing board and come up with something better.  But it never gets better.

It is to that drawing board that Coach Amodu Shuaibu and his now expanded technical crew have promised us they are returning to after their lackluster, stomach retching performance in the world cup qualifying match against the cartage Eagles of Tunisia.

It was to that drawing board they returned four years ago when we failed to make the World Cup in Germany. After fouling their preparations and superintending the sham in Kano which saw little known Angola pick the world cup ticket ahead of us based on the head-to-head rule, the men at the helms of affairs at the then NFA told us they will go back to the drawing board to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

After going to Mozambique in the earlier stage of the South Africa 2010 qualifying rounds and coming home with a point, they told us it was all a matter of going back to the drawing board and all will be made right. On that occasion, the Super Eagles had played like a pack of pregnant women escaping with a draw only by the grace of a rather incompetent referee who denied the Mozambicans two clear goals.

I don’t know where this almighty drawing board is located or of what size it is, I am only certain that that board should be full by now.  Given the number of times it’s been visited and re-visited, there shouldn’t be any space left on that board by now and surely, the board has nothing positive left to offer.

I thus make bold to say, not just to our football administrators who have become to say the least, classical models of corruption and incompetence, but also to all our leaders, that the drawing board is now full. It is time to get to work.

Stop making excuses for your failures. Stop postponing your responsibilities. Stop leaving for tomorrow what you can accomplish today. Stop compromising standards. Stop cutting corners. Stop justifying your irresponsibility. Stop branding your incompetence. Stop giving us that old gist. Its now stale news and quite irritating to hear. Keep your damn drawing board to yourselves. Give us results.

What other justification is there for the existence of a sports commission and various sports federations complete with fat bellied members if the Country can not win laurels in international competitions? What are they doing with all the money if I may ask? Recently, we went to the world athletics championship in Berlin and did irreparable damage to the re-brand campaign. We did not just waste tax payers money in what was clearly a jamboree, we also had our athletes testing positive to banded substances.

If we don’t make it to South Africa 2010, the first time the competition is being staged on African soil, I suggest that we should not just throw bottles of water at them; we should match to the football house where they sit around and sketch on the mysterious drawing board and sack them. They deserve nothing more, than to be openly ridiculed.

So enough of the blames on the drawing board and please, could you stop giving us that bla bla bla of going back to it.?

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

www.nzesylva.wordpress.com

Picture credit: http://thebsreport.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/drawing-board.jpg

The Scramble for Nothing

Pictures they say speak a million words. The picture above sure does meet this requirement and even more. I doubt if I need to say any more.

Now it is easy to say “ah…this is just an artist’s imagination” but that would be acknowledging just half the value of the painting as it carries a much deeper message. It is a depiction of not just an artist’s imagination but of a daily occurrence in Nigeria. People who have lived in Lagos and have had to contend with the sorry public transport system will attest to have witnessed such a sight many times before.

Even more, the picture is not just about a scrum for space on an already full rickety public bus, it tells the Nigerian story in many ways…the scramble by a frustrated people for any thing they can lay hands on….the tendency to want to grab and grab…the inadequacy of everything from drinking water to spaces on buses…the survival of the crook-iest …the lawlessness…the confusion…the hunger…the prevalence of killer diseases…the high maternal mortality rate…the darkness…the rigged elections…the failed projects…the strikes…the over crowded lecture halls…the o-yes legislature… the cash-n-carry judiciary…the comatose executive…

What have I left out? Fill up the blank spaces jare.

Have a lovely weekend peeps.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

What if I said PDP Is Haram?

What if I said PDP is Haram? Wouldn’t I be unnecessarily looking for trouble? Wouldn’t I be branded a terrorist and the SSS sent off to haunt me? Wouldn’t the most vicious men of the Nigerian army be sent after me and my clan? Wouldn’t my body be pumped with hot lead and brandished before tv cameras as a vivid example of what becomes of a renegade? Wouldn’t I get the same compliments as Mrs. Clinton got after she said the same thing in different words?

What if I really insist that PDP is Haram and deserved the same kind of treatment that they recently meted on the Boko Haram? No, not from the police or the army, but from me and you. What if I had proof to substantiate my claim? would I get a followership like Yusuf Mohammed, willing and eager to execute my own style terrorism that aims to chase the evil way?

What if I told you that for ten years PDP has done nothing but sing us a two versed poem. Verse one: Reform, Verse two: War on corruption, would you sign up to my unusual agenda? What if I told you that the reforms have been very successful only in the area of turning the reformed into competitive scavengers, recharge card sellers and graduate okada riders? And that the war on corruption has seen the anti corruption body with the eagle eye logo turn into a debt recovery tax force, would you then be convinced of the exigency of my call?

Oh! Sorry, how could I have forgotten so soon? Yeah, indeed there is a third verse to their poem; Rule of law. What if I said it was actually a rule of no law? What if I said there were no rules and no laws? What if I showed you countless news items to prove that? What if I wrote you a dictionary sized book about it all? What if I told you that we were all prisoners of their complete lawlessness? Would you then sign up to my noble course?

What if I told you this particular evil would be everlasting? What if I told you that their sixty years boast is not a bluff? What if I told you that a one party state is closer than we can imagine? What if I gave you Zamfara, Bauchi and Imo as proof? What if I told you Abia is being baited? What if I showed you the rancor in APGA and now PPA as more proof? Would you become as worried as I am?

What if we continued to grumble about our woes in the safety of our bedrooms; daily watching as two pieces of meat reduces to one in our dinner plate until there is none? What if we lamented about the rigged elections, the pot hole infested roads and our mortuary of hospitals until bloods instead of tears flowed down of cheeks? Would it make them change?

What if we all decided to troop to the US and UK embassies daily begging for visa, running to safer climes and shouting from the other side of the fence, would it take away the spot from the leopards skin? What if we decided to Kneel down and pray, calling the name of God more times than the waves of the Atlantic hit the bar beach shores, would it make them to suddenly repent?

What if instead you decided to join me in employing my kind of terrorism? What if we turn those tools at our disposal into fuel bombs? The facebook, tweeter, blogger, and Youtube.  What if we stop gossiping on them for a while? What if we stopped spending hours on them chatting with faceless people? What if we sang less of hate songs and beef raps? What if we wrote more, blogged more and sang more against them? Don’t you think they may begin to snore less in their sleep?

What if we did more than just write and sing?, what if a million of us marched down the three arm zone, into the National Assembly to tell them our mind on the issue of Electoral reforms? What if we remain on the road until they grant us audience? What if we carry placards and scream out our demands? Oh yes, the Public order Act! I have not forgotten. But what if we went to court to challenge that obsolete law? What if we resist the police and their rusty guns?, what if we reminded the police that the future of their kids was also threatened by this evil? Don’t you think we might strike a cord?

What if we publish the names of their children and the schools they are attending abroad…and of course, the fees they pay? What if those of us in the Diaspora march out and take our petition to the United Nations.  What if we told them our undergraduates have been idling at home for months while they share banters over glasses of sparkling white wine in Wadata Plaza? What if we champion the call for a law that makes it compulsory for their children to attend our public schools? Do you think our teachers and undergraduates will begin to get a fairer deal?

What if we printed pamphlets condemning them? What if we all went down to our villages to talk to the youths? What if we get them to see who is responsible for the uncompleted school project and the higher cost they pay for kerosene?  What if we are able to talk them out of carrying arms for them on Election Day? What if we told them to insist on the best candidate? What if we talked to them about insisting that their votes count? What if we got them to resist false results?  Would we have to wait for sixty years before the plague disappears?

What if I told you PDP is Haram? What if I am no more guessing but speaking fact? What if I am rounded up for daring to say this? What if they come in a convoy of trucks to seize me? What if they don’t shoot me, but charge me for treason and leave me to languish in “awaiting trial”? What if my ink dries up and my quill breaks? What if my voice cracks and my heart fail? Would you say the things I say today? Will you carry on my struggle?

(Tributes to Late Chief Gani Fawehinmi SAN)

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

Life Before Death

I have heard enough of that crap. And no, I am not an atheist. I just think that logically as it is in the English alphabet, there should be an “A” before a “B”. If that sequence is generally accepted, I therefore refuse to be continually harangued by the talks of life after death. No, enough of that crap.

Logically, there could only be a life after death when there is a life at the present. Does it make sense to worry about tomorrow when it is still dawn today? Why worry ourselves sick about a life after death when we are not living at the moment? If you ask me, we have proceeded just too fast for our senses. Far away from reality. Guess it’s time we do a little reverse and begin to ponder a little more about life before death.

What is this guy talking about I can almost hear you asking aloud. It’s so simple. I am speaking on behalf of the little boy in rags who approaches your car window in the traffic, with a dirty old rubber bowl in hand. You see him approach, and quickly wind up your window, your face either bearing pity or disgust.

I am speaking on behalf of the six year old girl hawking pure water under the scorching sun at an hour children her age should be in school. She has not even slippers under her feet. Her hair is dirty and unkempt and strings of catarrh hang down her nose. Her eye pleads with you as she announces the sale of her ware. Does she remind you of your daughter of the same age?

I am speaking on behalf of the pre-pubescent girl who is married off to a man three times her age by parents who need the money to keep them selves alive. You read such things in the paper and it sounds so distant. No, you really do not read it, you simply flip past it to more interesting stories about celebrities and beauty pageants.

I write on behalf of the many children who are destined to live but a few days on earth because of the accident of their birth. Children that suckle hungrily at dry flabby breasts. Children that are at the mercy of the elements both hot and cold. Children who can not access common chloroquin to fight malaria. Children who were better of not born.

I speak for the farmer who has watched his produce dwindle every passing year.  He doesn’t read in the papers of his Local Government Chairman’s boasts of spending millions on fertilizer every year. I speak for the Cocoa farmer who has lost his sons and helpers to the scramble for the city. I speak for the palm oil farmer who is losing his trees and house to erosion.

I speak for those women who will die and are dying for trying to bring forth others to this life. Those who have never heard of ante-natal. Those who must continue to satisfy their husbands crave for more children.  Those women who are raped and are too scared to say they were. Those who sign up for shipments to Italy not because they find it pleasurable. Those who are forced to give or throw away their nine months pain.

I speak for that child who is condemned by HIV. And the mother who bore him/her. And the father who has lost his job because his bosses heard he is positive. I speak for those who queue for days to get a dose of the antiretroviral. Those people who we establish NGO’s for. NGO’s that make us rich. NGO’s we administer from the comfort of our air-conditioned four –wheel drives.  NGO’s that don’t exist.

I speak for the child who learns from under a tree. The child who has an AK47 hanging dangerously from his neck. The Child who pushes that barrow around behind us in the Market. That child that has never seen a television. That child who forms the character of our more touching stories. Those stories that win international literary awards.

I am shouting aloud for that graduate who has lost every faith in himself and his country. The one whose shoe tell a million tales. Tales that make the wonderful degree certificate he carries about in that worn out brown envelope seen like a huge joke. He has lost his voice and can’t speak anymore. He is close to losing his spirit too. He has no money to take the next bus.

I am weeping along with that man who just lost his job. The man who has to layoff his workers ‘cos the books are not balancing anymore. The barber who can’t work ‘cos his tiny generator has broken down. The okada rider who can’t buy the spare part to fix his bike. That man who has been paying his tithe and waiting for a miracle. A miracle that only his pastor experiences. The pastor who keeps talking about a life after Death.

No, enough of that crap. I really would wish to know some life now not after. So stop threatening me about what would happen after I die which is very soon given my current state. Stop asking me to wait. I am tired of your deception and sweet talk. Stop postponing my joy. Give me something to hold unto today. Tomorrow will sure worry about it self. I need a life before death.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo