“International Literacy Day: Another Case Of Quality Textbooks In Africa”

The strength of a nation is built idea-by-idea from the blackboard of the primary school classroom someone intelligent pointed out.
And in line with this year’s international literacy day, the minister of state for education in Nigeria, Goodluck Opiah said that about a 31percent of the adult population in Nigeria is illiterate. He said it dropped from 38 percent in 2015.

Wonderful news and good to know. He forgot to tell us the percentage of the youths that are illiterates. We are guessing they are far higher. According to the popular saying, youths are the nation, not adults.

In Africa, there is no doubt that it’s major problem in education, not malaria, not poverty but quality education. We have many literate people and leaders, not educated masses and leaders. The policies and the state of everything will tell you as much. Utterances will tell you as much. Actions will tell you as much, and reasoning and thinking ability will tell you as much. No debate, no argument is needed in this assertion as far as Africa is concerned.

Many of us can read, write and even speak, yet, to think out a sound policy, ideas, and projects and see them through successful is foreign to us. Maybe, 97 percent of us are lacking in that regard. It’s a fact.

The problem is that we seem not to know the difference between the two. Am not sure anyone went to school to be educated, we all have literacy in mind even if we don’t know the difference. Speak, write and read. You are done. Speak any foreign language, you are educated.

During my days in the polytechnic, they referred to us as regulars and those adults, civil servants, and others from every sector that troops in there each Saturday for the education they called poly air and the internet wasn’t existing then in Nigeria. They are not on air, they gather in school In person each Saturday. Just like most of us, they were after the certificate. They needed it more than any other thing for promotion in their ministries and social standing prestige never human improvements of any kind. Let the dead bury themselves.

To acquire that literacy, many bribed their way to it. Many quack doctors, lawyers, teachers, lecturers, commissioners, ministers, chairmen, etc. The country is overflowing with them.

Ask them to supervise any important project, and be sure of it being done in our way. Nigerian way. No one can give what he doesn’t have it is even not in his power to have it as an educated Nigerian.

According to Alberto Moravia, the ratio of literacy to illiterate is constant but nowadays, the illustrates can read and write. I am not surprised that the literacy percentage in Nigeria is still as high as 31percent. And those that I used to see each Saturday in my school aren’t among them anymore?

The academic staff union of the universities has been on strike for a long now over salary. In the situation of his nature, my assertion must have hit the nail on the head. If any camp is right, it a still literacy at work. Educated people always understand each other and things but literate people understand themselves well and nothing deep.

Where does any educated government allow lecturers to strike for almost seven months and where do lecturers keep the students at home asking for pay raise? Who is feeling the pinch?—lecturers, government, students, society, or parents? How come the two parties don’t in that direction?

I have been outside the continent, I have been amid different races, different books, and different classes of those races. I have found out that the difference in, the gap between literate and educated can be as simple as quality textbooks made available in a place they are needed. Quality teachers matter too but no teacher can beat quality textbooks for serious-minded learners.

With quality textbooks, literacy is covered and education sought. No language came into existence completely. It is developed gradually by the educated not the literates. Most countries that have more educated than literate among them taught them in their local languages because it is complete and good enough to be taught.

As far as the 1920s, some Africans started graduating from western universities. Yet, personal glories, tribal, religious even state glories were the obstacles that stopped them from having any meaningful impact on people till their time was upon the earth. Wasted generation. They kept coming in that format without achieving anything even in the areas they focused on. These are not the qualities of an educated man.

The first ceremonial president of Nigeria was into a war of words with his sons on how useless the nigger’s university he attended in America was and how quality theirs are.

According to the Chinese adage, you want one year of progress, plant corns, want ten years of progress, plant trees want hundred years of progress, and educate people. Reasoning abilities are too poor and that is where literacy becomes its handicap to the continent. Literate man is a dangerous animal. Literate man draws lines between him and the illiterates. The literate government doesn’t want an educated few near them. How can such a nation progress? How can even an individual know your enemies if you don’t near them to know what needed changing, how, and where?

Half education which is literacy should not even be a burden had it been that we allowed that half to pass through us too. Since the relationship is one-directional, that is the root of the problems.

At times, shifting aside some cultural traditional agenda nonsense and trying to educate more women, might be the route out of our rut. African union might do well if they tour the route Asians did since the 50s, cornering every quality textbook in existence in the western worlds making them cheaper and available even in local languages where they are needed.

Literacy day was celebrated in Africa as we are doing today last year and what is the significant improvement since then? There would still be one next year. Action is needed not celebration.