Excerpt XXX from Moral Goodness In Our Life-time, By Pastor Ajayi James B. C.
Aiding and abetting pupils and students in examination malpractice became the teachers’ favorite pastime. Before a single mother could get admission for her children into government schools she had to pay triple fees- to bribe a teacher, bribe an official in government and then pay the stipulated school fees. Parents who could not afford to pay all the fees had to pay in kind by granting sexual favour to the co-ordinator of the admission process. During that period, admission into colleges and universities was particularly cumbersome and made more taxing not just for applicants to public colleges but even for those applying to private colleges and universities.Corrupt officials and teachers made huge sums of money from the exercise. These evil (not civil) servants and agents of the devil had degraded the quality of Nigerian education so much that certificates and degrees obtained locally were no longer accorded their due recognition abroad.An old friend once showed me a letter he received from an American university some years ago in which he was informed that his master’s degree was equivalent to their bachelor’s degree and that a Nigerian PH.D was equal to their master’s degreeThis was not the case some decades ago.When l got to the US in 1969, Nigerian certificates and degrees were highly recognised. Most of us students in America then were performing brilliantly in our various institutions inspite of financial difficulties faced by some of us at the time. To the glory of God,who is my witness now, l used to receive course mates in my rented apartment where l gave them solutions to problems they had in our sophomore class then. When things began to fall apart in Nigeria as a result of multifarious vices in government, the education sector was worse hit. The resultant effects are what we are witnessing in the country now-lecturers going on strike every year, students perfecting their cyber crime rather than engaging in studies for morally good scientific and social breakthroughs.
2.3 THE ROLE OF GOVERNORS.
“All goes wrong when starved for lack of anything good in their own lives men turn to public affairs hoping to snatch from thence the happiness they hunger for.They set about fighting for power, and their internecine conflict ruins them and their country.” – PLATO- THE REPUBLIC.
Therefore the good of man must be the objective of the science of politics.” – ARISTOTLE
2.3.1 THE COST OF GOVERNANCE. (TO BE CONTINUED IN EXCERPT THIRTY-ONE.)
