We have lied to an entire generation that a DEGREE is the best bait to success. We didn’t tell them it’s actually not the degree but the knowledge and capacity that the degree is expected to bestow, that brings success.

We also did not tell them that it is not everyone that will succeed in this lifetime, regardless of whether you have a degree or not.

So we have them all over the place doing all manners of unthinkable deeds just to get that key to success, DEGREE. Parents and children are sorting, paying, offering their bodies, grueling in pain, all to make sure they get that ‘kpali’ the world says is the key to success.

The obsession about getting the degree above getting educated and skilled, is only akin to the love of Nigerians for their clergy above their God.

Each academic year, universities and polytechnics in Nigeria admit close to 2 million students and produce over 600,000 graduates. Yet, the latest Graduate Skills ranking by the World Economic Forum, placed Nigeria on 135 out of 140 countries.

This simply shows that most Nigerian graduates don’t have the requisite skills, experience and knowledge for the dream job that they crave, even worse, is the fact that most of them are not professionally aware of the sector they seek to work in.

This is partly because, from the common entrance examinations to junior second 3 exams to WAEC, to JAMB to undergraduate examinations and even post graduate examinations; parents, teachers and students have mutually formalized methods and sub heads for exchanging everything possible to facilitate their children getting degrees.

The only thing that is not on the shelf for the pick is knowledge and skills. And because they aren’t getting any problem solving skills from these ivory towers, they leave school, go for national service and return home to start a second childhood, or to start learning a trade from an “illiterate” who doesn’t have a degree but can solve problems.

The brouhaha about the prevailing ASUU strike is actually not because they were learning anything in the schools. It’s because the market for the purchase of the degrees is shut.

Those who are ready to buy can’t find their vendors in the market place. From the Common Entrance Exams fees, to WAEC fees to JAMB fees to Post-UME fees, to many others, they are essentially revenue sources and not intended to afford any citizen education for development.

That goal has long left those schools unless the deliberate students who go out of their way to educate themselves.

So, the mirror before us is calling us to tell our children the truth. It’s not a degree that will get you a job. It’s a skill that you acquire in the course of getting your degree. Tell them that, in all their getting, they should pay attention and get a problem solving skill from their study in class.

Tell them that ‘kpali’ is only the icing on the cake when you have duly assimilated your skill in class. Tell them a degree is good but the capacity to solve a problem is better, and should come together with the degree.

Tell them not to be in a hurry to grab that paper and snap to show the world when they have not learnt how to solve a problem. Tell them to burn the legendary night candle and rediscover the tools that grandpa used to hunt for the family.

Tell them grandpa didn’t have a degree but he was the chief of the village that was solving all their problems. He developed herbs and formulas that attracted degrees back to his Hamlet. Tell them it is termites that will eat their degrees but their skills will be treasured, transfered and monetized.

Let’s tell them the reality. And the reality may not be the truth you hold. The conversation is not between those who believe in degrees and those who do not. Far from it. We all know what we believe. The conversation is about our reality.

Our education has become bereft of impacting existentialist skills. It has been impoverished by lack of imagination and vision, decades of neglect and unwillingness to catch up. Citizens must now insist that whatever it is that they are paying as fees in school must give them something beyond the degree, it must give them education. YES! EDUCATION.

Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo

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