Buhari is right. You cannot succeed beyond your education.

from the fence

President Buhari at the recent global summit on education, said that people cannot succeed beyond their education. In his words “You can’t succeed outside your educational qualification. Anybody who missed education has missed everything. Nigerians are acutely aware of the priority of education, and parents are making sacrifices to ensure that their children and wards get educated.”

This simple statement became an instant media hit even though there were many other statements and events emanating from the summit. For some it was a statement of fact, for some it was simply shocking and for others it was not true.

For those who were shocked, they felt that if the government knows that people cannot succeed beyond their education, then what steps have been taken by government to tackle the epileptic and often troubled state of education in the country.

For those who saw the statement as not true but mere theory, they gave uncountable instances of people succeeding in life without having formal education, at best they had primary school education. For them, it is not even with Nigerians alone, but a global thing, that education does not override talent, skill, creativity. In fact some will go further to say that education inhibits creativity.

Examples have been given on how very successful people like Bill Gates; Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell and a host of others dropped out of school and became very great in the global scene.

On the Nigerian scene, Buhari is correct to a large degree, even though at the surface it looks as if he is not. One of the reasons that might make him not seem correct is the high rate of unemployment in the country, because this high rate poses a question in itself. If people have fulfilled their own part by going to school and remain unemployed after the said school, how do you now convince them that education is a door to success?

You convince them by telling them to further their degrees and education; by going for MBA, masters/postgraduate studies, when they have done all these and there’s still no breakthrough, they are advised to do a PHD.

Remember the story of PHD holders applying for driver job at Dangote cement. Have you not seen first class students doing very low jobs? Some may say but job is job. Yes job is job but not in the case of a first class student of engineering or fine art doing a very mean job when the same brilliant person can contribute to the human resource in sciences or the arts.

The trending move right now is for government and non-governmental bodies to champion entrepreneurial mindset, trainings and the like among the citizens. Entrepreneurship is a very wonderful thing, it has limitless opportunities in it, but the problem is that in this case it is highly hypocritical; leaders do not want to take responsibility and combat the causes of unemployment and low education standard.

The same people pushing others into entrepreneurial ventures have secured slots for their children in choice government agencies. Sometimes, these children are still in secondary school, but they have good jobs waiting for them as long as you can imagine. Ghost workers are in their multitudes and state funds are used in paying them.

The caveat about entrepreneurship at its best is that, it is not forced nor even taught, it is caught inspirationally. You can spend millions teaching people entrepreneurial skills, if it is not in them, no magic can be done. The best that can happen is that you will have a community of 20 people, 13 are into liquid soaps and the rest must buy from them.

After getting the PHD, they must now publish articles, do further research, lecture, if not in tertiary institutions at least in primary schools. Maybe in so doing they might become professors. Have you ever seen a hungry professor? No. So the president is right, you must reach the pinnacle of education if you want success in life.

akaolisa1987@gmail.com

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