How learning could get Nigeria out of the woods

Many Nigerians who go abroad to work after their education at home do not like the idea. They do not embrace foreign lands in full joy, and would only be fully happy if circumstances at home do not speak of greener pastures outside.A Sociology professor who studied in Nigeria up to Master’s degree level but […]

Many Nigerians who go abroad to work after their education at home do not like the idea. They do not embrace foreign lands in full joy, and would only be fully happy if circumstances at home do not speak of greener pastures outside.
A Sociology professor who studied in Nigeria up to Master’s degree level but now teaches in the United States, Samuel Zalanga, painted that picture at an alumni lecture he delivered recently at the University of Jos. He gave his lecture on the invitation of the Advancement Office of the university which routinely invites former students of the university doing well within or outside the country to give such lecture.
Vice Chancellor of the University of Jos, Professor Hayward Mafuyai, had explained in his welcome address that the alumni lecture at which many other former students of the University of Jos had featured in the past couple of years, is an event by which former students always came back to share their experiences with the university community and the general public. Professor Samuel Zalanga, who is of the Department of Anthropology, Sociology and Reconciliation Studies, Bethel University, Minnesota, USA, broke down what promised to be a highly technical lecture considering the wording of its theme, and spoke with obvious knowledge of his fatherland as it contrasts from his country of sojourn, the US.
Zalanga said the unfavourable conditions of life in Nigeria are as painful to Nigerians outside as Nigerians who remain in the country. He stressed: “It’s tragic that Nigeria will spend money to educate Nigerians so that the educated can in turn contribute to national development only for the educated to have to go out and spend the education to develop other countries. I feel guilty that I’m outside because at Bayero University where I did my first degree, the federal government subsidised the cost of my education and the government of Bauchi, my home state, gave me scholarship, but today I’m outside the country. I hate it but I can’t help it. It’s sad that things around the country are as they are. To me, it’s tragic.”
His brief from the Advancement Office of Unijos, as explained by the Executive Director of the Office, Yakubu Gomos, was really to lecture on the ‘things around the country as they are’ and to propose a way out, in line with the theme of the distinguished alumni lecture,  ‘The Fragile Dignity of Humanity and the Disappearance of Human: Neoliberalism and the Suspension of the Ethical in the Struggle for National Development.’
Indicating greed and preoccupation with the self as being the root of Nigeria’s backwardness, Zalanga said: “We can’t make all Nigerians equal but we can make opportunities available for all Nigerians to enhance their lives. It’s terrible when people do things that help their personal interest but hurt public good. We must bear in mind that we are part of the public and our activities could more easily catch up with us than we would know.”
Speaking on what learning and higher education could contribute to ‘Salvaging the Oppressive Conditions in Africa and Nigeria,’ Zalanga quoted some words of a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist famous for founding analytical psychology, Carl Jung: “What we know and how we know it is an intellectual question and process, but what we decide to do with it is a moral and ethical question.” Expressing the view that the statement is a warning to Nigerians, he charged, “the real challenge we face in Nigeria and Africa today is one of moral and ethical failure.” Explaining this in some detail, Zalanga said, “this failure in Africa is part of a broader degeneration in morality and ethics. But it is worse in Africa because the failure has taken place when old institutions have been destroyed and new effective ones have not developed to substitute them.”
He said even religion which Nigeria is known to embrace with much enthusiasm has not proved sufficiently helpful with reference to the well-being of Nigeria as a country. “The most soaring thing about this moral and ethical failure and hopelessness in the Nigerian context is that many trust in religion as the solution or panacea of the nation or continent’s problems. Yet from the perspective of a careful observer, empirical evidence about the role of religion in contributing to nation building, national and human development in the last 50 years, is a terrible failure as measured by the claims of the religions.”
Offering what he said were his humble suggestions, he began with a set of three related questions as put forward by Professor Dudley Seers, a British economist with specialty in development economics: a) what is happening to poverty? (b) What is happening to inequality? (c) What is happening to unemployment? “If any of these three indicators is worsening,” he declared, “no matter the economic growth in the country, number of new cell phones, new millionaires or new buildings in the country, that country is not developing but declining.”
He offered that there is need for moral and ethical reconstruction of the individual as part of the human race and advised that Nigeria should adopt a global approach to university education. “The African needs to know who she or he is, but doing so requires that he or she realises being part of a global community and a shared humanity,” he said.  
Expressing his conviction that development would not come without efforts by the masses, Professor Samuel Zalanga said there is need for people’s movement. He elaborated: “Human dignity is a struggle. Looking at human history, Nigerians should not expect to achieve human development and improvement in human dignity through miracle or the benevolence of leaders as such. I mean no disrespect for leaders in Nigeria or Africa. This is what history teaches us.” He suggested the forming of grassroots organisations across the country that cooperate and collaborate within and across regions.
Zalanga said, “history can overwhelm us and cripple our vision. We should create a niche in it and try to make a difference in that area. In that way we can maintain a sense of hope in what appears to be insurmountable challenges.”