Little Success Adegor still on my mind
It is a story that strikes the soul. Meant to amuse, but brings tears down many a cheek. This is the digital age of citizen journalism. There is little privacy left for anyone. Success, a little primary school girl is sent off from school where she has hoped to sit her examinations, because her parents […]
It is a story that strikes the soul. Meant to amuse, but brings tears down many a cheek. This is the digital age of citizen journalism. There is little privacy left for anyone. Success, a little primary school girl is sent off from school where she has hoped to sit her examinations, because her parents did not pay her school fees. As she curses bitterly on her way home, Stephanie, a video phone user, captures in close-up, the rants of the fuming baby. Success thinks sending her off for the fees is a stupid thing to do. How could adults be so stupid as not to see that? Why not whiplash her and let her attend school and keep doing so till she paid, she blabs in her soliloquy.
***
Success:[ON CAMERA] … I never pay and…no be say I no go pay o! I go pay! But instead of make dem flog person dem go dey pursue person.
[MAKES TO GO]
Citizen Journalist: Wait. Better now make them flog you? Or make dem say go tell ya Mama make…
Success: [Cuts In] Make them flog me. Make dem flog me. If they flog me the cane go tired. Dem go tired for flogging. Dem go flog flog flog dem go tired. And dem say dem stubborn. I tell them say I stubborn pass dem.
[Success SAUNTERS OFF still running her mouth]
As often happens, the video goes viral.
By the time I got hold of the video clip, the story had ran a full course and taken on dimensions. Delta State Government turning its eyes off the decrepit school Success had been “pursued” from, reportedly suspended the school official involved. But not before public spirited Nigerians, some motivated by angst, others by the amusing verbiage of Success in raw Delta pidgin. Gifts poured in. Go Fund Me’s of different kinds had been raised to the rescue of Success.
There are many big stories in this little girl’s caper. Her dad, mum, and two other siblings live in a one room shack popularly called face-me-I-face-you. When her mother took in to expect Success, they were in a dilemma because it was already hard to make ends meet. In a story the father told a newspaper, his wife had planned a quack abortion even at the risk of her life. He reportedly told her it made more sense to have the baby and sell it for, he even named the estimated price, N500,000! As God would have it, none of this happened, but by beyond that amount, somehow, Success has lured in money to the family.
With Success and her family settled by typically Nigerian momentary philanthropy, we have papered over the fundamental imports of the nondescript occurrence. And the issues bother me because millions of little ones like Success abound unseen, “pursued” from schools for failure to pay fees as due.
A panoramic view of the North strikes me. With now an estimated 13 million school age children on the street, I can not help but feel ashamed to have come from the North where the zeal for learning at that age is more a dire need than for Success, yet, the region is playing ostrich with this priority challenge. Set against the vividly clear displeasure of baby Success, the languid idle swarms of Northern street children is a source of worry. Taking them off our streets for sound education was not an issue in the just concluded election campaigns, yet the problem is the biggest the North is faced with. It is even doubtful that the Northern Governors would burn midnight oil to brainstorm on the ugly spectre of street children. By the end of the first year, the population will increase by more than 5%.
Despite constitutional constraints, the Federal Government may need to assert itself more in basic education even for the sake of the Almajiri syndrome. Funds lie furlough in the coffers of the Universal Basic Education Commission that State Governors are reluctant to access because of the conditions that govern disbursement, specifically payment of counterpart funding. Even in some States where this is accessed, infrastructure is built without further investment in teacher training and upgrade. Worse still, it is the lot of teachers in primary schools in much of the North, to go months on end without salaries, a lingering problem that has worsened over the years.
The Federal Government must consider and take the driver’s seat on this issue. It would have to direct ways through which States would be compelled to access UBEC funds, for judicious utilisation to affect the situation of Primary education, or outright redefine UBEC mandate to go the whole hog into this clear State Schedule. To do nothing is to refuse to see how the anomaly is linked directly to our costly insurgencies in Borno, Adamawa, Yobe, Zamfara and Katsina State.
The Federal Government could consider the defunct PTF-type intervention in the primary education sector, even to include a thoroughly revamped Almajiri Schools System, working in collaboration with State and Local Governments.
Thus a fluke video has caused more than a ripple in the management of education in Delta State. The decrepit school named after Okotie-Eboh, a hellhole, is now set for a facelift. It is in oil-rich Delta State. Elsewhere in Nigeria, particularly in the North, schools can be found with pupils sitting on the bare ground and the tree shade, a class. Are we for real?