Picking up home skills
Now, we all know Fashola does not dwell on frivolities and ostentatious grandstanding aimed at massaging his ego. Surely, he could not have garnered so much acclaim as the most creative and high achieving governor since the emergence of the democratic dispensation, far out- performing the most intrepid challenger if he were so consumed by […]
Now, we all know Fashola does not dwell on frivolities and ostentatious grandstanding aimed at massaging his ego. Surely, he could not have garnered so much acclaim as the most creative and high achieving governor since the emergence of the democratic dispensation, far out- performing the most intrepid challenger if he were so consumed by ego. So we are therefore certain that he was dead serious in seeking to improve the young man’s handiness with tools at the home front in order to be able to help himself when mummy and daddy were not at home.
The governor’s revelation caused a near public uproar among those who read or heard that piece of news on his boy, and must have sought clarification from the media or the governor’s office itself, on what may have prompted such antediluvian measure from an otherwise educated man charged with running the most cosmopolitan state in the country where education has become a prime policy. They probably must have thought Governor Fashola was about to foreclose his son’s pursuit of an academic and intellectual life by consigning him to the drudgery of apprenticeship in a carpenter’s or technician’s shed, which makes one to imagine what manner of thought must have gonethrough the minds of those seeking clarification.
The most superstitious among them must have thought that to contemplate this act their dear governor must have been put under some malevolent and invidious spell that has befuddled his fertile logical and legal mind, they would proceed to see the handiwork of some diabolic opposition politicians who not being able to defeat the man at the polls are now trying to befuddle his thinking process. Well, as if to lay all this speculation to rest Governor Fashola dispelled all the misconceptions surrounding his comment. He told an interviewer on AIT that his action was not in any way going to jeopardise the young man’s academic or professional pursuits and that it was merely aimed at making sure the young man picked up an odd home management skill here and there to enable him to look after himself when mummy and daddy are not around. The governor even revealed that this was not an isolated case, that last year they (himself and missus) had sent him to learn, probably at a restaurant, how to cook for himself and not depend on some house help to be able to feed.
Now that we know the younger Fashola isn’t going to be farmed away into some stultifying skill acquisition vocation against his will, we can now with clear conscience address the issues involved. The issue of the inability of the young Fashola to acquire facility with home appliances is the result of poor implementation of all the grand education policies seeking to make students acquire both academic and vocational knowledge by the time they leave junior secondary level. To be sure, Governor Fashola’s case is not peculiar at all. We all have teenagers, and even those in their early 20s who are unable to change the odd flat tyres no matter how hard they tried. Left to them one would be marooned by the side of the road until he called the road side vulcaniser to the rescue. Some would even be hard put to it to perform a simple chore of driving a nail into the wall! So what happened to all those grand policies aimed at ensuring our young men and women picked vocational skills side by side with other academic subjects launched with fan fair and elaborate speechmaking? But need we ask when the telltale evidence is so stark. Another case of good money poured down the drains.
Rahman Kolawole Yusuf
News of the death of R. K. Yusuf reached me some three weeks ago through Ishiaq Moddibbo Kawu who told me he was in Offa for his fidau prayers. I stood there petrified while my mind went instantly to rewind mode back to 1979. Back then the Radio Kwara was looking for graduates for its News and Current Affairs unit and it just so happened that among the multitude that came looking for the job, myself and Emma Omadivi were picked.
We worked directly under RK who was at that time the Controller of News and Current Affairs and sessions with him were a drill on the rudiments of Broadcast Journalism, particularly his insistence on immediacy and accessibility of one’s prose. For RK, discipline was the watchword—script must come to him on schedule and delay fetched one rebuke; for me particularly whenever he was angry with some of my many blemishes he dispatched me to programmes department for a task that must be submitted on resumption the next day. I realised later that picking bones with my work and sending me to programmes was not at all to frustrate me but to ensure I worked harder and also become proficient in the News & Current Affairs as well as the programmes department.
I spent only a year at the Radio Kwara but it was a momentous one as it keenly whetted my journalistic ambitions. RK sun re o. May Allah grant you Aljanna Firdausi.