This is the fourth part of this discourse. The third part was published last Wednesday

By Yusufu Ameh Obajei

FROM another angle of viewing the challenge of sustainability in the Nigerian Equation, the free education policy of the Western region helped to sustain Western leadership in the education sector of Nigeria. Western education was seen as an imperative for holistic development in all areas of life. Therefore education became a priority for regional attention and commitment.

Families took exceptional pride in ensuring quality education for their sons and daughters. Those who could afford to travel abroad for western education opened their hands generously to encourage and welcome others to join them at the slightest opportunity. Every Yoruba man or woman in a particular country was always identified as an ambassador for other Yoruba sons and daughters interested in the pursuit of western education. Undoubtedly, the unquenchable appetite for western education was massive and this helped to sustain the spirit of education in the Nigerian Equation.

Also, in the Western region, the interest in education grew with the emergence of an elite class which provided leadership in virtually all areas of life. There was enormous pride in being educated and those who rose to the pinnacle of the ladder of western education were recognized, honoured and celebrated as role models. Families were eager to spend their life earnings to train their sons and daughters in tertiary institutions in order to acquire an elite status in the society. The elite group became the voice of the people, particularly in matters of politics, economics and religion. Thus, education remained a top priority of the western region.

The Challenge of National Unity, Peace and Progress: The issue of National unity, peace and progress poses a serious challenge for the Nigerian equation. This is partly due to the fact that the three regions can never truly realize their regional dreams in the absence of national unity, peace and progress. Undoubtedly, the real test for the relevance of regional ideologies is the realization of unity, peace and progress for Nigeria as a whole. In other words, Political power must be channelled to create unity, peace and progress. Material wealth must be used as a vital instrument of guaranteeing national unity, peace and progress. Likewise, education must remain a crucial means of ensuring Nigeria’s unity, peace and progress.

However, and in spite of the efforts made by the three regions to realize unity, peace and progress in Nigeria, we are still confronted with the reality of sectarian violence, insecurity and underdevelopment. One can understand why this has remained so, in spite of the numerous efforts by successive governments of our time. It is obvious that the regions lacked national ideological foundation for the people to work patriotically, in order to realize the overall collective dreams of Nigerians in the main areas of sustainable unity, peace and progress. The regions were busy creating regional enclaves, mostly inward looking and giving more priority attention to their regional interests to the detriment of the collective critical needs of all Nigerians.

Of course, it could be argued that the achievement of unity, peace and progress at the regional level could have assisted in the ultimate goal of realized unity, peace and progress of Nigeria as one entity or country.

But this has not been the case as the absence of national ideology left no foundational ideological peg for regional ideologies. The dilemma remains and the struggle to rebuild Nigeria of our collective dream is still on and a challenge to all.

The Challenge of Stewardship Responsibility: One of the challenges confronting the Nigerian equation is the issue of stewardship responsibility. Each regional ideology was meant to serve as a means to an end and not an end itself. For instance, the political power of the North was to serve the overall interests of all Nigerians and it is only then that the power benefits the North.

Similarly, the material wealth of the East was meant to address the collective positive concerns of all Nigerians and it is only then that the wealth serves the interests of the East. Equally, education as identified with the West in the Nigerian equation is a tool for the education of the whole Country. It is only then that education in the hands of the West attains its desirable consummation and ultimate fulfilment.

Indeed, the principle of stewardship responsibility is a very serious one. The one who is in possession of a particular gift of stewardship responsibility must use it for the benefit of all, if such a gift is to retain its salt of relevance and valuableness.

The relevance and value of political power is found in its application on behalf of the politically powerless or the masses in general. For, where there is true political power, there is bound to be evidence of transformation of lives and society as a whole. True political power cannot be hoarded or left in the hands of a very few political cabal or feudal lords without the corresponding consequences of underdevelopment, violence, unrest, insecurity, poverty, uncertainty, frustration and blame syndrome.

Our cry for being marginalized today in the North is a direct consequence of our failure to apply the principle of stewardship responsibility when political power was in our possession. We should have used it effectively to make others politically powerful.

TO have political power is to guarantee the empowerment of the people for leadership position. Certainly, we failed to use it to train others within and outside the region to acquire and profitably use political power for holistic development of the entire country. We should have used our political power to identify, recruit and empower the powerless Nigerians in any part of the Country for political leadership.

It is the people that we make politically powerful and politically relevant in Nigeria as a whole that confirms our strong hold on political power in the Nigerian equation. The failure is a major contributory factor to the current tears of political marginalization seen on our faces today.

The same mistake was also made in the Eastern region where the gift of material wealth was not seen as stewardship responsibility. The material wealth was hoarded and business protectionism became the order of the day. Whatever the business class discovered as the gold mine remained exclusive to the businessman or woman of the region, even if such persons were operating in any other parts of the country.

Material wealth

They too forgot that the real value of material wealth is found in the act of making the poor to become rich and not in the self-centred accumulation of the wealth by the materially wealthy people to the detriment of other less privileged citizens.

As a fact, it is virtually becoming an acceptable business practice in Nigeria today that where certain ethnic groups discover how best to make so much money from a specific trade, others are denied deliberately or indirectly persecuted under hidden agenda of protectionism.

The irony of it all is that, even the accumulated material wealth of the East could not stop them from shedding tears of political marginalization, which eventually led to the tragic event of our national history, the civil war. In this case, those shedding similar tears of marginalization should wipe away their tears and let us join hands together to overcome the challenges of nation building.

Furthermore, the West must also see education as a God-given instrument of stewardship responsibility for Nigeria’s educational transformation. There is a mandate inherent in the education ideology of the West as identified in the Nigerian equation. By that experience, the West is entrusted with the task of carrying the torch of education to all other regions of Nigeria. This is what sets her apart as the education centre or citadel of learning for the rest of the country. In fact, one is not surprised that the seat of the first public university in Nigeria is located at Ibadan in the Western region.

However, what remains to be seen is how the West makes a deliberate effort to ensure that Nigerians in all regions of the country experience quality education. As long as the whole country is not growing qualitatively in education, the West remains a failure in her stewardship responsibility as the fountain of Nigeria’s living spring of education.

It is a fundamental truth that no one is considered educated if the knowledge acquired in education is not passed on to others. After all, the evidence of being an educated person is in the act of making others drink from the wells of knowledge and understanding created for life and societal transformation.

Of course, we do not intend to forget the enormous contributions of certain individuals from the Western region to the educational development of Nigeria and the rest of the world. However, it remains to be seen as to how the West will champion the promotion of transformatory education of the rest of Nigeria.

Today, the West appears to present an attitude of unexamined fulfilment or satisfaction that she has arrived educationally and it is now left for the rest of the country to catch up with her. It is difficult to deny the fact that the West is more educationally sophiscated than the rest of the regions today but her inability to provide leadership in spreading the gospel of quality education for all Nigerians remains a failure in the manner that the other two regions, North and East, equally failed in their own stewardship of responsibility.

Enormous advancement

It is interesting to note, that in spite of the enormous advancement made in the West in the area of education, Western region also sheds tears of marginalization. Thus, the marginalization theory or experience has gone round the whole country and it is time we put all that behind us and let us join hands together in order to rebuild Nigeria of our collective dream.

We have come to realize the bitter truth, namely that political power without material wealth and education is a colossal tragedy or at best, totally incomplete and grossly inadequate. Similarly, material wealth without political power and education is a disaster as well as a bad dream. At the same time, education without political power and material wealth is an unfulfilled dream, a nightmare and a bundle of frustration. Consequently, we are all victims of unrealized regional ideological dreams and it is only our combined genuine and realistic joint efforts as one family, one people, one common destiny, under one God,that can guarantee our individual and collective holistic success.

 The challenge of rising voices of ethnic minorities and clannists within major tribes

The emergence of the regional ideologies of political power for the North, material wealth for the East and education for the West, within the context of the Nigerian equation, were originally, widely and generally acknowledged as well as celebrated by the people of the regions. But the enthusiasm did not persist fully to our generation as voices of discontent and resentment began to spread from one region to another, particularly by ethnic minority groups and other clannists within dominant tribes.

The voices emanating from these groups are usually voices of rights and privileges, justice and equity, recognition and empowerment, allocation and responsibility, equal opportunity and well-spread development. Any control from the centre or from the major ethnic group is viewed with suspicion and apathy. Regional leadership is sometimes identified with ethnic domination.

In the three regions today, there is hardly any single Elder Statesman or woman whose voice can be accepted wholeheartedly as the voice of the people of the region. It is a generation of we have come of age and must all be heard and decision made by all accordingly. This is a big challenge to the survival of regional ideologies and promotion of National Unity.

The challenge of unfulfilled ideological dreams

We have already observed the fact that in spite of the many positive efforts of the three regions, the ideological dreams of the Nigerian equation remained largely unfulfilled. The Northern ideological dream to use political power to ensure true greatness for the North and the country as a whole has not seen the light of the day.

Likewise, the ideological dream of the Eastern region to guarantee personal, regional and nationwide true greatness for all in all areas of life through material wealth, has not been realized. At the same time, the ideology of the Western region to use education as a tool for achieving true greatness for the region and all Nigerians at all levels of human existence has not been fulfilled.

One of the problems within this challenge is that many Nigerians are still not conscious of who they are; where they are coming from; what they are living for; where they are going from here and what they are expecting out of life ultimately. Many of us have remained unfulfilled with regards to our perception of our personal identity as Nigerians. We can hardly define ourselves within the context of our Nigerianness and consequently, we live on a borrowed existence. For instance, our yardstick for self-examination or self-evaluation is pathetically foreign, devoid of our cultural background.

Yardstick for self examination

Our reforms are nothing more than rehabilitation and freshing-up of whatever we were able to copy from the left-overs of Asian and Euro-American civilization, without the raw materials of our own authentic indigenous culture. Our transformation agenda is not always informed by the nature of our individual and collective identity as Nigerians but by whatever we admire from certain foreign cultures that are increasingly becoming godless, devoid of genuine fear of God and love for all humans, regardless of ethnicity, race and religion.

The Nigeria of our collective dream has remained a partial mirage, characterized by endless struggle of one step forward and two steps backward. It has been a Country of wasted natural and human endowments, unimaginable corruption, shattered hopes of largely confused citizenry, who are generally lavishing in abject poverty in an atmosphere of self-inflicted insecurity, and in the midst of overwhelming God-given resources.

Our response to this challenge must include the development of a most viable National ideology that will serve as the springboard for all regional ideologies to take off from and assist in fulfilling the goals of the region and the entire Country as a whole. In this case, we must advance our reflection on the subject matter of the ongoing presentation to the examination of the imperativeness of National ideology.

The categorical imperativeness of national ideology

•Its Divine Nature

National ideology is categorically imperative because of its divine nature. It is a product of divine initiative. God himself takes the first step to create ideas in all creatures ultimately and that all actions of all creatures must be predicated on ideas which inspires and drives their activities.

The foundation of any Nation is rooted on divine ideology or an idea which informs its creation.