The Coronavirus plague has come and thank goodness the frenzy associated with it is also dying down and in a matter of days from now it will be over. One thing history teaches is that occurrences in life have a way of repeating themselves and what we have come to know is that those who take the lessons of history very seriously, always stand a better chance to deal decisively with eventualities whenever they do occur. When we talk about Coronavirus, I like to doff my hat for the Chinese, British, South Koreans, Cubans and Americans. They showed the importance of going at a problem from the root. It is true the epidemic was of concern to them but the approach was systematic and with it a human face. The surprise there should be Cuba, the country was not only insulated against infiltration of the deadly virus despite its proximity to America, their health system is so endowed that this tiny nation could send doctors and other medical personnel on loan to Italy.
There is a bit irony in the Cuban offer of help to Europe. Majority of the team were blacks; that was instructive and a big story on its own, but the bigger issue for me, and which I think should be of higher importance to our leadership class, should be the question: what did Cuba do to earn her such an enviable acceptance and positioning in world affairs? This will take us to the lessons we ought to learn from the Coronavirus pandemic. If there is one big lesson we should take from the plague, it should be that it is time we give science and technology their primary place in national development. The quest for self-sufficiency and orderliness will remain a mirage until the benefits of science and technology are in place.
It is not as if this is a new lesson or new assertion, it is something we know and which we have desired time and time again but a project we have lacked the will, and perhaps interest, to pursue with vigour and in the right perspective. We talk science and sometimes go as far as creating some sub-structures but before we know it, the process is either bastardized or abandoned. Two things account for this: one is free money from petroleum exploration and the second one is preponderance of leaders without adequate tutorship. These two key factors manifest themselves in White Elephant projects and a high tendency for hedonistic entanglements. Our leaders will take pains to calculate how many vehicles they need as official cars and the amount of allowances due each but we don’t see the same rigour in terms of how many science schools could be established and what special area should be their focus. The truth is that we have destroyed the fabric of our society; so instead of progress, retrogression has become the result. It has become so bad that citizens are dying daily in such high numbers and nobody can adequately explain what is behind the development. Deadly situations and developments are now a butt of jokes; even the Coronavirus pandemic has not escaped this distortion.
In one of the rural communities last week, friends took turns to tell me the virus cannot do anything to them and the grounds of their confidence was that they take a good quantity of the local gin which has a high concentration of alcohol which they claim hinders the survival of microorganisms. This position has no foundation in science but it has been held up because our educational institutions that were meant to teach them the correct things are likely not doing so or they are doing and the students are not in the mood to learn. In years past, social studies, science was taught in a way, in primary and secondary schools that the adolescents in our society were conversant with such elementary acts such as keeping the house and environment clean, washing of cloths and towels, disinfecting surroundings and washing of hands at every turn. There were ways teachers in those days’ ensured pupils and students lived out what was taught. It is not so today.
Rather in the 21st century government is wasting resources and time to teach adults the importance of washing hands and keeping their environments clean, an exercise that should be routine and elementary. The challenge is that today everyone goes to school not to learn a productive career but to rush through the academic environment with a view to acquire certificate for meal ticket not for job. The most terrible thing is that our educational institutions have been so destroyed and reconfigured to suit this tendency that ought not to have a place in a society like ours. Our country is in a delicate phase and what we should require henceforth should be education for production and not education for work. Government vision and policies must begin to emphasize massive production of science and technology-based graduates and their creative deployment to critical sectors of the national economy. We must talk science and technology and begin to motivate graduates and participants in that sector. We should begin from the primary and secondary schools; they must teach science and be very equipped to do so. The ratio of science teachers to other liberal subjects should be in the ratio of 70 against 30 percent. Those who study sciences should be on scholarship and those who must teach, must be teachers who read those science subjects in the Faculty of Education in the universities. Science teachers should earn far higher than other classes of teachers, this prescription should be applicable to both public and private schools.
I recommend that all our schools be technical schools with literary education embedded as sub-courses in them. Between secondary and tertiary levels there should be specialization according to critical national needs. Citizens who would not go beyond secondary education should be sure to have a trade to earn a living and to offer the society qualitative service at that level. Togo, Benin and Ghana are some of the examples in this regard and like we know they are trying to take away the building industry from our citizens. Now citizens that want to specialize on civil engineering for instance begin to gather knowledge from the secondary school until they go through tertiary education, this way they acquire enough expertise to stand their ground anywhere in the world.
Today, we are still talking about insufficient number of doctors and you ask what does it take to train a doctor? How come we don’t have special institutions dedicated to the training of doctors? Today, we see young technicians from Europe, Asia and Arabs from North African countries building our highways; and the big question is, we have Department of Civil Engineering everywhere, what do they teach and what kind of capacity do they impact? Even toothpick we can’t manufacture. I can bet that after Coronavirus this country will still be talking about testing kits and quarantine centres when another challenge erupts and the questions is what has drained our ability? Bad government or what?