Home >> Africa >> Poverty & Governance

     Email   Print 

Education in the Quest for Responsible Governance in Africa

Emmanuel Franklyne Ogbunwezeh, Ph.D - 7/12/2005

It was Lord Acton who articulated the ageless fact that Power has the ontological potentiality of corrupting its holders, while its absolute, unrestricted concentration in any individual or structure has that natural propensity of absolutely corrupting its repository. In view of the foregoing, a responsible leadership can be nourished and sustained only by an enlightened and responsible followership, which will constitute an effective check on its exercise and excesses.

This holds true because an enlightened followership would be vigilant on things that concern their welfare. This eternal vigilance, which is the price of liberty, is the basis for an effective foreclosure of despotism, abuse of office and trust, rise of tyranny and kleptocratic governance, et cetera. Whenever this maid of eternal vigilance goes to sleep, or is non existent tyranny and irresponsible governance is allowed to germinate and flower; like it has done in Africa today and in many other lands, where the sun of vigilance was allowed to dim, either by the consolidated ignorance of the people, like in pre-colonial Africa; mass delusion and mesmerism of the people, like in Hitler's Nazi Germany, fear and collective emasculation of the people, like in Stalinist Russia, Nigeria under Abacha, and Zaire under Mobutu Sesse Seko.

There can be no responsible governance in Africa, save for among other things, the checks and balances of an enlightened society, which only obtains in an educated modern political set up. This enlightenment is a buffer, which enables the society to engulf and jettison any scheme whether conceptual or actual, which threatens its collective existence or welfare.

The modern world is crazy about democracy as the best form of government. This craze for it borders on the fact that only democracy affords the governed the opportunity, no matter how limited, of participating in running their affairs. Africa is equally not left out in the league of those entertaining or clamouring for democracy. But most of our attempts at this have left Africans badly bruised and pauperized, socially, economically, geopolitically and otherwise. The leaders have actually led Africa into the (Bretton) woods of debts, doubts, irredeemable poverty, wars, and interminable crises. Though, Chinua Achebe would entirely heap the blames of the trouble with Nigeria, on its leadership.[i] It is the contention of this essay that the consolidated ignorance, unenlightened postural inaction, and general civic and political apathy of the majority of Africans contributed in no small measure to the rise and misadventure of African leaders. And this postural apathy is attributable to the high illiteracy level and zero or subliminal enlightenment level pervading most of Africa south of the Sahara.

The masses in Africa that make up over 85% of the population, are poor, uneducated, politically disempowered, marginalized and prone to exploitation and manipulation by the leaders and elite that constitute only about 3% of Africa's teeming population. This environment constitutes a rich fertile ground for irresponsible governance to subsist and thrive. The abuse of power has always fed on the sophisticated ignorance and postural unconcern of the people. This is because, it is only those who know and understand their rights that ask for them. When those whose rights are denied do not even know or understand that they have such rights, how then can they ask, agitate or fight for them?

It is our contention here that this postural apathy, consolidate ignorance of our people and its inadvertent offspring which is irresponsible and kleptocratic governance can only be cured by a massive, qualitative and functional education of our people. This is the capstone for the enthronement and survival of a sustainable development and responsible governance in Africa. James Madison's hallowed words are instructive in this direction. He told Americans and anyone who cares to listen, that: "knowledge must forever govern ignorance, and those who wish to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives"

I am of the opinion that the rudderless and irresponsible leadership plaguing Africa today can only be checked by a well informed, educated, enlightened and courageous followership that can never be hoodwinked, bribed, intimidated, mesmerised or coerced into mortgaging their welfare and future, or abandoning its concerns and fortunes in the hands of a few, elitist, unscrupulous charlatans, in the corridors of power who would corner the common weal, and preside over it as a consortium of thieves would; a huge distribution agency to boot. And the only structure ontologically endowed to effect this kind of multi-dimensional awakening in all the strata of human society is Education.

Education confers knowledge. It banishes ignorance that means a blind grope in the dark grottos of directionless and purposeless vacillation. It confers power. A Latin adage and practical existential experience lends credence to this that "Scientia est potestas" (Knowledge is Power). Education, of all human activities has striven to position itself as the foundation of every modern civilization and the fulcrum of every socio-economic and political renaissance. It is in lieu of the foregoing that I have identified the issues I essay tackle in this piece. This paper will make a case for education as the foundation of every civilization, and the fulcrum of every socio-economic and political renaissance. It is the midwife as well as the guarantor of any responsible governmental or political experiment.

The Face of African Socio-Political Experiment

Every right thinking African should be concerned and is supposed to join in questioning the unpalatable condition of want, poverty, underdevelopment and irresponsible leadership prevalent in a continent that is richly blessed with a superabundance of all the resources that make for greatness, both human and material. It s painful to note that we are in a serious mire. We seem to be marooned in the swamps and cesspool of irreconcilable poverty.

Africa today is serious bad news. She is economically not developing.[ii] She is socially in ruins with millions of her citizenry living well below the poverty line[iii] Many are still inmates of refugee camps. Others are fresh survivors of civil wars and other internecine conflicts that have become the hallmark of African geopolitics today. Many are living under despotic regimes, where human rights abuses is the norm rather than the exception. Many others inhabit lands and climes where governments and leaders are either a brigade of brigands, consortium of thieves or kleptocrats, that rape and pillage the resources of the land when the citizenry cannot place two decent square meals on their tables. Those living under democratic structures are simply disillusioned as what they thought as the light at the end of the tunnel has progressively degenerated into a mirage. Their democracies have reverted into a new slave driver in civilian robes and the looting of the treasuries, misappropriation and misapplication of funds, misplacement of priorities have all continued as a sad vestige of the "Business as usual" syndrome.

Africans are disillusioned. Many took refuge in emigrating from the whole mess into some comfortable slavery in Europe, America and other parts of the world "tidied up by someone else's intelligence".[iv] So many others, who cannot afford this type of luxurious reaction to the situation, simply took refuge in inaction as mere spectators in the arena, where the symphonic orchestra that conducts them into penury and poverty is having a field day. The few that dared raise their voices in opposition to the status quo, find themselves at the speaking ends of the guns or they unwittingly canonize themselves as martyrs to a lost cause. They even find themselves in between two unfriendly forces, namely the elites who, afraid of losing their position fights, claws and are ready to kill for it, and the unconcerned masses whose war he is fighting, but who care less for their plight or the outcome of the battle fought on their behalf.

The people cannot even be blamed for this postural apathy. Hunger, ignorance, disease and powerlessness all conspire to immunize them against socio-political concerns that are outside the periphery of their immediate Maslownian needs of food, clothing and shelter. In situations such as this, the politics played simply matriculates into bread and butter politics. The people are hungry. And their votes and continued silence in the face of oppressive regimes in most cases constitute their only meal ticket. And K.O Mbadiwe, a foremost Nigerian politician of the first republic had it that the only democracy a hungry man understands is the democracy of the stomach.

In this concourse, the people are prone to manipulation by the elites who know that power is the easiest way to ill-gotten wealth and perpetual domination of their circumstance. In the matrix and equations of power in Africa, the people are only repositories of power only in theory. African elections are simply charades played out to hoodwink the world about the legitimacy of some manipulators of the electoral process. What is done actually is a selection of a candidate and his eventual imposition against all sound reason, on the people, by a faceless cabal of kingmakers, made up of old politicians, past military leaders, businessmen and some foreign interests, that litter the African political landscape. The people are not a veritable consideration or factor in this power equation, save as objects to be fleeced and milked dry for good measure Their lives according to F.M.A Ukoli, is characterized by the terrible trinity of poverty, ignorance and disease.[v] And they are effectively saddled with and overburdened by this trinity of woes that their political participation is simply an exercise in manipulation and exclusion.

This accounts for the reason why a rise in the price of bread, which has torpedoed many governments in the world, is ignored or tolerated with subdued groans by Africans. This accounts for our infinite elastic propensity to endure executive recklessness, abuse of power, grotesque incompetence of leaders, brazen looting of public funds by those that hold them in trust for others. This is why our rights are recklessly abused and trampled upon, while we take refugee in, and confront them with unparalleled timidity. This is why our future is mortgaged to debts by leaders who contract these debts on our behalf, and re-channel them into their personal numbered accounts in Switzerland or other tax havens, where their loot is stashed away in safety[vi] This is why we cannot muster enough consensus to rise against an oppressive socio-political structure, even when its vicious grip on our collective wellbeing is strangulating. This is why the leaders and elite can muster enough effrontery to take the people for a ride all the time. It is a crazy-circle run-around. The soldiers would sack the politician, touting themselves as the messiahs that will turn our socio-political and economic fortunes around, only to end up as worse brigands than the people they came to correct. The politicians remain an unfunny joke. Many of them are incorrigibly corrupt. They have not done enough to prove their preparedness to lead Africa on the part of greatness. Many of them true to type, a la Krushchev, pledge to build bridges even where there are no rivers.

These and other considerations force one to incline favourably to the dictum which suggests that politics is too serious a business to be left to the politicians alone. The governed; the followers must be actively involved in order to foreclose the possibility of the leaders translating themselves into repositories of ultimate power, which is the norm instead of the exception in Africa since independence.

The Foundations of the Predicament

Africa was the graveyard of so many European traders, missionaries and other envoys of colonialism. That was in the colonial days. Today Africa has turned into an old woman that is being mercilessly raped and ripped asunder by her sons. Africa which prior to the advent of the Europeans was a pure traditional society that was content with life as it obtained within the enclosed social embrace of the diverse ethnic configurations and nationalities dotting it[vii] encountered a new cultural reality in its contact with the Europeans. This contact engendered certain reactions which set Africa on the road to its present course of social evolution.

The European colonial masters yanked us out of our ethnic nationalities and effected a merger, which was designed simply to conduce to their convenient exploitation of Africa's resources. In this scramble and merger that was legitimized by the Berlin Conference of 1885, many tribal strange bedfellows were welded together in a geopolitical contraption that never took anything into consideration save the interests of the colonial powers and masters. In almost all these places, they uprooted and destroyed African political, religious and cultural structures and implanted some European models in their stead.

Today, Africa is no more wholly a traditional society. It is now an evolving dynamic melange of a movement towards modernity existing side by side with a conservative nostalgic inertial baggage, tied to her long cherished traditions. This accounts for many of our attitudes refusing to yield to the pressures, demands and exigencies of the modern social structures that we embraced. For instance, the quintessential attribute of capitalism is the pre-eminent position it accords to profit. But the traditional, closely knit extended family structure that still subsists in a great measure in Africa sometimes scuttles this principle. And this accounts for why businesses and other commercial enterprise owned and manned by Africans cave in after sometime. His brother is given pre-eminence over his drive for profit. That is why he feels reluctant in firing a brother whose punctuality is legendary in the breach. And this postural overthrow of modern principle of capitalistic enterprise leaves many African businesses bankrupt and liquidated. The failed banks in Nigeria under Abacha, apart from fraud and embezzlement, fell more to nepotism more than to any other single factor.

I am of the opinion that the African leadership crisis is traceable to this conflict between our traditional attitudes and the demands and exigencies of modern realities. We were schooled informally in the ways of our people. But our knowledge of the demands of the modern set up is a far cry from what it should be. And the number of Africans that are positioned to chart and navigate these fresh waters of Western style of government or participate meaningfully and effectively in it, cannot challenge a fair comparison with the number of our population that are functionally ignorant of its full implications and the adequate response that is imperative in such a situation. This is because; though they live in a semi-modern social set up, they are not adequately educated or schooled in the Western conceptual scheme that fuels this type of government and social engineering. The true situation is this: many Africans are yet to jettison some traditional conceptual schemes and attitudes that are anachronistic in the present circumstance. Such concepts are inglorious antique relics of our social evolutionary infancy. Concepts like the elevation of primitive magic and superstition to sublime levels, slipshod work ethic, nepotistic allegiances that have made us sacrifice excellence and accountability for sectionalism and mediocrity, are all parts of this traditional baggage. In Arthur Nwankwo's view, "Africa is faced with a tragic dilemma: how to adapt the ideas and techniques of the Western world without losing her essential Africanness.[viii] Wiredu re-echoed this in his contention that Africa is in the middle of a transition. And only a reconciliation or a confrontation of this transitional crisis with the right attitudinal overhaul in the people would conduce to the emergence of a renascent Africa, where the principles of right governance and mass participation in their affair will foreclose forever the possibility of irresponsible governance.

Why Patronize Education?

An American Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had it that "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged". Placing this against the backdrop of the functional illiteracy of majority of African citizens lends credence to the fact that its obverse in no small measure contributed to the terrible socio-political cul de sac, that Africa is presently holed up in.

Africa adopted a modern alien political structure without an extensive diffusion of the corresponding attitudes operative in such structures. In Africa today, there exists a chasm between public policy formulation and its understanding by the public. The intellectual capacity and informational equipment requisite for the comprehension and constructive appreciation of the workings of government is much beyond the grasps of majority of the people. And this in Ernest Boyer's considered view is unacceptable because, the complexity of life in modern society as well as in a complex socio-political set up requires more and not less information in order to ensure participation. Continuing in his submissions, he contended that "for those who care about government by the people, the decline in public understanding cannot go unchallenged", because in a world where human survival is at stake, ignorance is not an acceptable alternative.

To make a headway and escape from her captivity to poverty, Africans must realise that the world has undergone immense transformations in all ramifications of life. It is now a global village and no longer a conglomeration of pockets of isolated traditional societies. And for our people to fully approximate the benefits of modern life, we must move with the tides and dynamics of the times or we would compromise ourselves out of existence, by the structural and consolidated ignorance of our people. To this end an educated and enlightened followership is a condition-sine qua non for the sustenance of a responsible leadership and governmental structure in any polity. Boyer agrees with this condition when he opines that what we need for this

"are concerned people who are participants in inquiry, who know how to
ask the right questions, who understand the process by which public policy
is shaped and are prepared to make informed, discriminating judgements
on questions that affect the (their) future"[ix]

I am aware that no single institution of state or society can erect this attitudinal framework needed for the germination of active and enlightened collaborative participation of Africans in their affairs. But education more than any other institution or enterprise is ontologically obliged to provide not only an enlightened leadership, but also an enlightened and well informed followership, that can withstand the complex vagaries of a complex political set up. Education is the bastion of modern democracy, which is today recognised as the best form of government that adequately responds to the aspirations and needs of the people.

The postural apathy of Africans to governance is traceable to ignorance, which builds up a climate of indifference that allows manipulation a walkover. And if Africans are not led through a massive functional education to see beyond themselves and better comprehend and appreciate their place in our complex world, "their capacity to live responsibly would be dangerously diminished". Not only this, knowledge breaks down the dykes of insular ethnic parochialism that has dangerously irrigated and over flooded the African geopolitical concourse, since the wind of change which blew many African states to independence, in the early sixties.

Education only, possesses this intrinsic potency to melt and prevent pejorative ethnocentric bias from fossilizing and hardening into a coagulated magma of militant sectionalism, which gave rise to most of the internecine crises witnessed in Africa. This is more instructive when one realises that Africa is an amorphous monolithic conglomerate of ethnic federations, brought into many political set ups under the avaricious blueprints of colonial masters, in most cases without the consent of the peoples. In all these cases, the tribal differences of these nationalities were downplayed while the colonial masters held court in Africa, but erupted in volcanic dimensions immediately they departed. This is accountable for most of the civil strifes and wars like I said earlier. We need not remember the Nigeria-Biafran War of 1967-1970, The Hutu-Tutsi genocide of the 90s, Liberian Civil war, the Sierra Leonean war, Congo-Katanga War, or the Sudanese civil war? All these took their moments about tribal differences. And only a conceptual emancipation from old rivalries and deep seated xenophobia and bad blood prevalent in all these can effectively put pay to strife. And only an integral whollistic education can achieve this. People were taught to hate, and they could equally be schooled out of it.

Education equally has the ability to imbue people with a global participative vision and perspective, which conduces to peaceful co-existence and development. Emeka Ngwoke captures this well when he wrote in a well-crafted editorial to Torch Magazine of December 1989, as follows:

Education is the bedrock of modern civilisation and progress. It stands to
the entire structure of modern society as a keel, a veritable foundation.
Thus, whatever happens to education resonates through industry,
commerce, politics and, indeed, all professions: medicine, law, etc.
In modern times the importance as a catalyst and hallmark of progress
has come to be increasingly recognised by an ever-swelling number of people.
The presence or absence of knowledge has determined the fate of empires;
it has lost and won wars. Our ancestors were colonised largely because their
ignorance could not withstand the vast knowledge of the invading white hordes,
especially in the field of science[x]

And for Prof. Festus Okafor, "It is from education, as from a central hub that the rays that invigorate other contemporary human activities take their rise. Education is an indispensable factor in the solution of modern equation"[xi] The above reasons I believe are explanative of our patronage of education.

The Socio-political Implications of Education

Among the worst enemies of is ignorance. Our forebears were defeated more by ignorance than by the colonial masters. Ignorance canonises an unanalytic mindset that inhibits progress. It is the seedbed of superstition and credulous fatalism, which gives rise to a pathologic and debilitating inferiority complex, conceptual myopia and dysfunctional attitudes and skills all of which, manacles a people's aspiration. It conduces to a conceptual and mental slavery, structural retard and progressive retrogression of race. And man being a dynamic being must always contract to a new equilibrium, as the tides of reality sways in any direction or he goes under. To do this effectively, he must be equipped both intellectual and otherwise. And the only facility for this education. Education, ontologically flowed the fact with which Aristotle opened his metaphysics: "All men by nature desire to know"[xii] This ontological desire for knowledge lurking deep in the human mind, is ultimately what re-bounced to an equilibrium that set out to assuage this thirst for knowledge. In fact the annals of human evolution have been a chronicle of man's pioneering into the blues to navigate the frontiers and vast terrain of the great unknown. In articulating this, Plato, the great Athenian philosopher, used his allegory of the cave to give an inkling into how dark the grottoes of ignorance and unknowing could be. He did not stop there, in his Republic; he laid down the basis, the principles, the reasons and the desirability of a socio-political educational program and stratification, that would ensure the enthronement of a good social structure to be presided over by the philosopher-king. In his laws, it was Plato's contention that societies fail when ignorance triumphs over wisdom, or when intemperance defeats temperance, or when freedom is lost because of license. Socrates' intellectual midwifery battled to make his contemporaries and men, less of shopkeepers of spiritual wares. He essayed to draw our-(educere), to lead men out of ignorance into the liberative embrace of knowledge and awareness. Aristotle's insistence on the natural basis of human political activity accounts for his central concern with the proper education of the state's citizens.

Education and knowledge since time began are directed towards the bettering of the lot of man who equally is a social and political animal. Against this backdrop, one may not be totally condemned if one views Augustine's Divine Illumination as being there to enable man function effectively in the Civitate Dei, which the civil society mirrors. It may not equally be preposterous if one interprets Machiavelli's attempt in the Prince as an amoral blueprint in socio-political engineering and principled gravitation towards an eternal latchment to power by the prince.

In fact the socio-political dimension and implication of education cannot be over-emphasised. The Fathers of Second Vatican Council realised this as could be gleaned in their dedication of a document to it. In Gravissimum Educationis, the Fathers noted that:

Education has been rendered more necessary by the circumstances
of our times, for men, as they become more conscious of their own
dignity and responsibility are eager to take an ever more active role
in social life and especially in the economic and political spheres[xiii]

In the extra territorial province of metaphysics, one needs not essay much to prove that only an educated mind is well positioned to grapple with the myriad of conflicting gnoseologic edifices and epistemic authorities that unfurl flags of conviction, conflict and contradictory subjectivities which suffuse the modern world today. A pedestrian mind is a liability to the society today than he would have been centuries ago, at the dawn of civilisation. Today there is no excuse for a vegetative existence. One either navigates his raft in this turbulent and complex sea that is modern existence or he is sucked in by the waves.

Africa is almost lame today because she has failed to appropirate the gains offered the human race, by our heritage of inventions and discoveries, both intellectual and material. Others who have armed themselves with the power that knowledge gives have now tamed their environment and circumstance. And they are deploying this power to their advantage in almost all ramifications of their lives. Africa is still plagued with the teething problems of developmental infancy, like hunger, poverty and disease. We are primary economies that only produce raw materials, without even the technology to do this effectively. We depend on others for things that are basic. And if this is the case, then, why shouldn't these interests interfere in our geopolitics, and manipulating it to their advantage. The answer is simple: They have the power that knowledge gives.

What is Education and Why Education?

In positing education for scrutiny in order to exact an operative definition from it, I have no intention of treating it in all its vast range of theoretical and practical connotations. I would sculpt a functional definition that suits my purpose from this huge conceptual marble, in order to highlight its fundamental import to the enthronement, sustenance and reinvigoration of responsible governance in Africa.

For my purposes here, I would assume as my operative definition, that which sees education as embossoming the processes and structures of inculcating and acquisition of knowledge, attitude, skills, propensities and aptitudes that one requires to function as a member of a specific society. Education has a social dimension, which emanates and tends towards the society. It has formal and informal dimensions, which full exploration is outside the immediate scope of this present exercise. Education as obtains and applies here embraces the functional, whollistic, systematic approach to the acquisition and inculcation of the huge patrimony of knowledge, techniques, skills, attitudes and aptitudes that man has accumulated over the ages in the course of his social evolution.

Informal education though not ruled out, is not of immediate concern here, because it already obtains in Africa as well as human culture since time since time immemorial. What I mean in advocating for a massive education is the systematic configuration of this, which only a formal education can offer, in schools of all configurations. This for now would obtain and apply here.

This is because of my conviction that only a conscious systematic approach to the battle against ignorance is the most effective strategy ever invented by man, in his enterprise of subduing his environment. And formal education has paid its dues in the hard coinage of proofs, in projecting man out of the narrow confines of his immediate concerns to a high lofty pedestal, from which he can now effectively manage the irreconcilable variables generously strewn across the highroads and backwoods of existence. It has served other civilisations, and cultures and peoples. In addition, I believe it has the potencies of serving Africa effectively in her search for self-actualisation, responsible governance and development. In Western civilisation, formal and organised schools and universities arose and automatically translated themselves into the seedbeds of research, discoveries, inventions that propelled, nourished and sustained the western assault on their environment and circumstance, and its subsequent conquest by them. It equally generated the philosophical attitude of scepticism, which pulled down the fatalistic gnoseologic edifice that views the world as unmanageable by man. This fall of knowledge based on tradition and authority paved the way for a massive storming of the fortress of the unknown and ignorance, forcing them to yield their secrets and holds over the human mind. This enlightened worldview generated and sustained by education pulled man out of the wasteful experience that was the dark ages. And if massively adopted and applied in Africa, education would engender a renaissance that will free us from our primordial enemies of hunger, poverty and irresponsible governance.

I must not fail to reiterate the fact that the education that is advocated here which is for life does not obtain exclusively in an organized, systematic set up provided by the school. But the most important advantage that an organized, conscious education proffers is that it casts a foundation for continued learning, which lasts through out life. Whenever and wherever formal education, fails to build a pedestal or scaffold for continued education or endow an omni-dimensional ability to adapt to the ever dynamic complexities of modern life, then it has not only failed in its mission, it implodes into a functional incubator for the hatching of social misfits and zombies.

To this end an authentic school education creates room for complement by a continuous social education which embosoms continuous character development and refinement, a dynamic propensity to interpret reality from a rational, human angle freed from pejorative prejudices, a skilful ability to navigate sensibly and responsibly one's socio-cultural, geopolitical, economic and psycho-religious environment, et cetera.

What the school does is to lay the foundation for every other subsequent behavioural, psychosocial, mental and physical edifice that the human mind can bear and utilize for social functionality, emotional stability, and personal development.

This is the type of education presently needed for a great percentage of the African population. This is the only type of education that can build a foundation for responsible governance, and development in modern Africa.

Africa and Education, The Road out of the Woods

Since Africans today live in a modern social set up, they must be trained to acquire the relevant corresponding skills, knowledge and attitudes that will equip them to confront, effectively master and manage the circumstances and demands of contemporary times. To this end schools are of vital importance. They are our last line of defence. We neglect this fact at our great discomfiture and peril. What obtains in most African schools and colleges is simply a show of shame and a conscious attempt to mortgage the future of Africa to ignorance and dependence. In Nigeria for example, education is treated with lavatorial assault both by the authorities, the government and even the students themselves.

The government views the schools as a massive laboratory for its political manoeuvrings. Schools are actually starved of needed funds and infrastructure to help them function. Successive governments see the schools as thermometers that is meant to rise and fall at governmental temperature. That is why Vice chancellors could be sacked on television and a sole administrator appointed without regard to procedure. The government so much interferes in the internal affairs of schools that the job security; independence and autonomy, which conduces to excellence, are superlatively compromised.

That education is a very costly venture, which is very much beyond the fiscal competence of the government alone, is indubitable. In Africa, I cannot vouch for the public sector participation in this crucial sector. The government cannot go it alone, yet private sector participation is too scanty for comfort.

Do we need talk about the authorities? Well the school is a creature of the society. It is not immune from the corruption of social decadence. This accounts for why whatever exists in the macrocosm finds an expression microcosmically in the schools. Scarce allocations are embezzled, misappropriated or misapplied by unscrupulous officials. The students themselves are a different ballgame altogether. Without the requisite direction from committed officials, the schools, especially at the tertiary level either becomes a brothel, an abattoir for human slaughter or an edifice erected to mediocrity and infamy. The student product that emerges from this picture is nothing but a half-baked, characterless, half-animal.

Examinations organised in Nigerian universities, to cite but one example is nothing but an affront to the fragile sensibilities of every sane individual. Cheating, malpractice, irregularities, intimidation and sickly favouritism are all present in superabundant proportions. We now produce social misfits; certified illiterates and dysfunctional professionals, who are not even socially aware, responsible or enlightened.

Japan before opening up to the West, was an archipelago of isolation. Her encounter with the West opened the Japanese up to a realisation of their technological timidity. This realisation prompted her sending out her bright sons in droves to acquire Western education. This country was aware that to compete effectively in the world of tomorrow, she must be equipped to confront other competitors on an equal pedestal. Today Japan is a leading industrial power that commands respect. Her citizens are sufficiently aware, despite cultural peculiarities, to adopt western style government to their situation, and to ensure responsible participation of the citizenry in national affairs. The United States which is a great democracy and which we copy so easily is great because she built her greatness in the classroom. This is a nation of men and women who are sufficiently aware politically, that no one can commit them while omitting them. There the people are really the repositories of ultimate power. A leader leads them with their consent. And he is always there for public scrutiny. To this end he dares not enthrone his passions and caprices into law. If he tries, like Nixon did at Watergate to bamboozle or hoodwink the people, he is seriously censured with social opprobrium that no other person would ever dare to try it. In this environment, the press, which is a watchdog of democracy is forever alive and vigilant. And the populace is so enlightened as to actively follow the trend of events in their polity[xiv] In such an environment, irresponsible government cannot subsist, let alone surviving. the patrimony of knowledge that humanity has accumulated in the march of civilization must be approximated and effectively deployed to the service of specific African existential situations.

Education leads to social competence and optimum personal development of an individual. This positions the individual to fit properly and function effectively in his social milieu. America realised this when it seemed their nation had fallen asleep into foot-dragging. It took the Russian launch of the Sputnik in the 1950s to make America realise that her greatness must pass through the portals of Education. Rudely jolted from slumber by the Russian Sputnik, America convoked a National Conference on Education in 1955. This conference, which reviewed American educational philosophy and curriculum, came up with the Defense Education Act of 1958, which designated education as America's first line of Defense. In that Conference, Lawrence G. Derthick, the US commissioner for Education left a statement, which is of eternal relevance and which I would like to share with everyone here. He said while addressing the conference that , "We are engaged today in a battle…to determine whether man is to stay free, or again become enslaved, and Education is the master weapon". America did this in 1958 and by 1968, ten year later; American technology powered and landed a man on the moon to the chagrin and admiration of the world. This I believe is instructive of the gains inherent in placing premium on the education of our people. Anything short of a massive infusion of resources and seriousness into education is a luxury too costly for Africa to entertain at this critical period of her history. The Igbos of South East Nigeria would say that "a man whose house is being ravaged by fire does not have time to pursue rodents. The fires of underdevelopment is presently consuming Africa. And African intellectuals and philosophers whose bounden duty it is to chart our path to greatness cannot stand by and let Africa wallow in ignorance of which irresponsible governance is but a symptom. It is on the strength of this that I call for a Continental conference on Education. This conference would review the African situation with the aim of charting new ways of lifting Africa out of the morass of underdevelopment and the triumvirate forces and symptoms of retrogression, namely ignorance, poverty and disease.

Conclusion

Africa can never wake up from this long night of an all pervading decadence in all spheres of life, if the quest for social stability, responsible governance and development is not rooted in an enlightened attitudinal disposition, which is only possible, if there is a mass exodus from consolidated ignorance, postural apathy and functional illiteracy, which only education can guarantee. Only education can initiate an eclipse of poverty. It is my contention that an unschooled mind is a slave to caprice and passion. It makes people difficult to be hoodwinked all the time. It radically impinges on their vision and lifts them out of the propensity to credulity.

Ignorance makes a man a liability to the society and a cog in the wheel of social progress; a passive spectator in the social-political concourse. An ignorant man is a social misfit. He is unfit for leadership and a credulous follower. A society led by ignorant men is condemned to end in a developmental ditch. This is a case of blind guides leading a society of blind men. When he is a follower, he becomes so credulous that clever crooks, would find him an unwitting accomplice to their misadventure in the corridors of power. Ignorance so emasculates a man that he is nothing but foolery in motion; a perpetual travesty of what humanity represents.

I believe that this realization was among the factors that informed James Madison's ageless words cited earlier, that "knowledge must forever govern ignorance and those who wish to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power that knowledge gives". Africans must realise that education is not cheap. But if we think that it is too costly, we might as well try ignorance.

* This paper was presented at the Second International Philosophy Conference held at the Bigard Memorial Seminary, Enugu, November 18th-21st, 2002