There is a problem we all live with. It’s a silent killer that suffocates systems, arrests development and destroys the aspirations of millions of Nigerians. It affects every household. Although, a few escape it’s damaging effect and treat it with mild irritation, most can’t escape its impact. This economic terrorist causes households to breed citizens whose life prospects are severely limited to a life of poverty. This man-made disaster is called the public education system in Nigeria.
If you googled education in Nigeria, the words ‘state of emergency’ will trail your search and little wonder why. A sneak peak of recent headlines will reveal the many distinguished voices that have declared a state of emergency in the sector. Our recent track records are; ‘Senator Tinubu declares state of emergency’, ‘Malala declares state of emergency’, ‘Stakeholders advise Federal Government to declare state of emergency’, ‘Kebbi Government declares state of emergency with 63 out of 73, 378 passing common entrance and eligible to go to Unity School’ and the list goes on.
There seems to be a festival themed ‘state of emergency’ across the country and after such declarations are made, a high-studded committee is formed and tasked to look into the issues. This leads to incremental change that translates to little value and the problem we all live with remains intact.
If truly there was an emergency, then there’s nothing more important in an emergency room than the simple truth. Let’s briefly imagine an emergency call. Is the victim breathing? Was the person shot? Where was the victim found? You see in a real emergency there is no room for lies unless the caller has no intention of saving the victim. So here’s the simple truth- there is no education crises, there’s only a crises of ignorance.
Normally, when a state of emergency is declared, it alerts citizens to change their normal behavior and government suspends normal constitutional procedures to regain control of a situation. In Nigeria’s case, a state of emergency has not translated to a change in behavior or attitude.
A quote by Antonio Gramsci ‘The old is dying and the new cannot be born’ might capture our condition, a strange morbidity, which lacks new ideas but takes grim pleasure in its dreadful status quo. Grand statements of ‘state of emergency’ and the jamboree of putting an uninspired committee together that will release a stale report cannot be the process that will get us out of this rot. For real change to occur there must be a departure from the familiar.
We must be willing to go where we have not gone before. We’ll need to implement Design Thinking. The reason past plans have failed is due to the linear approach used. This linear thinking presupposes that the problems are obvious such as lack of infrastructure, teachers and financing. It’s an ineffective approach that can be equivalent to drinking water from a fire hose, the scale of the issue seems overwhelming and inertia sets in.
Design thinking is a methodology used by designers to solve complex problems and find desirable solutions for change. Its starting point is discovery via a human-centered approach that embeds itself in the lives of the people that will benefit from it- the end user. It taps into capacities we all have but are overlooked by stale problem-solving practices. Such as looking inward to find ‘Positive Deviants’ which considers the very few places where the public education system might be working. Then it takes that relevant and unique cultural context and scales it up. This allows us to develop high-impact solutions that deliver real results.
SIMI FAJEMIROKUN
SIMI FAJEMIROKUN is the founder of Read2Succeed Africa.
