For Abagana, Anambra State-born 75-year-old retired General Manager of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Dr Violet Arene, the current education system in Nigeria has lost its value, compared to what it used to be in the past.
The first trained guidance and counsellor in Nigeria, with other firsts in her career, told The Point that the Nigerian education sector had suffered decadence and lost value if compared to what it used to be then.
Arene said, “Today, what you have is a decadence, a retrogression, I don’t know what to call it, a downgrading. It represents loss of quality, loss of morality, loss of standard, loss of everything and the reason for this is no other than being in a hurry to make money.
“Let me tell you this, when I was in secondary school, they used to bless us with the opportunity to write compositions; we used to have a distinctive composition displayed on the board for people to go and read.
Good grammar, free flow of thought, the quintessence of English language and the content was valuable.
“Today, somebody calls himself or herself a graduate, and he or she cannot write a correct sentence. Very few graduates can sit in a boardroom and take minutes. It is pathetic. Everything is bastardised. In fact, nobody reads novels. How many people read novels?
They watch African Magic, they watch the superficial and glorious shows in the world.” Schools today, according to her, are gradually turning to ‘living dead schools’, where teachers collude to commit malpractice and take money for such acts.
It (corruption) is a pervasive dis- ease that is spiritual, because the money is taken beyond normal human need
“They do not care about what they are turning into the societies,” she added. She said university lecturers were not different, as “today, if you don’t get to buy from them, you don’t get through, no matter how brilliant you are.
She added that parents also encouraged these bad acts because of their hurry to get their children into higher institutions. “They don’t mind what they pay, to get their children in through the back door, to get certificates, and once the malpractice starts, it’s an ill-wind, because it continues once it starts. You have to do all it takes to meet up, outside school, at work and others. You have to play whatever game to keep getting on through malpractices,” she said. Taking a flash back to her days at the NNPC, Arene said that the NNPC of her time was never occupied with corrupt minded people.
“The NNPC management has blended into satanic ways and lost responsibility and accountability. Some are still good, but the ones in bad light have blended with corruption in the society. It’s like it’s no longer possible for them to be pure, because the society is rotten.
They used to complain to me that they were being forced sometimes to make secret inducement to government. I don’t know under what circumstances, but I know that oversight is not pure,” she said.
On corruption, she said that corrupt people were not alone, saying that there must have been collaborators who helped them perpetrate their corrupt practices.
She said, “I know how much I have, if you remove N100,000 from it, I will know, but people remove so much money and nobody blows the whistle; go and check any corrupt society, they are not alone; those who should blow the whistle are in it. It’s a perplexed menace, it’s a cancer that has affected everyone.
“Before I can get at your money in the bank , I need inducement . So someone with money, belonging to NNPC, go and check who gave it to him, who opened it for him. Look, it’s a rat in the house that knows where the fish is, so when the rat from outside comes, he will take part.
“I cannot remove $1 million dollars from the account of Nigeria, without someone knowing about it and if no one complains, the person you are holding is not the only person. So the NNPC of today has been maligned with the structure of corruption that has become a cankerworm and has seen us globally as the worst in corrup – tion. “It’s a pervasive disease that is spiritual, because the money is taken beyond normal human need.
Let me tell you, if I give you N1 billion today, I don’t know your age and you already have a house and a car, how much will you use to train your children? “If you’re stealing to get such, it means you are sick. We are not into psychiatric investigation, but go and check, many are the living dead… they are living, but have lost their souls because they have lost God.” On her experience while growing up, the former manager of the NNPC said life was very tough.
She said, “I was scared of darkness, no electricity. I was scared of insects that made noise at night and they intimidated us that the grave there had monsters. The way they controlled people then was by intimidation, they didn’t teach us to be bold. We were fearful and there were masquerades a girl must not see, if you saw them, you were finished.
“Everything was difficult, no light, even the meat we ate then was the hen that didn’t hatch egg, or if someone came from the North, they brought the bush fowl head. Chicken, rice and shoes were for festive periods.
Breakfast was the leftover of garri from previous night. “It was in secondary school we had to eat margarine and bread, dipped in cocoa in 1956. It was tough and the grace of God made us who we are now.”
Dr. Arene recalled that the only medicine available then was M & B tablets, which were the only cure to all manner of diseases. She also said, unlike now, that sex had pervaded the society, the kind of sex education they had in their time was such that instilled fear in the girlchild.
“They would tell you, ‘that thing that comes from a man, once it touches your leg, you are pregnant’. She also recollected how she was whipped by her father at the age of 18, for breaking a 6pm curfew.
She said, “One Mr. Ojo, an adventurer came. He insisted on knowing my house and came around 6pm, when we were supposed to be at home by 6pm. So I sent him away, and as I turned back, Papa caught me. It was five minutes past six and I was 18 ‘oh’.
My father whipped me. No mercy.” Expressing disappointment at the level of impunity that has crept into the institution of marriage today in the society, she said, “It’s the same problem, it’s the menace of corruption; it is in different shades.
The purpose of marriage today, some say it’s money, some say it’s sexual attraction, and before marriage, they have done everything. The purpose of marriage has suffered a setback today, and people get married for reasons that should not make them get married. Today, before marriage, the sacredness of marriage is eroded. Most couples no longer understand the meaning of marriage.”
