A very strange thought has just popped into my mind. Imagine the deplorable state of the education system in our country. The primary schools are a shadow of what they were as recently as the year 2000 when I was a pupil, the standard of teaching and the performance of students in secondary schools continues to plummet and is at an all time low, Universities in the country are no where near what qualifies as tertiary institutions, yet and this is the strange part; it is not the worst part of the situation. For every 3000 half-baked graduates out of a Nigerian university every year, there are about 7000 more who are struggling to get in. As a matter of fact, only a mere 30% of Nigerian youths are even fortunate enough to stand a chance of being a part of this decaying system. The rest are unable to get basic education let alone, go to the university. That is a whopping 70% of young men and women who cannot read, write or even afford three square meals. That is seven in every ten people my age. Now what is most alarming is that of the so called "fortunate" 30%, only about 1/3 are worthy of their certificates. The rest are just going into jobs that they cannot handle and will surely end up causing more havoc to an already declining system. DOWN!
Whenever I use the public transport system in this town I always get a story. It's because the public transportation allows one to interact with the society and feel it's pulse in a way that is almost impossible from the comfort of a private vehicle. So yesterday I got off a bus at Julius Berger round about at around 5pm, rush hour. Naturally there was a fair amount of traffic, pedestrian and vehicular. I had just arrived in the city from my outpost in Gwagwalada and I was hurrying to get in a cab and out of the blistering sun. That was when I saw something that made me stop. There was a crippled man along the sidewalk. His limbs were shrunk and shriveled and he could only manage to drag his malnourished body along the curb using his forearm while accepting alms from motorists and passersby who threw their loose change in his direction. He looked very exhausted and he had his hands full but every time a note was thrown out of a moving car or dropped by a pedestrian he would ...
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