It is only the mentally blind and a pitiably self deluded person that would say all is well with the country socially, economically and politically since its flag independence from Britain over 50 years ago.
It has been an awkward social engineering all the way and nothing short of such very obscure phenomenon that now permeates our entire national life.
Whichever way you want to look at it, Nigeria can be likened to a lighted candle that has its wax burning slowly and steadily.
This is, no doubt, due to lack of good leadership in its entire political landscape, crass and inordinate opportunism, unbridled corruption in all the facets of its social fabrics, nepotism, tribalism, religious bigotry and all other vices that can never be associated with the kingdom of animals.
Whether we like it or not the fact remains and ironically too that in spite of her enormous economic potentials, the country remains one of the poorest and most underdeveloped places of the world.
This has been its shameful disposition in the comity of civilized nations for very many years.
Despite her huge income of not less than US$6 billions daily from crude oil alone, her average citizen still lives on less than two dollars a day.
Common sense indicates that things must just not be allowed to go on this way and this is the reason why our children must be brought up on the path of a new global social order notwithstanding the fact that the so-called Millennium Development Goal is still far away from the knowledge and the reach of any typical grassroots person but only exist in the psyche of those at the corridor of power only.
It is always good to hear some people talk glibly and thoughtlessly too that the industrial revolution in Britain was the country's catalyst for rapid economic development in the 18th and 19th centuries forgetting that it would not have been possible without men of education, science and technology like Richard Arkwright, James Hargreaves, Reverend Edmund Cartwright, James Watt and several others like them..
What the totality of singular and joint initiatives of these men of history brought to the world include: 1.
Discovery and utilization of new energy sources.
2.
Invention and fabrication of new machinery and other automated/mechanical devices.
3.
Invention and development of faster forms of transportation and communications of which today's Information and Communication Technology is an offshoot.
We must be mindful of the fact that the rapid social and economic development of Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries; USA in 19th century, Japan in late 19th and early 20th centuries was made possible in the first place by their men of education, science and technology.
It is not that our policy makers in the education industry are not fully conscious of this incontrovertible fact but they seem to be out of touch with the reality and that is the reason why they feel so much unconcerned about how to move it forward by allowing the academic staff union of Nigerian universities to go on strike endlessly.
It is quite shameful that, today, our universities are no longer citadel of learning like in the days of yore but a breeding ground for cultism, political thuggery and several forms of social miscreants that are now the bane of our entire social fabrics.
It is quite shameful that several Nigerian university graduates can hardly express themselves articulately and adequately in English language while the present rating of our post-secondary institutions in the list of global university index is nothing to write home about.
This makes one wonder in what way the labor of our heroes past is not in vain so where do we go from here?