Every child is entitled to certain benefits, a legacy that concerned society does not only regard a priority but ensures also that it gets all the best attention it so deserves and that is why even the holy books emphasise on the need to train up a child because each one has a value and a destiny as well to fulfill.
Among the many rights of a child is contributing to his or her future and a country like America is doing a good job in that regard with the ways it takes care of every child right from birth that even at every month up to a certain age, an amount of money from the government goes into savings for every child born there which makes it easy for such a child to have something worthwhile to live on by the time he is of age to look after himself.
A great Philosopher, late Edmond Copeland, once quoted in one of his extracts that “any government or society that fails in her responsibility to give a child access to a better life which has in itself right to free and quality education a such will have a lot to blame herself for when the seed of that neglect grows up to be the reason the society is unrest”. And that is the major reason the late Obafemi Awolowo’s education legacy is still a reference point today as history records how even the children of the termed poor through it became enviable in and around the world.
It broke my heart when an old man tutored me how education was in their own days. I was made to know that it was once so nice that you even get paid for schooling while students were also being fed with cow meats amidst other things from the government of then.
The old man said that, he travelled America to study on scholarship and had to hurry back home immediately after his final paper because there were so many benefits at home you could not compare to anywhere, not even the almighty America. Our pounds, according to him, was a thing of pride and the honour you get here and there too will make you want to be where you’re loved.
There was an evident rain of tears in my eyes as opposite of what they enjoyed was the case in my own generation. But what made me so sad wasn’t just that we had to pursue it with all our sweat, but we’re made to do that by the same generation of people that had it all for free. And to worsen the case the more, a governor on an occasion around then openly said it, ‘that a good school is not for the children of the poor’.
Now ask ten out of twenty children why they don’t want to go to school, some would tell you they know of someone who had been there but have nothing to show for it and what some give as reason for being out of school was as result of a certain amount of money their parents who hardly could feed them were once asked to pay in the past which to them is why they feel it is better to just not even go there at all.
I know how frustrating it can be or might have been in the time past, but I think now that a government has declared education free for the benefit of all children, nobody has an excuse not to go to school.
This could be another Awolowo’s time in the history of Oyo State, an offer without any condition other than go to school and learn.
There is no better gift a society owes to a child like a good beginning that is not costly but accessible and that is why declaring education free will go a long way raising the hope of a common man and births a comfort of seeing his children doing like others the world regard as rich.
Thank you Governor Oluseyi Makinde and happy Children’s day to every Nigerian child.
(C) Chris Ayantoye.
