NOBEL Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka,
has decried the rate at which Nigerian
leaders consult marabouts and
prophets in a bid to hold onto political
power.
Nigerian leaders, he said, were in the
habit of sacrificing animals in order to
remain in power.
Soyinka spoke in Port Harcourt on
Monday at a two-day education summit.
He observed that the situation was
encouraging students to join cultism,
adding that the rot in the nation's
education system was trickling down to secondary and primary schools.
The renowned author, who chaired the
occasion, noted that normal university
cultures like fraternities had been
misconstrued to mean cultism.
He said, "Give me the name of any head of state who has not been consulting marabouts and prophets and so on, sacrificing goats, animals in the dead of night to receive a third term in office and so on and then you start blaming students, they are imitating the same thing the infirmity society itself has become.
"So, they can no longer distinguish
between a genuine fraternity and a
secret cult of which society is riddled all the way from the top.
"The rot in our education system is
trickling all the way down to secondary schools, into some primary schools.
Normal university cultures like
fraternities have been misconstrued."
On the activities of Boko Haram in the
North, Soyinka explained that members
of the sect were not sufficiently
educated about their religion.
Soyinka, who noted that Islamic
fundamentalist needed to be re-
educated about their history and
culture, also canvassed support for the
creation of almajiri schools.
He added, "Those who call themselves
Boko Haram, for instance, claim to be
educated; educated to mean books. But they are not sufficiently educated, even about their religion to know that some of the greatest philosophers came from that religion, some of the greatest mathematicians were the pioneers.
"So, these killers roaming around,
saying that they hate western
education; they are uneducated; but
they think they are educated.
"They (Boko Haram members) have
been taught on a monorail, one-track
lane. They need to be re-educated, even about their own history, their own culture."
Soyinka described the situation as
desperate and called for a proper
supervision of the content and method
of teaching in almajiri schools.
Rivers State Governor Rotimi Amaechi,
decried the attitude of school heads and teachers, who collect illegal levies from their pupils and students against his administration's free education policy.
Amaechi also ordered the issuance of
employment letters to 13,000 teachers to make up for the shortage of personnel in the state's model schools.

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