By BELLO, Lateef Adekunle

The breeding of the Kwara State generational ignoramus became evident when, on partisan and parochial grounds, the free holiday coaching classes of MDB Solidarity Team was truncated by the Ministry of Education and SUBEB on the authority of the Commissioner for Education. According to the news report by The Nation Newspaper, media aide of Mr. Dele Belgore, Mr. Rafiu Ajakaiye lamented the stopping of the initiative, for which due permission had been obtained, without any genuine reason. This, in effect, ensures the Poverty Distribution Party (PDP) would be the vanguard to make ignorance blossom.

This repulsive development came at a time when any well meaning government or nation should invite stakeholders and supporters of youth-centred initiatives to ensure the appropriate training of the students in the State. Just on Friday, 10th of August, the WAEC results released showed that only 39% of the students had results worth the coin. Indeed, politics, with the Nigerian template, is a very perilous venture.

How else can one explain the Ministry of Education's succumbing to pressure from the super power to cut-off a free holiday coaching just because such was instituted by an opposition candidate? Nigerian leaders are indeed suffering from mediocrity that PDP-ing has brought them.

I was there when on Friday 3rd August, 2012 a beggar fell off his wheel at the Kareem Adisa Central Mosque at GRA as he struggled to grab his share of the Dear Gov. AbdulFattah Ahmed's Greek gift. It was indeed a show of shame as a group of poorly educated masses fought tooth and nail without minding who gets hurt. I gnashed my teeth when my colleague with whom I attended the Friday service told me the untold hardship that some of the beggars had to undergo as they would trek from the popular Oja-Oba market to the would-be venue where the Governor or eminent politicians would observe their Solat, a regular practise that only proper education and mental re-orientation can override.

What pained most is that most of these women are elderly and some in their mid-forties. They are the ones constituting a nuisance and they can afford to sacrifice the future of their wards for a pleasure that ends as soon as it is gained. It is bitter that most of these women rather than toil for the future of their wards, they engage in wasteful spending of their time and sadly enough, are careless about where their children were when they embark on such contemptible sojourns.

The Government should stand tall and admit its lack of adequate planning and implementation of educational programmes and policies. The government ought to gladly shake the hand that extends gesture of rescuing the youths from the bottomless pit into which she is banishing the Kwaran Students. Rather, sadly, the state government decided to bite the finger that extends such gesture. This leaves the average Kwara student to wander the street (probably accompanying their parents on the praise sing spree) for two months duration of the holiday. What a colossal waste of precious time and brains! These fertile heads that should be ignited and mentored to critical, productive and thinking ability are now left at the mercy of the political war lords. The sad effect is the breeding of generational illiterates, who qualify more as a liability to the society than asset.

Where two elephants fight, the grasses suffer. Dele Belgore himself is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), a position he earned as a result of productive reading and struggling, while our dear Gov. AbdulFattah Ahmed is a Chemist, an alumnus of the University of Ilorin. So why on earth would such a Governor not welcome the good will of Belgore, if the democracy that we practise truly revolves around sincerity, commitment and nation building?

This is a big question for our Governor to answer.

*** BELLO, Lateef Adekunle is an Ilorin-based freelance writer and book publisher. He can be reached on 08022953087 and akblesings@gmail.com.