This is not one of my academic scribbles, but rather a lamentation
about the state of retired school teachers in Imo state and
perhaps, in other parts of Nigeria. It’s a matter that requires
immediate attention, what the late Martin Luther King categorized
as the “urgency of now”. I will be brief.
A while ago, the American press invaded the houses of some old
kindergarten, elementary school and high school teachers in the
United States and Indonesia to extract information about the
current US presidential hopeful; senator Barrack Obama. The
Illinois senator, Obama, is the first African American in US
history with a realistic shot at the White House. With a father
from Kenya and a mother from Kansas, US, the world is excited
about the prospect of a non white, biracial American president.
The US media is digging deep into Obama’s past, especially his
kindergarten and early elementary school years in Indonesia, where
he spent a couple of years with his mother and Indonesian
step-father before returning to Hawaii. The goal of the media is
undoubtedly to excavate some uncomfortable information that will
de-mystify the Obama persona and phenomenon. Who else would be in
a position to provide in-depth analysis of Obama’s early years
than his teachers?
Hence, the US media agents have been beaming their information
lasers non stop in Hawaii and Indonesia, interviewing with ease
and at random Obama’s former teachers. This illustrates the
importance attached to the teaching profession in the US.
Prompted by the respect and dignity accorded to teachers in the
Western world, I embarked on a recent journey from New York State
to my village in Imo state with an unrelenting mission in mind:
visit my elementary school teachers, pay them some respect and
thank them for molding some substance into my being.
As I boarded the plane, my heart was full of joy and fear at the
same time. The joy of re-living some glorious childhood moments
and the fear of meeting people, who knew me before I even figured
out who I am. In the plane, I started reciting some of my
elementary school poems, ranging from Ten Green Bottles to
Humpty Dumpty. The excitement was real. This will be my
first true home-coming.
After navigating my way through the busy Lagos, I finally landed
with a Virgin Nigeria flight in Imo State. I passed the night in
a hotel in Owerri and early in the morning drove through village
trails to locate my former teachers.
The first visit was the home of my elementary five teacher. I
have not seen the man in the past fifteen years. I bought him a
bottle of wine and some other gifts. I was very eager to see my
teacher again and to surprise him in the most positive sense.
Alas, my former teacher is now almost blind with advanced
cataract, starry eyed, sick and haggard. When he recognized my
voice, he started crying and I couldn’t hold back my own tears. A
man, who retired a headmaster and with respect after forty years
of service to the Nigerian ministry of education, is now poverty
personified. A tangible symbol of a nightmarish profession in
Nigeria.
My teacher has not been paid his nineteen thousand (N19.000) Naira
monthly pension for FIVE GOOD YEARS. He has no one to cling to.
Nigeria has abandoned a man, who exerted his last energy to train
productive citizens. My former teacher is starving to death in a
country where government administrators re-renovate already
renovated houses with six million dollars. A nation that abuses
her educators is like a house built on sand.
