Originally Posted by Irinajoeda

After all these degrees, these ever essential masters and the can't do without doctorate,s we still haven't transformed. Our mindsets still remain thesame.

The Government Must Be Blamed! Oh yes!

We go to college, yet our mindset remains thesame! We live in the countries that tells us to ask what we can do for the country and not what the country can do for us but when it comes to Naija, it's: Ask what the country can do for you and not the other way round.

Isn't education meant to be enlightenment? Isn't it to open your mind to things you never knew existed?

No, Nigeria doesn't deserve us because there is no constant supply of electricity or no, we didn't get scholarship or no, the environment isn't fostered to enable you dream and ...gosh! should I go on?

I guess America became America because there was a government from inception that put things in place, I guess Britain became great Britain from day one! Even after the war, it was the government that did everything, that built that beautiful country, isn't it?

And who are these government by the way? Isn't it the people? If the government failed, then it's the people that failed! Maybe when we start to see ourselves as the government, maybe then, things would start to shift but so long we keep seeing the government as these money grabbing Hausas who want to seat atop the Delta, we are doomed.

Maybe for a change, we should allow all these education we acquired to transform our mind and our thinking! No government would hand anything over to you on a platter! You are the government, so start doing something! God knows i'm fed up of Nigerians who moan about the government!

Emeka was your course mate, you went to Law school together and were called to bar in the same year. You graduated and years later, Emeka contested for the presidential seat of Nigeria. Emeka was elected, he becomes the president.

Now, Emeka is the government, he is meant to provide for you. Nevermind that Emeka is human but now he's the government. Couldn't you, Esosa have been president too? What happens if you had? You stop being human? You stop being part of the soceity?

My point is this, normal people become the government. We are the government, we should be held responsible for however a nation turns out. One tree doesn't a forest make! Little contribution from you and I is what makes the economy! You can't expect Yaradua to put things in place just because he sits in Aso Rock! He is one person and even with his aides, can't effectively run a nation of too many ethnic groups who would rather have their own country! A country where a Yoruba man thinks he had no business being part of Nigeria in the first place or an Igbo man feels he has nothing in common with the Hausa man? That country is too large to rest everything on the shoulder of one government! Until such a time comes when we are divided into regions and allowed to manage ours, we should help in whatever way we can to push the country forward if we still want to be an entity. Stop this Nigeria didn't do this for me mentality!

However, if you're also pleased to amass all these doctorates and still work as a taxi driver or at most an administrator in an office and get to wear suits and feel among at lunch time, then please go ahead. It's your funeral!

Nigerians are not unique! Don't kid yourself! We are not the most intelligent group of Africans! We are only talked about because we are large in population and the probability of fraudster being Nigerian is 1 to 4. Now if you add those 1s out of 4s together in say 50 million, the result you'll get is that Nigerians are majorly scammers. The same goes for education!

Anyway before I deviate from the point, i'll pause here.


Stop it already!

Originally Posted by Ayesha

My dear, It was a simple question because that long thing you wrote did not make any sense to me.. So again I ask you.. "So what are you saying?" It can't be that hard to answer now right? This is a forum where we all express our views? My aspiring to do a PhD has nothing to do with the question or is there something I am missing???

I aint trying to be funny here and I expect that you know how to argue without using force force gira gira..

Originally Posted by Obariba

A relevant opinion I found on the internet !

Originally Posted by The Maverick

By the way, what has having a degree got to do with changing the country? Seriously, this whole making a change in Nigeria business, does it only apply to Nigerian degree holders in diaspora, because based on the arguments of Vince and Irinajoeda, one would think that all these PhD holders are cab drivers and should all go home and put their PhD to work. Perhaps you should look closely, maybe you'll see the myriad of people that have either gone back already or sent up some sort of camp back home. We don't all have to go back at the same time. People have left here to go into politics, education, medicine and other workds of live in Nigeria. What about non degree holders? Doesn't the country belong to them too? Aren't they part of this proverbial "people" that should be held accountable for its current state....wait, they must be the one doing the scams and have suckered degree holders into it. Yeah, 1 in 4 fraudsters is a Nigerian based on a groundbreaking, water tight survery conducted by the firm of Irin, Ajo, $ Eda, LTD. I forgot you keep account of the total population of scammers in the world and you know all the Nigerian ones. Hold up, don't you need some sort of degree to do such complex statistical mathematics? So you do have one?

It's apparent that you've been itching to tell us the part you've been playing to change Nigeria, so please let me not hold your tongue, go ahead and spill it, so we can move on to something else, this thing is getting very stale.

Originally Posted by The Maverick

Kikis, it means a lot, well beyond the realms of individual achievement, which of course comes first. My argument has nothing to do with the article itself. It didn't tell me anything new. My objection was the outright dismissal of these degrees as useless solely based on the unproven notion that degree holders in the diaspora are NOT contributing anything to the nation(Nigeria). First of all, that's blatantly wrong. Many Nigerians in the diaspora are contributing immersely to the development of Nigeria, there's no rule that they have to live there to do so. Second of all, a simple logic when applying deductive reasoning will tell you that there are significantly more degree holders in Nigeria than in the diaspora. I don't need statistics to prove this, just look at the population of home based citizens compared to those abroad, now equate the pursuit of education inherent in most of us, and it's apparent that the larger population at home will most likely have a proportionate amount of degree holders. Aren't those at home trying to improve the country? Do we really need every degree holder abroad to come home before progress is made? Many of those degree holders at home got them abroad nonetheless, whereas others got them from schools in Nigeria. Unless they're saying that people educated abroad are automatically smarter that those that got their education at home, which I disagree with because there's no way to equivocally say that a degree obtained abroad is better than one from a school at home, since learning is predominantly based on the individual being taught. We might not have state of the art schools, but our students make the best of what they have. The analogy of Emeka and his buddy going to school and one going on to become president is still not realistic because it's assuming these people are in our generation. Look at the present and past rulers in the country, they're relics from the civilization era. Nonetheless, there are the Donald Dukes, and many more are on the way in the near future. Any educated person will not go out and claim/brag that we're the most educated people on earth, we might obtain a lot of degress, and like Irin said earlier, education does not always mean wisdom, but yet he/she want them to come back. If you have to force someone and convince them to go home and make a contribution, chances are their conviction is not in it. People do things differently, as time goes on, believe more people will go, if our commrades at home haven't already rectified the situation. Take this sermon to people in our parents' generation. We're planting our feet at the moment, once that foundation is strong, we'll take on the load. But in the mean time, the little we're doing is just fine for now.

Originally Posted by Papino

Marvelous contributions so far.
Fact remains that there is no prove yet that educated Nigerians are more in the diaspora than at home.Just that diasporans are expected to contribute more effectively consideribg their exposure to functional societies.However,clear statistics has shown for instance in Politics that returnee politicians have been noted to be more corrupt than local based ones.The influence of one over the other is still debatable
Development is not limited to infrastructual provisions.It starts from an oreintation that must equally include every individual-educated or not-in the society that needs it.An oreintation that must include;a greater commitment to our nationality more than to tribe,a better approach to accountability and responsibility in handling the affairs of state amongst others.
The drive towards a sustainable development is though slow,but moving in Nigeria.Debating an issue like this in the 21st century sure has a tendency to blindfold one especially in trying to compare western economies with emerging ones like Nigeria.Mavericks hint on the path/metamorphosis of western develoment is a valid point.