NAPKUR: OLD WINE IN NEW WINE SKIN

Napkur, grew up in a small village in Langtang North Local North Government area of Plateau State in central Nigeria. He was born into a poor home. His parents were farmers, which is the predominant occupation of the people in his village. He is the first child in a family of five.

Napkur’s village has only a hospital to cater for the health needs of over 500 people in that community. The hospital rarely smells the presence of a doctor; only community health extension workers generally known as CHO work in the hospital in Napkur’s village.

The school is 10km away and there over 100 pupils to a teacher in the classroom in the school that Napkur attends. As the oldest child in his home, his father trained him to work with his muscle by farming to meet his needs. The general believe in Napkur’s community is that exerting physical strength is what makes you a man and so every young boy is taken to the farm and taught how to farm by his/her parents.

Napkur attends the crowded school in his community. He goes to school because of Nanpon, who attended that school and further his education to become a Grade Two teacher. Nanpon is revered in that community because he is the only one who went to school and graduated to become a teacher. Nanpon always use the few vocabularies he knows to intimidate his peers in that community. Nanpon got his education in the big city thus making him one of the few persons in that community to visit a big city. Nanpon is the center of attraction in the community and he always have guests in his home who want him to tell them about life in the big city.

On a very faithful day, Napkur visited Nanpon. Napkur asked Nanpon the entire questions he has about the big city. Nanpon now told Napkur all that is in the big city from the cars, the buildings, the markets and electricity in the city. Ever since that day, Napkur life was changed and he developed an interest to visit the big city to live and maybe raise a family with one of the women of the city.

Twenty years passed and Napkur is now old enough to fulfill his childhood dream. The decision to migrate to the big city did not sit down well with his parents as they are now old and in need of his support. But Napkur defiantly travelled to the city. He left without completing his education; he just thought that all he needed was the physical strength he used while in the village to survive. And so the journey goes for this young man to the city to fulfill his dreams.

He arrives in the city without knowing anybody to stay with. He found the boys at the bus park welcoming and some of them shared the same story as he. He now found shelter in one of the stalls at Bus Park. He ate whatever they ate and soon he became like them; smoking, drinking and doing all sorts of things to survive.

This story is typical of a good number of young people who left their villages in search of a ‘better life’ in ‘big cities’. Their story is true of a young African who thinks that physical strength is what is needed to thrive. This is because they are in old Africa; old Africa is the type of Africa that Napkur grew in. Where men were taught that physical strength is what is needed to thrive or survive. This type of society oppresses women and it treats women as properties and not persons with dignity.

Africa is in a transition. Africans are moving into a culture that has been described as post-modern; a culture that there are no absolute but relativism is what is championed. The system of education in most of African countries is not structured in the way that can meet the demands of what is needed to thrive in the post-modern world.

How different would the life of Napkur be if he had a good and solid education so that when he comes to the city, he would readily have the skills needed for him to thrive in the city and possibly support his old parents?

Educators have submitted that ‘a nation cannot grow above the standards of her education’. Africa’s development lies in the hands of Africans; it is left to them fix their system of education in order for the continent to grow.