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Citizenship Education: A Vehicle For Transformation

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BOOK REVIEW: Ayo Joan Olatoyosi's Thesis, Antithesis And Synthesis Of Life

By
Grace Ego Omoni

We are living in a historical moment with a variety of interconnected global and complex challenges such as widespread inequality, religious intolerance, prejudice, youth hooliganism, degeneration of political crises, terrorism, banditry, prostitution, rape, victimization, national insecurity, low standard of education, examination malpractice, immorality issues, violence, arson, destruction of lives and property, other forms of high level criminality and insensitivity of the people in power. These often truncate the practical and transparent democratic governance.

Nigeria is today under siege of heinous cases of man’s inhumanity to man. Kidnapping, vandalization of public facilities, ritual murder, incest, Yahoo syndrome, plundering of farmlands by Fulani herdsmen, oil bunkering, employment issues, incessant protests, intermittent school calendar and other unpatriotic vices are instances of the dissatisfactions projected by the citizens. Coupled with the above, the presidency and a few individuals engage in provocative statements to indict their critics of obvious unpatriotic administrative mistakes.

All these have worsened the spirit of unity and federal character the nation anticipated at independence. The language now is tilted toward secession. Dividing the country into different states is being echoed each passing day. Nobody is ready to shift ground because there is no spirit of patriotism.

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According to Diania and Eboh (2012), the nation has been balkanised along ethnic lines because of the primordial loyalties whereby each section of the country has a political organisation catering for the interest of its own people. The lopsided federal appointments is a typical example which does not in anyway represent the Federal Character being preached.

The failure of the government to give fair judgement to issues pertaining to dissatisfactions is another typical example. For instance, the presidency did not hesitate to declare IPOB a terrorist organisation and marched out to wipe them out instantly whereas Boko Haram and Fulani herdsmen were never declared as terrorists. Instead, billions of money from the government are being used to negotiate with them.

Education has not really met its aims, goals and objectives as specified in the National Policy on Education. This article postulates that one major problem facing this country is because education has failed to produce citizens who are patriotic. The citizens have failed to place the interest of this country above self, ethnicity and religion. For the people to have a sense of patriotism, it is high time the schools take citizenship education as a priority and the right measure for entrenching national interest and consciousness.

This write-up will discuss the following:

a) Citizenship Education
b) Patriotism
c) Benefits of Citizenship Education as a Vehicle for Transformation
d) Implications for Counselling.
e) Conclusion.

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Citizenship Education.

As observed above, the world is in a state of confusion and Nigeria is not an exception. This is as a result of the failure of education to transform the citizens from the I, me, myself syndrome and the plethora of ethnic tendencies found in the nature of the black man. These have occasioned the chaotic situation and instability in the Nigerian polity.

One can emphatically say that the curriculum content of the subjects taught in the school system is grossly inadequate, especially pertaining to the development of the citizen socially, politically and morally. There has been advocacy for Citizenship Education as is practised in developed countries like the United Kingdom, the United States of America and in Australia.

There is no gainsaying the fact that this subject has helped in transforming most citizens to show undisputed interest in the development of their nations. National consciousness is more pronounced among the citizens in the nations identified.

Citizenship education according to UNESCO is the development of civic skills especially a willingness to investigate issues in the local school and the wider community; a readiness to recognise social, economic, ecological and political dimensions of issues needed to solve them and the ability to analyse issues and to participate in actions aimed at achieving sustainable issues.

Osakwe(1993) asserts that citizenship education conveys to the learner the body of knowledge, set of values and behavioural orientation that are considered vital and necessary for the sustenance and well being of the people. In the same vein, according to Dave in Diana and Eboh (2012), citizenship education is aimed at developing young people into reasonable citizens who can understand their rights and responsibilities and can play an active part in the society.

In other words, citizenship education facilitates the knowledge and competencies necessary to involve people in societal discussions and decision-making processes in a democratic way. It involves the training, awareness, raising information, practices and activities which aim at equipping young people with knowledge, skills and understanding and developing their attitudes and behaviour.

It is designed to empower them to exercise and defend their democratic rights and responsibilities in the society as well as to play active part in the democratic life with a view to promoting and protecting democracy and the rule of law.

This will bring about a transformation and the ability to act as responsible citizens and fully participate in civic and social, economic, legal and political concepts and structures of their nation. Thus, citizenship education in schools to young people is aimed at fostering national consciousness, which when enshrined in them will help them develop the spirit of patriotism.

Patriotism

Patriotism is love for one’s country and loyalty towards it. Patriotism according to Collins English Dictionary is a devoted love, support and defence of one’s country. In other words, it is the feeling of loving your country more than any others and being proud of it. A patriot puts his or her country first, the people and a desire to make it better.

In patriotism, the individual engages in promoting national interest, placing the nation before self and exhibiting loyalty to his or her nation. Patriotism which is also called national pride is a feeling of love, devotion and a sense of attachment to a homeland and alliance with other citizens who share the same sentiments politically, culturally or historically.

For patriotism to have meaning in the lives of individuals,schools should start taking the right measures in teaching citizenship to create national interest and consciousness in learners because it fosters a deep psychological attachment and pride to their nation – a disposition of uncritical support for correct political leadership. The point being made here is that there is a relationship between patriotism and citizenship education.

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Benefits of Citizenship Education as a Vehicle for Transformation.

Citizenship education is that which demonstrates how the school plays an important role in creating an informed electorate. It gives people the knowledge and skills to understand, challenge and engage with the democratic society including politics, the media, civil society, the economy and the law.

The teaching of citizenship education helps the citizens in developing positive attitude towards their homeland. Research suggests that this type of education in schools in western democracies emphasizes political institutions, rights and responsibilities of citizens and debate on current issues. In citizenship education, it is the responsibility of the schools to teach about democracy and prepare the young people to become effective democratic citizens.

In this sense, the subject is a programme behaviour modifier. In citizenship education, young people learn about politics, parliament, human rights, justice, the law and the economy. They also learn about active citizenship and teaching is brought to life using real issues and events in local and global contexts.

It promotes those skills that allow people become active and responsible citizens in a society that respects the rights and involvement of individuals. It helps young people to deal with situations of conflicts, controversy, intolerance. It helps them to understand the consequences of their actions and those of others.

Students learn how to recognise biases, evaluate arguments, weigh evidences, look for alternative interpretations, viewpoints and sources of evidence to give good reasons for the things they say or do. The school not only plays a critical role in educating students about the formal curriculum but also on how to be active members of a democratic society.

Citizenship education seeks to cut across all subject areas, integrating many skills, competencies that will benefit the young, individuals, community members and professionals and transform the society. It makes for more thoughtful and engaged citizens leading to a stronger and more just society. Citizenship education helps individuals to be equipped with and empowered to face the challenges ahead of them on a personal, community levels and global scale, think critically about the world around them and make empowered and informed decisions

This education according to Obike(1993) should teach attitude and values that will foster the ideal of democratic practices, national consciousness, and patriotism for the Nigerian citizens for them to understand their rights and duties.

READ ALSO: Reimagining Higher Education And Knowledge Management In Nigeria

Citizenship education will help inculcate national and moral values and develop patriotic citizens whose worldviews will transcend ethnic boundaries.

Nigeria is a pluralistic society with over 250 ethnic groups, so the religious belief system, political understanding, culture and values are diversified and these can be used to entrench national consciousness and pride in the learners.

Implications for Counselling

The development of right attitudes, values, beliefs, skills, competencies, knowledge, national, consciousness, pride and behaviours as we have seen come from the teaching of citizenship education in schools. The school is the best place for cultivating and inculcating these. Therefore:

a) All schools from the primary to the tertiary levels must have citizenship education as part of the subjects to be taught.

b) The curriculum content of citizenship education must as a matter of urgency be reformed and the multi- cultural nature of Nigeria must be put into consideration.

C) Curriculum content should include conflict resolution strategies.

d) Teachers trained in teaching citizenship education should be appointed and not just any teacher in the arts.

d) Emphasis should be laid on patriotism.

e) Counsellors should be posted to schools to assist in helping the learners to understand themselves and the world around them.

CONCLUSION

Since we are living in a world of I, me ,myself, it is necessary for the school to give students and pupils a new orientation where they will value and protect the lives of others, protect the integrity of their nation, and show loyalty and love to their country by developing national consciousness and pride.

This transformation will go a long way to helping them re-evaluate these evils going on in the country with a view to bringing about stability and serenity.

 

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Opinion

Kemi Badenoch’s Bad Knocks  On Nigeria 

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By  Hope O’Rukevbe Eghagha

One of the interesting proverbs I picked up in our General African Studies (GAS 201) course with the late Professor Jabez Olowo Ojoade in the University of Jos in 1979 was ‘it is a bastard child that points at his homestead with his left hand! The Akan people of Ghana put it this way: a bastard child points to his father’s house with his left hand’. The Yoruba say that ‘a person who points to their homestead with the left hand is not a good person’, while the Luhya of Kenya say that ‘when pointing to your village, use your right hand’. It is in the Swahili language that a sort of generalised use of the left hand is concretised when it says ‘the left hand is for personal hygiene, not for pointing!

Bastard child! Homestead! Pointing with the left hand! These three constituents and functional parts of the proverb tickled my teenage imagination to no end. What is it about the left had that it should not be used to refer to one’s family? Why is this metaphor common across the continent? Indeed, there must be something about the family, about the homestead, about one’s origins that deserves respect no matter the circumstances.

By the way, some Nigerians in the diaspora also point to Nigeria with their left hand. ‘That country’, is often used to describe the place where some spent eighteen or thirty of their lives as they tried to find their feet. So, in a sense, Kemi is simply doing what some full-blooded Nigerians do in reaction to the anomie which currently rules the land. Kemi stands out because of her delicate and prominent position in the world. We all took offence when Bully Donald Trump referred to ours as ‘shithole countries! At that level, who said what becomes very important, that is, the message is given prominence because of the stature and calibre of the messenger.

            The proverb, according to Wikipedia, is ‘often used to convey that someone who is not respectful or grateful to their roots or heritage will eventually be rejected or ostracised by their community! The left hand, we are told, is for personal hygiene. We don’t use it to give or receive gifts; we don’t use it to serve drinks or for traditionally important functions.

             In the African context, a bastard child is not one who was born out of wedlock or whose father is not known to the family. Bastard child represents a person who is disconnected from their family. Pointing to the family house with the left hand is indicative of disrespect.

            These thoughts flooded my mind when I read recently elected leader of the Conservative Party in the UK, Kemi Badenoch, gave some hard and bad knocks to Nigeria, the Nigeria Police, and governance in her Nigeria, her ancestral home. To be sure, nobody who has encountered some men of the Nigeria Police in action can fault Kemi. Her chemistry of being brutally frank is what has taken Kemi to the heights in Conservative Party politics. Whether she can indeed lead the Party to victory in an election is a different kettle of fish. As the potential leader of the British government, all cards will count when push gets to shove. Which is why Kemi should remember that no well-trained child points to the family house with the left hand.

            Nigeria is in process. It is a building site. And we started this project of disparate and different cultures fused together when the British pounced on our ancestors to create Nigeria. We look back to the years when a British monarch, King Henry VIII (1491 to 1547), who ate two of his six wives for breakfast and dinner. Wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard were executed by beheading. Jane Seymour died under mysterious circumstances. Perhaps if Diana had emerged in the 15th century as wife to a British monarch, the reigning king would have sent her to the guillotine instead of the tunnel in Paris! Some British monarchs actively participated, supported, and profited from the transatlantic slave trade. British monarchs oversaw the colonisation of indigenous lands in Africa, North America, and Australia sometimes through genocide! No where in Africa, our dear left-handed and grandly insolent Kemi, would a Prime Minister allow his wife to remain in an adulterous relationship for decades as Harold Macmillan did with wife Lady Dorothy Macmillan did with the bisexual Bob Boothby in the 20th Britain!

            We may need to remind Kemi that racism still dominated policing in Britain as it does in much of the Western world. Yet, we have not painted the entire police system as being racist. Indeed, Kemi, without officialdom around her can still be profiled by a police officer if she were found driving alone in some areas of London! Her skin colour, is not typically British, I dare say. Yet, we have not said that Britain is racist. The ‘how dark’ racist discussions which precipitated Harry and Meghan fleeing the British monarchy is still very fresh and raw in our consciousness; yet, Nigeria’s Vice President has not called the British monarchy a racist institution.

            Time will fail me to discuss the Damilola Taylor case in year 2000 when the Metropolitan Police handling of Taylor’s murder was seen as slow and inadequate due to racial bias. By the way, Damilola was both British and Yoruba like our illustrious and petulant Kemi who believes in giving hard knocks! What about the Stephen Lawrence 1993 murder case which the Metropolitan Police badly handled owing to racial bias? In 1999, Roger Sylvester, a Black man, died in police custody and an inquest showed that the police used excessive force. In 2009, newspaper vendor Ian Tom died after being struck by a police officer during the G20 protests in London. The 1999 Macpherson Report, which investigated the Stephen Lawrence case, concluded that ‘the Metropolitan Police as institutionally racist! As late as 2017, the Lammy Review which was led David Lammy (MP) concluded that “black and minority ethnic individuals were more likely to be stopped and searched, arrested, and imprisoned than their white counterparts! Need I say more?

So, our dear daughter and bright star Kemi in the British firmament, we shall not point to you with our left hand, because in spite of you, you are our daughter. We can only say that the Nigeria Police is in good company of the Empire of the Police system which was created in 1820 by your progenitors from the other side! Colonial vestiges are not easy to shake off!

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Afe Babalola And Dele Farotimi: On Justice, A Just Society And The Nigerian State

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Prof. Tunji Olaopa

By Tunji Olaopa

The feud between elder statesman, Chief Afe Babalola and civil rights activist, Mr. Dele Farotimi, is perhaps the most significant discourse that postcolonial Nigerian state has thrown up for the moment, one in a class of those grand defining disputations that surely will gather dust which will take some time to abate. And it is one case that is fraught with all sorts of legal, jurisprudential, moral and political traps and complexities that speak to more than the trivial interventions—leveraged around the David and Goliath motif—that are attending the matter. Those who have been able to go beyond the surface of the case will agree that it goes to the very foundation and founding of the Nigerian society, and the fundamental objective of crafting a good and just society for Nigerians. That the issue revolves around the dispensation of justice immediately alerts us to the deep insinuation about the idea of social justice itself, and how the conception of fairness could be written into the very fabric of the Nigerian society. And yet, the complexity of the case is what makes it a case that is too critical for a public servant like me to dabble in.

(Un)fortunately, my intellectual maturation, my political science education and my professional endeavor in institutional reform advocacy have prepared me to intervene in this critical matter. I have always been involved with Nigeria, and with reflective thoughts about how to reconstitute her greatness. Three learning encounters with three world-historic icons configured my passion for wanting to see that Nigeria becomes a state we all can be proud of. The first came from my reading of Plato’s Republic. There is a reason that the entire treatise commenced with the question, what is justice? Justice was a fundamental issue in the decline of the ancient Athenian democracy that allowed Socrates to be judicially murdered. The second learning derived from Wole Soyinka’s dense prison memoir, The Man Died. And like most who have read it, Soyinka was troubled by the idea of justice: “For me, justice is the first condition of humanity.” By the time I would be coming to Thomas More’s Utopia, I was already apprised of the connections between my political science education, my professional endeavor as a public servant, and the key elements of institutional reform as a cogent framework for transforming Nigeria.

From Plato to Soyinka, we have a trajectory of political reflection that takes justice seriously as the basis for organizing a just society. This is part of the intellectual frameworks for my undergraduate and graduate studies at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan. In one of those explosive seminar classes that played some fundamental role in my intellectual maturation in the graduate school, I had proposed an argument through a seminar paper titled: “Is a revolution an option to fix Nigeria?” The topic was meant to titillate the collective yearning for revolution that would serve as the ultimate mechanism for social change that would flush off all traces of corruption and degeneration in postcolonial Nigeria. Revolutions seem to possess some allure for the masses because they constitute a framework of justice that the constitutional justice mechanism might not be able to handle.

However, as Wole Soyinka, Thomas More, Martin Luther and even Galileo Galilei would realize, the need for radicalism is balanced by the force of establishment orthodoxy. The Nigerian predicament has, as a fundamental foundation, a lot to do with the connection between governance failure and injustice in terms of the persistent and protracted class strife between the haves and the have-nots, between the rich and the poor, indeed, in the final analysis between the government and the governed. And in the case between Afe Babalola and Dele Farotimi, the issues boil down to the administration of justice and the entire edifices and institutions of social justice and the rule of law in Nigeria. And so, in outlining the key issues involved in the matter, we must be careful enough to read between the lines and the noises of analysts who are eager to queue behind their favored protagonists.

First things first. Let us remove the surface debris. Indeed, and in this case, the debris points us in the direction to look for the rot within the matter. First, there is the matter of civil defamation and its legal ramifications. And second, there is the issue of the legal and moral protocols involved in dealing with the pursuit of redress by someone who knows and understands the law. Barrister Farotimi has a legal right to seek redress in court. Chief Babalola has a legal right to defend his reputation in court. In raising the specter of legal prosecution against defamation, I see Chief Babalola as being at the forefront of gatekeeping the legal establishment in terms of what is and is not permissible or possible under the law and its conservative tenets. If you are hurt or an injustice has been done to your person, then the best place to seek redress is not the court of public opinion but the constitutional legal establishment.

Unfortunately for him, Barrister Farotimi’s book, Nigeria and Its Criminal Justice System, impugns the entire legal and judicial establishment up to its apex institution, the Nigerian Supreme Court. However, does radicalism preclude moral decency? A book could be written and allegations made without the complement of atrocious language. Or maybe the rot in the judicial system, and the need for a revolution preclude any niceties, especially with those who are allegedly at the forefront of perpetuating and protecting the rot. But then, how to prove what we all consider to be the norm in terms of legal prosecution of judicial corruption remains a hanging question.

No matter how we look at what we are calling the surface debris, we are redirected deeper and deeper into what lies beneath the surface. The ultimate question is that between Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi, what we are asked to contend with is the state of the Nigerian judiciary and the corrupt impediment of social justice, especially for an average Nigerian. What Barrister Dele Farotimi said about the Nigerian judicial system is not new. We are all familiar with the rot within the system. Indeed, this is not the first time an alarm would be raised about what we are all familiar with. Indeed, as far back as 1999, The News magazine carried a most unsalutary headline, “Crooks on the Bench: An Expose on the Rot in the Judiciary.” The magazine headlined the names of 47 judges indicted for judicial corruption. What is new is that Dele Farotimi dared to go so far as to mention specific names, and to confront the big players in the legal establishment. And he did this in a most scurrilous manner targeted at getting maximum traction and attention. It is as if Mr Farotimi, through the public sphere, is throwing the gauntlet to every Nigerian and challenging us on our collective responsibility to clean the Augean stable.

If Barrister Farotimi cannot prove his allegations in court, it would not mean that his charges are false. It might only imply that the system which is supposed to guarantee justice has become too corruptly dense to achieve its mandate. But there is also the chance that since the entire judicial system cannot be tarred so broadly with the same brush, Farotimi’s allegation might receive a dispassionate hearing that might deliver justice as we expect it. This might be a tall expectation. Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament has inevitable consequences on the capacity of the judicial system to facilitate the delivery of justice. And this failure also complicates the capacity of the Nigerian state to deliver on its social contract to Nigerians. This is what makes the Babalola-Farotimi case too complex to be decided either in the constitutional court or the court of public opinion. The burdens of postcolonial disruptions that the Nigerian judiciary system carries are enormous: judicial corruption, miscarriage of judgments, executive lawlessness, delayed trial due to insufficient infrastructure, financial dependence on the executive arm of government.

To outline the fundamental challenges of the judicial system in Nigeria this way is not to give in to cynicism and a deterministic mindset that we might be caught in a vice that is inescapable. It is simply to say that the ongoing uproar between the two dramatis personae demonstrates that the court has been given a chance to reflect on the role that (in)justice plays in the fundamental understanding of the Nigerian postcolonial predicament and the capacity of a democratic system to correct itself. When Chief Afe Babalola and Barrister Dele Farotimi are given their day in court, we will have no choice but to trust that same judicial system to deliver unbiased judgment no matter our misgivings about how objective and untainted that judgment could be. This is just a way of saying that though our judicial system is not perfect; it is still the best that we have.

The last words on this reflection on the connection between the ongoing feud between Babalola and Farotimi and Nigeria’s postcolonial predicament must be given to Haile Sellasie, former emperor of Ethiopia: “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”

Olaopa is the Chairman, Federal Civil Service Commission,Abuja, and Professor of Public Administration.
tolaopa2003@gmail.com

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Opinion

Fear Of Witchcraft And Politics In Zambia

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Witch Burning, Impunity And Abuses Linked to Witchcraft Beliefs In Benue State
Dr Leo Igwe

By Leo Igwe

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) is concerned over the reported arrest of two men accused of being ‘witchdoctors’ in Zambia. The arrest underscores the potency of witchcraft fears and the connection between occult anxieties and the country’s politics. These individuals were accused of trying to bewitch the Zambian president, Hakainde Hichilema. The police claimed that they had charms. They planned to use the charms to harm the president. The report says the two persons have been charged under Zambia’s Witchcraft Act. The Act criminalizes “possession of charms”, “professing knowledge of witchcraft”, and “cruelty to wild animals”. The police found the two with assorted charms, including a live chameleon.

This development is utterly embarrassing and shows that the Zambian government is slowly losing its focus and bearing.The country has many socio-economic challenges. Suspicion of bewitchment or possession of charms should be the least of its worries at this time. There should be no place for witchcraft and possession of charms in modern politics because there is no evidence for these beliefs and practices. Zambian authorities should not weaponize the Witchcraft Act or use it to justify this incident. Zambian law does not recognize witchcraft. Zambia’s Witchcraft Act criminalizes naming or imputing witchcraft. It prohibits accusing or threatening to accuse any person of being a witch or a wizard. In this case, it is the police who are breaking the law.

Otherwise, how did they know the two individuals were ‘witchdoctors’? Did these persons identify as witch doctors? If not, the police are liable because they named and imputed witchcraft and have to prove that these individuals have witch-doctoring powers. The police claimed to have charged these individuals for possessing “assorted charms”, including a chameleon. Really?

The police in Zambia have questions to answer: What are charms? How did they know that what was in their possession were charms, not pets? Is a chameleon a form of charm? What makes possession of a chameleon possession of a charm? When and how does a chameleon become a charm? The police need to answer these questions and more before one takes them seriously.

Again, did the individuals describe what was in possession as ‘charms’? If they did, does confessing or designating something as a charm make it a charm? And if they did not, the police are liable because they need to prove how those possessions translated into charms.

In addition, the police claimed that the duo wanted to bewitch the president. What does that mean? How did they know? Are the police not contravening a provision under the Witchcraft Act by professing knowledge of witchcraft? Can one harm another person using a chameleon? They claimed that the two persons wanted to use the charms in their possession, including the chameleon to harm the president. How did they know that? What is the evidence for that?

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches calls for an end to this state-sponsored witch hunt. There is no evidence of harm through witchcraft or charms. The Zambian government should desist from witchcraft- related infractions and violations including arbitrary arrest, and detention of innocent citizens. These allegations are baseless and absurd. The arrest was politically motivated. This development demonstrates that Zambian authorities are out of sync with their duty and obligation to uphold the rule of law and protect accused persons.

Zambian authorities need to act in compliance with the 2021 UN resolution, which urged states to take measures to combat abuses linked to witchcraft beliefs and ritual attacks. End witchcraft allegations in Zambia. End witch hunts in Africa now!

Dr Igwe directs the Advocacy for Alleged Witches.

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