07/05/2024
The Indifference of Our Chiefs and Religious Clerics That is Putting Education in Bole to its Knees.
Education involves developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life. Our chiefs, clergymen, and politicians have failed us woefully regarding education in Bole and its surroundings.
The repercussions of this apathy on our leaders' behalf have been the fall in the educational standard of the Bole traditional area, which has been dwindling and is set to approach its lowest trough. Everyone is to blame in part for this but the major culprits responsible are our leaders.
A community as large as Bole has been without a library for years, and it seems no one is bothered by this shameful fact.
I remember when the Christian council in the community met with the MP about 3 years ago, where they were tasked to consult with the DCE to secure a land on which he (MP) would develop a library on it.
There’s been no progress in that direction, simply because these Christian clerics do not care and also because whatever was said at the gathering was of no concern to them as the bags of rice, gallons of oil, and cloths they received.
At least they pretended to act, the same cannot be said for our Islamic clergy.
Pupils are taught ICT in theory at this crucial hour when digitalization and IT are the new norm. Meanwhile, desktop computers, state-of-the-art IT facilities are rotting away to the detriment of our younger generations.
How will they become relevant tomorrow and be able to compete with their peers from elsewhere?
Whose fault will it be if tomorrow the names of others are mentioned and ours are not?
Private schools are thriving and performing while government schools like the 31st daycare, Methodist nursery (Akonkon), and government primary schools are dying out. Isn’t it ironic that the schools dying out have teachers from some of the best colleges of education and universities, whereas the others mostly have SHS leavers as teachers?
To any individual, this piece of information is very unpleasant to hear, but I often wonder if the same can be said of our leaders.
Our chiefs are very interested in gathering wealth. For the love of money and cows, they speak no truth and they hear it not.
The Bolewura is able to consolidate cows from his sub-chiefs for whatever purposes best known to him but he cannot instruct the same chiefs to support pupils in light of the failed school feeding program.
Pupils are hungry and hence they are leaving school; a clear example will be found in Doli, where the whole pupil populace is at most 50. There are instances of food shortage in our senior high schools but never have I heard of an intervention to that effect from our chiefs. They do not care, and that is killing our future. Our human resources are going to waste.
We have schools that our younger siblings and our children do not want to attend because these schools are not mentioned in the same sentence with category A and B schools. On whose account are these distasteful realities?! Those A-list schools are better for a reason, why can’t we replicate their efforts and results? Those are questions we should be asking ourselves and bowing our heads in shame to the answers we come up with.
The idea here isn’t that it is incumbent on leadership to put up tangible developments or to directly get involved in getting things done the right way. There are authorities and bureaucracies in charge, but it is obvious what politicians and bureaucrats will do if it were left on to them.
We need our chiefs and religious leaders to amplify our plights; they should be our mouthpiece and put our interests first and foremost. A lot is wrong, but until we get them involved or gain interventions from them, things will continue to get worse.
