Building New Universities: Not A Project To Be Applauded…

By Dr Jarlath Uche Opara

I once listened to a video clip where a guest speaker in a convocation ceremony of a University bemoaned the negative impact of education on our systems.

Graphically, he painted a mosaic picture in the fertile minds of his audience of how education has become a vehicle for the impartation of criminality, corruption and inappropriate behaviour in the minds of people.

Rhetorically, he asked those responsible for the decay in our country? Those stealing from the coffers? Those making the system very ungovernable and productively sterile? Those siphoning funds meant for infrastructural development into their private pockets? Of course they are all products of our universities.

Should we continue to graduate criminals? Thieves?etc from our universities, since those already graduated have become our albatrose? It was rhetorical, but I got his point.

He wasn’t against university education, but I got his points. He wasn’t saying all graduate are theives, but I got his point.

His point lies within the misunderstanding and misuse of what university is and should be, de jure.
However, when a product is misunderstood, misuse becomes inevitable.

Maybe the reason many youths think education is a scam. Education is not a scam. What is a scam is a mis-education of the M.I.N.D ( Making Informed Natural Decisions).

It is not only a scam but a poisonous substance corroding the M.I.N.D ( Making Informed Natural Decisions) and giving it a deformity that makes it difficult for one to articulate creatively for a benign result.

Education is about the beingness of a person. It is not all about the H.E. A.D( Having Every Answers Delivered,) More of the M.I.N. D( Making Informed Natural Decisions) It is about morals,values, practical knowledge of soco- religious etc dimensions of a person.

It is about the development of ones mental, emotional, spiritual and physical needs and skills. It is about the regeneration of all the spheres of human nature.

It is not limited to head knowledge alone. Head knowledge in a mind that is imbalance and the soul that is degenerated, makes one a weapon of corruption and destruction, the reality of many products of the Universities.

Our problem isn’t the proliferation of universities. Our problem is the lack of the ability to understand what u.n.i.v.e.r.s.i.t.y is de jure and what it sets out to do.

U.N.I.V.E.R.S.I.T.Y means ( Understanding New Ideas, Vision, Experience, Realities, Success, Innovation, Transformatively Yielding. )

Imagine if our universities are churning out graduates that understand new ideas, vision, experimenting realities by achieving success, innovation while being yielding to transformation. Our country would be a better place. Place filled with great heads, transforming minds and regenerating spirit. An opposite of what we experience today, of course the reason that guest Speaker thought university education is the bane of our societal decay.

Building more universities now shouldn’t be a project to be applauded. Enough of universities in our clime .

Enough to swallow our increasingly growing population, seeking for advanced knowledge. What we need is to be deliberate in making our universities a place for both the training and transformation of the heads and minds.

This piece is in reaction to a post on a new university “Maria Assumpta” on one of the platforms I belong to. I guess it is a project of one of the Catholic Dioceses somewhere. It stung my sensitivity when someone wanted to use building of university as a measurement tool to assess the success or otherwise of Bishops. Was he kidding me!

University is good, building new ones shouldn’t be a priority, expecially when it is not a unique one, off the conventional universities that flood our space.

Much more abound which the church can do to impact and alleviate the pains of her members. What about building farms across Denearies,? Empowering the less privileged, creating job opportunities and at the same time putting food on the table.

Jesus didn’t build infrastructures, he built system and souls. He didn’t build structures, he feed and healed them.

He was more concerned about their well being than leaving behind infrastructural monuments.

It is about time for our religious leaders to began to emulate the evangelical, humanitarian and compassionate disposition of Christ, healing them of their infirmities, feeding them and plucking them from the claws of demonic operations.

All these show of infrastructural display in the state of the art church auditorium, Event centers, schools, etc without an organised, systematic outreach for souls through the channels of both spiritual and corporate works of mercy should be reconsidered.

Considering the noise of doctrinal and biblical errors awashed on social media, looking at the hard pressing and suffocating economic situation, can the church be intentional, systematic and methodic in meeting the spiritual and stomach needs of her members?

Until this is adequately addressed, building of high class university which at the end would be out of the reach of the poor masses whose kobo kobo formed part of the funds wouldn’t avail much.

Dr.Jarlath Uche Opara Jarlathuche@gmail.com