By Owei Lakemfa
I DID not expect my column ‘When uneducated minds change the education system’ to attract so much reaction.
A parent said that in my review of the new education curriculum imposed in September 2025, I did not draw sufficient attention to some facts. The most fundamental, she said, is that government imposed new trade subjects on the approximately 1.8 million SSS3 students taking their final examinations in the 2025/2026 session without their having a foundation or being prepared for the examinations.
The Tinubu NYSC ‘reforms’ are a joke to divert attention from serious national issues and challenges. My primary point on this is that if reforms are to be carried out in an institution as important as the NYSC, in which over 400,000 graduates from our tertiary institutions participate annually, at least students, their parents and the general public served by the corpers should be consulted.
She complained that these subjects were imposed with immediate effect without teachers trained to teach them. These include Solar Photovoltaic Installation & Maintenance and Computer Hardware and GSM Repairs. She said there were no trained teachers, centres or workshops provided for new subjects like Fashion Design & Garment Making nor demonstration farms for Livestock Farming or Horticulture & Crop Production. The parent complained that the government, on a brain wave, just decided to use the hapless students as guinea pigs.
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A teacher who called complained that the curriculum in the Colleges of Education now excludes subjects like handwriting, which activate critical brain activities like memory, reading and language development. He posited that the use of tablets does not help kindergartens to link letters of names nor how letters look and sound.
The most emotional response I got was from a civil servant; that tribe of the most underpaid, undervalued and unappreciated professionals in the country. In appreciation, he simply asked me to send my account number.
The lack of citizen consultation in governance, especially by the Tinubu administration, again reared its head last week when it announced reforms in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). I examined the seven areas of the operation and concluded it is a cosmetic surgery.
These include a technology-driven call-up process. In this age of technology, how can this be a reform? The second is: “sensitive deployment to better protect corps members.” This, in plain English, means not deploying corpers to areas witnessing insecurity such as terrorism and banditry. Third is doubling the three-week orientation programme. How is this fundamental? The administration claims this is for the entrepreneurship and digital skills of the corpers. But this has been on before the Tinubu administration. The fourth ‘reform’ is: “Skills-based primary assignments aligned with academic background and career pathways.” This is obviously a joke as lots of corpers are rejected by employers in places they are posted for their primary assignments. So, the challenge is for corpers to get attached anywhere.
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The fifth is that the Director General of the NYSC will no longer be a serving army officer, but a civilian. How is this fundamental to the scheme?
The sixth is: “Improved camp standards through a national grading and certification system.” How does improved camp standards constitute a reform?
The seventh ‘reform’ is that the Passing Out Parade at the end of the service year would now be called a graduation, very much like a convocation. The second leg of the seventh “reform” is redesigning the NYSC uniform to reflect “professionalism and national pride.” What does it mean? Don’t worry yourself; the government is already denying the fabric of the new uniform it announced. Minister of Youth Development, Ayodele Olawande, said the Adire and Ankara fabrics he announced are mere proposals. Indeed, it will be a tough choice: will the new NYSC fabric be the Igbo Akwete or Isi-Agu, the Anioma Akwa Ocha, the Tiv A’nger, the Yoruba Aso Oke, the Hausa and Fulani Mudukare, or a combination of all?
By the way, where is the report of the N800 billion alleged contributions by APC governors from their states’ Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) revenues? Lack of proper accounting of this money was said to have led to the attempted coup by the Enugu, Bayelsa and Ogun State governors to unseat Hope Uzodinma as the chair of the APC Governors Forum.
The Tinubu NYSC ‘reforms’ are a joke to divert attention from serious national issues and challenges. My primary point on this is that if reforms are to be carried out in an institution as important as the NYSC, in which over 400,000 graduates from our tertiary institutions participate annually, at least students, their parents and the general public served by the corpers should be consulted.
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No administration is the depository of all knowledge, and nobody or government, no matter how well intentioned, can claim absolute knowledge. This, in Nigeria, is the incurable sickness of military misrule which afflicted us for a cumulative 29-year period. Those were the years of the locusts when the military carried out horrendous seasonal mass executions in the name of checking coups.
Unfortunately, the military mentality is a major affliction of the Tinubu administration. On May 29, 2023, in his first few minutes in office, President Bola Tinubu announced, like a successful coup plotter, that “subsidy is gone.” This was in reference to fuel subsidy in the country. That singular pronouncement, without consulting the Nigerian people, their professional or mass organisations, is what still haunts the people and has been the most singular cause of deepening poverty, hunger and starvation in the land.
President Tinubu had, in justifying that brainwave, promised: “We shall, instead, re-channel the funds into better investment in public infrastructure, education, health care and jobs that will materially improve the lives of millions.” But over three years later, rather than improve, the lives of Nigerians have worsened with nothing concrete to show for the saved subsidy funds.
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The government has not been accountable. It has given no verifiable reports even on an issue as basic as how much savings have been made. In the first one month, Tinubu had announced that N500 billion was saved. Since then, the cost of fuel had gone up from about N900 to over N1,300 per litre. Going by the figure the president gave for June 2023, at least N18 trillion should have been saved. Where is the money? What concrete projects have been executed as electricity has not improved, there is no public transport system and no mass hospitals built. Rather, the administration has added over N65.9 trillion to the public debt, pushing it to N159.28 trillion or $110.97 billion as at December 2025. The only verifiable road improvement is in Abuja. The much-talked-about Coastal Road is an unfolding scandal.
Some have argued that a lot of the subsidy savings went to state governors. That may be true, but many of them are not known to be friendly with honesty. So, packing more funds for them amounts to bribery.
By the way, where is the report of the N800 billion alleged contributions by APC governors from their states’ Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC) revenues? Lack of proper accounting of this money was said to have led to the attempted coup by the Enugu, Bayelsa and Ogun State governors to unseat Hope Uzodinma as the chair of the APC Governors Forum.
In any case, why is the Federal Government, which swallows the lion’s share, not accountable?
We need to demilitarize and demythologize government. There should be no governance without consultation.
