Enugu Smart School debate and Mbah’s relentless vision

By DAN NWOMEH

I person taken clip to peruse the avalanche of comments that person trailed the Enugu Government and Sujimoto saga. They scope from those who genuinely mean well, to those who deliberation they person yet recovered the brushed underbelly of Governor Peter Mbah’s medication to viciously attack, sometimes for unrelated grudges, to the habitual armchair critics who neither recognize nor attraction to recognize the conception of the Smart Green School, nor adjacent what it adjacent looks like. I noticed immoderate backstage schoolhouse entrepreneurs and their beneficiaries who are threatened by the precise thought of tuition-free, free-uniforms, free-learning-materials, and free-meals-per-day Smart Schools. There are besides those who persist successful asking wherefore the authorities should conception caller schools alternatively than renovate the existing dilapidated ones, astir of them relics of the assemblage era, eyesores that basal shamefully beside magnificent churches successful galore of our villages. 

But fto america intermission and ask: Who among these outspoken critics would renovate a crumbling household location near by their gramps erstwhile they person the resources and  tendency to physique a caller location designed for modern living? Who among them would spot up cracked walls, regenerate leaking roofs and breached windows, alternatively of constructing a marque caller location with electricity, ensuite rooms, screeded walls and tiled floors, POP ceilings, conduit wiring and plumbing, star lights, net connectivity, astute information doors, and CCTV camera surveillance? Who does that? If nary 1 successful their close senses does that for their family, wherefore bash we privation specified attraction visited connected our children, particularly those who cannot spend costly backstage schools? Why should we condemn them to learning successful depressing classrooms that beryllium to the past, portion their property mates elsewhere bask environments tailored for today’s realities and tomorrow’s opportunities? And would those who advocator for renovation unsocial nonstop their ain children to those schools? If not, what does that accidental of their privation for different people’s children, truthful agelong arsenic cipher asks them to wage taxes? 

The Smart Schools inaugural is not astir erecting conscionable different acceptable of classrooms; it is astir redefining the precise thought of acquisition successful Enugu State. The ceramic and mortar, 260 expansive pentagon-shaped buildings crossed each wards, are lone the beginning. Within those walls prevarication the foundations of an wholly caller exemplary of learning, a implicit displacement from rote memorisation to experiential, hands-on education. A abstraction wherever tech and innovation are embedded into regular learning – coding and robotics, integer labs and libraries, innovation hubs, and multimedia studios. These schools are designed to hole our children not lone to walk exams, but to make tools, lick problems, and vie with their peers crossed the world. The children of Enugu merit better. For excessively agelong they person been cheated, their contiguous and time denied and mortgaged, forced to endure outdated structures and outmoded methods, portion their counterparts successful organised societies moved ahead. 

Governor Mbah has near nary 1 successful uncertainty arsenic to the extent of his commitment. He has said repeatedly that his imagination is for his grandchildren, if not his children, to beryllium educated successful the Smart Schools close present successful Enugu. He is not allocating 33% of the authorities fund to education, back-to-back successful 2 years, if helium did not see this the astir consequential paradigm displacement successful the beingness of our state. Investment and spending are ever a connection of priority, and successful Mbah’s case, helium is virtually putting our wealth wherever our mouths are. 

It is truthful astonishing that immoderate would question the integrity of the governor, who has shown uncommon transparency successful this full matter. When questions arose implicit Sujimoto, owned by Olasijibomi Ogundele, it was the politician himself who invited the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, opened the books, and placed each transaction connected the array for scrutiny. Who does that if helium has thing to hide? Which person engaged successful shady deals has truthful openly embraced accountability, welcoming investigators to way the fiscal trails? If anything, this is the clearest motion that the politician has thing to conceal, lone a determination to present a bold imaginativeness for our children. 

Some person adjacent raised the disappointing statement of wherefore 22 Smart Schools were awarded to a Yoruba contractor successful the archetypal place. But this is petty tribalism ...