By Umar Egbunu Muhammed, Lafia
The National Orientation Agency (NOA), has blamed get-rich-quick mandness of youth who are on a neck breaking competition to get rich without legitimate means of livelihood to the high rate of banditry, kidnapping, armed robbery and others criminal activities across the nation.
The Director of the National Orientation Agency NOA, Mr. Augustine Akwe-doma made the statement while speaking at the graduation and prize giving day of You-Nik Academy Lafia, the Nasarawa State capital.
He explained that young people are dropping out of schools to pursue quick and illegitimate wealth which he said is responsible to the high rate of out of school children, a situation he further added that spell doom for the country and the State.
The NOA boss, who was represented by the deputy director Civil Values and Democracy Education, Mr Yamusa Luka, explained that the dignity of labour which was once a societal value held in high esteem in the past is fast eroding with the drive to get rich quick though any means including taking the life of others.
His words, “Get-rich-quick syndrome is the way people want to get rich or wealthy, without hard work or legitimate source of income, what It leads to is social vices like armed robbery banditry, kidnapping, Internet scams (yahoo yahoo) ritual killing so on and so forth.”
He continued: “You will notice that today, in Lafia in particular, with this kind of get rich quick mentality, our young generation don’t want to learn,everybody want to get rich quick now now, I have said this in many fora that the young people who are in for quick wealth are also quick to die.”
“And that’s why you see, they are our children involved in accidents everywhere in the town. Even today, as I was coming, here, there was an accident involving all these boys , you see it everywhere,” he concluded.
Mr. Luka, however, blamed parents for encouraging their children to indulge in the quest to get rich quick by comparing them with others, expecting that their children go into crime to buy them cars, build houses so as to compete with their peers.
“Without any fear of contradiction parents are also encouraging this, you will see parent telling their children that they want them to build or buy houses, cars for them, they even assist in buying phones and laptops computers for them to go and learn yahoo yahoo,”
While urging the youths especially school leavers that they should shun yahoo yahoo, cultism, kidnapping, armed robbery and other social vices, he called on them to indulge in the habits such as hard work, entrepreneurship and other legitimate means of livelihood that will make them role models.
He then applauded the management of the You-Nik group of schools for inculcating the NOA values such as honesty, hard work, value orientation, shunning examination malpractices among others in training their pupils and students, tasking other schools be it government or private to follow the full steps of You-Nik model.
Earlier, the permanent secretary in the Nasarawa State State ministry of information culture and tourism, Hajiya Hadiza Dahiru , explained that the State government under the administration of government Abdullahi Sule has given priority to education in all ramifications, sitting the recent recruitment of teachers which was strictly based on merit.
She, therefore, reiterated the need for regular monitoring of public schools and teachers by the ministry of education to put them on toe for effective service delivery, as some teachers are found to be engaging in truancy, praising SUBEB for stepping up the monitoring in primary schools which has yielded results .
“Let’s come back to the issue monitoring, there should be strict supervision of all the public schools, because sometimes we find out that the teachers are sitting under the trees doing nothing, if they know that they are monitored, at least they will sit up to do their task,” she stated.
The permanent secretary urged the State government to institute free education for the girl child as a means of encouraging girls enrollment and curtail the issues of out of school among them, nothing that educated girl today will be an educated mother tomorrow.
On her part, the proprietress of You-Nik Academy, Lafia Nasarawa State, Mrs. Ima- Abasi Brown, stated that the school which has been in existence for sixteen years, is driven by the vision to raise children who are confident, disciplined, innovative, compassionate, and equipped to succeed anywhere in the world.
She said that the school has placed about fifty pupils and students on full scholarship based on different reasons, some are orphans, exceptional academic performances, one of them is Dominion Lazarus who have been on scholarship for about ten years, emerged tops in the recent Unified Tertiary Matriculation Board Examination, with a score of three hundred and twenty five.
“Our students Zainap Idris emerged the overall best in the country in the recent essay writing competition by system spec, she was awarded a million Naira and many other gifts and the school emerged as a winning school and we were given ten laptops right over there and we are grateful to God,” she added.
According to her, You-Nik Academy recently was honoured by the Centre for Ethics and Self-Value Orientation (CESVO), for ethical leadership and quality educational service delivery, with the school ranked first among the leading private schools in Nasarawa State.
Speaking on modern educational trends she said, “Artificial Intelligence is changing the way the world works, learns, creates, and solves problems. Rather than waiting for our children to grow older before introducing them to these technologies, You-Nik Academy has decided to make Artificial Intelligence a curriculum subject—not just an after-school club” she revealed.
In an interview with the valedictorian who emerged tops in the last UTME with a score of three hundred and twenty five, Dominion Lazarus, encouraged students to take their academic pursuit very serious, added that even failure should be seen as a stepping stone.
“If we see failure as nothing, we see it as a way to learn and become better, then the sky is no longer a limit, the sky is just a starting point. So we should always see failure as a drive for more, a reason for hunger for more,” he said .
He, however, admonished the government to be more innovative with education curriculum to ensure that it puts food on the table of Nigerians and not the old system where graduates lacks practical skills for livelihood.
