Education: A Tool for Societal (Omuma) Development.

Being a Public Lecture Delivered by Nweke, Emmanuel Onyekachi on the Occasion of End of Year Praise Festivity by Omuma Youths for Christ,  held on 29th December, 2020 in the Church Auditorium of St. Luke’s Anglican Church, Eberi, Headquarters of Omuma, LGA, Rivers State.

Protocol

Introduction

Education takes place when we learn.  Education is a means of livelihood. It is a phenomenon of change and moderation.  Education has been severally defined by various scholars.  However, this paper chooses to define education as the transmission of culture from one generation to another. Smith (2006) defined culture as a ripened, cultivated state, a state of good taste.  In other words, a cultured person is a cultivated person, a ripe fellow, one who is mannered.  

Following, therefore, a cultured person is an educated person.  A society is a group of communities who live together and interact with one another.  Development of a society is the advancement of its generally agreed course.  The gradual and consistent attainment of a society goals and aspiration is its development (Oyet, 2015).   Education is the connecting router between society and its development.  

Education provides the necessary ingredients to better the lots of the members of a society.  This paper has outlined: pre-colonial education in Omuma society, Advent of schools in Omuma, contemporary education in Omuma, education as a development tool in Omuma, and suggestions, as its pivotal guide.

Pre-Colonial Education in Omuma (Society) 

Omuma (meaning across the water), had a very peculiar pre-colonial educational development; though not completely different from other adjoined boundaries.  

The primary education during this era was predominantly moral education.  The children from age 5-11 were expected to stay at home and watch their parents perform parental house chores.  The female were being educated by their mothers on how to sit as a woman, how to interact with the opposite sex, what constitutes taboos and norms, manners in the public, respect for others and elders, how to cook.  Whereas, the male folks, learnt proverbs from their fathers, how to protect the family, methods of parting meat/fish amongst households, participate in moon light tales, (the females had stipulated time to go to bed while the tales continued with the boys).

Secondary education in pre-colonial Omuma society had to do with farming, fishing, wrestling, music, hunting, depending on the trade of the father or mother.  The children were educated on how to fish, farm, hunt or in sports, like wrestling or in music (egwu adima) or dance like (nwa-okuruobo).  Remember we alluded to education, as a means of livelihood.  

The strong men who could kill cruel animals, like lions, tigers, pythons and the like, were isolated as soldiers and commanders of war to defend the people against external aggression or invasion.  They were regarded as ‘nde dimkpa’.  

The tertiary education has to do with age. A state of maturity, where the young men were allowed to own fish ponds, farmlands, etc.  It was a handiwork stage, a taste of manhood and womanhood.  It was the stage of fetching for oneself under the caring eyes of the living parents or the oldest, living male in the family.  

Our pre-colonial education was largely moral education, agro-sports/music based entrepreneurial education.  The modern trend has seen our people make in-roads into cognitive enrichment bordering on contemporaneous science, engineering, medicine, social sciences, education, and management sciences. 

Advent of Schools in Omuma  

Omuma citizens had proximity constraint accessing education during the colonial era, post independence and after the civil war of 1967 to 1970.  Our people trekked from our towns to Aba, Ogwe, Obehie, in present day Abia State for primary and secondary education.  Reprise came in 1978 with the establishment of Government Secondary School Eberi.  As a people concerned about development and knowledge, the great people of Amaji came together to establish Community Secondary School Amaji in 1980.  The great people of Umuogba followed suit in 1982, to establish Community Secondary School Umuogba.  Not deterred, Umuajuloke, established Community Secondary Umuajuloke in 1999; in a bid to curb proximity hiccups associated with fetching quality education from a far.  

Omuma, at the moment has four senior secondary schools, two junior secondary schools and twenty three (23) primary schools. 

At this juncture, I will like to appeal to our amiable Governor of Rivers State, Chief, Barrister, Ezebunwo Nyesom Wike (CON/POS, Africa), dean of projects, Africa, to as a matter of the good milk flowing in him, consider locating the promised moving of a faculty in the prestigious Rivers State University to Etche and Ahoada, to a section of Govt Secondary School, Eberi.  This will bridge up proximity issues arising from distant travel by our Omuma/Etche kiths and kins for quality education.  It will also reduce cost for government, arising from land compensation, initial take-off facilities and manpower.  

Contemporary Education Status in Omuma

Immediately after the pre-colonial era, our people’s education system changed during the reign of the whites.  There were those who became interpreters to the white man, others became court-men.  This led some of our people going to Teachers’ Training Colleges and obtaining basic teaching certificate as it was then.  In sequel, most of our earliest, formally educated persons were teachers.  

However, the status quo has been altered. Omuma today, has other professionals in addition to teachers.  This accounts for the rapid development, we have had since Dec. 1996, that Omuma was created by Late Gen. Sani Abacha.

Since the emergence of our first graduate, Mr. Sunday, Joseph Nwankwo, in 1963, Omuma today boasts of all professionals, except pilots. We have four (5) medical doctors, and four in training.  We have a total of 15 lawyers, including a high court judge, Mr. Emmanuel Ogbuji who recently passed on (May His Soul Rest in Peace). We have a total of 250 teachers, three (3) professors, nine (9) lecturers in various tertiary institutions across the country and beyond. Omuma has two (2) practicing journalists, with 10 in training, eight (8) chartered accountants, with three (3) as fellows.  We have one chartered administrator. There are 25 trained university engineers, 27 trained polytechnic engineers; with five (5) certified by (COREN). There are seven (7) trained professional nurses, with 4 in training in Rivers State School of Nursing, Port Harcourt and University of Nigeria Nsuka (UNN).  We have one (1) forensic expert in biological sciences, twelve (12) Catholic Reverend Fathers with two (2) in training, health technologists numbering 45, other professionals in the count of 51. Omuma in the whole has about 310 graduates and more than 280 in tertiary institutions within and outside Nigeria. (source: village by village inquiry, 2020).

Omuma in the last two years has recorded two first class graduates – one from Nigerian university and another from an European University. We have also recorded seven (7) second upper division degrees and five (5) upper credits in the Polytechnic category.  This calls for eloquent invitation to both local and foreign investors to look toward Omuma; to take advantage of our noble, educated young population, and our numerous, untapped, virgin and latent natural resource to make money and employ our people. 

Education as a Development Tool in Omuma 

We have identified education as a pipe through which development flows.  Our LGA for instance would not have been created, if we didn’t have educated venerates that could approach the presidency on our behalf.  Our uncles who had quality education and have advanced in civil service were appointed at one point or the other to man the council.  Our representatives in the local, state and federal government levels have education status as a prelacy. Education made us to produce premier Deputy Governor (Late Dr. Dominic Ukachukwu Anucha) in Rivers State. 

Most of our people who do one kind of public service or the other, do so as a result of education.  Proper education, abhors quackery.  Quacks are those who attended school without allowing schools pass through them.  Such persons are largely unemployable, and may end up joining political thugery as the last hope of common man.  Education ensures that one is trained to be or seen as responsible member of a society. Immanuel Kant, a German Philosopher, once said, the man who claims to be educated, but lacks morality is a wicked man.  It is therefore, behooving on all our educated sons and daughters in positions of trust to understand that the major focus of their being in power is to develop our people. This paper does not insinuate that our brothers and sisters in power are not doing well, but like in Oliver Twist, we need some more. 

In succor, if we say that we are educated, it should make us think incrementally.  There will always be a bordering question, ‘how do I better my people’.  Special mention of an incremental thinker, an educated Omuma elite, in Diaspora, Mr. George Anele, has not reneged in ensuring that Omuma children have better education.  Probably, he is aware and in addition to his kind person of the study that 70%of violent crimes are committed by illiterates or school dropouts. Education is therefore a liberator.  It is what brings development and sustenance to the people It is what keeps the people glued in peace and development.

CONCLUSIONS

Education is the fulcrum and bedrock of any human and infrastructural development. Any society with minimal education tends to be backward.  It is education that provides the route for a society to be developed and sustain that development. There is therefore, no price big enough to pay for education or knowledge transmission.  Education should be seen as a way of life.  

SUGGESTIONS 

Having reviewed educational development in Omuma, it is suggested that:

1. Our Local Government should set up a special committee on education with the mandate to find out areas of professional deficit in the LGA and proffer areas or how to encourage young ones enroll in such professions.

2. Our communities should reinvent the erstwhile pattern of communal training of intelligent children without parents or poor parents.

3. Our elites should come back home to support our government or NGOs to better our educational lot.

Nde Omuma nu ka-anka

Nde wemanu nu kelem ma-zaa-oo

Compliments of the Season.

Nweke, Emmanuel Onyekachi (HND/B.SC/PGD/PGDE/MBA/M.ED/PhD/ACIA/ACIPM/MABEN/MNIM/FABS)

REFERENCES 

Tugwell, N. A. (2018).  An inaugural lecture: the Nigerian socio-cultural milieu and school curricular offerings; the need for integration and synergy between town and gown.  Port Harcourt. Pearl publishing ltd.

Iwundu, C. O. (2015).  An inaugural lecture: a ontological approaches to the epidemiology of crime and criminality among Nigerian youths toward social re-engineering based prophylactic and psychotherapeutic interventions. Port Harcourt. Pearl publishing ltd.

Oyet, E. N. (2015).  Lecture notes. NTI lectures.

Smith, R. (2006). Education and society. Lagos. Kindy publishers.

Azunna, N. N. (2009). Oral tradition

Nwaelele, O. (2020). Oral tradition

Oral accounts from Omuma Elders.