ACCESSS TO QUALITY EDUCATION IN ORO: PATHWAY

TO DEVELOPMENT

It is indeed a practical expression of the Oro avowed interest in giving her citizenry

qualitative and comprehensive education. Since charity should begin at home, the necessity

for a comprehensive and qualitative education that will properly expose our students to the

basic concepts, provisions, together with other cognate areas of our social existence is a

patriotic imperative. This idea is indispensable for well-rooted development of our nation as

one cannot be said to be educated, knowledgeable and developed when there is a crass

ignorance of the history, philosophy, sociology, politics, economics, value and ideals that

characterise Oro's march to full nation-hood. Oro as a ethnic group cannot be regarded as

truly great when her citizens do not have a good quality education that makes us well

informed citizenry equipped to both prepare and be ready to be acquainted with the dreams

of our founding fathers, the pains of their struggles for oneness and their aspiration to find a

nation where development is the hallmark are important milestones which citizens ought to

know at their fingertips.

From time immemorial, there has been need for total consciousness and participation in

national life. This situation has resulted in the need to create adequate functional awareness

of democratic values, attitudes, and practices for a better socio-political setting. In order to

realise this vision of Oro nation, various successive regimes and government created socio-

political infrastructures that can enhance political education and equip the citizens with

knowledge of their rights and obligations to the society. There is a general need to expose

students to both the theoretical and practical issues of government and the society. Certainly,
this will provide the necessary tools by which citizens can face the reality of the changing

world situation.

This reminds me of the experience of Prof. Onyewuenyi a renowned philosopher at the

University of Nigeria Nsukka. He tells us in the introduction to his book.: "The African

Origin Of Greek Philosophy", how after the defence of his Ph.D dessertation on the

celebrated German philosopher W.F Hegel, he was accosted by an American priest who told

him "You will now teach African Philosophy". Prof. Onyewuenyi replied that there was

nothing like African Philosophy. This priest went inside his room, brought out a book titled

"Muntu: An Outline of the New African Culture". He showed him chapter four of the book

titled "African Philosophy". The same priest told him about other books on African

Philosophy. This African doctorate degree holder became ashamed of himself that American

priest know more about African than himself.( Onyewuenyi: 9993 : 27). This is the situation

most Oro citizens find themselves today. They know more about Ibibio, Igbo, Hausa and

Yoruba etc than they know about their nation (Oro). This is very unfortunate and call for

serious steps to correct this unpatriotic ignorance . This is also one of the reasons why access

to quality education in Oro is necessary to check this.

The essence of quality education is to train individual to be proper member of the

society. Citizens are individuals that have been adequately socialised into their roles in the

society. Citizens are to the body politics what cells are to the natural body. A dysfunctional

cell will hamper the functionality of the entire body. The Education of the citizens about

their place in the nation building and development is therefore a sinequanon. Education is the

instrument of this enlightenment. This is still the preoccupation of Plato in his Republic. He

talks of the need to properly educate the citizens on their roles in the Commonwealth. This
will enable every member of Oro, student to specialise in that area of community

development where he has the greatest attitude. If the less complex city states of Plato's time

needed a rigorous education for these citizens to know their roles in commonwealth, we

today in Oro nation need more incisive education to fit into our differing but appropriate

roles in nation-building and development.

In the words of Peter France, a Commentator on Rousseau, a citizen who is not

properly educated is seen as an absent citizen (though physically present), he is lost in the

society, held by it but not at home in it, an alien in his nation, he is dragged along contrary

roads by nature and by men, forced to divide himself between the different impulses. He

follows the path of compromise which leads him to neither of his goals and at the end he

contributes nothing worthwhile to the development of his nation.

Education means act of instructing, educating, schooling, and discipline. it is the

process of nurturing in all knowledge relevant to the individual's intellectual maturity. This

means that the individual undertakes to make himself available to be taught the arts,

traditions, morals, laws or any other professional disciplines needed to fit him into his role in

the society or community to which he belongs. We have formal and informal education.

Formal education has to do with the learning which takes place in formal institutions,

Schools, colleges. Here, there is a difined curriculum and systematic teaching to qualify the

individual as learned in his own specialised field of study. Informal education on the other

hand, is the day to day inculcation, assimilation and learning of the ways, mores, customs,

attitudes, proverbs, laws, and the general cosmology of a given community. In another way, I

can defined informal education as the learning of the social, economic, cultural, legal and

religious pattern of one's society all done in an informal way. All forms of learning done in
ways that are not systematised formalised or determined outside the school setting is what I

called informal education.

Quality education aims at equipping our students with broad knowledge which

prepares them to have panoramic view of issues that affect Oro as a nation and the individual

as a citizen. This will enable the Oro citizens to know how to cope with the problem of

citizenship to know his responsibility, have an idea of the different facets of his existence

and the needs to meet the challenges posed by these areas as it affect the general well-being

of the Nation. Also as future leaders of Oro, quality education targets the youths who must

be groomed for sound and progressive leadership role in the near future. It is also a legacy

for generation unborn who will still inherit this intellectual document for their guidance and

instruction. I believe that through this quality education, Oro students or citizens will be able

to identify and aschew all negative and retrogressive traits and idiosyncrasies that

characterised some of the actions of our forebears and then chart a more noble progressive

and glorious future for our nation (Oro).

Recently, many Oro people have also tried to reconstruct our past history by making

enormous contributions and publications which of course has debunked the Hamatic

hypothesis that Oro people cannot produce anything better than a very low political culture

this is as a result of quality education they acquired. The quality education aims at providing

the students and the general citizens with a wide spectrum of issues which will make them

adequately enlightened and prepare to play his role in Oro social political scheme of things.

The quality education, should enable the youths to dream dreams of greatness for the Nation,

state as well as the country and to resolve to commit their lives to the achievement of this

long elusive greatness for this nation (Oro).

political development and stability through sensitising the people on the need for good

conduct and awareness on basic democratic value. The political scene has been characterised

by both stability and instability at periodic intervals thereby making politics fearful. Quality

education therefore is aimed at providing available machinery through which sustainable

development and social consciousness can be achieved. In essence, the justification for

education is to enhance the ability of students to sociolise well with others and create

desirable habits as well as appreciate the importance and statue of national constitution as the

will of the state. If quality education is provided, what remains Is for the student (youth)

populace of this nation (Oro) to determine from the wealth of information provided through

quality education to positively turn things around with the overriding objective of moving

Oro forward as access to quality education in Oro is the pathway to development.

(Edited).