One rainy day in Kaduna in the 1990s, Aminu Umar Argungu drew my attention to a humorous short item in Reader’s Digest. It was about an American high school where, at the end of every session, school teachers voted for the student that they believed was “Most Likely to Succeed” in life. There was however one student who was so fond of the Confederate States of America [the American Biafra] that he always went to school wearing Confederate hats and t-shirts and singing old Confederacy songs. That year, teachers voted him as “Most Likely to Secede” from the United States.
Nigerian schools do not have this tradition, so I urge the Federal Ministry of Education to direct them to institute it. At the end of every session, teachers should vote for the student they think is “most likely to succeed” in life. Success should however be defined here, because our parameters of success are different from Americans’. Is it the volume of money that one manages to amass in life, by means fair or foul? Is it attaining high office, or is it what you do with the office? In Nigeria, people are awarded the highest honours of GCFR, GCON and CFR just for becoming president, vice president, Senate President or House Speaker, regardless of what they subsequently do with the office.
Is becoming an eloquent cleric, a fiery trade union leader, a Smart Alec politician, a Facebook influencer, a powerful boxer, a highly visible human rights activist or a Twitter warrior the marks of life success that teachers should predict? How about an insurgent leader, a 419 kingpin, an agricultural produce hoarder, a bandit leader, successful con artist, a Ponzi financial scheme builder, a drug kingpin or a billionaire kidnapper? By some measures these are successful people, and in many Nigerian communities these days, they are the ones that are more likely to get chieftaincy titles.
What criteria should Nigerian teachers use to determine likely success in life? It is likely that many teachers will see the vote as doing a favour to their favourite child, perhaps because his or her parents have been generous to them, or due to ethnic, religious or other primordial affinity. Well, that will defeat the purpose. The criteria should include academic achievement, overall seriousness with studies, excellence in extra-curricular activities, good interpersonal relationships, respect for teachers and elders and moral rectitude. We can also add recent criteria such as lack of obsession with social media chats, lack of obsession with European football leagues, lack of obsession with the opposite sex and lack of obsession with fashion items that change every three months.
In addition to voting for the most likely to succeed, American school teachers also vote for the student who is “Least Likely to Succeed” in life. One of the winners of this second award was Howard Hughes, who went on to become a billionaire, produced blockbuster Hollywood films, set many aviation speed records, owned Hughes Tool Company, Hughes Medical Center in Houston, TWA airline, RKO studios and many hotels and casinos in Las Vegas.
I suggest that when Nigerian teachers vote for the most and least likely students to succeed in life, the vote should be sealed in an envelope for 25 years. It should only be opened during the 25-year school reunion. An impartial judge should then cross check it and determine whether in fact the teachers accurately predicted the fate of their students. If they didn’t, as in the case of Howard Hughes, it could either be an indictment of the teachers, or it could be a more general indictment of the school system itself. It could be that performance and attitude in school is no longer a reliable indicator of success outside the school. In which case, the Ministry of Education should do something to the curriculum.
Apart from school teachers, newspaper editors should organize an annual vote to determine which Nigerian politicians are most likely to succeed. Let us see if Nigerian editors really know their terrain and if they have predictive power. They should vote only for politicians within the 30 to 40 years’ age bracket and predict which ones of them would become LG chairmen, commissioners, governors, ministers, ambassadors, senators and president.
Concomitantly, editors should vote to predict which persons are most likely to secede from the Federation. Is it al-Barnawi, Nnamdi Kanu, Sunday Igboho, bandit kingpin Dogo Gide, a mega church pastor, a reclusive drug baron, a cantankerous oil mogul or a Nollywood actress? Did the teachers of any of these men and women notice a fascination in them with secession during their school days? Let’s open the envelopes 40 years from now [when most of the voters are underground] and see how good the predictions were.
When the results are announced, please send me an email. Yahoo must have placed a server in Heaven by then.
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