Posted by By Wilfred Jibril on
As the hydraheaded menace of cultism continues to ravage the nation's campuses, an educationist, Engineer Adekunle Banjo, has said that the only enduring antidote to the malaise was divine intervention.
As the hydraheaded menace of cultism continues to ravage the nation's campuses, an educationist, Engineer Adekunle Banjo, has said that the only enduring antidote to the malaise was divine intervention.
Engineer Banjo, who is the Director of Studies of Bafuto Computer and Secretarial School, Egbe, Lagos, lampooned parents for not inculcating the fear of God in their children. He also castigated those whose children and wards are neckdeep in cultism for abandoning their responsibility of training them in the way of the Lord.
" Children and wards who are not properly brought up will end up as tools in the hands of the devil while on campuses. That is why the Bible says, train a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he will not depart from it", he noted.
Engineer Banjo contended that unless Nigeria looks up to God for the eradication of the monster, there is nothing any individual or government could do in this regard. He hinged his argument on the fact that most parents made it in life through cultism.
" How can you expect parents who acquired wealth and power through their involvement in secret societies dissuade their children from joining secret cults on campuses. This is the main reason cultism has remained intractable", he lamented.
He, nonetheless, posited that the monster would be a thing of the past if Nigerians could pray individually and collectively against it. He also advocated the arrest and prosecution of parents and guardians of student-cultists as a way of stemming the tide, adding that such a step would go a long way in putting parents and guardians on their toes as regards child training.
Engineer Banjo was of the opinion that a child who is properly brought up cannot be lured into secret cults irrespective of the carrots dangled before him.
He also bemoaned the falling standard of education in the country and regretted that most graduates being churned out today cannot express themselves in simple and correct English.
"Their rate of assimilation is so low that one wonders if they ever went to school.When you give them assignments, they would reproduce the works of their colleagues and submit, rather than attempting such assignments themselves, all in a bid to acquire certificates which they cannot defend", he further lamented.
He warned that unless the government de-emphasises paper qualification as a pre-requisite for job placement, the nation's tertiary institutions would be churning out illiterates rather graduates.To corroborate his point, Engineer Banjo pointed out that some students are in the university to acquire certificates and not knowledge, hence they have nothing to contribute to the development of the nation.
He also implored the government to fight all forms of corruption and examination fraud on the campuses, warning that such vices would constitute an impediment to the educational development of the nation.
" In my school, we don't condone examination fraud. Any lecturer caught in the act will be sacked and the affected student(s) expelled.This is our own contribution to the war against corruption", he enthused.
According to him, his school, which is a reputable centre of academic excellence and which has distinguished itself in all the examinations conducted by the Institute of Data Processing Management of Nigeria(IDPM), has so far awarded scholarship to six deserving students.
Engineer Banjo urged the government to enact a law prohibiting sex-for-marks syndrome as a way of wiping out immorality from the campuses. He also stressed the need for female students to be barred from wearing transparent dresses on the campuses, stressing that the Federal Ministry of Education should prescribe a dress code for all the institutions of higher learning in the country so that the chances of lecturers being lured into immorality could be eliminated.