By; MUSA LADAN
The 8th day of September every year is celebrated as, “International Literacy Day”. Celebrating the day is meant to sensitize governments and all stakeholders in education to wake up and take full responsibility and make sure that all citizens are afforded the chance to become literate.
The need to increase the level of literacy of people, male or female, young or old cannot be over emphasized.
This is manifested in efforts made by governments at various levels to educate and conduct literacy programs all aimed at increasing the level of literacy of the people.
In the Nigeria context, millions of Nigerians are yet to be literate.
This is despite Nigeria’s participation in various international meetings and declarations on literacy. At the federal level, different programmes were initiated.
Ministries, agencies and departments were established to conduct literacy programs; for the young, from basic education level to university, for the adults, mass literacy and adult learning programmes were all put in place.
However, navigating through Nigeria’s literacy profile, three basic setbacks were manifest.
Firstly, the operational definition of the term literacy seems too narrow.
Over the years, literacy programmes in Nigeria are conducted to ensure that citizens can read and write with understanding.
But considering contemporary challenges of scientific and technological development, increasing global competitiveness and the need for possession of life supporting skills, the operational definition of literacy should go beyond mere learning how to read and write with understanding.
People need critical life skills that could support their struggle for survival and free them from redundancy and dependancy. Literacy alone without these type of skills amounts to nothing.
Having thousands and thousands of school graduates who have no skills to support their survival, but only certificates, is a serious problem that must be dealt with.
Hence, governments and all those concerned should borrow a leaf from countries such as China and fine tune so that no citizen is made literate without inculcating in him some critical life skills for survival.
Secondly, in Nigeria, we place too much emphasis on paper qualification in our literacy drive.
Once a person possess a certificate of undergoing a course of study, no concern is shown on the level of understanding and mastery of his subject.
For instance, basic education starts from primary school to junior secondary school. But many of those who undergoes the basic education cannot show some level of literacy beyond writing their names without ease.
This is particularly seen from students who undergoes basic education in village public schools. If possession of the JSCE certificate means a person is literate when they can only write their names talkless of understanding, then there is a great task ahead of stakeholders in education.
Thirdly, if literacy connotes ability to read and write with understanding, then why not we recognize any citizens of the country to be literate even if he/she is able to do so in a language other than English? The tradition in Nigeria is that literacy must be in English. Many people particularly in Northern Nigeria can read and write with understanding in Arabic language, yet they are not recognized literates.
A visit to Tsangaya schools will tell more on this. Failure to give professional recognition to literates in Arabic language adds to Nigeria’s backward position in world ranking of people that are not literate.
Therefore, celebrating international literacy day means that governments and all those concerned should go back to the drawing board and ‘re-strategize if they really mean it that they want to eradicate illiteracy.
Musa Ladan writes from Off Sokoto Road, Zango, Zaria, Kaduna State.
