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Editor, Itedge, Segun Oruame.

Of hunger and computers for schools

If Chief Leo Stan Ekeh has his way, every Nigerian student in secondary and tertiary institutions would have a PC and may be a laptop. But wishes hardly come true in Africa's most populous country of 150 million people where a failed economy has in the last 25 years rendered millions of citizens impotent.

Less than 10% of Nigerians meet the basic need of shelter and food. For more than 90% of the population millions, basic clothing and healthcare has long become priority items thus, if people cannot eat and be sheltered, they cannot have sufficient presence of mind to desire or reflect on the transforming power of the computer.

But Chief Ekeh, chairman of Zinox Computers, appears consumed with a passionate desire to make a technology transformation possible through exposure of the youth population, the critical segment of our future, to the PC. His response is the Z-SCOP, a computer acquisition initiative seeking to make students own computers through a highly discounted scheme which also allows payment to be stretched over a long time. In a bastard economy such as we have now, you certainly can't dream of a better deal.

The snag is students like their parents are not poor but wretched. The economic equation has changed in the last few years. Millions of parents have lost their claim to parenthood. It is the children that have become bread winners and the sustenance of whatever dream they dare to have including acquiring university education.

Retrenched and jobless, many parents have simply ebbed away into oblivion becoming irrelevant in the determination of what their children would become. Thousands of students in the universities today are on self-sponsorship. Their parents are alive but economically dead to meeting the basic needs of their children. How the children struggle through the financial and academic demands of the university are outside the 'thinking space' of these parents and they are in the millions.

They represent the generation of responsible adults wasted by a tribe of misfit leaders including military adventurers and their civilian collaborators. In last three decades, the family institution has been redefined. No longer is it the stronghold for sustaining moral values. It has gradually been made to degenerate to a set-up where everyone is faced with just one challenge: survival. There are more jobless or financially incapacitated parents than there were in the 70s. The result is a family set up where adults can no longer set examples for youngsters and youngsters may do as they wish since they even decide whether the adults would eat and drink.

There is an economic and moral tragedy here that the craving for computers would definitely not address. There is a complete bastardization of institutions that make society sane so much so that it is becoming ridiculous to talk of a sane future. If you have doubt, take a walk into the public secondary schools, the polytechnics, colleges of education, and the universities. Things have fallen apart. The rot of failed national leadership, the evil years of military rule and the ineptitude of so called democratic system are completely reflected in the educational centres that the affordable computers should find their way into.

The ivory tower has long become a den of robbers and a brothel. Those who should be entrusted with the future of the country have imbibed other sense of values that are far from being noble. They cannot be blamed for this. Thousands must rob to remain in schools just as are the thousands who must become 'clean prostitutes' or to use the more appropriate sobriquet 'runs girls' to survive a day extra in schools.

These are the generations that Z-SCOP wants to give an alternative future. Like other computer appreciation schemes, Z-SCOP offers a bright chance to enroll an otherwise neglected generation into the information age. But how can this be done effectively and comprehensively without taking into cognizance the fundamental challenges faced by this target group?

Somebody needs to address the fundamental evil that has rendered millions of Nigerians no better than scrap papers. Somebody needs to restore hope in the family institutions that is being eroded gradually. The social and economic failings expressive in the high level of unemployment, poor purchase power and extremely low income just must be addressed. There must be a holistic approach to bringing computers to the schools. The first condition is to empower the citizens to be able to meet the basic challenge of food, shelter, clothing and healthcare.

This is where and why government must come in. If we have had 30 years of waste, we demand at least, 15 years of fruitfulness. We need responsible leadership that would guaranty the restoration of sanity in those abused institutions which would ultimately safeguard the interest of the citizens in developmental goals that Chief Ekeh is keen on inspiring through Z-SCOP.

And I dare say, this government owes us a lot in the restoration of this hope.

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