The Corrosive Effect Of Corruption On Nigerian Educational System

As Nigerians struggled to tame the psychosocial beast known as corruption, they have particularly beamed the searchlight on the behavior of public officials (civil servants, military and police personnel, elected officials etc.) and former public officials, contractors, business associates of public officials and families of public officials. However, one sector of society that has escaped the penetrating searchlight is education.  The educational sector seems to escape critical observation regarding the conduct of educational bureaucrats, administrators of various educational institutions and the faculty.  It is argued here that the educational sector is as corrupt as the public and private sectors.  Therefore, the war on corruption cannot be won without making a determined effort to purge the educational sector of the psychosocial beast.  It appears that there is a symbiotic relationship between the educational culture and the psychosocial and political culture of the society at large.  What happens to society at large affects the educational sector and whatever happens in the educational sector affects the society at large.  Those in the educational sector learn and adopt predominant values generated by society at large and the society at large learns and adopt predominant values generated by the educational sector.

 

It is very necessary to clean the educational sector since education is the second or third most powerful and effective instrument of socialization.  Indeed, after the family and possibly religion, education follows as the most important agent of socializing children and the youths generally.  As a result, if children and the youths are not properly socialized, they are very likely to end up adopting destructive social values.  As can be seen, Nigerian youths, for the past twenty or more years, have increasingly adopted habits and tendencies that are destructive to social harmony because the values in society tend to push them in that direction.  Most of these habits and tendencies are eating deeply into the philosophy and moral foundation of education in the country.  The educational sector today, seems to produce graduates who are not sufficiently disciplined and equipped with the appropriate academic and professional skills, hence, have no qualms about breaking the law, perpetually looking for shortcuts to amass wealth and are morally bankrupt.  These developments are byproducts associated with corruption in the educational sector as the society at large continues to spread corruption around.