have you, let’s think Nigeria
Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) reversal of the earlier decision of the Bankers Committee which had met in Abuja and decided to place restrictions on allocation of foreign exchange for school fees abroad and medical tourism is only postponing the doomsday. If, as the Bankers Committee said we commit about 15 percent of our forex to serve these two purposes, then there is danger ahead because the country is unlikely to be in a position to afford that forever as things are.
As a matter of fact, to underscore the urgency and seriousness attached to the matter, some of those who had lost hope of getting forex allocation for their children abroad started receiving alerts from their banks, asking them to turn in their papers after the CBN’s decision. I agree though that it would be unfair to deny those already abroad the opportunity of finishing their programmes; but those thinking of joining them should begin to think twice because, if things continue like this with our forex situation, a time might come when the country would find it difficult to meet such obligations. Even if things get better with the country’s finances, it is still not good to continue on the present destructive path which only guarantees jobs for people abroad at the expense of Nigerians at home.
What I am saying is that, our current quagmire should nudge us into reviewing the way we do some things. Whether as individual Nigerians, or as governments, or as a country, it is time to change from this foreign dependence on virtually anything imaginable. Nigerians should start rethinking this idea that everything Nigerian is bad; or that everything foreign is good.
Please get me right; it is not that studying abroad is inherently bad, or that it is something novel. Even in those days when the premier university in the country, the University College, Ibadan, now University of Ibadan, and a few of the first generation universities around were still in good shape, turning out quality graduates, some Nigerians were still going abroad to study. But what we have today is a complete departure from what obtained then. Many of those studying abroad now are there either for status symbol or because they could not find space in the local universities. With standard perennially falling in many of the local universities, parents who can afford it prefer sending their children abroad to study, instead of staying in overcrowded lecture theatres where some half-baked teachers would also stuff into their brains what they are not paid to stuff there. Or, where for the better part of the academic year, the schools would remain shut due to one industrial crisis or the other.
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