Nigeria: Journey to the Depths of Hope

28 April 2009
opinion

Lagos — My journey to Institute for Industrial Technology (IIT) last Monday was like a journey to the depths of hope. At a time when all we seem to be celebrating is hopelessness, journeying to a far-flung poor neigbourhood of Isheri-North Residential Scheme, Kosofe Government Area, Off Lagos Badagry-Express-Way, Lagos and finding an institution that produces competent technicians for our industries and companies was like discovering a precious treasure. The wind blows where it wills and we can hardly tell where and when the wind will blow on us. Oftentimes we go about searching for treasures in the so-called special places forgetting that the most precious treasure can be found in the most unusual place. Before last Monday I had heard about the marvel called IIT and how it had produced young graduates now employed in Nestle, Guinness, Nigerian Breweries, Tetra-Pak, British-American Tobacco and all that. I had also read with relish Dr. Yomi Makanjuola's most-refreshing piece on IIT and the inevitable place of qualitative technical and vocation education in nation building. But little did I appreciate the whole revolution going on at IIT until I got to the place last Monday.

Everything happened fortuitously, although we have been told that nothing actually happens by chance. Worried by the increasing number of idle hoboes, out-of-school unskilled youths in Nnewi and its environs, the Nnewi Improvement Union sent a delegate to IIT to find out how Nnewi can benefit from the qualitative technical education which the school offers. Apparently after the delegate visited IIT and presented their report, the news filtered into the air. A member of the Anambra State House of Assembly who heard about the visit rang me up and said: "Go to IIT and find out about this thing they are doing. A lot of our young boys are wasting away in idleness. You can't believe it; we now have many Igbo area boys". He recounted to me his recent sad experience at Berger, Lagos where he had gone to buy a "tokunbo car. After buying the car and was walking away, he looked behind and saw, to his utter disappointment, about 25 Igbo boys in the age bracket of, say, 15-25, following him and begging him for money. It then dawned on him that petty-trading alone cannot take Igbo youths anywhere. Any wonder he did not hesitate to dispatch me to IIT as soon as he heard about the place. Why should I refuse to carry out such a lofty assignment? Human development is the epicenter of all developments. Any nation which doesn't invest in preparing her youths for tomorrow's leadership challenges is a nation tottering on the precipice of collapse.

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