Senator representing Bayelsa East, Ben Bruce has said the faulty educational system in Nigeria is why the issue of Biafra agitation cannot be addressed.
Bruce, who described the Nigerian educational system as “terrible” opined that the country’s information policy “makes no sense” because it neglected the Nigerian civil war.
The business mogul lamented that young Nigerians were not being educated about the civil war.
Contributing to a motion on the country’s unity on the floor of the senate, the lawmaker said the country’s educational problems needed to be addressed because any other region of the country may agitate in the future.
He said, “We are here debating a subject that the educational system is not teaching and people do not understand it and the federal government of Nigeria do not recognise it. A fundamental problem is our educational system. We must address the problem at the source.
“What is the problem? We are the problem. It is Biafra, it could be south-south tomorrow or north-east, it doesn’t matter. This must be addressed. Our educational is one of the worst I have ever seen anywhere in the world, it is terrible, our policy of information makes no sense whatsoever and here we are talking about an impending crisis.
“Government should pay attention to history, there is a way out but to pretend or remove bight of Biafra from the map, nobody has the right to the bight of Biafra from the map, put it back on the map and let’s fix our problem.”
The Senator observed that other countries televise their history of wars in order avoid the repetition of their past mistakes in the future.
Bruce lamented that the government has done “absolutely nothing” to educate youths agitating for a secession.
He said, “The reason they televise these wars is so that you can learn from the mistake of others, so that you do not become a fool and make the same mistakes and fight again. So, here we are, fifty years later talking about something that could be avoided if the federal government at the time understood the value of history.
“We erased the civil war from our consciousness, so generations of people do not know we fought the war or why we fought the war, they say the Igbos, were marginalised, right? But today they are the most industrious in the country, they are the richest Nigerians in the country today and amongst one of the most educated people.
“Yet they feel marginalised, if you compare, the Igbo man to other sectors of the society, you will say the Igbos are the privileged because of what we have. Yet, a generation of Igbos say they have been marginalised and they want to secede and want a nation.
“But what have we done as a nation to educate them on destruction and war – absolutely nothing. They don’t teach these in our history books. We do not tell our children what war is all about. Those talking about bloodshed have not even carried a gun.”
