Reviving education programmes in Nigerian media

SIR: Some people are naturally gifted; they perfectly do extraordinary things that break records. A person who has written his name in gold in the history of edutainment programmes in Nigeria is Aroma Ufodike, from Nnewi, Anambra State. He appeared on: “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” in Nigeria, on September 11, 2009, and fortunately won N10 million.
 
Ufodike is the first and only person to win the top prize in Nigeria. He confidently answered all the questions without using any life-line. When he was on the last question, he said: “I want to use the ‘phone-a-friend’ option to call my family at home that I’m about to win N10 million,” and he finally changed the narrative by hitting the jackpot!
 
Sadly, television and other media, through which programmes are disseminated nowadays, are choked with numerous contents, most of which are for leisure. Only few broadcast educational programmes, but the majority focus on entertainment. This has contributed to mass failure of students when results of examinations are released.
 
Frankly, most students spend more time watching movie series, streaming songs, and attending social events than studying. It is incumbent on Ministries of Information, as well as Education, and NGOs to assist in resuscitating educational programmes.
 
Parents, on their part, should be involved in their wards’ education. Where there are gaps, they should channel complaints to schools for proper actions to be taken, and engage services of experts in extramural classes. Notably, kids memorise things more easily than adults. Educational programmes, therefore, are important to making such children build the reading culture from scratch.
 Mukhtar Kobi wrote from Bauchi.