GAMBIA DUMPS ENGLISH AS LINGUA FRANCA; NAOMI LUCAS VS QUDUS ONIKEKU... WHO IS RIGHT'ER'?

NAOMI SAYS:

So Gambia dumps English language for its local lingua. Heartbreaking news I tell you. How will its citizens, especially young people, compete internationally?
It would have been a different case if their local dialect is spoken internationally but it's not. They should learn from the Chinese who, despite their economic might, are still struggling to play catch up and whose senior citizens and youths still suffer a crippling complex because of their inability to effectively communicate outside the boundaries of Mandarin.

At a forum with the Katsina state government, I asked the Chief of Staff why Katsina state sent over 200 young people to Sudan to study different courses; especially as some seemed mundane to me. I mean, calligraphy? Sudan? Seriously? No Sudanese university made it to the top 45 universities in Africa in the world universities ranking. Where would a graduate of calligraphy find work in this day and age where humans are being replaced by apps?

This is what happens when leaders can't see beyond their noses, beyond their self serving interests and ego and lack of vision.

ONIKEKU SAYS:

The pairing of Sudan university and Gambia's will to opt out of the commonwealth, seem to be very well misplaced and probably ill-informed. I've got few connections (Hafees Missa, Suliat Spicysul Ayoade-Adediran, Rashidat Olanigan et al) who have studied medicine and other management courses in Sudan, and now being element of examples within the mob of unemployable Nigerian graduates.

My other worry for this manner of reasoning is that we have misplaced priority. Look at her rationel for "studying". Solely to get a job, how about creating a new norm? I can't stop being amazed by such manner of reasoning. People like her are those who gave people like us hell in our homes, who have made the society believe that we must continue to make clones of so called successful practices, that those of us who decided to pursue arts; dance, music, fashion, football etc, continues to get hell for response. That we must find ways to arrange ourselves properly within the set box.

What will people like her say, if she hears that some of us went to a circus art school, and were probably not thinking of where to get a job, or what kind of job awaits us. Or what will she say when she hears that someone like Steve Jobs left school to go pursue his interest in calligraphy. Mundane probably. Well we haven't fell out of this world, and not starving in this world either.

It is this sort of thinking that I try to do away with when trying to understand why a leader will take such radical step of opting out of the commonwealth. Voila.

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