PRESIDENT WEAH'S REQUEST FOR 6,000 TEACHERS FROM NIGERIA

PRESIDENT WEAH'S REQUEST FOR 6,000 TEACHERS FROM NIGERIA

                  By:
Nurudeen Dauda
      March 6, 2018
nurudeendauda24@gmail. com
nurudeendauda24@yahoo.com
nurudeendauda.blogspot.com

Permit me to say that as a country, a lot of us are "toying" with the issue of education. Immediately I heard about President Weah's request for 6,000 teachers from Nigeria through its Technical Aids Corps Scheme (TACS), the first thing that comes to one's mind, is that, President Weah priotizes education. The newly sworn in Liberia's president a country with a population of about 4.8 million people made the request for assistance during his visit to President Buhari.

As educationally developed as Britain, Mr Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister of UK fought his first election campaign - to become leader of the Labour party - with education as top on his agenda . More so, just a couple of weeks before he won the vote of July, 1994 he pledged to bring experts into the classroom to help teachers, improve early years learning and vocational training and introduce a general teaching council.

Mr Tony Blair at the Labour party's conference in October 1996, seven months before sweeping to power in May 1997, said: "Ask me for my three main priorities for government and I tell you: education, education and education ."

Technical Aids Corps Scheme (TACS) was initiated in 1987 during the Military administration of President Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida under a Professor of political science, Prof. Bolaji Akinyemi as the then Minister of External Affairs. 

More so, Technical Aid Corps (TAC), was (or is)  a program which aims at sending Nigerian professionals overseas to engage in volunteer work. It was designed to promote the country's image and status as a major contributor to Third World and particularly African development.

Nigeria as a country has assisted many countries in Africa politically, militarilly , economically, socially  and morally without asking or seeking for any benefit whether in kind or in cash. We helped South Africans during the apathied regime, Liberia and Sierra Leone during their civil wars, etc without any take home benefit .

In international relations, national interest is supreme. In my observation, it appears in our own case is different. It is very unusual for the superpowers of the world to just assist a country without a take home benefit. The western powers  give foreign aid to poor nations and in return they benefit for it. Why is our own different?

As a student of Foreign Policy I want to suggest that , If Nigeria as country,  wants to get it right , it should and or must change its long held foreign policy tradition which has been described by many scholars of International relations as "Flamboyant" or Father Xmas foreign policy.

During the "heights" of the Liberia's and Sierra Leone's civil wars, some analysts described Nigeria as a country which "export" what it does not have (peace) and "import" what it has (crude oil). Nigeria then got the description as a result of the early 1980s ethno-religious crises in the country to the 1990s ethno-political tension in the country which was occassioned by the anulment of June  12 elections.

In my observation, many countries that we assisted in past the took us for granted perhaps due to the fact that we are just assisting countries without conditions or demanding for something in return.

Nigeria has played a greater role towards restoring peace in Liberia and Sierra Leone etc., but did not gain anything for it, no even deserved respect by some of the countries . Some of the countries have even abandoned us at the time of our need with payback support.

Our foreign policy objectives should be changed. It is high time we start asking for something in return as a take home package. This is the tradition all over the world. 

May God bless Nigeria!

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