The struggle for independence generally for the African countries began about a century ago. While some got independence through a fairly smooth course of diplomacy, relatively without bloodshed others got through it painfully with a huge scale of grief. However, these freedoms were gained by the various countries of Africa, independence was gained. But the African nations were becoming independent with well over 75percent of the people without formal education, uninformed and therefore lived in blind trust with the bias to accepting only what their kinsmen in the struggles as leaders of the society would tell them.

Greed and partisanship took centre stage in the post-colonial era both on the part of the Africans who had gained independence and some of the colonial masters. Leaders who had sincere intentions to move their nations in most cases lacked the know how to go about the process of governance especially, in generating the needed resources to back their intentions and in the process made very grievous leadership mistakes which gave rise to blackmail and betrayal. Colonial masters who were still interested in holding on to power and control commence in these colonies also promoted rivalry and in most cases succeed in installing their puppet governments which knew nothing outside protecting their masters’ business interest to continue holding on to power.

This effectively gave rise to neo-colonialism which further worsened the situation of the majority of the African nations as we saw the emergence of barbaric and uniformed crop of African leaders that took hold of power. Since the main preoccupation of the leaders was to do anything to continue in power, no meaningful development ever took place. The nations’ riches were shared among cohorts and the very majority of the people were left subservient to the few kleptomaniacs through death threats and all means possible. They never allowed the nations have enduring constitutions to provide for checks and balances. Budgets were made arbitrarily to fuel the concupiscence of the decorated thieves who paraded the worst from superimposed leadership upon their kinsmen.

This bedeviling circumstance which has prevailed in almost all of the African Countries since their respective independences without yet a meaningful change has conveniently created the culture of all-round poverty which the majority of the African families have conceded to live with as part of life. This culture is pandemic in the entire continent of Africa and its grave results is that successive leaders believe that there is nothing they can do to alleviate the situation and so are encouraged to see their leadership as their own chance to enrich themselves and help families and friends the much they can to a better life. This is the reason why we have no good roads, water, electricity, hospitals, etc.

The provision of educational opportunities for every African child, as I had earlier stated, is the complete solution to the problem of Africa. Permit me again to say quickly here that the educational opportunity must be provided for the child with the deliberate effort made to see the child eventually imbibing a culture of sincere, 0pure and unconditional love for every individual he comes across in the world not minding sex, colour, language, ability or disability. This our drive in Perfect Peace Prospect where our children are made to imbibe this culture of endearing mutuality and oneness at all times to institute zero aggression/crises.

This is only possible when they pass through a system which is seamlessly united and exhibits the pure and unconditional love which we want them to imbibe, grow with and all through their life time exhibit as well. This is why our ISHIBA Education Motto is see no evil, hear no evil, do not evil because a child will only grow up with what he or she learns or experiences. In the face of grave misconduct, we embrace the child with open arms and engage him in consistent counseling to bring him to the awareness of adjudging himself guilty of his conduct and therefore convince himself never to be involved in the act.

This is done with the highest degree of patience and tolerance and so could endure the child no matter the number of times we have to go round this circle of embrace and counselling. I make this early interjection  because a child can redirect his opportunity to education into crime and violence and would fair far better in crime than an uneducated child.

Having said the above, the African Society with its leadership is not set even at this moment in time to provide the needed education opportunities for the majority of the academically underprivileged children. Majority of these children are living with their indigent parents in the hinterlands, most of whom our census data have not captured. Yet the entire world pays for the crimes they commit; the Niger Delta crisis, Sudanese sea pirates etc. readily comes to mind.

They are cut off from these opportunities for lack of good connecting roads, making it impossible for even the private investors to take the opportunities to them. The situation is further compounded by the lack of electricity, good water and phone network service.

When their indigent parents dire make it to the cities, they end up in the suburbs and most of them are not able to afford private schools. In the government owned schools, no chairs and most of the time no learning facilities. Laboratories are empty with teacher’s owed salaries for upwards of four months, leaving the children susceptible to ad companies/cults.

The provision of quality education opportunities for every African child that will in the end yield peace and peace alone for the entire African society and the world at large can only be provided in the organizations like ours with government doing their minimal best which has not taken the continent anywhere. Outside Private Nursery, Primary and Secondary Schools in the African society, government impact in the opportunities can be modestly put at less than 15 percent on continent. Now, this is in relative terms inconsequential.

With the help of donor organizations ISHIBA Development and Empowerment Centre intends to replicate what we have done for the over several of our educational schemes, which is currently making preparations to cater for five hundred children, in the hinterlands of Nigeria and all around the continent of Africa and beyond. This we trust we can conveniently do.

Developments such as the one we have at hand brings indelible marks of joy to us in ISHIBA Development and Empowerment because it simply exhumes the block characteristics of our being as an NGO. Ours is extreme voluntarism which stops at nothing to building the next generation of leaders and earth dwellers which will under no circumstance see no evil, hear no evil and do no evil but perfect peace in Christ. This is the only sure path way to instituting the serene atmosphere of perfect peace in our world for which education for all is inexcusable.

The subject upon which I have been asked to make this presentation; “Bringing Educational opportunities to All Academically Underprivileged African Children” is one that I see as the most comprehensive and holistic approach to addressing the entire problems of Africa as a continent.

Permit me to hurriedly state even as I intend to be brief as much as possible that almost everything about the African society deprives the African society deprives the African child of his right to life in general for which Education is a part. This is not because the continent cannot afford to provide basic education for her children resulting from the fact that it is poor in terms of resources or have unproductive and infertile soils or unfriendly weather conditions alien to development compared to other parts of the world that have passed through various stages of development to earn being classed as first-world countries, Africa is endowed with rich and huge deposits of valuable and economically viable mineral resources that can support the progressive development of her nations to the class of her American, Asian and European counterparts. Yet, in the midst of these wealth generating resources the greater majority of the African children are educationally underprivileged.

The key instrument of deprivation in the African society to say the least is bad governance. Not in a bid to trying to rewrite history, quite a lot of factors contributed to bringing these bad governances into being in almost all African countries in the post-colonial era when Africans started governing themselves. While it would constitute a distraction to our subject to consider in details the emergence and seeming institutionalization of these bad governances in the general African society, it would be most helpful to briefly highlight how it came into being, how bad it has gotten and what peacefully revolutionary measure needs to be taken to reverse the trend in order to bring back the African continent on the fast track of development as other continents of the world.

It has often been said that if you think education is expensive, try ignorance. Africa provides many lessons on the damage done by ignorance and if the continent is to get rid of gloomy perceptions, it will be through education. For the continent to develop, its education must change, writes Pusch Commey. After all, as Nelson Mendela put it: “Education is the most powerful weapon, which you can use to change the world”.

Very few will dispute that in the quest for an appropriate education, best practice should from an integral part of the African agenda. And that means shopping around the world, and adapting best practice to one’s special environment and circumstances, whether from England, China, India, South Korea, Singapore or Malaysia. Some African educational experts on the continent and in the Diaspora are adamant that the right foundation and direction in education for the African child must be African-centred.