According to World Book Dictionary, education can be defined as ” the development of knowledge, Skill, ability or character by teaching, training, study, or experience”. In other words, it is the process by which people acquire knowledge, skills, attitudes, habits, and values that could shape their character and remain with them throughout life.
Quality education is crucial for development in all its ramifications. While developed regions require education to maintain and advance their current state, developing areas need it to catch up with global trends and avoid being left behind. Therefore, underdeveloped and poor entities like Agwa, need education more than any other form of aid. Agwa has a reliable Central Union populated by exemplary individuals who oversee our affairs.
Recently, the Union made an appeal to public-spirited individuals from our clan to donate funds to help indigent students in Agwa secondary school register for their final examinations as their parents and guidians could not afford the necessary fees. Many generous individuals responded, and to them, I extend my gratitude. Their demonstration of love, goodwill, a sense of responsibility, patriotism, and service to humanity is deeply appreciated. I strongly believe that with accessable quality education for all in our clan, the narrative of our deep poverty, backwardness, and underdevelopment will change.
Currently, we lack access roads, electricity, pipe borne water, hospitals, and other social amenities. Quality education is the key to transforming this reality. I propose therefore, that our Union, the Agwa Central Union ( ACU) should establish an Education Trust Fund on behalf of our clan. This Trust Fund would enable well-to-do and public-spirited individuals and organizations from our clan to make donations whenever they deem fit. ACU could also seek support and partnerships from local and state governments, as well as from individuals and organizations both within and outside our clan, to further enrich the Trust Fund. The Trust Fund would guarantee the availability of quality education to all potential indigent students in our area. This shall be in tandem with the truisms that great geniuses appear one in a generation and great heroes one in a decade , that nothing in indigence, psychologically or environmentally, suggest that children with very strong natural endowments are not found among the most less privileged in the society, and that a community may be running a terrible risk of loosing her best brains if education eludes the less privileged in her population. Mere knowing that this support exists would motivate parents, guidians, and potential students, increase yearly enrollment, and reduce the out of school rate in our population. This, in turn, would lead to personal and communal development, reduce youth restiveness and crime, enhance awareness and participation in all productive spheres of life, and allow us to stand proud in the commity of communities within Oguta Local Government Area and beyond.
Through personal and collective efforts, we can achieve and enjoy all the social amenities that make life beautiful, which have thus far eluded us. I appreciate the elites among us who have been shouldering the burden of standing in the gap for our people, particularly those in the electronic and social media who continue to educate our people, promote our collective image, and advocate for our development. Let us come together to prioritize quality education and make it accessable to all, for it is the cornerstone of our future progress and prosperity. ACU can help those who are less fortunate among us so that they too can help others and thereby become part of the process through which goodness can multiply in Agwa.
O’Anthony Uzoma, Coordinator, Agwa Social and Political Thought Initiative.
This view as espoused by Mr. O’ Anthony Uzoma is irrefutable and it is a guiding light to recalibrate community based education initiatives