This is not like the rich dad poor dad episode, this is the
reality of some lives around you, all over the world. This is the evidence of
polarity and discrimination that can never be erased or destroyed, at least not
in our life time. Not because we (this generation and many generations before
ours) have not tried, but simply because it is what it is. This is life.
RICH KID:
Goes to the best schools available from infancy, intelligence
is not in question, he excels, some say because of the enabling environment he
finds himself in, others, because he is naturally gifted and still others
because his parents have paid the price and bought excellence for him. He
graduates at a very young age because his schools do not go on strike and comes
back to the country to integrate and know his roots and his people. He is
extravagantly rewarded on his return, with a certificate in hand, the minimum
requirement for any graduate, but he has more. Even when he was “abroad” he won
several local and international scholarships, many would say he didn’t deserve
it or more importantly, he didn’t need it. He got it nonetheless. His return is
coloured with fun-fare and a contract of employment in one of the top companies
in the industry of his interest. The top of his worries is the traffic and the
harshness of the Nigerian sun on his very delicate skin.
POOR KID:
Attends a public school until the level of corruption in it
pushes his parents to withdraw him from the public school to a very expensive
private school in the country. After a few years he drops out because his
parents can no longer afford the fees. He manages to seat for entrance
examinations to the unity schools with affordable fees although it is very far-away
from home. He survives the harshness of the local boarding school system and is
successful in all his certificate exams. His return home is greeted with a list
of expectations as his parents have both retired from the country’s civil
service and are expecting their pension and gratuity (if it ever comes). He
scores high in the matriculation exam, but he knows no one in the university
admin office to push his admission through even after he scored way above the
schools cut off mark. He finally gets the admission albeit after 3 attempts to
study the course of his dreams. His stay in school is frustrated by lack of
infrastructure, strikes and lecturers trying to sell hand-outs to pass their
course. He survives this and graduates. The expectations are even higher from
home but he knows now that he has to get, not just any job but a good job to
take of his ageing and ailing parents and to elevate his status. Maybe he would
break in to the elite group and buy a house on the island or ikoyi. The top of
his worries? How long will he have to continue like this?
It is not a level playing ground. Never was and never will. Strength,
however is required to break in to the upper echelons of the society and more strength
to remain there.
