Barrister William Ballantyne, Principal Partner at City Solicitors, Lagos, Nigeria.
It should be scrapped. If we want to get things right we must stick to excellence and merit.
If we don’t give our wards sound background how do we produce quality and functional leadership?
We should follow merit in every facet of our national life. There is no short cut to it. I don’t know what we say we are balancing in the country by enthroning the flawed federal character policy in education.
Yes! May be in federal political appointments, but as far as the education sector is concerned, we must pursue merit and jettison federal character, unless we want to keep producing half backed graduates, who cannot add value to the our socio-economic and political structure.
Merit should in fact, also apply at the state level, because you need to give opportunity to the bright students to excel.
Because moderation Nigeria does not need that kind of retrogressive policy in a global village that the world has become, the policy should be do away with immediately.
Pastor Onyema Duruigbo, General Overseer of The Gospel House, okota. Lagos.
There is nothing wrong with Federal character policy, what is wrong is its implementation. The essence of it is to give all the regions opportunity to grow simultaneously. But the problem has been the implementation, which has become warped in the process of Federal Character. We must make room for Federal Character, but we must also accommodate merit in the whole concept.
If for a example, some from one region must score 400 to get admitted, as against, may be, 150 from another region, that is classified as coming from an educationally disadvantaged region, then the whole essence of the policy is defeated, because some people who come from the region classified as coming from educationally advantaged, may lose the admission to the person from the disadvantage, region who scores far below him.
And the worrisome thing about this policy, is that when the person who scores less graduates tomorrow, he may become the boss of the more brilliant student who may have been denied admission, at some point, due to the policy.
So, I think it’s high time, we discard or modify the policy, where everybody or region or state is allowed to grow at their own pace without necessarily holding down others. That’s my take on the matter.