"Home Economics" An Important Course For Nation Building

     A nation is as developed as it’s level of education, when the people inhabiting a nation are learned,  it creates a civility, a guarantee that other people can work with, it makes government policies easier to implement as the people will help in their own way to create little development that makes up a desirable whole Like Most of my article my case study falls in line with my gripe with my country Nigeria which is in a state of disrepute to put mildly, due to the catastrophic socio-economic damage that have befallen and is to befall us. I walk around and feel sorry for most of our youths who in their damnation still find within them, the inbuilt pang to want to create their own lives and family in this cesspool. Not knowing that whatever games, scheme or hustle you have and what ever dream marrows inside that hard shell of your plan, in a country like Nigeria you are just as exposed as any other person and it takes little things like a bad health, accident, a fire, robbery, or bad investment to make you biblically wretched. How do you change a country without a thinking process with a philosophy of just wanton greed, biting at all sides like a pack of wolves, with a mindset which will eventually be our ruin.

Unless, just unless we go back now to the schools and use Home Economics as an important course in our Nation Building, we are going to do irreparable damage to our way of life, since many people don’t really know how to live, they only do what they feel is acceptable in society without actually checking if it feasible for them or not like (children, ostentatious lifestyle etc) Home Economics which is a subject taught only in the Primary school level in Nigeria is laughed at in the University because of the feminine and non lucrative outlook many have of this very important course, In Nigeria the if you aren’t studying Medicine, Engineering or Law you are “practically wasting your time” belief goes to buttress the caption “poverty capital of the world”, where we all need to get the ‘best’  jobs since the bare minimum must be bought (light, water, good health). So you need enough money to provide basic amenities for you and your family or risk living by the grace of god which is what many of us do frankly and a course in Home Economics doesn’t seem like it would give that.

Why Home Economics? Well, because to me it is the addition of two important words, “Home” and “Economics”; Home: which mean a place of abode and rest will teach us to look at our country a little a little closely for solutions rather than plan how to and run off abroad we can look at home and build it like those people abroad built theirs and

Economics: which studies people cost, management, what demands our satisfaction and that which is sacrificed for them. Teaching us how to save money, invest and build purpose driven business and investments

Building a nation is essentially educating and improving the lives of the citizenry who inhabit the country for when the people who populate and demand of your country’s resources just eat, sleep, plan their own carve off the loot, and are oblivious of their own role to play in the development of the country the effect are usually hard to manage. They have to be taught and open to their own piece meal management and enhancement of the country which will add up to a whole we can be proud of. It involves teaching them about the plethora’s of options available to them as individuals teaching them essentially how to live, how to have a way of life instead of a way of toil that is practiced in Nigeria, to change the wash, rinse and repeat approach to doing things that stagnate and stultify them killing their talents, dreams, aspirations and denying the world as a whole a progress.

Take for instance a young woman who is married to a poor mechanic in an expensive city like Lagos will in their one room apartment give birth to five children, finding it hard to feed them might resort to the sale of fries as a way of toil and manage to send their haloed selves to the end of secondary school as an achievement. I use the word “Haloed” because at this stage whatever strife they encounter as a result of a lack of family planning they will see as God’s way of testing them and use the church to bolster their ardor to toil further, the children will have a less than par education due to the hawking associated with the competitive selling of fries, with a retarded education they will continue in their now stroke mangled mother’s toil, while giving birth to children of their own if they are girls, children gotten from enthusiastic advertisement of their wares to horny masons in uncompleted buildings. This way is still prevalent in the south, while the North has the Almajirai system.

Look around and see many youth living a life of borrowed affluence hyperbolically discounting their life as a day and tomorrow affair they will rather eat the literal head of their life now and when suffering comes they say, we will cross that bridge, why? Because no one taught them how to live and they feel no matter what they do, their toil will not amount to anything in a system skewed and planned to destroy them.

Where does Home Economics come in: If home economics is taught to them from Primary to tertiary level it can go a long way to teach people how to live and how to live in accordance with their environment, things that cost NGO’s mostly in the North millions like Hygiene, Personal Health, Cleanliness, Family Planning will be something already ingrained in them from a young age. It will tell the now stroke mangled woman that the reason why she suffered so much was that she had more children that she could  feed, one child or two is enough

Home economics can address things like hygiene, teaching people on how to take care of our bodies, and our houses like the Japanese instead of relying on a maid or an appointed amidst resentment maid among the family member every one can pitch in and learn how to clean their surrounding, it will go a long way in ending littering of the environment as the road and sidewalks are extensions of someone’s compound and if everybody on a street stretch their brooms to reach that extension the whole road will be free of litter. The children should be taught how to do household chores and be responsible so it becomes a part of them as they age. Diseases like Cholera, Leprosy and, Lassa fever will not be announced with the verb “outbreak’ as it done so frequently in Nigeria. The littering of the environment will not be a case of transferring job or giving employment to a poor worker but the collective responsibility of everyone in the society. In schools children should be taught how to take care of themselves other and their surrounding and practice session should be done to allow them play house, as they learn a lot of thing except how to live, home economics can be that subject that teaches them how to live.

Economics aspect will teach people how to manage their money, for a lot of people earn a lot of money but don’t know or even have a saving culture, many still believe in keeping money all their money in the bank not knowing that the dwindling nature of our money value In Nigeria means the worth of your money 3 years ago is not the same today, instead of using the money to create investments and when I say investments not that old and outdated form of investments of father which is: Building a house and waiting for someone to rent it, which is very common investment but when you look at it, if you spend over 2 million naira building a house you can only make you money back in 10 years time with rent capped at 200 thousand naira. There are other form  of investment like building a sport centre for example if you buy 2 acres of land and fence it, and sow a grass lawn which can be a pitch for sports, it can also serve as a  occasion venue that will fetch you every weekend what a house will fetch you in a year.

Building a well furnished viewing centers for football crazy Nigerians which can also serve as a local theatre when the football season is over, It could be in form of Building up of towns, by creating market in desolate villages in Nigeria and collect a space rent on market days, or building of Corp. member lodge for the National Youth Service Corp member with your own store beside, so that they spend the bulk of their income in your shop while they rent your rooms Or go into Broiler chicken farming or investing in Night school for Nigerians who want to write WAEC and Jamb but work in the day, I am just saying there a lot of options rather than building another house.

It will teach them about home driven investment like Farming, Sports Centers for the development of talents in our country, and creating industries

Or if you have that kind of money you can buy 50 acres of land in a practically empty state like Kogi state, and build a racing track there and have motor companies invest with their cars and who says in 10 years Nigeria cannot have our own formula 1 champion. Same goes for cycling, cricket and other neglected sports and the funny thing is that the money Nigerians spend on cars will build some of this purpose driven home thought investments as Nigerians are the largest owners of automobiles and private jets in the world showing that we are just oblivious to our own wealth and capabilities this will also teach member of our society to invest in the future natural resources of Nigeria which isn’t crude oil or gas but the people itself as Nigerians are the most tenacious people on earth blazing trails wherever we go.

To get this ever elusive money, the citizenry should be taught minimalist living and how to do and achieve so much more with less, let them know that there is an affordable replica to every form of our paradise a less expensive car, cloth, house, and a way to manage our lives and family which brings me to

FAMILY PLANNING which is an important topic going forward in Nigeria in Northern Nigeria specifically and the whole generally by teaching the Billings method of conception which basically stipulates that if you want a female child you have sex 5 to 7 days of ovulation, and if you want male child you should concentrate on 10 to 13 day of ovulation when there is the pap and egg white respectively. Though variations may occur one can always consult the doctor, now if you do get it right and have a female child and a male child what else do you need, get a vasectomy and live a simpler life with a simple and well monitored family that will be well taken care of, less likely to be thieves, brigands, crooks and thugs of society  and you yourself will have a more fuller life, when you child is independent you can do the things you have set out for yourself travel, explore or achieve other goals

Home Economics can also teach us about Food  is basically our fuel, as Nigerians we are in a trident of bread, rice and beans varied and intermingled with soups  but we can learn a lot of food variables by being curious, Go to the North for cereals, like (finger millet, pearl millet, corn, and the mixture of these with tiger nut, groundnut soya beans crayfish ) for our morning food which is a richer source of carbohydrate you go to the South for the different kinds of soup from Cross River, and the Eastern state and our curiosity is sated with the countless number of food blogs and videos on YouTube that can help spice up our food life and they are very affordable and better than eating out all the time.

Hobbies should be a part of lives, like travelling and exploring every part of our countries during breaks and leaves, with 30, 000 naira only you can spend the night in any part of Nigeria and see breath taking views and open you to new opportunities outside your familiar the only gripe is the bad level of security but with determination anything is possible.

So what is the practical nature of all what I wish, One might ask, Nigeria is a country with very alacritous citizen when directed on a path or taken interest in, case in point is how we tackled Ebola collectively and with the graceful Dr Adaevoh and her sacrifice which we are grateful till today, something about that one early morning call that showed me this is a country that can fight anything collectively as we got over 5 calls from different people irrespective of religion and ethnicity telling us to drink salt water and bath with it when the rumor spread that it helps in curing Ebola.

This in mind if we can effectively use our Youth Corps member and recently our N-POWER Teachers who are in every local government in the country who have access to general information gotten from the government, And use them to teach an adult class of Home Economics with more added to my enumerations listed above to parents and adults of every society. To make it interesting and spur them into action the government can pay a welfare stipend of five thousand naira monthly to the citizens on a 75 percent attendance to enable their fervent participation. They can give them tree seedlings to plant trees in their locality, create practical of soap making, disinfectant and other things and share it after the class in order to improve cleanliness and good hygiene. Educate them thoroughly about family planning and we shall see the importance of this course as it will essentially teach the people the best way to live and pass on a fundamental education to the young citizens of a now more better country.

By

Victor Samuel