But the reality in the last 15 years or more is that job opportunities have been shrinking so rapidly that even those who are in school sometimes question the necessity of their being there, because what they can see thereafter is a bleak prospect. The consequence is what we find in our boys jetting out in search of daily living in often menial and hazardous jobs abroad. The consequence is also what we find in our girls hopping off by the next available plane to dehumanise themselves in the seedy red-light districts of Italy. The consequence is what we find in the spiraling rate of violent robberies. Education is not an end in itself.
Policies are aplenty, but implementation and co-ordination have been deficient.
Thus, in spite of the array of institutions related to investment and industrialisation, we remain, regrettably, an industrially left-behind country. But their efforts were bound to be hopeless. Military regimes were interimist in nature, and even where they were prolonged, the governments were propelled by a task force mentality that was often violently short-circuited as one regime after the other was toppled and the nation retreated to point origin. There was also the critical factor of command disposition and centralised planning attendant to military regimes. This fostered unitarism, and stood federalism on its head.