SHOULD OUR LAWS AS A SUBJECT NOT RATHER BE TAUGHT IN OUR SCHOOLS

Hello Nigerians, How are you doing Africa and Good day World!

I want to start this issue by appreciating you for staying by me all these years while I continue to journey through the deep and rugged path towards The Nigeria and Africa of our dreams. 

I still maintain the stance that the Change Nigerians are clamouring for lies in our hands as indigenous Nigerians both at home and in diaspora.

In case this is your first time of reading my blog, I must say a warm welcome to VICTOR COSMAS BLOG and thank you for taking out the time to read this. It is because you want to see things corrected and done well in Nigeria.

Being Africa’s most populated and popular Black Country in the World, we must be POSITIVE examples to the entire Black Race of the world, and not elements of disdain kept under criminal radars and surveillance around the world. 

We must be role models in Education, Politics, Security, Business, Human Right Protection, Gender Equality and the rest.

Myles Munroe of blessed memory once said ‘IF THE USE OF A THING IS NOT KNOWN, ABUSE IS INEVITABLE’.

You must have heard of lands and communities where the people live in bondage, slavery and poverty in their own lands some taken by force and others by IGNORANCE of the fact that the lands were rightfully theirs. 

South Africa was an example until Nelson Mandela came by.

In other cases, some people are incarcerated, punished and ostracized from their communities, against their rights.

On the street of Lagos you could be forced to put the password to your Personal mobile phone or laptop computer by a Stop-and-Search policeman on the claim that they are doing their job and if you object to that, you could be badly molested by the people who are paid from citizens’ taxes to selflessly secure lives and properties. 

Many helpless Lagosians (And other places where this happens) have continue to leave under this oppression with many forced to drop anything at home that would engender any form of such encounters with those policemen who see expensive phones, laptops and other relevant-to-modern-day gadgets as a way of extorting money from their owners.

NOW THE ONE BILLION NAIRA QUESTION IS: SHOULD OUR LAWS AS A SUBJECT NOT RATHER BE TAUGHT IN OUR SCHOOLS?

As a Nigerian adult I don’t even know beyond my Basic Human Right if I even know them totally. 

As a child I never knew my right. 

As a student I don’t know what the law says about me. 

This is the same for a good number of Nigerians out there with the exception of those who have the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) Stickers on their windscreen or students of Law in tertiary institutions of the country.

This should not be so!

"If there is provision for children and their rights in the constitution, then children should be made to know such laws using simple English that a child can understand". 

That way, he starts to know the role he must play as a Nigerian child. 

I mean, what use will it be to teach me my right as a child when I am already an adult who is no longer covered or protected by such laws!

A child who starts from his formative stage to sing rhymes on the country’s laws, move to secondary school and still learn more aspects of his country's laws such as tenancy laws, human right laws, educational laws, business laws and other aspects of the country’s laws up to his fresher level in the University, will be conversant with the laws of his country, the rewards for keeping them and the consequences for breaking them. 

He is less likely to be oppressed as he would have been if he didn’t know his right. If he is tempted to go against those laws, it would be brought to his mind, the consequences of breaking that law.

In January 2017, the entire nation was brought to shock at the emergence of the Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria (FRCN) Act 2011 which required Not-for-profit organization owners (churches, mosques and the likes) to hand over such organizations to non-members of their families after they had used up the time limit stipulated by the Act.

This Act met controversies and required prominent and influential Nigerian preachers like E.A Adeboye, W.F Kumuyi, David Oyedepo and others to resign. 

This pulled criticism from those ministries’ faithful and resulted in the firing of Obazee, the strongman behind the promotion of the Act by the Federal Government and suspension of the Act.

To be honest, I wasn’t aware of such Act or were at least 50% of Nigerians?

If they were, why were they against the Act they already knew? 

But if they knew and didn’t agree to it, why didn’t they call for its amendment?

I strongly believe that to be more law abiding, everyone who is affected by the laws should be made to know the laws and the consequences of breaking them and also the reward for keeping them.

To reference Myles Monroe again, you must agree that the renowned Writer, Speaker, Preacher and Best-selling Author was right when he said that "when purpose is not known, abuse is inevitable".

If the law affects a child he should be taught those laws in his primary school days.

If the law affects a girl she should be made acquainted with those laws and the same goes for businesses, ministries, education, politics, marriage, career and so on.

I want to state clearly that where Ignorance is not an excuse is where knowledge is made available cheaply and people deliberately ignore them.

Indonesia today has been seen as one of the world’s dreaded places to be caught with hard drugs with death penalty accrued to it. The advance countries of the world may not like this but at least defaulters knew very well what they were getting themselves into.

There is no way people will abide by the laws they don’t even know.

The Bible says, “Obey the laws of the land” but to obey you must first know what laws or instructions there are to obey.

Even as soldiers obey commands and respond accordingly, you will agree with me that if a Commandant gives a command that is strange to the soldier, he would not be sure how to respond. 

The simple reason is that from inception he was not trained on how to respond to such command and it would be totally unfair and wicked to treat that soldier as an offender.

Many Nigerians get to know the laws and their consequences in the court room after it has caught up with them and some are serving long terms in prisons over what they didn’t know was against the law.

To be fair with offenders and avert offenses against the law in our country and reduce criminality and corruption;

 
We must first allow the public access to the laws by incorporating laws that affects citizens to the school curriculum from Primary school to the University level (at least Fresher level)  

We must employ qualified experts of our laws to train teachers to teach pupils and students these laws.   

Textbooks should be published to this respect to make sure our laws are broken down to the understanding of their targeted readers.

The Nigerian government can save an awful lot of money in excesses of billions of naira it spends on detaining offenders who mostly do not even know the laws by diverting a tiny fraction of that money into teaching her citizens the laws and consequences of breaking them plus the rewards of keeping them.

Even the Bible admits that even God’s people perish for lack of knowledge. 

Meaning, millions of people will survive just for the mere provision of necessary, relevant and required knowledge.

I call on the government, preachers, teachers, parents, comedians, celebrities, human right activists, media houses, legal practitioners, rights groups, educationists and every stake holder in the affairs of our great nation to lend their voices to ensuring that our children learn the laws from their childhood until they know the laws that directly affect them, the rewards of abiding by them and the consequences of breaking them.

Every Nigerian from childhood must imbibe the psychology that true patriotism is in abiding by the laws of his land.

Join the Campaign and lets become the true Giant of Africa.

God bless Nigeria, God bless Africa and God bless the World.

Abia Cosmas Victor

Phone: +234-708-2363-694

Email: victorcosmas2003@gmail.com

Twitter: @victorcosmas