UNDERFUNDING AND MISMANAGEMENT AS BANE AND DECADENCE OF THE IVORY TOWER: STATEMENT IN BAKARE OJO RASAKI’S ONCE UPON A TOWER

Abstract

Education is the key to a successful life as the ability to communicate and interact with people from different communities effectively proves an important aspect of education. In a bid to be educated, every generation face series of challenges and the first set of people to wrestle with these challenges are the youths which sprang up as a result of underfunding and mismanagement of little funds allocated to the education sector. Nigerian writers in a bid to call the government’s attention to the evil of underfunding and mismanagement that have plagued the education sector make the challenges of the youths their major concerns. Like other generations, the youths of the contemporary generation are facing new societal challenges. For instance, in this generation, many youths graduate from the university without being able to demonstrate the art they spent years to study as a result of inadequate and malnourished education being exposed to. In a bid to conscientize the government, Bakare Ojo Rasaki in his work Once Upon a Tower demonstrate this ugly situation that has so eaten deeply into the fabric of Nigeria education system. The work stress the fact that more and more youths of this generation are graduating from Nigerian universities without being able to demonstrate mastery of their courses of study as a result of underfunding and mismanagement of fund by the government and school management. Bakare Ojo Rasaki through this play Once Upon a Tower demonstrate the danger the society is into through the reality of a Nigerian graduates of gynaecology who learned the wrong way, and cannot carry out a successful abortion by administering the wrong dosage as a result of what he learnt while in school The paper concludes by revealing the causes of the problem and suggesting ways in which the problems can be solved.