“Learning unlocks the door of acquiring knowledge throughout life, it is essential to development and health and opens the way for democratic participation and active citizenship.” Kofi Annan

As a former Secretary General of United Nations (UN), Kofi Annan has rightly postulated, literacy unlocks the door to learning. In the opposite sense, illiteracy may be said to lock the door to learning throughout life. It is a factor militating against the development of a place, community or people. Also, quite a handful of authorities can say that illiteracy shuts the door to political and democratic participation and, as well, citizenship.

It is to buttress this point that the cliché “the youths are leaders of tomorrow” was borne, given that with education, the youths can assume leadership of their communities and the country, at large. It is important to ask “What happens when these “Leaders of tomorrow” lack the basic knowledge of the academia and the general knowledge of basic things? Well, you guessed right; there will be no leaders at all. This is the plight of the youths in Agwuo nu Ahua community.

Agwuo nu Ahua, a settlement in Omagwa in Ikwerre Local Government Area of Rivers State is a small community that was populated with just indigenes but with the frequent sales of lands to outsiders, it is now assuming a cosmopolitan status comprising of both indigenes and non-indigenes.

However, this article will focus on the indigenous youths of the community. Agwuo nu Ahua youths are said to make up 70℅ of the population, hence their importance in the development and growth of the community cannot be overemphasized. Unfortunately, the majority of the youths do not seem inclined to the development of the community. This is portrayed in their indifference and seeming hatred for education and whatever that involves learning and acquiring knowledge.

The youths of the community are reportedly so illiterate that they believe an airplane is an act of witchcraft! This is sad. These youths are only inclined to the prospects of selling lands, which is a major trend of business in the community. The youths believe that sales of lands to non-indigenes can bring about development in the community in the sense that these non-indigenes would develop the lands purchase either for residential or commercial purposes.

The flipside, however, is that most of these non-indigenes hardly develop the land they purchase but instead keep it for years and resell at humongous prices to the highest bidders. On the other hand they develop it by building businesses and in turn employ same youths to work there as sales boys or girls due to the fact that these youths are mostly school dropouts.

Some of them are primary school dropouts while majority of them are secondary school dropouts, not because of lack of finance but lack of interest in education. With this attitude towards education, the youths who are supposed to bring about development in the community cannot do so.

These youths now engage in illegal activities such as theft. These youths still hold onto old traditional ideologies, in this present day. The youths are not even technologically informed. They live in the world of crude, surrounded by technology. This becomes a pitiful situation because in other communities it is the youths that are becoming technological gurus and exhibiting versatility in diverse endeavours.

However, this problem of illiteracy in the youths of Agwu nu Ahua can be solved only with the right orientation. The youths need to be sensitized adequately about the importance of education and literacy. Through sensitization programmes, the youths are made aware of how literacy could bring about development in the community.

The youths will be made aware of becoming political participants and potential candidates for political offices in the country by being literates. The opinion leaders, chiefs and chairmen of the youth movements in the community can also hold meetings to sensitize the youths on the importance of literacy. Informal classes can be carried out to facilitate this.

These series of activities aimed at awareness creation on advantages education confers on youths can be reported in community newspapers, especially, virtual ones that youths can read and become aware. These reports can be in from of news reports, special features, cartoons or pictorials.

With these operationalized, the youths of Agwu nu Ahua Community of Omagwa in Ikwerre Local Government Area will embrace literacy and become better leaders of tomorrow because without literacy and knowledge there will be no growth. Even the holy book says so when it noted that “my people perish for lack of knowledge.”

Goodness Chinoru of the Mass Communication Department, Rivers State University, wrote this article from Port Harcourt.