Ndubuisi Ekekwe

Yesterday, I made it back from Brussels, Belgium where I had gone to deliver a speech in the European Commission . It went very well.

When I made it home, my son told me that he had a special present for me - a projectile launcher to fight battles . He took me and showed me his final kindergarten project. The school closed yesterday.

Over the year, he has drawn really brilliant things. He has also built things. He has a movie series with episodes of Spider Man, Pokemon, Michelangelo (sic??), etc (I cannot keep count). It is now 23 pages of cartoon. He plans to develop the series and make his own movie in his laptop. His school had told them that making movies over just watching them makes kids superheroes.

My son's game studio with his laptop. He eats here and does most things here. There is the "library" nearby where he does numbers and words.

But yesterday one got me thinking.

He likes Pokemon and he likes battles. He likes Turtles (the green one). According to him, he told his teacher that he would like to make a launcher to have an edge in battles. He built something that I might not have even done while in secondary school, in Nigeria. He knows about circuit, dc motor, wires and their basic colors. The mechanism of projectile, etc. He just turned 6 and starting first grade this August.

Watch the raw video below. In coming days, he will draw the launcher in Microsoft Paint to integrate in his movie series. The launcher has beads to control the speed of launch, the lighting mimics the projectile in action, the tall thing on top, according to him is to scam for enemies with camera, etc. One major omission: he forgot to put American flag (he remembered that one after his explanation. So, he will draw one and paste it there).

I spend about $30,000 yearly in his school fees. He attends a good private school. The quality of the teachers is legendary. His two class teachers each holds a PhD. And when parents gather together, you see normal kids being transformed through a well-designed process. They take them to ride train, enter public bus, etc and experience the world they live. They give them flowers to nurture at home watering them to see how far they can grow before they die. They have pet fishes in aquarium tracking their phases of growth. They assign them insects in school labs to experience metamorphosis, real. They dig the ground looking for worms to know where they live and what they eat.

Sure - there is no way to compare U.S. and Nigerian education. It is fair to say that if you can pay the same amount of money in Nigeria, you will likely get a similar outcome. Nevertheless, our nation must really work harder to deepen the competitiveness of our younger people. The kids they will compete against in the next generation are not waiting.

No nation can talk itself into technology strides. Every nation has to plan and execute it. Nigeria cannot afford to have primary school teachers on strikes. It puts the country farther behind.

Part of the "library" with storage below

Please do not attack me for any elitist showing here (no argument, my family is blessed and I have Christmas everyday. But I do not show off. This is purely to provide perspectives on educational systems ). Posting this, with permission from my wife (Ifeoma), is to get people to think what I see as a weak link in Nigeria. We really need to focus on those little angels in primary schools more than the university students. Nigeria has forgotten its primary school kids which is unfortunate. In Benue State, primary school system was shut down for 8 months in the 21st century!

The most important education I had was in my secondary school. That was more important than anything afterward. In secondary school in Nigeria, I took 15 subjects and made distinctions in 15 of them. But to do that, I had to write GCE in SS2 for Economics, Government, Commerce and others they would not allow me to register in SSCE owing to the structure of the system which focused on defining specialization very early when students should be allowed to dream, unconstrained. (My family had insisted that without passing them in GCE, I could not claim that I took them.) In SSCE, I took Geography, Further Maths, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Agriculture etc and signing up for some of these subjects was a compromise to the Arts subjects. But without Economics, I would not have picked some critical skills which continue to help me in my business.

Okonjo-Iweala's son, Uzodinma, is today a surgeon, but he graduated from Harvard with English and American Literature and Language degree ! Can that happen in Nigeria? Someone that started with B.A. Literature in English becoming a doctor? It did not take Uzodinma ages to transition because the system prepares you for whatever in life.

We have a really broken educational system that boxes people in a corner even before they begin. Education is the liberation of the mind, but instead of helping to liberate the mind, the Nigerian system imprisons the mind, even at a tender age.

Back to my son, he returns for the 1st grade with 50% scholarship on his tuition this August. The scholarship made possible through the help of a generous alumnus of his school is awarded to kids that excel in their Numbers and Technology. I thank Ifeoma for all the efforts, she gets all the credits.

Ndubuisi Ekekwe

Greater Pittsburgh Region

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Ndubuisi Ekekwe

Greater Pittsburgh Region 200K followers 500+ connections

See your mutual connections View mutual connections with Ndubuisi Sign in Welcome back Email or phone Password Show Forgot password? Sign in or New to LinkedIn? Join now or New to LinkedIn? Join now

Contact Ndubuisi for services

Engineering Design, Leadership Development, Management Consulting, Public Speaking, Change Management, Project Management, Training, Educational Consulting, and Financial Consulting

Education

The Johns Hopkins University

View Ndubuisi’s full profile

Other similar profiles

Lin Yang

Navrina Singh

Emmanuel Dumont

Greg Coticchia

Manu Chopra

Ashutosh Saxena

Dr. Frederik G. Pferdt

Yiran Chen

Eric R Fossum

Barney Pell

Arthur Woods

Saumya Rawat

Kesava Kirupa Dinakaran

Daniel Kim

Yuning Chai

Samir Addamine

Sarah Drinkwater

Jonathan Reichental, Ph.D.

Subodha Charles

Katherine Maher

Explore collaborative articles

Others named Ndubuisi Ekekwe

Barr Ndubuisi Ikechukwu Ekekwe (ADVOCATESAB)

Add new skills with these courses

Nano Tips for Getting Unstuck as an Entrepreneur with Terry Rice

Digital Technologies Case Studies: AI, IOT, Robotics, Blockchain

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