Choosing between a PhD and a passport.

Hello, everyone.

I welcome you to my blog. I believe that growing up, every African kid must have heard the popular saying "education is key." We all believed this saying and keyed into it, worked so hard, and invested so much in our studies only to grow up and see something different. We were made to believe that once you are educated, you have a job on the go, but funny how we have the streets flooded with graduates of different disciplines but with no job at all. A friend of mine came home complaining about how a tricycle rider studied the same course as him but ended up as a tricycle rider and is now so scared about what the future holds for him.

_{designed in canva.}

The importance of education cannot be overemphasized; we really need to see beyond what our bad government has put before us. They are making it look like education is not the key, trying so hard to plant a seed in our hearts and make us think that education is all a scam and, in the end, money invested in education is a waste, but that is all wrong in a way. The world we are living in today is advancing towards a technological world, a world where, without education, one cannot really cope and will be completely dependent on the educated. This alone proves that we need education and not embrace illiteracy because of bad governance.

I will be using my country as a case study, but this is a problem suffered by many African countries. Bad governance paints a completely different picture of education; those who are educated and managed to get a job are earning peanuts, while the uneducated ministers and their touts earn about four times what a graduate earns in this country, with additional allowances graduates don't get to enjoy. Looking at the circumstances surrounding getting educated and the end result of many who chose to get educated, one will just feel discouraged about getting educated. It is expensive, you suffer strikes that will keep you in school for so long, and then, in the end, to get a job, it is by who you know and not what you know. All these contribute, and I cannot blame those who chose not to go after formal education.

So with all that has been said, if I am asked to choose between a PhD or a passport out of this country, I am sure you already know my answer. I am definitely going for a passport out of this country. There are countries out there where you do not even need a PhD to earn and live well; even with a regular degree, you'd live a good life, whereas in my country, even those with PhDs are paid peanuts. Here, your PhD is not a guarantee that you get a job; your effort to get a PhD is trashed like it is nothing, which is why many people, especially youths, are fighting their way out of the country and continent as a whole because they feel they stand a better chance outside, and it is true.

We all want a better life, and since the government is not helping matters, we ought to make choices that will favor us. Everyone has their own preference; for me, taking a passport out of here is the best.