<p><span style="background-color: transparent;">For so long, I've believed that literacy was the great divider, the mark of progress. To be literate was to possess tools for dreaming, for building a roadmap to success, for navigating the complexities of society. The illiterate, by contrast, were seen as adrift—without anchors, left to survive in shadows cast by those who could read and write their destinies. But today, this distinction is beginning to fade. In the chaos of modern society, the literate and the illiterate seem to march to the same tune, played by the relentless hands of greed and systemic decay.</span></p><p>What good is literacy when society itself plays the educated for fools? The ability to dream is now stifled by the sheer weight of reality. A democracy that promised freedom and equality has become, in our Nigerian context, nothing more than a "demonstration of crazy." The educated class, once expected to lead with reason and vision, has become indistinguishable from the masses they were to uplift. A society where law exists without respect for the rule of law leaves everyone, scholars and non-scholars alike, playing careful, lest they fall victim to its arbitrary whims.
</p><p>In this environment, poverty grows like a festering wound, sapping the strength of the common man. The burden of survival crushes reason and rationality. It leaves the dreamer too weary to dream and the planner too preoccupied with the next meal to strategize. Education, once a light of empowerment, is dimmed by the darkness of corruption and systemic neglect. What difference, then, does it make if you can read and write when you still find yourself bound by the same chains of oppression?
</p><p>Perhaps the true literacy lies not in schooling but in the ability to see beyond oneself. To understand justice, to fight for equity, to wield knowledge not as a weapon of greed but as a tool for collective progress. This society needs more than textbooks—it needs visionaries who remember that education is not merely a privilege but a responsibility.
</p><p>The illiterate may lack letters, but the literate have lost their way. Both are casualties of a system that rewards the cunning and punishes the just. </p><p>
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Literate and Powerless
By
Godwin Erite