The Desk — Finance, Policy & the View from the Street By Kemi Adeosun
Kemi Adeosun
There are weddings you attend for the couple, and weddings you attend for the room. Last week I attended one of the latter. The occasion was beautiful, but I confess I greeted neither bride nor groom properly, because I was cornered in the sunshine with three other women having a conversation I could not leave. We were talking about Nigeria’s social challenges. The schools that do not teach. The clinics that are there but not there. The children the system has no name for.
At some point I said the thing I always say when this topic surfaces. I call it We the People, if I were not at that phase in my life where I seek ease, I should write a PHS thesis on the subject. The argument is simple: look, globally, at the history of mass education, healthcare, care for widows, the disabled, and orphans. Much of it was pioneered not by governments, but by religious institutions, civic associations, philanthropists, and ordinary citizens who could not wait for the state to act.
The UK Pattern
