The Nation Newspaper

Category: Thursday

  • Sore-losers’ assault on our judiciary

    Sore-losers’ assault on our judiciary

    For those who have taken the pains to study Nigerian politics and political process, the outcome of the 2023 presidential election was predictable. With PDP fractionalized into four, it was apparent the party was doomed. Unfortunately, leading lights of the party including Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Rabiu Kwankwaso and other warring groups who out of greed for power unwittingly ceded the coveted price to a more versatile politician with a better brinkmanship on how to cope with party intrigue and ambition of party and non-party members and reconcile private affluence with public squalor, blamed everyone except themselves.

    First the target was Bola Tinubu, the winner of the election who from his party intra primary to the general election battled power and principalities to achieve what most people have come to regard as a miracle. After losing to a better prepared candidate, they embarked on sterile argument about his Chicago University certificate, his health status and his true identity. Then the battle shifted to INEC accused of not transmitting result by Irev. Obi, despite coming a distant third, claimed his victory was stolen. Atiku who ought not to have featured in the electoral contest claimed victory without proving how the victory was secured.

    And finally it was the turn of the judiciary for dutifully interpreting the electoral law and the constitution when approached by sore losers sworn to undermining the integrity of the judiciary if they could not have Tinubu’s victory over-turned on technical grounds.

    While Atiku and Obi may justified their assault on the judiciary by the fact that all is fair in war as in politics since politics is war by other means, I think both by their short-sightedness are unpatriotic. Destroying judiciary which defines humanity only takes us back to Hobbesian state of lawlessness and chaos where life is nasty, brutish and short.

    Read Also: No noise, please

    Of course our judges are Nigerians. It can therefore be argued that a part cannot be holier than the whole. But comparing our judiciary with other institutions of state will be odious. Beyond etymology, judges are called justices because it is envisaged they will dispense justice to ensure a just society. And a just society is where a person gets what he or she deserves. For a society, it should be an article of faith that their judges will dispense justice, protect citizens human rights and a nation’s constitution.

    Unfortunately, instead of promoting faith in our judicial system, those who should know better, precisely because they are sore losers have done everything to undermine the integrity of our judiciary.

    Let us start with last week’s open letter to Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) Justice Olukayode Ariwoola by elder statesman, Chief Edwin Clark asking him to reorganize the judiciary because of alleged corruption and the malpractices. Unfortunately, his intervention was ill-timed because Nigerians who are aware of where he stood in the last February election cannot but lump him together with supporters of Obi who because they see only the picture in their heads have become the greatest threat to the judiciary.

    Pa Clark’s case was not helped by the fact that except ‘conflicting judgments by same courts in different states of the country’, all the other cases he cited to support his allegation of corruption in the judiciary including the inhumane treatment meted to the former CJN, Justice Walter Onoghen; the illegal raiding of judges houses at midnight; socialization between the judiciary and some senators who are facing criminal charges;” all happened before the current CJN assumed office.

    Pa Clark who admitted he has been in the judiciary for 59 years knows Nigerian judiciary has come a long way from the First Republic when judges complained “their “hands were tied”, when the NPC/NCNC coalition partners engineered a midnight retroactive law to oust the jurisdiction of the Privy Council, the then highest judicial body in the country and during Buhari, Babangida and Abacha military misadventure when the judiciary was used to wage wars against Nigeria. He was alive and had influence on political actors of the fourth republic including President Obasanjo who without restraint freely used the judiciary to fight his political foes.  For Pa Clark to therefore insinuate just like the ‘Obidient’ that the judiciary today is the worst in our nation’s history will be a hard sell to those who live in Nigeria.

    Pa Clark also seem to have a problem with the chief justice’s declaration that judges are not moved by public opinion in the determination of cases before them but by facts’ as a response to Labour Party’s “all eyes on the judiciary” media campaign which many saw as attempt to intimidate the judiciary to see only their own truth no matter how jaundiced.  But with the outcome of the election, it has become apparent, results of polls after polls masterminded by Obi’s sympathisers which predicted his landslide victory in the February election could not have had universal applicability. And with members of Human Rights Groups accusing each other of partisanship during public presentation of what was supposed to be a joint report, the CJN’s apprehension or uneasiness with public opinion as determinant of court cases cannot be faulted.

    Attack by Atiku Abubakar on the judiciary that threw his case of alleged ‘banditry perpetrated by the APC and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on October 26, 2023 and upheld the election of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has remained vicious. But this was just as his party’s governors’ forum led by Bala Mohammed, and his party’s National Working Committee (NWC) including the acting National Chairman, Umar Damagum distanced themselves from his attack by declaring “As a forum, (they) believe and restate our faith and confidence in the judiciary to do justice in political and other cases before the courts” adding that “the judges should be commended for doing a good job.”

    The judiciary also came under severe criticism following the Court of Appeal’s ruling by the three-member panel led by Justice Elfrida Williams-Dawodu that sacked the Governor of Plateau State, Caleb Mutfwang and declared APC candidate Muntawe Goshwe as the winner of the March 18 governorship poll in Plateau state.

      Again they ignored the precedents. In 2019, APC was unable to present candidates for the governorship, Senate, House of Representatives, and House of Assembly elections in Rivers State following bungled party primaries.

    It was the same story in Zamfara where the APC lost three senatorial seats and the seven seats in the House of Representatives they won during the February 23, 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections, the APC governorship election won with 534,541 to Bello Muhammad Mutawalle of the PDP’s 189,452 and all the 24 seats in the Zamfara State House of Assembly. APC lost all the positions to the opposition PDP because according to Centus Nweze, who spoke on behalf of a five-member panel of the apex court, “it is clear that the respondent (APC) was in grave disobedience of two lawful court orders and It is a serious matter for anyone to flout a court order”.

    Governor Abdulaziz Yari Abubakar who admitted APC breached the provisions of the law that mandates the party to conduct ward congresses, accepted the Supreme Court verdict, urged APC members to be law-abiding while directing security agencies to ensure adequate protection of lives and property of his people.

    We cannot afford to destroy our judiciary because of all the institutions of state, it is the only one that can ensure government accountability, fair resolution of dispute, uphold rights and bringing culprits to justice and sustain the democratic culture.

  • Remember when we grew food in our gardens

    Remember when we grew food in our gardens

    There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm, notes Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Almanac; one is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other, is that heat comes from the furnace.

    For the benefit of the superficial Millennial or Gen Z-er, the Curmudgeon paints a more fascinating picture of the source of all wealth. And in the true spirit of his portraiture, I’d say: Imagine yourself a ghommid, standing smack in the centre of Nigeria’s groundnut pyramids, animal ranches, and cocoa plantations, several decades ago.

    You take your ghommid’s shears and cut down surrounding flora to make a clearing for a farm. As the crops flower and animals fatten, you harvest the best grains and herd all the supple livestock into a giant pile, wave a magic wand, and it’s all turned into industry, buildings, and people spattered across gated high society and sprawling boondocks. You name this ‘progress’ and feign mutation from ghommid to giant.

    Such is the relationship between cities and the countryside, the modern and out-of-date, the dwindling past, and the silicon age. We must understand, however, that mortal Nigeria as the metaphorical giant is nothing but a dispensable minion in the economics of life.

    A Nigerian prototype of America’s Silicon Valley is the Millennial and Gen Zer’s most astute retort to the declining world foisted upon all by the older generation. But this has done too little to improve our fortunes. Ultimately, the burgeoning I.T. sector fosters ephemeral growth, rather than give relief, it delivers a Siamese bundle of utopia and dystopia in one birth.

    Young Nigeria, like the rest of the world, is besotted by this twin grotesqueness for its dazzle and espoused freedoms. More fascinating are the manifestations of the now ubiquitous start-up and fintech. A peculiar thing is happening: where the government fails to show up, foreign financiers or angel funders, if you like, are extending their interventions with curious funding.

    Read Also; Two held for alleged manufacturing of fake drinks

    Of course, nobody sees anything wrong with this. How could anyone deem such interventions scary in a world where oligarchs maul promising youths into armed bandits, career assassins, political hooligans, murderers, arsonists, and so on, while they embezzle public funds to entertain their wives and educate their children abroad?

    Thus the argument is that angel funding is great for the economy. These seed monies – irrespective of their slush equivalents used for funding regime change and dubious political springs worldwide –  are filling a crucial void in empowering youths who would otherwise be unemployed and left out of the loop of social interventions.

    Not all ‘seed money’ is a slush fund; a few agricultural startups have sprouted from the seeds of angel funders with stakes in diverse sectors of the agricultural economy. Some of their interventions subsist in the production of palm kernel oil (PKO) which is still currently inadequate for the companies that use it as raw material.

    Then some support farmers’ scale-up from peasant farming to commercial farming by providing extension services, quality seeds, access to finance, access to mechanization, and general advisory services on new and innovative methods in farming.

    These appreciable interventions deserve sustainable partnership between the government and the so-called angel funders of Nigeria’s Silicon Valley. But technology, like the crude oil boom, is Janus-faced, often manifesting as development’s womb and tomb.

    Little wonder Silicon Valley subsists as the playground of nerds and mindless herds on a leash. It is also the modern arena of the surveillance state, our private perversions and mob wars: government and the governed, husbands and wives, parents and children, lovers and their sexual nemesis, politicians and electorate, clash like gladiators – their mismatched whims the tools of shredding and seizure.

    The history of technology has often been characterized by a debate between enamoured romantics and dismissive sceptics. Neither divide, however, projects a convincing response to the opportunities and challenges that new technologies present; both in turn often exaggerate or downplay the impact of technology, and this leads to entrenched positions and polarization.

    Such entrenched positions can be harmful even if politically correct and more media-friendly than the highly differentiated analysis fostered by reality and careful, longitudinal research.

    Advocates of technology integration in agriculture must understand the discourses that drive it and, in some cases, harm its acceptance, and find a balance between the technological innovations that can be sustained by sound policies and those driven more by Machiavellian interests.

    Technology is useless if it isn’t humane and doesn’t improve life. Given the soil’s contribution to all life and wealth, technology must be deployed to enhance its healing and restorative properties by which disease passes into health, age into youth, and death into life.

    The wellspring of wealth is agricultural surplus, the ability to feed more than one with the labour of one. Agricultural surplus built the groundnut pyramids of the north and the cocoa plantations of the southwest.

    Agriculture became the mainstay of Nigeria’s economy and the foundation upon which the pioneer nationalists launched their agitation for independence.

    Nigeria was a leading agricultural economy in the 1950s, being the largest producer of palm oil, groundnut, cotton, and cocoa globally. The sector employed over 70 per cent of the labour force and accounted for as much as 62.3 per cent of the nation’s foreign exchange earnings.

    World Bank data reveal that agriculture contributed over 60 per cent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Even so, the sector grapples with a poor land tenure system, deficient irrigation farming, climate change, and land degradation. Others are low technology, high production cost and poor distribution of inputs, limited financing, high post-harvest losses, and poor access to markets.

    These challenges have stifled agricultural productivity, affecting the sector’s contribution to the country’s GDP. It has also led to increased food imports amid skyrocketing population and declining levels of food sufficiency.

    For instance, between 2016 and 2019, Nigeria’s cumulative agricultural imports stood at N3.35 trillion, four times higher than the agricultural export of N803 billion within the same period.

    Of its 92.4 million hectares, Nigeria boasts 82.0 million hectares of arable land; so far, just 34 million hectares of it have been cultivated. With population explosion and the government’s renewed drive to boost food security, agriculture has become increasingly crucial to our survival as a nation.

    But caught between the womb walls of the crude oil creeks and big tech, Nigeria lives imprisoned in starvation’s bower. The country asphyxiates amid deathly oil spills, stolen crude oil, misgovernance, and the tinseled serpents of Silicon Valley.

    We live in dire need of irrigated farmlands but our people shed more blood to irrigate the seasons; think farmers-herders clashes over grazing pasture and arable land.

    Yet Nigeria is lost to her Silicon Valley treats. What do we eat when the dazzle dims to a dwindle, as the oil boom did, and all innovations do, eventually? Like Cadmus sowing dragon’s teeth, shall we plant yesterday’s corpses and harvest them as fresh food for our bellies?

    The first supermarket, Kingsway Stores, appeared in the Nigerian landscape in 1948. Since then Nigeria has showcased dazzling groceries across a burgeoning wholesale-retail complex.

    Against the backdrop of it all, the old farm fades into patterns and cycles of strife. Remember when we grew food in our gardens, forests, and farm settlements? Remember when fresh harvest nestled in our pantries, the basement, and our backyards? 

    Today, it’s beyond the reach of everyone.

  • Betta Edu: Between God, Oyedepo and Tinubu

    Betta Edu: Between God, Oyedepo and Tinubu

    Betta Edu, a trailblazer is at 35, Nigeria’s Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.  She was before then the Cross River State Commissioner for Health,  the National Women Leader  of All Progressives Congress (APC), the feat she achieved by defeating her opponent by  2,662 to 117 votes at the APC National convention of March 2022. She then became the Special Adviser, Women Affairs, the Tinubu/Shettima Presidential Campaign Committee and went on to mobilise women all across the country in their millions to vote for the ticket.

    Of course by the nature of our party patronage system where politicians share spoils of war after victory, many Nigerians will readily conclude she secured her position in President Tinubu’s cabinet on account of her contributions. But such assumption is far-fetched. And it is not that Edu herself was any less confused.  While she was convinced her appointment as a minister at 35, was a miracle from God, she was not sure as to who between her pastor, Bishop Oyedepo who placed his hand on her head and President Tinubu, the freewheeling talent hunter, laid the foundation for the miracle.

    But listen to her. “On the last day of Shiloh, just as I was walking out, I saw Papa, Bishop David Oyedepo; I whispered to him, ‘Papa, I need you to pray for me. I have just one prayer request now’, ‘I want to come back to Shiloh 2023 as a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria’. He put his hand on my head and he said, ‘It is done’. I stood up and I left.”

    Last week, while appreciating God for what she genuinely believes was a miracle, Edu said, “I came today to return all glory to God that in spite of all odds, today I’m a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.”

    But we must understand where she was coming from. As a woman of faith, she has been told by her Bible that “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong (Ecclesiastes 9:11) and that “except the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain that build it” (Psalm 127 v1).

    But Betta was also smart enough to understand that this only meant one cannot work independently of God. She therefore has no illusion as to anyone trying to win a race in which she is not a participant or securing a victory without first fighting a war.  And because she instinctively knew every man/woman is the architect of his/her own fortune, she left every other thing to God who ‘does not share His glory with any man’, and chose to arm herself with intimidating credentials.

    She was born in Lagos where she was raised by a disciplinarian Cross River father who ‘would not allow her go out visiting friends’, let alone going to nightclubs or wasting all evenings watching half naked girls exhibiting bad character in search of cheap money on Big Brother Africa Reality TV show.

    For her education, she earned a first degree in Medicine and Surgery (MBBCh) from the University of Calabar, Cross River State,  a Post Graduate Diploma in Public Health for Developing Countries from London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom,  a Doctor of Public Health from Texila American University; Certificate in Leadership and Management in Health from the University of Washington, United States of America;  Certificate in Health in Humanitarian Crises from University of London, United Kingdom; Certificate in Fundamentals of Project Planning and Management, Daren school of Business, University of Virginia, United States of America and did a program on  Advanced course on Health Financing for universal health coverage for low- and middle-income countries by World Health Organization.

    Read Also: COP28: Betta Edu secures Islamic Development Bank nod to scale-up social protection

    And for her professional developments, she was Special Adviser to the Governor of Cross River state on Community Health in 2015 to 2016; the vice chairman, Forum of all CEOs of Primary Health Care Agencies and Boards in Nigeria in 2018; the first Director General, Cross River State Primary Healthcare Development Agency (CRSPHCDA); the Commissioner for Health, Cross River State from December 2019 through to March 2022.  In 2020, she was appointed as the chairman, Cross River State COVID-19 Response Taskforce’.

    Dr. Edu, according to The Guardian “is a goal-getter who is driven by her strong belief in excellence, integrity, hard work, resilience, diligence and effective execution”. (The Guardian, April 3).

    It was for the above reason that I think, that by attributing everything to God while downplaying her own intimidating credentials, Betta has done a great disservice to some of her fellow miracle seekers who have ignored Jesus’ admonition that “faith without work is a dead faith” (James 2:17) because a dead faith produces no tangible evidence in a person’s life’.

    Unfortunately while Betta was piling up her intimidating credentials, by burning the midnight oil and engaging  in humanitarian work across the creeks of her native Cross River State,  most of her fellow miracle seekers spread within Pentecostal churches across Nigeria wasted valuable time on Sundays and on weekdays praying without forgetting their mid-week night vigils.

    If only miracle seekers understand the nature of God that decreed ‘everyone reaps what he or she sows’, they would have known that no amount of their pastor’s anointment or placing of hands on their heads will make President Tinubu who is a mere pencil in the hand of God, to settle for an unprepared miracle seeker in place of resourceful Betta  as a minister.

  • Oshiomhole and foreign criminals as labourers

    Oshiomhole and foreign criminals as labourers

    Last week, Senator Adams Oshiomhole’s heartache was about some “Foreign Prisoners Working on Nigerian Construction Sites”. He has threatened to disclose their names. I think he should save his breath. Nigerian government and the media cannot pretend to be unaware of a decade old conspiracy against Nigerian unskilled workers.

    It has long been established that we all suffer from cultural imperialism by believing everything foreign, including religion, culture, and even the foreign media, are superior. The new addition is that we are now also saying foreign criminals condemned in their country are better than our jobless Nigerians. These foreign condemned criminals are housed in decent hotels, ferried by luxurious buses to their site every day and paid in foreign currency to do digging of ground which should ordinarily be the exclusive preserve of Nigerian unskilled workers.

    Read Also: Oshiomhole to NLC: advocate N35,000 minimum wage for all workers

    The truth is that for contracts awarded to foreign firms,  almost  80% of the cost of such contracts are repatriated back to foreign land from where funds, machineries, equipment and, experts and consultants implementing such projects originated from. The only 20% that get to us in form of daily wages for those who dig the ground is what those who issue expatriate quotas visas have now passed back to foreign condemned criminals.

    Unfortunately both our unskilled and skilled workers are not treated any better by our indigenous owners of mega banks and telecommunication companies whose annual profit will make investors in Europe and America green with envy.  It will be a big relief if Oshiomhole can bring succour to these contract staff many of whom in the absence of hope are escaping in droves to foreign land.  As for foreign criminal workers, Nigerians are aware of those involved in expatriate quota visa racketeering to bring condemned criminals from China and the beneficiaries.  Oshiomhole should just do the needful.

  • Better late than never

    Better late than never

    The constitutional provision on the issue is unambiguous.  When the President or a state governor is incapacitated that he cannot discharge the functions of his office, he yields place to his deputy. But in a democratic setting like ours, where trust is scarce, the President and governors keep their deputies at arm’s length. So, they comply more in the negative with the constitutional provision to allow their deputies run the show when they are indisposed.

    Once they get into office, the President and governors and their deputies who ran on a joint ticket suddenly become arch foes. They make it look as if they just tolerated each other for the purpose of the election. After being sworn in, they become sworn enemies rather than settle down to work together.

    The enmity brews discontent, affecting largely governance. With the vice-president and deputy governors sidelined, trusted aides of the president and governors fill their roles. Without resources to fight back, they are reduced to reading newspapers jeje in their offices, as the wife of a former vice president once revealed. We saw what happened when the late President Umoru Yar’Adua took ill and could not continue to discharge his duties.

    The nation thought it had witnessed the last of such political drama until a similar case reared its head in Ondo State. Governor Rotimi Akeredolu has been ill for sometime now. A few months ago, he went abroad for treatment and handed over the reins of government to his deputy, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, after duly informing the House of Assembly. He returned in September and wrote to the lawmakers that he was back and ready to resume work. He never did.

    Remember the late Danbaba Suntai of Taraba State? That was the same thing he did following injuries he sustained in a plane crash in 2012. He flew the plane. He abandoned his treatment abroad midway in 2013 and was brought back home to keep his job. He was in bad shape and never stepped into his office, even for one day throughout his remaining two years in power.

    Read Also: Medical leave: Ondo Assembly confirms receipt of letter from Akeredolu

    Obversely, Akeredolu never returned to Akure, his state capital, for work. Rather, he stayed in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, from where he tried to run Ondo. It did not work. His presence was needed more in Akure, but his health did not allow him. When you are ill, you are ill, there is nothing you can do about it except to seek medical help. For ranking public officials like the President and governors, their health matters so that they can discharge their functions, with their faculties intact.

    Where their health fails, the proper thing to do is to go for treatment, while their deputies stand in for them. The Constitution recognises the fact that as humans, the President and governors can fall ill like any other person. Being President or governor does not make any person super-human or indispensable. If it does, the Constitution would not have created the offices of vice-president and deputy governor.

    This constitutional allowance is reasonable and cannot be faulted. No man is a machine. Even machines break down and when they do, they are allowed to rest and fitted with new parts to get them working again. The human body is not like that. There are no new parts that can be bought off the shelf to make an ailing man function optimally, if he does not make the issue of his failing health top priority. The only way to do that is to go for medical scrutiny.

    It is heartening that Akeredolu has taken this step by returning to the hospital to take care of himself. No office can be more precious than life. No matter the office a man occupies, if he does not have good health, he cannot enjoy it. We can only pray for Akeredolu to get well soon and return to his post, if God wills. The governor has finally done the right thing. It is good that he is going to pay more attention to his health than hold tight to an office that is ephemeral.

  • Fubara’s fantasy 

    Fubara’s fantasy 

    Rivers State continues to dig deeper and deeper into crisis. The House of Assembly was demolished yesterday, weeks after part of it was torched to, rightly or wrongly, stop the impeachment of Governor Siminilayi Fubara. The governor’s political fate hangs in the balance, with 27 members of the assembly opposing him. They are for his godfather and predecessor, Nyesom Wike, now Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister.

    On Fubara’s side are four legislators led by Edison Ehie, who got an interim injunction on Tuesday recognising him as ‘authentic speaker’ of the House. Since the injunction was obtained exparte (without the other side present), the task before the 27 other members led by Martin Amaewhule is to get the order vacated. The injunction is obviously to counter the next move by the Amaewhule group which on Monday dumped the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for the All Progressives Congress (APC).

    In this fight between godfather and godson, anything can happen and two queer things – the court injunction and demolition of the assembly complex – happened consecutively on Tuesday and yesterday. Fubara  has been accused  of biting the fingers that fed him and warned against tampering with the political structure that brought him to office. Though, the governor made light of the rift when he described it as “one between a father and the son”, he is not taking things lying low.

    Read Also: Fubara has erased Rivers history with Assembly demolition, says lawmaker

    To stop the 27 lawmakers from moving against him, the assembly complex has been demolished and may not be rebuilt any time soon. Can that checkmate the lawmakers or will they get another venue for their sitting? The portents are not good.

     Exparte orders are not granted as a matter of course. There must be a special interest to be protected. What is that special interest in this instant case? Can four members hold a 32-man house to ransom? Do they have the power to sit and elect one of them, Ehie, as speaker as they did? To prevent the hijacking of the legislature, the Constitution stipulates in Section 96 (1) that: The quorum of a House of Assembly shall be one third of all members of the House.

      So, do four men constitute ‘one third of all members of the House’? Well, the court has ruled, giving Fubara and the four lawmakers something to hold on to, for now. For how long will that be and how will it all end?  Impeachment of the godson or fall of the godfather? Time will tell.

  • Obstacles to seamless growth of tertiary institutions

    Obstacles to seamless growth of tertiary institutions

    Incredible as it may sound, the various Nigerian governments constitute the greatest obstacles to seamless and rational development of tertiary institutions in Nigeria especially in recent times. The University of Ibadan was established by the British colonial government after careful study, analysis and funding options and the country’s needs at the same time. This was also the time the British government established the university of the West Indies, upgraded the Makerere College which had been offering some form of technical education since 1922 to students in East Africa to a university college in Uganda.

    Contemporaneously, the British government founded the University College of the Gold Coast in Legon on the same principles. They were all to operate as colleges of the University College, London which moderated examination papers and the degrees awarded after three years post-Advanced Level of London or Cambridge universities as the case may be. The university colleges did not offer specialized degree courses but general degrees in Arts, the Sciences but by 1949, a few of them, namely Ibadan, Kingston and Makerere offered courses in medicine.

    Students from the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone and the Gambia came to Ibadan to study medicine while students from all the West Indian islands went to Mona (Kingston, Jamaica) and those from Uganda, Kenya and the then Tanganyika (now Tanzania after unification with Zanzibar) went to Makerere to study medicine. This careful planning ensured that the quality of the degrees offered was at par with those of London and their products could work in any country of the Commonwealth and even in the USA after fulfilling local conditions. Critics have justifiably said the curriculum  in these university colleges was too narrow and in some cases unrelated to local environment but nobody could say the quality of the teaching  and research were inferior to any offered in the Western world. The teachers and technicians and even librarians came from the advanced world of the white commonwealth. The few Africans who taught in these institutions were educated in British universities and rarely in American universities whose quality of education was usually thought not to be as good as those in Britain.

    Nigerians were proud to have gone through the portals of the University of Ibadan and their products provided the bulk of the civil servants on which the politicians relied in the transition period from colonial administration to independence administration.

    After independence in 1960, the new rulers of Nigeria began to criticize the colonial structure and limited academic offerings at Ibadan where the Social Sciences except Economics were not taught. Business Administration, Law, Architecture, Engineering, Accounting, Insurance and other modern disciplines were not on offering. Under this general criticism  of existing universities  in Nigeria, the Eastern Nigerian government  inspired by Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe and others largely educated in American universities, established along the land lease basis of  some state-owned American universities, the University of Nigeria at Nsukka, emphasising the all-round nature of universities in the USA with emphasis on agriculture, engineering, architecture, business, the social sciences, education with emphasis on sports medicine and physical education.

    Admission did not place too much emphasis on the restrictive Advanced Level passes of the London or Cambridge universities overseas examination. The school leaving certificate was adjudged good enough for a four year degree course instead of the three-year course duration at Ibadan. Even though the elite looked at this experiment as watering down higher education in Nigeria, the university stuck to its guns. The Americanism at Nsukka was later watered down by the influx of Igbo academics who went to Nsukka because of the civil disturbances and the civil war which lasted from 1966 to 1970. In 1962, the western and northern regional governments followed suit by establishing their own universities in Zaria and Ife in a competitive spirit which characterised politics of the first years of regional governments in Nigeria from 1951 to 1966. The two institutions tried to combine what was good in the British and American traditions but they remained largely tied to the British educational tradition.  The federal authorities were not going to allow itself to be run out of competition in the educational sector and it therefore established the University of Lagos combining business oriented courses of medicine, engineering, marine biology, architecture with the traditional arts, social sciences and the physical sciences.

    Read Also: NASS to remove tertiary institutions from IPPIS – Speaker

    The point I want to make is that the first five universities in Nigeria were established after very careful planning.

    Since that time, not much planning went into the establishment of universities in Nigeria. After the civil war of 1967 to 1970 and the stupendous rise in petroleum dollars accruing to the Nigerian exchequer especially following the rise in prices after the Arab-Israeli war of 1973, Nigeria felt confident enough to decide that the five existing universities were grossly inadequate and went ahead to establish regionally located universities and to take over the existing universities in Ibadan, Lagos, Ile-Ife, Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria and University of Nigeria in Nsukka. These new universities were located in Sokoto, Maiduguri, Calabar, Port Harcourt, Benin (taking over the existing state university) Yola, Bayero College Kano and Jos. Later, Makurdi , Abeokuta, Akure, Bauchi and Owerri were established as special universities of agriculture and engineering. The point that needs be made is the politics of establishment and location of universities without paying much attention to funding, equipment and staffing. The domination of politics in the establishment of universities was carried to an extreme point when President Goodluck Jonathan suddenly in an after-dinner speech decreed the establishment of universities in all federal states where there were no universities ushering the sudden establishment of 11 federal universities in some places that had no infrastructure on the basis that universities were part of what was called “democratic dividends”. Since then, politics seems to play more part in the establishment of universities than rational planning and the wherewithal to fund these universities.

    Some state governments that have not even succeeded in running good secondary schools have now joined in the mad rush to establish not one but two or three universities without having the financial resources to run them. The university idea has gone to the dogs with the indiscriminate establishment of universities which exist only in name but not in truth and in deed as my old secondary school anthem taught us. The National Universities Commission (NUC) which was established to monitor the rational growth of universities has been emasculated and reduced to a rubber stamping body of yes-men! To make matters worse, private individuals under the illusion that there is money to be made have joined in the rush to establish universities. Religious bodies have not allowed itself to be left behind; in fact, many beat individual businesses to it and established well organised universities which have been found good enough to beat the government universities except in the high level of fees which they naturally charged the students in their institutions.

    The establishment of universities in Nigeria has been reduced to absurdity. Any powerful politician can use the establishment of universities in their constituency as bargaining chips. Universities of Medicine, Air Force, Navy, Petroleum, Transport, Police, Army universities are widely located in isolated places of the birth of major political and military officers with hardly any planning apart from who to ennoble as vice chancellors. My hope is that water will soon find its own level and these unplanned universities will in future collapse like a pack of cards when students refuse to enrol in them as a result of employers shunning their products.

    No one is opposed to the establishment of universities because the present ones do not have the absorptive capacity to take the students who want to have the benefit of higher education. But what is worth doing at all is worth doing well.

     The funding and staffing of these so-called universities leave much to be desired. If we have the correct statistics on our population, employment capacity and other data, one will be able to know the number and what kind of universities we need and can afford. If we are going to educate our young people for global employment places, then we must ensure that are graduates are of great quality and consequently of the desirable type. On the basis of our population which is estimated at over 200 million which are probably over estimated, our 170 plus universities of different hues, colour and quality is not too many but they must be quality universities. America has over 4,000 universities with five of them adjudged to be out of the best ten. Britain has 160 with a national population about a quarter of ours. Canada with less than 40 million people has just over 100 universities but we cannot compare our GDP with those of Canada, the UK and the USA. India about 1113 universities, 43796 colleges, 43796 so called stand-alone colleges producing different kinds of graduates but the product of its highly rated engineering colleges are attracting attention all over the world.  Perhaps we will get there but not through mushroom universities just established to meet the yearning of young people with no eye on end products. If we are to produce those who will put Nigeria on the world level, we have to pay more attention to our universities and the way we establish them without planning because it will be a scenario of garbage in garbage out! It is not the number or quantity that matters but quality and there is little quality in our existing mushroom universities.

  • Wellspring of all surplus

    Wellspring of all surplus

    It’s about time the Nigerian city achieved a rural sweep. We should profit from what we grow. Right now, our cities deify baubles and digital enlightenment, which are superfluous to the country.

    This is why social life and commerce get grounded in the heat of a crisis. At the outbreak of the coronavirus, for instance, economic activities in most cities got grounded. It was as if the metropolis and the wheels of industry didn’t matter.

    Before the advent of big tech; before our cash crops and wildflowers got decimated by murderous herdsmen and their ruck; before pastoral farms frothed with pesticides and fishes floated belly-up in Ewekoro and the oil creeks in Niger Delta, we grew what we ate.

    Cities don’t produce food. They depend on the countryside to provide it. Save their food distribution systems, cities can quarantine, shut in, and shut down, so long as the countryside doesn’t.

    A deeper look at our fate through the pandemic revealed how worthless the Nigerian city is, with its parade of glitz and chug-chug of industry. But for the country’s agricultural economy, Nigeria would starve.

    President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has his work cut out for him. His agricultural policy must manifest beyond passionate pronouncements and gazetted intent.

    The wellspring of wealth is agricultural surplus, the ability to feed more than one with the labour of one. Agricultural surplus built the groundnut pyramids of the north and the cocoa plantations of the southwest.

    Nigeria was a leading agricultural economy in the 1950s, being the largest producer of palm oil, groundnut, cotton, and cocoa globally. The sector employed over 70 per cent of the labour force and accounted for as much as 62.3 per cent of the nation’s foreign exchange earnings.

    Over the last four decades, however, the yield of most key crops has declined, in particular, cassava, cocoa beans and wheat – a reflection of low utilisation of improved seedlings, agrochemicals and poor adoption of technology, according to a recent Price Water House report.

    The yield of rice on the other hand has increased steadily, resulting from government’s increased support for rice production, by providing subsidised agrochemicals and credit facilities through various intervention funds.

    In contrast to yield, land usage in Nigeria has increased across key crops, like cassava, cocoa beans, rice paddy and wheat. This has been primarily driven by an increase in the population engaged in farming, although production remains at a subsistence level.

    For most key crops, Nigeria’s share of global production has remained low. However, the rate of consumption has outstripped production. The deficit has been met largely by importation, making the country a net importer. On average, between 2011 and 2015, N1.4 trillion has been spent on food imports with wheat, milk, rice, sugar and malt extract, constituting the bulk of Nigeria’s food import bill.

    Consequently, Nigeria is vulnerable to changes in global agro-commodity prices, with a significant impact on inflation and foreign reserves. Between 2011 and 2015, agro-processed exports declined by 41 percent to N143 billion. These exports, which accounted for an estimated 20 per cent of Nigeria’s non-oil exports in 2015, were mainly leather and processed skin, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, tobacco and cocoa derivatives.

    According to the FAO, Nigeria is estimated to have lost US$ 10 billion in annual exports of agriculture and agro-processed commodities including groundnut, palm oil, cocoa and cotton as a result of the decline in production of these commodities.

    In addition, the Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) attributed the decline in food exports to non-compliance with regulatory and documentation requirements for food imports to the European Union and the United Kingdom.

    Also, the World Bank estimates that Nigeria and other developing countries could have lost as much as US$ 6.9 billion in 2015, as a result of food export rejection.

    These challenges have stifled agricultural productivity, affecting the sector’s contribution to the country’s GDP. It has also led to increased food imports amid skyrocketing population and declining levels of food sufficiency.

    For instance, between 2016 and 2019, Nigeria’s cumulative agricultural imports stood at N3.35 trillion, four times higher than the agricultural export of N803 billion within the same period.

    Of its 92.4 million hectares, Nigeria boasts 82.0 million hectares of arable land; so far, just 34 million hectares of it have been cultivated. With population explosion and government’s renewed drive to boost food security, agriculture has become increasingly crucial to our survival as a nation.

    Understandably, former President Muhammadu Buhari sought to revivify the country’s agricultural economy at his assumption of office in 2015, and then, in 2019. Despite his rural preachment, the country’s fixation with oil rendered her a whited sepulchre, sullied by wastefulness and vice, the soot that will not out.

    Read Also: Nigeria records N1.888tr trade surplus in Q2, says NBS

    Nigeria needs agriculture. Agriculture employs about 70 percent of the country’s population thus it can be used to drive sustainable growth prospects through a value chain that turns raw commodities into processed goods for domestic consumption or export.

    President Tinubu must fund the diversification of agriculture to make it more appealing to a vast youth population that is spiritless about farming but might be attracted to processing, marketing, and other business opportunities along the value chain.

    The food emergency in northeast and northwest Nigeria brought on by the Boko Haram insurgency, banditry, infrastructure deficits, and the government’s response to them emphasises the need to expand the agricultural sector to guarantee food security and nutrition.

    Until then, the Nigerian city will subsist as a plague; it is diseased because its sensuality is both morbid and commercial. Its hidden graces unclad, like the proverbial harlot, self-exiled from the village but always returning under cover of night to stalk and prey on the countryside.

    The Nigerian city does too little for the countryside. Knowing this, President Tinubu announced his decision to resurrect the country by endowing its agricultural economy with remarkable fillips. To achieve this, he must ensure that both his team and tools, unlike Thel’s worms, aren’t pathogens miming his curative mantra.

    Tinubu must understand that his government cannot achieve agricultural boon simply by pronouncing passion to resources. He must thoroughly examine if resources are pronounced to his passion.

    While the rationale for prioritising agriculture is sound, many reforms will have to be enacted if the sector is to flourish. These reforms must also include measures to save rural Nigeria with the sheen continually sponged off its greenery by the city.

    It was hay that allowed populations to grow and civilizations to flourish among the forests of Northern Europe. Hay moved the greatness of Rome to Paris and London, and later to Berlin and Moscow and New York, writes Dyson.

    Hay was responsible for Nigeria’s first brush with economic glory. Between 1962 and 1968, Nigeria’s major foreign exchange earner was the agricultural sector where palm oil and groundnut made up around 47 per cent of the country’s exports. However, Nigeria’s position as an agricultural powerhouse declined through its oil boom.

    Caught between the womb walls of the crude oil creeks and digital tech, Nigeria lives imprisoned in starvation’s bower. Yet the government recites fantastic stories of agricultural rebirth thus rejecting the strife of contraries by which Nigeria convulses.

    At the outbreak of COVID-19, our storied artifice collapsed in hysterical retreat as the country leapt from its tinseled perch and dashed, shrieking back to its native valleys.

    What was hitherto regarded as an underprivileged fetish and peasant preserve became our major source of sustenance and rebirth. Nigeria weeps but does not recognise her tears.

  • This is your daughter’s  body count (2)

    This is your daughter’s  body count (2)

    A female celebrity recently celebrated her love for being a “slut” on a broadcast programme. The male interviewer, intoning a slur, called her a slut at every turn until she felt comfortable and voiced her discomfiture. Having bragged earlier that her family supports her decision to self-identify as a slut and live as such, she suddenly developed a moral sense of things and asked the interviewer why he is unforgiving of a woman with a high body count vis-a-vis a man. Their dialogue ensues.

    “Why do you only condemn a female with a high body count?”

    “Because that makes her a slut.”

    “And what does it make you if you are a man with a high body count?”

    “A slut maker,” he said.

    As we condemn the slur intoned by the male interviewer, shall we invalidate the toxic femininity of the “slutty” interviewee? More is the pity that they both enjoy a cult following among modern, “emancipated” youngsters.

    While being male permits no one bragging rights to reckless sex life, the consequences for a female are often more devastating. Dissenters may argue with their keypads.

    There is a lot to teach our daughters. That chastity is nonnegotiable; it simply makes perfect sense. That promiscuity renders the female toxic, like a garden filled with poisoned fruit.

    Sleeping around projects a lack of morals. And lack of morals makes no one “emancipated.” It’s neither ennobling nor liberating for a female to stack up multiple body counts, let alone, a girl. It simply makes her a slave in a factory of fluid sharers. Intercourse with her, even in matrimony, is akin to coupling with an emotional cripple.

    This article refers to the millions of ‘daughters’ with a choice, the unmarried horde who embrace promiscuity as a sport. Not the percentage left broken by sexual abuse, rape, commercial sex work, to mention a few. Thus the flaming misandrist may stifle her gall.

    A female with no morals may consider herself free today; she may argue that she doesn’t need any man, quoting the married fraudulent feminist, who teaches women never to see marriage as an achievement, in time, she would find herself a broken debauchee.

    If your daughter tells you abstinence and marriage are restrictive, teach her to navigate their humane shoals; help her to appreciate why they have been grounded on human experience through the centuries.

    Teach her that the “modern” female with a high body count, will forever subsist as a gymnasium of bodies soullessly masturbating her psyche, until they rupture the membrane of passion she shares with any new partner.

    Teach her that promiscuity isn’t liberating. It isn’t freedom. Teach her never to see men as tools by which she could achieve all her acceptable and inordinate yearnings. A woman who approaches men as tools gets used up, like a tool, till she becomes broken.

    And if she’s smitten with feminism, teach her to project African feminism, developed outside sullied and biased academia, one that seeks the inclusion of both men and women in nurturing the family against social, economic, and political constraints.

    Teach her to embrace that brand of feminism that complements and humanises the patriarchy. Not the one that antagonises it. Help her understand that beneath the misandrist’s bedazzling, theorised nirvana, life is a purgatory.

    Read Also: We must make development happen, says Edo APC governorship aspirant

    Misandry eats deep into the contemporary female psyche, like a virus. It infects 13 and 14-year-olds. ‘Modern’ teens at 15 through 20, swim in its slurry. By age 21 through 30, they hasten through various stages of awareness, embracing furry anti-male slogans, weaponising felt and ‘unfelt’ grief into savage animosity towards men.

    Yet they need men to fulfil random impulses thus social media becomes their performance theatre, where they share everything mostly of a sexual nature.

    Once upon a time, a Facebook celebrity loved to post the adventures of her soul as she masturbated. She bragged about her capacity to attain mind-blowing orgasms and denounced the existence of God in the same breadth. She recounted with relish, how she screamed to taunt her very religious siblings and extended family, in the heat of a squirt.

    She condemned adultery but boasted about flirting with married men. Eventually, she got pregnant by a supposedly perfect hunk, who identified with her misandrist ideology. The latter, she bragged, begged to be with her knowing she could only offer him an “open marriage.”

    Unknown to her, her perfect beau belted out the notes she loved to hear. He was the liberal, feminist male, who joined her in scoffing at ”chauvinistic men,” online and offline, while raiding her secret places. 

    Her gravest mistake was getting pregnant for him. He deserted her in a heartbeat. Now a single mother, she “coaches young girls to achieve their dreams.”

    Like this curious character, many misguided females shop for non-committal sex with random males on social media. This minute, one such character brags about how many ‘oafs’ and ‘scums’ she has bedded in random, passionless sex in the backseat of her ‘personal car,’ on her ‘personal sofa’ and ‘six-foot bed’ inside her ‘personal apartment.’

    If she gets pregnant, she either terminates it or keeps the baby. Either way, she becomes the ‘sapiosexual’ man-hating feminist, who lives by her terms and ‘does not give a hoot what anyone thinks.’

    Innately she craves for someone to love and trust. Outwardly, she seeks solace in bitter, misandrist literature. Someday, she might write a daring, ‘feminist’ novel that gets her celebrated among the herd.

    Beneath the glitter of acclaim, however, she is a weak, needy female craving a man’s love and attention. Occasionally, she might “experiment” in the arms of a fellow woman or girl, a bored housewife or married woman who flirts with her on social media en route to a tryst or two.

    Eventually, the latter find her boring, her touches, gross, and her rant too repetitive. Then they run back to their husbands whom they never deserted for her in the first place.

    Now hovering in her late 30s, she realises that it is only on the pages of feminist literature and misandrist fairy tales that married women ditch their husbands to marry or move in with feminist lovers, no matter how earth-shattering their joint climaxes are.

    Forty creeps on her while she is busy posting anti-male messages on Facebook and Twitter; and penning yet another feminist-lit blockbuster. But where she attains no literary or artistic renown, she simply fades frustrated, into her life’s eternal midnight.

    Eventually, she finds religion and rediscovers sudden wisdom in the scriptures she hitherto pilloried as patriarchal nonsense. She has no more use for tired slogans and banal anger. Most of her peers are now quietly married away and severing connection with her kind. She begins to covet the marital securities and stability she scorned in her youth.

    She tries to live again but it’s too late. She discovers that she had been enjoying for years, her 15 minutes of fame. The truth dawns on her in a moment of eternal damnation. Her orchestra is done playing and it’s time to exit the stage.

    It’s about time we raised our daughters to be so strong they can be gentle, so educated they can be humble, so fierce they can be compassionate, so passionate they can be rational, and so disciplined they can be free. Apology to Kavita Ramdas.

  • COP28 Dubai December 2023

    COP28 Dubai December 2023

    It seems the campaign for reversing the environmental damage and climate warming caused by human activities leading to climate change and environmental degradation has become a jamboree like the UNGA (United Nations General Assembly) meeting every year in New York from mid-September to the end of the year, passing many resolutions which are unenforceable.  The United Nations Conference of Parties to the Global Convention on climate change otherwise known as COP28 holding in Dubai in the UNITED ARAB EMIRATES from November 30 to December 12 has collectively called for accelerated action, higher ambition against the escalating climate crisis. It has focused on what has been done previously to address the issue of climate change and what can be done to address the urgency of the problem. There is no doubt that some efforts have been made to address these issues even though not sufficient to match the urgency. There is gradual move from the internal combustion engine to electric vehicles in America, Canada China and some other nations as well as abandoning coal energy or its planned phase out in China and the USA and Canada even though countries like India and Australia depend on it for domestic use and export. Industrial processes are now embracing green technologies in manufacturing processes.

    Environmental policies are not generally popular and acceptable to everyone domestically. There has been general criticism about the huge sizes of country’s delegations at these conferences. The sizes of the delegations do not generally reflect the seriousness, commitment or ability to effectively affect the issues and the application of resolutions on mitigation, adaptation or reversal of the damage already inflicted on our common single human planet. The question of abatement, mitigation and possible reversal was taken much more seriously in the past than the present situation which seems to be influenced by domestic politics and audiences rather than the collective good of mankind. What goes on now reminds me of what the older president George Walker Herbert  Bush said in one of his reflections on leadership, that there is so much time wasted by long speeches by all countries at international fora and that the smaller the country, the longer the speeches. Cynical as it may sound, I ask the question of what impact the speech by an eloquent prime minister of one of the Caribbean island countries on climate change may have apart from the point of view of a victim if the big polluters like China, the USA and India continue their industrial production of, and dependence on hydrocarbons.  Morality is not usually a big factor in how international politics is played! The consequences of global warming and coming climate change are here with us in the unseasonable rainfall, snow fall, floods, bushfires, drought, high temperatures. This year’s temperature is the highest in recorded history; rise in ocean temperatures, melting of the ice caps, sea rise, coastal erosion and occurrences of pandemics and other health issues.

    We now generally know what to do to ensure that the rise in the temperature of world does not go beyond 1.5C by the end of this century above pre industrial temperature as agreed to in the Paris protocol of 2015. Anything above this poses existential challenge to mankind. The COP28 is the 20th meeting of global leaders to address this problem.  This is a conference attended by about 160 global leaders representing countries, business, academia, the press and critical leaders all over the world. The central core of the problem is economic. The vast number of mankind was not responsible for global warming. The developed countries of Europe, America, and the OECD countries generally whose advanced economies were and are still dependent on hydrocarbons  and consequent greenhouse emissions were responsible for global warming and they have now been joined by China, India and the oil producers of the Middle East in their contribution to global greenhouse emissions. Even though the “polluter pays “principle makes political sense but it does not address the existential problem of global environmental damage. The developing countries including even China and India and the rest of us in the Third world are right to argue that we cannot abandon our own industrial plan of development in order to protect the global environment unless those responsible for the damage ab initio come up with plan to help our development through economic and financial transfer to help the developing countries adapt to the present global situation. Countries like Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia, whose forests constitute the lungs of the earth because of their absorption of carbon emissions and release of oxygen into the air would have to be assisted to preserve their forests.

    Read Also: Reps committee expresses anger as INEC fails to appear for Budget defence

    Nigeria also can make the same argument in preserving what is left of our tropical forests and also our plans for reforestation. The onus to contribute substantially to the global fund for this purpose lies on the developed countries. The domestic politics of these countries do not permit the kind of generosity or economic policies that would help the environment if people are going to lose their jobs. To arrive at a workable solution will require considerable amount of political will on the part of leaders in America, Canada, Europe,  China, India, Japan, Australia,  Russia, Brazil  and the oil producing countries especially those in the Middle East.

    A UN publication indicates that if we continue at the present trajectory of nationally determined abatement measures the world will reach 2 degrees Celsius above the pre industrial level of temperature which is clearly higher than the 1.5 degrees Celsius globally agreed to. Studies show we need 43 percent further reduction of our current levels of greenhouse emissions before 2050 or earlier. Climate finance stands at the heart of the problem. There is need to replenish the GREEN CLIMATE FUND (GCF), and DOUBLING FINANCIAL RESOURCES FOR ADAPTATION and to agree on the operational mechanisms for deployment of resources to tackle the problem of climate change. The host country – the United Emirates has pledged $200 million which is encouraging but is just a drop in the ocean of the trillions of dollars needed. The OECD countries and China would have to open their pockets to donate what is needed for abatement and for adaptation to address the problem of the climate. 

    There also has to be a paradigm shift all over the world in industrial processes and production away from the old fashioned way of dependence on hydrocarbons.  This must be collectively negotiated and agreed upon and hopefully the basis of this would be agreed upon before delegates leave Dubai in readiness for 2025 when stakeholders would have to assess how far we have advanced in our journey to save the environment and reach a sustainable level of economic development that would not damage the global environment. The emphasis from now on would have to be green energy based on renewable energy sources like wind, tidal, thermal, solar sources and the growing and cutting edge research on renewable energy.