The Nation Newspaper

Category: Letters

  • Sowore: When activism becomes complicity

    Sowore: When activism becomes complicity

    Sir: Omoyele Sowore’s decision to mobilise Nigerians to “free” Nnamdi Kanu, an individual whose words and followers have brought blood and terror upon innocent citizens, is not activism. It is a dangerous act of moral blindness that insults the memories of the dead and the pain of the living.

    Let’s be clear: no one is attacking Sowore’s right to protest. Peaceful dissent is the cornerstone of democracy. But when a so-called protest glorifies someone who, on record — both in video and audio — called for Nigerians to be killed, properties to be burned, and the nation to be torn apart, then that protest becomes a national disgrace.

    Freedom of expression is not a licence to excuse terror.

    The facts are undeniable. Under Nnamdi Kanu’s directive, mobs took to the streets of the Southeast, enforcing illegal sit-at-home orders, burning markets, attacking police stations, and murdering innocent people — including the very Igbos they claimed to defend. The region once celebrated for commerce and education now lives under a reign of fear.

    Parents are afraid to send children to school. Traders are afraid to open their shops. The blood of countless Nigerians cries out for justice.

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    And yet, instead of standing with victims, Sowore has chosen to side with their tormentor. What does he seek to achieve — chaos? Relevance? A new round of unrest? History will remember that when Nigerians needed moral clarity, a man who once fought for liberty decided to flirt with anarchy.

    Even more telling is that Kanu’s right-hand man, Simon Ekpa, has been convicted and jailed in Finland for promoting terrorism — a conviction that further exposes the global dimension of this criminal enterprise. If a European court, after fair trial, can recognise the terror this movement unleashed, why should any responsible Nigerian pretend otherwise?

    True activism demands conscience, not convenience. You cannot claim to defend human rights by defending a man who trampled on the rights of others. You cannot preach democracy while empowering those who destroyed democratic order in their own homeland.

    Leadership comes with responsibility, and words have consequences —especially in a nation still healing from division and bloodshed. If there are genuine concerns about Nnamdi Kanu’s treatment, let the courts handle it. Let his lawyers pursue justice through the proper channels. But no Nigerian with a conscience should march in support of someone whose followers turned towns into war zones and villages into graveyards.

    The Southeast deserves peace, not propaganda. Nigeria deserves healing, not hostility. And Sowore must be reminded that no one — not even a self-styled revolutionary — has the moral right to defend those who have waged war against their own people.

    Activism without conscience is complicity. And any protest that ignores the blood of the innocent is not freedom — it is betrayal.

    •Chief Abiola Falayajo, Melbourne, Australia.

  • Terrible state of Ibadan/Ife Expressway

    Terrible state of Ibadan/Ife Expressway

    Sir: Democracy is instituted across the countries willing to be fast developed. It aims at giving voice to the voiceless and to facilitating bringing dividend of democracy to the citizens. One area where dividend of democracy can easily be reflected in the life and dealings of the citizens is the provision of critical infrastructure such as electricity, road/highways, power to mention but few.

    The highway connecting Ibadan (Oyo State) with Osun down to the two other Southwestern states of Ekiti and Ondo is in deplorable state. It is understatement to say deplorable, if not impassable and awful. The situation of the highway from Celica Junction in Ibadan down to Asejire River which serves as Oyo and Osun boundaries is visible right from this section.

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    Nowadays, motorists are left with no choice than to drive at the top speed even at facing the oncoming vehicles. From Ikire, Ayedade Local Government Secretariat axis, the motorists had to go through the agony of sharing lane with oncoming vehicles from Ife to navigate their ways to Gbongan interchange.

    Initially, you see some physically-challenged individuals attempting to do some patches at Wasimi Town, with the hope of recouping some Naira from the drivers and other road users. These, days, the situation has gone beyond their little intervention. Of note is a series of accidents that have claimed lives of individual such as the former SSG Ondo State, some undergraduates of UniOsun among others.

    It is worrisome that political office holders including the governors of these states pass through this highway especially when they need to catch up with local and international flights in Lagos.

    Before now, an intervention that looks like rehabilitation used to be on this expressway; however, reverse is the case in the last two years. I wish the governments of the affected states can team up to get this road fixed. Specifically, governors of Oyo, Osun, Ekiti and Ondo should team up to get the road fixed without waiting for the federal government. The situation has gone beyond discriminating federal from the state road, after all, it is meant for the use of Nigerian citizens, the taxpayers and others. This is a clarion on the government. Please, help out in fixing the highway before the situation gets out of hand. I could see a lot of write ups in this direction, without any meaningful corrections. I hope this write up will not go the way of others.

    •Dr Abiola Hamzat,Ibadan, Oyo State.

  • Healing the minds of youth

    Healing the minds of youth

    Sir: Nigeria stands at a dangerous crossroads, one defined not only by economic hardship and insecurity but also by an invisible epidemic eating away at its future: the mental health crisis among its youth. With 27% of the population aged between 15 and 35, and nearly 58% under 30, the psychological state of young Nigerians is not a niche concern; it is the lifeblood of the nation’s tomorrow.

    Behind the energy, creativity, and resilience that define Nigerian youth lies a hidden struggle. Depression, anxiety, and substance abuse are spreading quietly, threatening to erode the very generation expected to rebuild the country. The signs are everywhere, on university campuses, in secondary schools, in bustling cities, and rural communities alike.

    A June media report revealed alarming data from Enugu State: 30.7% of secondary school students showed signs of depression, 36.4% exhibited anxiety symptoms, and 8.4% admitted to suicidal thoughts. A 2025 preprint study estimated that behavioural disorders affect 15.1% of Nigerian adolescents, meaning roughly one in six young people are living with serious psychological distress.

    Nigeria’s suicide rate, about 17 per 100,000 according to the WHO, remains among the highest in Africa. Yet over 90% of Nigerians with mental health conditions receive no treatment. Only about 250 psychiatrists serve a population of more than 200 million, a staggering ratio of one psychiatrist per 800,000 citizens. The WHO recommends one per 10,000.

    The crisis is not merely medical; it is deeply social and economic. With youth unemployment and underemployment rising, many young Nigerians face a crushing sense of hopelessness. The repeated and ongoing strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) have left countless students stranded, fueling despair and delaying their dreams.

    Economic pressure meets emotional fragility in a toxic mix. Social media, while a tool of expression, often worsens this burden. A 2025 UNICEF report found that more than 80% of Nigerian youths feel greater pressure to succeed than previous generations, as curated images of wealth and success online amplify feelings of failure and inadequacy.

    Substance abuse is both a symptom and a coping mechanism. The rise in the use of tramadol, codeine, and synthetic cannabinoids like “Colorado” reflects how many young people self-medicate their pain. A study among adolescent inmates in North-Central found that 82.5% had at least one psychiatric disorder, and 15.8% had substance use disorders, illustrating how untreated trauma spirals into addiction.

    Cultural stigma remains one of the greatest obstacles. Mental illness is still widely viewed as a sign of spiritual weakness, laziness, or moral failure. Families often choose prayers over treatment, while faith leaders dismiss clinical depression as a lack of faith. The language of “madness” silences those in pain and prevents timely help.

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    The state’s response has been tragically inadequate. Despite the Mental Health Act of 2021, which replaced the colonial-era Lunacy Act of 1958, implementation has been slow. Only Lagos and Ekiti states have domesticated the law, and the Mental Health Fund is yet to materialize. Less than 3.5% of Nigeria’s health budget is allocated to mental health, and over 90% of that goes to psychiatric hospitals, leaving almost nothing for community care.

    The workforce crisis compounds the challenge. With fewer than 300 psychiatrists, limited psychologists, and minimal psychiatric nurses, most Nigerians, especially those outside Lagos, Abuja, and Port Harcourt, have no access to help. Rural communities are left in silence, often resorting to traditional or spiritual remedies that worsen rather than heal.

    Nigeria must act decisively and urgently. At least 10% of the national health budget should go to mental health, with a focus on prevention and community outreach. The Mental Health Act must be fully implemented nationwide. Psychiatrists, psychologists, and counsellors must be trained and retained, and mental health services integrated into primary healthcare.

    Schools and universities should employ trained counsellors, establish safe spaces for therapy, and include mental health education in curricula. Digital platforms and mobile outreach units must reach rural areas, while communities and faith leaders should be sensitized to treat mental health as a legitimate medical concern, not a spiritual punishment.

    Nigeria’s youth are its greatest national asset, but untreated mental illness is fast turning that asset into a liability. Ignoring their mental well-being is not only a moral failure but a developmental disaster.

    With a life expectancy of just 54.9 years, Nigeria cannot afford to lose its young to despair. Healing the minds of the youth is not charity; it is a national emergency. The time to act is now before silence becomes the loudest sound of a broken generation.

    •Olasubomi Sangonuga, Ago-Iwoye, Ogun State.

  • Kaduna’s worthy example in school feeding programme

    Kaduna’s worthy example in school feeding programme

    Sir: School feeding programme is a noble policy which every government in Nigeria must endeavour to practice. Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo was the first to introduce school feeding policy as premier of Western Region 1954 – 1959. In 1955, his party, the Action Group, introduced the compulsory free primary education in the Western Region and free feeding of pupils was one method the party used to win the hearts of parents to release their children and wards to enrol for primary education.

    Many parents withdrew their children from the farms to enrol in the free education programme and the gesture of free feeding became the catalyst for increased enrolment. Such policy till date gave the now Southwest its leadership educationally over and above all other states of the country.

    It is gratifying that Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State seems to be replicating that same old idea of the former Western Region where he has elevated the school feeding programme into a model of inclusive development. By providing daily meals to thousands of children, the Kaduna State government has succeeded in improving the nutrition of the children, increasing school attendance and enrolment, empowering women who daily cook and prepare such meals and also empowering farmers who supply the needed foodstuffs on daily basis.

    It is a chain of advantages for which Governor Uba has been praised and commended largely for such rare vision, leadership quality and as a bridge builder. The idea of school feeding programme goes beyond mere provision of food; it is a bridge to learning, a shield against poverty and a sheer promise that the state government will never abandon the children to the vagaries of unpalatable socio-economic and political circumstances they found themselves.

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    In Kaduna State, the slogan by children is no longer that I am disadvantaged, but the slogan is am I willing to take advantage of the available opportunity now at their beck and call to grow and achieve destiny? Other states of the federation should also copy and embrace the lofty ideal of school feeding programme as practised in Kaduna State so as to build up also the future of the children in those states.

    More than 60years after the free education in the West, beneficiaries continue to thank those responsible for such initiative and they remain eternally grateful to the proponents even in death. Finally, in the words of the late South African president, Nelson Mandela, “Education is the best legacy either parents or governments can bequeath to nation’s children”. Training of children is training future generations. Children are future leaders of any nation.

    A nation that fails to train its children will also fail to reap their future benefits.

    •Sunday Olagunju, Ibadan, Oyo State.

  • New admission policy and the slow death of merit

    New admission policy and the slow death of merit

    Sir: The federal government’s new reform to “streamline” tertiary admission requirements sounds lofty on paper but dangerous in practice. Under the banner of the Renewed Hope Agenda, the Minister of Education, Tunji Alausa, announced sweeping adjustments to admission requirements, aimed at expanding access and “democratizing” education. But in trying to cure the illness of limited admission slots, the government may just be infecting the system with a more chronic disease: the death of merit and the dilution of standards.

    Let’s be clear, no one disputes the need to reform our educational system. The bottlenecks are real. Each year, millions of young Nigerians write the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), and only a fraction gain admission. But the real question is not how to admit more students — it is how to ensure that admission remains a product of merit, competence, and fairness.

    It’s undeniable that JAMB, with all its imperfections, remains the only national institution that has managed to balance diversity, merit, and accountability in admissions. It ensures that a student in Gombe competes fairly with another in Lagos or Anambra on a common national scale. Without JAMB, admission becomes a matter of luck, influence, and negotiation or a market of favouritism where standards are as flexible as those who apply them.

    Those who argue that JAMB limits access forget that the examination itself is not the barrier; the scarcity of facilities, funding, and institutional capacity is. You can lower the fence, but if the field remains too small, not everyone will play.

    So instead of dismantling JAMB’s regulatory relevance, the government should have focused on expanding institutional capacity, building more polytechnics, funding colleges of education, improving ICT infrastructure, and supporting distance learning. That is how to democratize education sustainably, not by diluting its entry gates.

    The new policy’s promise to increase annual admissions by 250,000–300,000 students sounds like music to populist ears, but every melody needs rhythm. If the system admits more than it can accommodate, the quality of instruction will fall, facilities will collapse under the weight, and certificates will lose value in the marketplace of knowledge.

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    Education must be inclusive, yes — but inclusion without integrity is chaos. You don’t democratize education by eroding its foundation; you strengthen it by building new ladders for those who cannot reach. Reducing entry standards to “open the gates” is like declaring everyone fit to fly because planes are expensive. Compassion must never replace competence.

    If the government truly wants to embody the spirit of Renewed Hope, it should modernize, not marginalize, JAMB. Let the Board expand its testing to measure not only academic capacity but vocational readiness as well. Let our polytechnics and colleges of education be respected and well-funded as genuine alternatives to universities. Admission methods may vary, but merit should remain a shared foundation.

    Alausa’s intentions are, presumably, noble. But noble intentions don’t guarantee wise outcomes. His policy risks giving us an illusion of progress, growth in numbers without growth in quality. Hope is not renewed when fairness is compromised.

    The truth is simple: Nigeria’s educational problem is not that JAMB is too strict; it’s that our system is too unprepared. JAMB, imperfect as it is, still stands as the last line of fairness between the poor boy in Kaltungo and the rich girl in Ikoyi. Once that wall collapses, admission will become a playground for privilege.

    Reforms should refine systems, not wreck them. A country that cheapens its standards just to look inclusive will soon produce graduates excluded from global relevance. True Renewed Hope begins not by lowering the bar but by lifting people until they can meet it.

    JAMB must not be abolished or side-lined. It should be strengthened, respected, and trusted, because in the fragile world of Nigerian education, it remains the thin line between opportunity and anarchy.

    •Hisham Saleh Gidado,Gombe State.

  • Why our farmers are still losing the harvest war

    Why our farmers are still losing the harvest war

    Sir: Go to any rural community, any farm gate, any market in our country, and you’ll find the same thick, suffocating reality: the dusty disappointment of our farmers. This is not just the dust of the field; it is the sediment of shattered hopes, broken promises, and economic injustice. This pervasive sense of loss is a silent, creeping national crisis that demands immediate government interest and urgent action.

    The core tragedy facing our farmers is a vicious, unyielding paradox. We see two economic forces colliding, and our producers are always on the receiving end: Agricultural inputs keep rising bad; the costs for essential items—fertilizer, high-yield seeds, quality pesticides, and fuel for tractors—are skyrocketing. These are non-negotiable expenses. Farmers are forced to take on greater debt just to begin the planting season.

    Yet, when the harvest finally arrives, the market collapses. Prices are driven down by an “uncalled factor”—a chaotic, unregulated, and often exploitative market structure.

    Farmers, having invested their all, are then compelled to sell at rock-bottom prices during the harvesting season. They prioritize immediate cash flow to service urgent debts, rather than storing their produce to attract higher, fairer prices later. This necessity is the address service they provide to the public—the immediate flood of cheap food—but it is also their undoing.

    From the villages of   Gwagwalada Area Council of the Federal Capital Territory Abuja, to the produce fields of Kaduna, the story is consistent.

    The real profit is not made in the fields, but on the margins of the market. Middlemen and bulk marketers capitalize on the farmers’ desperation. They buy cheaply during the harvest glut, store the produce until the off-season, and sell it to consumers at exorbitant rates, pocketing a massive profit margin for simply waiting. The farmer—the one who toiled under the sun—gains nothing but a meagre subsistence.

    This endless cycle of exploitation is eroding the passion and resilience needed for farming. Why would the youth embrace a sector where effort is penalized and risk is not rewarded? The national food security is jeopardized when farming becomes synonymous with poverty and disappointment.

    The government has a moral and economic imperative to intervene. The current “laissez-faire” approach has failed our primary producers.

    What the government could have done is establish a Guaranteed Minimum Support Price (MSP). This will ensure floor price for key staple crops, ensuring that no farmer is forced to sell below the cost of production, regardless of market fluctuations.

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    Secondly, it can build, subsidize, and maintain community-level cold storage and silos. This crucial infrastructure would empower farmers’ cooperatives to store their harvest, enabling them to control the supply chain and negotiate better prices later in the year, breaking the marketer’s monopoly.

    Third, it can intervene decisively to stabilize the prices of imported fertilizers and essential chemicals. Subsidies must be transparent and reach the actual smallholder farmer, not just large corporations.

    Fourth, revitalize local extension services to educate farmers on modern storage techniques, commodity trading, and cooperative management.

    The time for talking is over. The government must immediately embark on these steps: Empower farmer cooperatives. Provide direct financial and legal support to establish strong, democratized farmer cooperatives that can collectively negotiate prices, manage storage, and access credit.

    Create an accessible, low-interest market intervention fund that provides farmers with the temporary capital needed post-harvest, allowing them to delay selling until prices improve. Launch a campaign to show consumers where their food money actually goes, encouraging a direct link between urban buyers and rural producers to cut out exploitative middlemen.

    Until we lift the crushing weight of this paradox—high costs for inputs and devastatingly low prices for output—the dust of disappointment will continue to settle over our most vital industry. The health of our economy, the security of our food supply, and the promise of our future all depend on recognizing that protecting the farmer is protecting the nation.

    It is time to make farming profitable, respectable, and sustainable.

    •Michael Adedotun Oke, Garki Abuja.

  • ASUU: ‘No work, no pay’ threat solves nothing

    ASUU: ‘No work, no pay’ threat solves nothing

    Sir: Once again, the federal government is threatening the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) with no work no pay. It’s the same tired approach used by past administrations. But history has shown that this policy does not solve problems; it only deepens mistrust, kills morale, and pushes our universities further into decline.

    The no work no pay policy was applied during the Muhammadu Buhari administration, particularly after the 2022 ASUU strike that lasted eight months. Lecturers were denied their salaries for the period of the strike, even though the government’s failure to meet its own promises was the reason for the industrial action in the first place. Buhari’s government insisted on punishment rather than dialogue, and what was the result? Did it end the strikes? Did it fix the rot in our universities? No.

    It only created resentment and weakened the relationship between the government and the academic community. The issues that triggered that strike, poor funding, unpaid allowances, decaying infrastructure, remain unsolved today.

    You can’t use the same tactics that might work on transport unions or political protesters on an organization built on principles, history, and intellectual resistance.

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    In 2016, for instance, the South African “Fees Must Fall” movement forced the government to rethink its policies and increase education funding. In the UK, university staff have gone on strikes repeatedly over pay and working conditions, yet the government had to return to the negotiation table, not threaten them. These examples show that dialogue and respect for agreements are the only sustainable paths, not coercion.

    ASUU has endured decades of intimidation and threats. From the military era to the present democratic dispensation, their fight has remained consistent to protect public universities from total collapse. They have been banned, unbanned, and blacklisted, yet they remain because they represent something deeper than just salary negotiations.

    The government’s repeated use of no work no pay is not just short-sighted, it is a confession of leadership failure.  Their struggle is not for personal gain but for the survival of education in Nigeria. Threats won’t work; intimidation won’t help. Only commitment, dialogue, and respect for signed agreements will bring peace to our universities.

    If we truly want to equip our education system for the poor and the future, we must stop treating teachers as enemies and start treating them as partners. A nation that punishes those who fight for education is a nation that has already given up on its future.

    •Muhammad Umar Shehu,Gombe.

  • ASUU strikes, symptom of broken promises

    ASUU strikes, symptom of broken promises

    • By Genesis Dansule

    Sir: Once again, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has declared another strike — a two-week warning action that could snowball into a full-blown shutdown of public universities if not urgently addressed. For many Nigerians, this is a familiar and frustrating story: the same accusations, the same promises, and the same cycle of disappointment that has come to define the country’s public education system.

    For over two decades, ASUU has battled successive governments over issues that should have been long resolved. The union’s grievances are well-known: revitalisation of public universities, payment of earned academic allowances, completion of the renegotiated 2009 ASUU-FG agreement, withheld salaries, and the implementation of better welfare conditions for lecturers. These are not new demands; they are recurring issues that successive administrations have pledged to fix but never truly do.

    This tug-of-war has become a tragic routine — one that punishes the very group least responsible for the crisis: the students. Every new strike halts academic progress, disrupts graduation timelines, and pushes young people into idleness, frustration, and even crime. For parents, it means wasted money and shattered hopes. For lecturers, it means more resentment and uncertainty. And for the government, it means another dent in its credibility.

    It is easy to blame ASUU for being “too rigid” or “too confrontational,” but doing so ignores the root causes of their grievances. Industrial action is not the problem — it is a symptom of government neglect. When dialogue produces only empty promises, strikes become the only language that gets attention. The union’s methods may be disruptive, but their frustration is understandable in a system that consistently fails to honour its word.

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    That said, ASUU must also reflect on its strategy. While strikes draw attention, they also erode public sympathy over time. Ordinary Nigerians, especially students and parents, are now weary of endless shutdowns. The union should complement its agitation with creative alternatives — sustained public advocacy, collaboration with civil society, and transparent communication that shows Nigerians the full picture of its struggle.

    The government must rise above token gestures and half measures. A lasting solution requires more than press releases and committee meetings. It requires honesty — to admit the extent of decay — and commitment, to invest in real reform. Education is not charity; it is the foundation of national development. Every delay in addressing these issues is a delay in Nigeria’s progress.

    In the end, the ASUU strike is not merely an industrial dispute; it is a mirror reflecting Nigeria’s broken promises. And until we fix the system that produces these crises, our universities — and our future — will remain trapped in an endless loop of negotiation and neglect.

    •Genesis Dansule,

    University of Maiduguri.

  • ASUU: Inconvenient truth about varsity autonomy

    ASUU: Inconvenient truth about varsity autonomy

    • By Lekan Olayiwola

    Sir: Nigeria’s higher education debate has long been trapped in a false dichotomy between making universities “autonomous” and risking commercialization, fee hikes, and ideological anarchy on the one hand and letting them “state-controlled” and suffering bureaucracy, underfunding, and stagnation.

    This framing is both tired and misleading. Successful education systems—Germany, South Korea, India, even China—operate on a blended model: Strategic state stewardship over national priorities, equity, and standards and operational autonomy over curriculum, research, and internal governance.

    Nigeria’s problem is not that it controls its universities; it’s how it controls them through bureaucracy, patronage, and fear, not through performance, trust, or purpose. The result is paralysis disguised as policy. Every strike is treated as rebellion, every reform as surrender. The deeper question is: what exactly are universities for?

    Nigeria’s universities consume public funds but produce little in policy influence, research patents, or global standing. The reason is structural. Universities are funded as civil service appendages, not as knowledge industries.

    Vice Chancellors are treated like administrators, not visionaries. Research is funded episodically, not strategically. Budgets sustain bureaucracy, not innovation.

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    Autonomy, properly understood, would not mean withdrawal of funding. It would mean accountable freedom, a new covenant where funding follows performance, and performance is measured by impact, not by obedience.

    Until universities are allowed to function as strategic institutions competing for grants, solving national problems, shaping civic thought, funding will remain a ritual, not an investment.

    There is also a darker logic at work. Nigeria’s universities, in their weakened state, serve a quiet political purpose: they are containment zones.

    They absorb youth frustration, intellectual energy, and class anger, releasing them in predictable cycles of strikes and protests that never reach revolution. The dysfunction is not accidental; it is functional.

    A vibrant, independent university system would produce citizens harder to manipulate, thinkers harder to buy, and moral elite capable of demanding coherence from power. That is precisely why reform has been deferred, not because it’s impossible, but because it’s inconvenient.

    Rather than treating autonomy as separation from the state, it should be seen as shared authority with moral purpose based on four structural pivots that shift the conversation from confrontation to co-creation:

    Fear of autonomy: Redefine control as strategic stewardship. The federal government sets national learning goals—digital literacy, civic ethics, agricultural modernization—while universities determine how to meet them.

    Funding gaps: Create Sovereign Knowledge Funds, financed by royalties from natural resources and co-managed by academia and industry. These funds would reward research with measurable social impact.

    Intellectual stagnation: Build Think Clusters, cross-university labs competing for policy and innovation grants so lecturers no longer strike merely for survival, but strive for relevance.

    Public distrust: Mandate Transparency Dashboards, where universities publish open data on spending, research outputs, and community engagement.

    This is not privatization, but a purposeful decentralization where ownership remains public, but trust becomes the operating system. In this model, autonomy is not a prize to be won through strikes or decrees, but a status to be earned through competence, clarity, and contribution.

    What Nigeria needs is not another strike or another bailout, but a National Higher Education Compact—a covenant between government, academia, and the public. This compact would define what universities are for, what freedoms they require, what responsibilities they must bear.

    It would also enshrine a new moral logic that universities exist not merely to produce graduates, but to cultivate citizenship, conscience, and creativity. In such a vision, government becomes a steward of values, not a gatekeeper of thought; and ASUU becomes a vanguard of renewal, not an instrument of resistance.

    Nigeria must now face its inconvenient truth: autonomy is not an act of rebellion, but of responsibility. The university cannot remain both captive to politics and servant to progress. The real question is not who owns the university? But who controls the future?

    Nigeria must be a country where knowledge matters, where policy is evidence-driven, and where universities become engines of national intelligence.

    Both ASUU and the federal government must move beyond ritual negotiations to structural imagination that builds an education system which is not only autonomous but authoritative, purposeful, and indispensable.

    •Lekan Olayiwola,

    lekanolayiwola@gmail.com

  • Nigeria’s paradox of bumper harvest and poverty

    Nigeria’s paradox of bumper harvest and poverty

    • By Michael Adedotun Oke

    Sir: The air across Nigeria currently carries the unmistakable scent of harvest, a period that should mark prosperity and relief. Yet, for millions of farmers in the nation’s agricultural heartlands, the abundant yield is fast becoming a bitter paradox. The same bumper harvest that momentarily assures our food availability is simultaneously sinking farming communities deeper into economic peril.

    This is the great concern we must address: the current structure of our agricultural market is fundamentally unsustainable and poses a long-term threat to national food security.

    During the peak harvesting season, the immediate and massive influx of produce into local markets inevitably leads to a lowering of prices for agricultural goods. For the non-farming consumer, this temporary reduction in cost is a welcome relief. However, for the farmer, this period represents forced, low-margin selling.

    The reason for this economic compression is clear: the importance of the harvest is undeniable for current supply, but its inability to be stored effectively forces immediate, high-volume sales. Farmers are selling their produce at prices barely above, or sometimes below, their cost of production, simply because they have no facilities to hold the goods until demand stabilizes. This is where the structural fault lies, and its side effects are devastating. When the immediate bounty of the season is sold off cheaply, the farmer has little capital remaining to prepare for the next planting cycle.

    This crisis is not about lazy farmers or poor soil; it is about a profound national failure in post-harvest infrastructure. To ensure true food security and move farmers out of the cycle of life poverty, the central need is robust and accessible storage facility support.

    Investing in modern, secure storage facilities—silos, cold chains, and warehouses—is not merely an administrative detail; it is a critical necessity plan. Such infrastructure would allow farmers to withhold a portion of their yield during the glut, mitigating the sharp price reduction caused by oversupply. By bridging the gap between the peak harvest and the after-off demand periods, prices are stabilized, ensuring fairer returns for the producers and a consistent supply for the nation throughout the year.

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    The government, policy makers, and private sector stakeholders must urgently recognize that the predictable drop in prices during harvest is a cyclical disaster that requires a structural, physical solution.

    Beyond mere storage, the long-term strategy must heavily emphasize the encouragement of processing and storage development. Supporting small to medium-scale food processing industries near production zones is a direct route to economic transformation.

    Processing converts perishable goods into shelf-stable, value-added products (like starches, flours, dried fruits, or canned goods). This strategy simultaneously achieves multiple critical goals:

    Reduces waste: It minimizes the shocking levels of post-harvest loss that currently plague the sector.

    Creates year-round demand: It generates sustained industrial demand for raw materials outside of the harvest window, further stabilizing prices.

    Generates rural wealth: Processing creates non-farm jobs, diversifies income streams, and moves communities “out of life poverty” by adding layers of value before the product reaches the consumer.

    Nigeria cannot afford to remain a nation whose food security is held hostage by the absence of a simple storage plan. The continuous failure to stabilize the rural economy through disciplined investment in post-harvest technology is a policy oversight whose cost is measured in the poverty of our farmers and the hunger of our populace. We must shift focus immediately from harvest celebration to infrastructural determination.

    •Michael Adedotun Oke,

    Abuja.