The Nation Newspaper

Category: Letters

  • National Mathematics Centre’s awards

    SIR: The disposition of corporate organizations to the development of intellectualism in our educational system is a very disturbing one. No nation can liberate it citizens from modern imperialism without the adequate education of its people. No country can hope to have an enviable future when it fails to appreciate, support, develop and reward its intellectual class.

    I witness, daily, a mass decampment of our young people from what I term ‘real education’ to entertainment and frivolous interests. A survey of the current trends on Nigerian campuses will reveal the scary statistics. Students no longer have interest in programmes and event with essential academic content. What catches their fancy is any of the huge shows where music stars and celebrities are brought in to arouse their sensations.

    I cite one example – the National Mathematics Centre, Abuja, which recently concluded the National Mathematics Competition for university students in the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja to buttres this trend. This contest drew participants from over 20 universities (out of over 100 universities in Nigeria) including the universities of Ibadan, Ilorin, Imo and Lagos as well as several others from across the six geo-political zones of the country.

    The competition’s objective, I believe, is to stimulate the mathematics acumen of students and translate the exceptional performances of the contestants into visible national development. However, the best overall undergraduate student did not get so much as a N500 Mathematics textbook. Does this not sound ridiculous? It is a shame and a disgrace to our collective sensibilities. It reveals how much aspersion we cast on the development of intellectual capacity in Nigeria.

    Four contestants from University of Lagos were among the top eight in the contest. The best five are supposed to represent the country in the yearly international competition in Bulgaria sometime in August this year. None of these students got any prize in cash or kind as reward for making their universities proud. Though I learnt the NMC promised to employ the best five but are we not tired of promises in this part of this world? What is with politicians-turn-academics and their promises?

    Beauty pageants are held on campuses and their winners, (the top 10) return home with visas to international editions, cars, laptops, high-powered phones, and millions of naira as cash prizes. Music talent shows are held in country and their winners get huge record deals worth millions of naira, cars, fame and an overnight rise to stardom.

    Why can’t the National Mathematics Centre get overwhelming support for a national competition such as this? I ask the centre to come out and tell Nigerian students why it cannot, at least, help keep the light of intellectualism shining. If all our students go into music and beauty pageants because they see it as more rewarding, where are we, then, headed as a nation?

    Bill Gates just announced a $100,000 reward for any young person who comes up with a new-generation condom. Where are the Bill Gates of Nigeria? Corporate organizations and brands should help to support the development of the intellectual class. Music and Entertainment should not be the only things that interest us!

    •Joshua Oyeniyi,

    Lagos

  • A note to my dad on his birthday

    SIR: It is normal and often a cliché for people to address their fathers as mentors, role models and a source of inspiration. This sometimes, is not always true, especially when the values and philosophies of a father are not reflected in the son who claims he is a protégé.

    For me I have actually been mentored, pampered, scolded, molded, instructed, cared for by this man whom I have grown to love and admire.

    A man would have me sleep on him all through the night. One who would always come to pick me up in nursery and primary school despite his schedules. This same man has taken the pain of sending me to the best schools anyone would ask for. This man has brought himself so low at one point that my siblings and I would have the best in life.

    A man who would allow me sit with him on the driver’s seat on our way to the village. One who shouts on me and comes back the following morning to apologise to a five-year- old. Who carries me to bed each time I doze off in the sitting room. This same man made out time to teach me how to tell the time with our wall clock.

    Interestingly, the signature I append today on documents, this man drafted it for me. A man who took me to secondary school and tertiary institutions on my first day in school, stayed with me until I was finally registered. He still came all the way from Eastern Nigeria to Abuja for my visiting days. It is because of this same man that I have been privileged to be who I am today.

    The lessons and values I learnt from him are now what drive and I instill same in my three lovely sisters. To crown it all, this same man is still the same and has not changed one bit. He made out time to teach me how to drive; in fact, he has taken the pain of trying to find a suitable mate for me!

    As he marks another year of his birth, please join me and celebrate this man of integrity, love, care, a leader of people, an indefatigable fighter, an ever loving husband (my mum has never bought a phone), and an inspiration to myself and siblings.

    Happy birthday to Engineer Nicholas Ej. Azubuike Osuagwu.

    •Emeka Davies Azubuike,

    Covenant University, Ota, Ogun State.

  • Tales from a failing state

    SIR: When countries beat their chests about providing adequate security of both the lives and belongings of their citizens, that Nigeria will do so is becoming increasingly doubtful. The doubt arises from the failure of successive governments to deliver basic dividends of responsible governance to the people, from whom they have either derived or seized political power. An implication of those years of neglect of social service delivery by government is the widening disconnect between it and the people it ought to serve. One worrisome result of that ‘disconnect’ is kidnapping, which has become a serious social problem in Nigeria.

    Kidnapping was relatively strange to Nigeria until February 2006. What began with abductions of foreign oil workers by rampaging members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and allied groups has now assumed a dimension that requires crucial, decisive and non-partisan action from the current Nigerian leadership.

    Since then, kidnapping has flourished; it now serves as both a means of making ‘fast’ money and ‘negotiating’ for the release of persons in custody for alleged links with terrorist groups. The spate of kidnap of persons for ransom, and sometimes ritual, has lengthened Nigeria’s presence under the global spotlight that has already fetched her ‘laurels’ for such systemic deficiencies as corruption, electoral fraud and recently, pardons for convicted persons among others.

    All these have spurred keen watchers of events to conclude that Nigeria is showing symptoms of a failing state, if not an already failed one. In June 2012, the Research Institute of Economics and Peace released its Global Peace Index, in which Nigeria came sixth in a list of world’s 10 most dangerous countries to live in. Sadly, all of the surveyed countries are from Africa.

    On February 16, the Jama’atu Ansarul Musilimina Fi Biladis Sudan (JAMBS), believed to be a splinter group of the Boko Haram terrorist organisation, kidnapped seven foreign workers from a construction firm in Bauchi State, only to claim to have killed the foreign nationals a month later. The murder, as the group claimed, followed a perceived planned attempt by Nigerian and British security operatives to secure freedom for the hostages.

    I am drawn to the General Objective in Section 14, Sub-section 2(b) of the 1999 Constitution of Nigeria, which is unequivocal about the fact that security and welfare of citizens is a fundamental responsibility of the Nigerian government. The section saddles the Nigerian government with the duty of protecting the lives and belongings of every citizen, from whom it derives all powers and authorities. Universally, governments owe this duty to their citizens and aliens within their territories and beyond. Some nations will freely go to war in love for their citizens!

     

    •Agboola Odesanya

    University of Lagos, Akoka

  • Still on gay marriage

    Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife remains Nigeria’s cum Africa’s foremost centre of learning. The University is reputed to be among the best designed estates in the world, and no human being no matter how biased ever visits the Great Ife, without coming out with a special kind of feeling about the university’s exquisite beauty and candour. However, beyond and beneath the physical beauty of OAU is a strong tradition of scholarship that has continued to hold its own anywhere in the world. Little wonder the university was recently ranked the best in Nigeria by the popular webometric university ranking organisation.

    Not that the ranking in itself says anything new about the university, but in a country bedevilled by a myriad of negatives, the well-deserved ranking serves as a pointer of hope for the nation. As a Great Ife alumnus, one is quite confident everywhere one goes. This has led many people to erroneously believe that Great Ife Alumni are unnecessarily proud!

    It is against this background that I read with trepidation a piece in The Nation on Sunday, April 7, 2013 in defence of gay marriage written by one Arthur Anyaduba, who claims to be of the Postgraduate School, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife. In the piece, Mr Anyaduba launched into endless diatribe against Mr Femi Fanikayode and other protagonists of the marriage institution whom he nebulously categorised as ‘Religionists’. He went wild claiming that no ‘God or deities ordained at any time one mode of sexuality’ and therefore, ‘no one pattern must be enforced for people to follow’!

    Indeed, in a relatively free society like Nigeria, it is assumed that people should express themselves as one of the fundamental rights of humans. However, even in the expression of one’s opinion there are boundaries because where one’s right stops other’s begin.

    In his defence of gay marriage, Mr Anyaduba vehemently argues that gay marriage is a norm the world over, therefore we must necessarily toe that line. I then begin to wonder where his facts emanate from and even if that be the case, must we, Nigerians, necessarily join the bandwagon. Again, it baffles me that the protagonists of this set of people suffering from the gay disease base their argument upon that ‘others’ are doing it, why not Nigeria.

    In his definition of family, Mr Anyaduba posits that ‘family is a social unit of biologically related people’ and I wonder why he should bring in biology when all the gay people in this world are as a matter of fact anti-biology. This is because, the nature or biology (for those like Anyaduba who don’t believe in God) already cuts out the roles of man and woman sexually. Not done, Mr Anyaduba goes on to tell us that ‘gay marriage is not a threat to marriage (as we know it) and family’. This greatly contradicts all that gay disease is about because one of the natural offshoots of heterosexual people is procreation and that only happens when a man’s semen fertilizes the female egg. This is irrespective of all the breakthroughs of modern science. And the society is peopled by products of man and woman relationship!

    In one breath, Anyaduba argues that no society should determine how people should live, yet in another breath he says that ‘all marriages are products of socio-political and religious situations’ yet he and his ilk are vehemently denying the majority of the Nigerian society the right to determine how we may live in our own land.

    The university community, and especially the Great Ife is a place of progressive research to harness the powers and resources of nature to better the lot of human societies, it’s appalling when some sick people now want to use the rights given them by society to work against nature. The motto of OAU reads: For Learning and Culture. And to all its content the Great Ife has abided by this solemn declaration. As an undergraduate and a campus journalist at OAU. I once interviewed Dapo, a notoriously ‘proud’ gay young man who traversed the OAU campus then, and after a long chat with me I could not but have pity on him as he came off as a young man that was irredeemably sick. After wandering in the wilderness of gay community that took him from Ife to Lagos, London and other European Cities, Dapo a few months ago had a sex-change surgery and today carries herself as a woman somewhere in the Netherlands. The moral of Dapo’s story is that nature and biology have designed human beings in a finite way and have apportioned biological roles accordingly. So, if anyone contracts the gay disease and decides to take the role of a man or woman as the case may be, science now has a lee way-Go do sex change!

    It is a fatal and escapist at best for people to argue ‘rights’ in the defence of illness as a way of life!

    By Mazi Moses Idika

    Maitama, Abuja.

  • Pain, anguish at ATM

    When most banks across the world deem it wise to introduce the use of automated machine teller, otherwise known as ATM, most people welcomed the noble idea of fast withdrawal of money without hitches.

    Nigeria did key into such high technology to bring the country at the same pedestal with other countries using the ATM.

    Nigerians also welcomed the use of the ATM to enable them have easy way of money collection as the case worldwide, but the case has been of pain and anguish before collection of money for some time now.

    When Nigerians approach most of this machines to withdraw money, it’s always one form of disappointment or the other, sometime :unable to dispense cash or network problems. This has to stop to enable Nigerian feel the impact of easy way of collect money.

    Formerly, Nigerians always experienced hardship buying petroleum products before they embarked on holidays to see their loved ones during any festivities, but the case now is spending most of their times at ATM machines to secure money to meet family needs in their various homes.

    If urgent steps are not taken, the much talked about cashless policy of the Central Bank would be a mirage, with the way most of the ATM machines are not properly being maintained for the benefit of their customers.

    The Central Bank of Nigeria’s directive of stopping the charge of one hundred naira for interbank withdrawal has gone a long way to bringing relief to many customers, whose joy is now being hampered with most of the ATMs not dispensing cash to their customers

    Equally, the Central Bbank of Nigeria should as matter of urgency direct all commercial banks to update their ATM machines to ameliorate the sufferings of bank customers.

    We hope those banks whose ATM machines have not been functioning would overhaul them for the good of the customers transacting business with them.

    By Bala Nayashi,

    Lokoja, Kogi State.

  • When not to celebrate a centenary

    SIR: Since the amalgamation of the country 99 years ago, Nigeria has had different leaders under different circumstances- from colonial administration to civilian-military and back to civilians. One unending question on the lips of citizens is why Nigeria, among the developing countries of the world seems to be locked into a cycle of dysfunction?

    Why is it that of all third-world countries, Nigeria seems unable to convincingly get its foot on the economic and political ladder?

    Are Nigerians universally more incapable? Are Nigerian leaders genetically more venal, more ruthless, more corrupt?

    Are Nigerian policy makers more innately feckless?

    What is it about Nigeria that holds it back, that seems to render it incapable of joining the rest of the world despite the huge mineral deposit, conducive climatic condition, good arable land, availability of both skilled and unskilled manpower?

    These questions demand answers as the people of Nigeria did not in any time yearn for a government that serves only the interests of narrow ruling elite, governance drenched in corruption, patronage, favoritism, and abuse of power.

    Our governments have been scandalously incompetent and hopelessly ineffective in tackling the myriad of social ills confronting the nation; compromised by corruption and hobbled by cronyism.

    Even why the country is facing the biggest challenge of insecurity today, our leaders are obsessed with cultivating and acquiring power without care to the needs and welfare of citizens and are even more disturbingly unconcerned about the rule of law.

    Their promises of, and commitment to good governance during the electioneering campaign in 2011 is turning out to be vacuous soothing words, feckless rhetoric, and hollow gestures as the people are completely losing sight on the direction of their leadership.

    In a society where men are truly free, they need not seek salvation in their leaders; but in Nigeria today, the people are earnestly in need of democratic salvation because either by ignorance and inefficiency if not by complicity, the political scene in the country today has taken on an air of surrealism, a weird and almost frightening atmosphere. Our Christians and Muslim brothers and sisters have deserted their places of worship for fear of being attacked by the dreaded Boko Haram sect and kidnappers; schools have been razed, pupils and teachers maimed, commuters bombed at the park and various security outfits have been attacked, resulting in the death of many rank and files in the security agency today.

    As a result of these unfortunate situations in Nigeria today, disenchantment is widespread, cynicism is epidemic, and disillusionment has become a way of life among the electorate.

    In spite of these, our “Ogas at the top” are in blissful mood for the celebration of the country’s centenary existence.

    What will be the justification of this celebration when after 100 years our academic institutions are structurally and intellectually ineffective, after hundred years there is still endless phalanx of unemployed graduate on our streets to the extent that both the B.Sc and the PhD holders are slugging it out for truck driving jobs?

    After 100 years, looting of public treasury is not seen as a grave crime as those who loot walk freely with retinue of security personnel.

    After 100 years, preventable diseases like malaria are still killing our children on daily basis.

    After hundred years we are still importing toothpicks and cannot refine our crude oil locally. What are they celebrating? We need to look at how we can reset our values in regards to a better economy, we need to work with all civil societies, government and expert to work out better way forward.

    A nation that generates billions of dollars from crude oil should be creating six regional state-of-the art hospitals for all Nigerians; instead of our people trooping abroad for treatment.

    •Onogwu Isah Muhammed

    Kogi Youth Coalition for Good Governance, Lokoja

  • WAEC and examination leakages

    SIR: I write to draw the attention of the public and major stakeholders in the Nigerian educational sector to yet another rot that bedevils the sector and threatens our future. Examination malpractices is a monster that has defied corporate and government efforts. Another alarming dimension to the menace is the leakage of examination questions on the social media before scheduled time of writing the papers.

    As if releasing the questions to students is not criminal enough, the administrators of this social media site also provide standard answers to members, also hours before they write the examinations.

    It is obvious that the issue of leakage of questions, like a malignant cancer that defies the efforts of chemotherapists, has been a major challenge for the regional examination body. Where is, then, the academic integrity needed to earn us respect when our students present their WAEC results for international admissions?

    When will the relevant security agencies fish out these shameless crooks and make them face the full wrath of the law? Which examination body is to be more trusted and relied upon, WAEC or NECO?

    Will be authorities respond to this call to save our future before it falls over the precipice of national mediocrity? Or shrug their shoulders and sweep these allegations under the carpet? Needless to say, this portends a dangerous future for coming generations as well as our corporate existence. When students are no longer encouraged to build on foundations of academic honesty and hardwork in order to succeed, then we are already on a steep slope towards international embarrassment.

    Recently, a Nigerian graduate seeking visa for a master’s degree in a foreign country was humiliated by the immigration officer. The white officer, believing that our graduates our half-baked and knowledge – deficient, asked the Nigerian to define ‘recession’, after all, he was an economics graduate. I do not know such that is enshrined in the policy for granting visas but as long we keep giving out students the easy way to passing examinations, they will be subjected to such ridicule.

    Before the Federal Government and the National Assembly forges head to outlaw the NECO examination body, efforts should be made to restore public confidence in the West African Examination Council. We cannot afford to sacrifice our tomorrow for the selfish purposes of individuals who have no regards for academic hard work and honesty and worse still, pass the same trait to our future leaders in today’s secondary schools.

    • Joshua Oyeniyi

    Lagos

  • How ‘419’ merchants defrauded Ekiti civil servants

    SIR: At first, it was a good news, but few days later, many Ekiti civil servants were crying. A group of people who called themselves SUKA MERCHANDISE CO LTD came to Ekiti State with a programme they called PROPERTY ACQUISITION. If you bought their goods ranging from pressing iron-TV then, you’re qaulified to buy goods in credit up to brand new car and pay them instalmentally for four years.

    We all rushed their goods and when their goods finished, thousands of staff paid them without collecting thier goods in order to qualify for the instalment. They promised to bring the rest of the goods the following day. Up till today, they never returned. Millions of naira were taken away only for them to disappear. All their mobile lines were fake. Their website is, www.sukamerchandise-ng.net.

    Though, nobody can cheat Ekiti people and go freely including some civil servant who helped them.

    Felix Olajide.

    SUPEB, Ado Ekiti

  • German Physicist and Methodist Girls , Yaba, Lagos

    SIR: German Physicist Max Planck once jested that those born in 1879 are especially pre destined for Physics. In 1879, Albert Einstein, Max Von Laue and Otto Hahn were born.They all went on to win the Nobel prize for Physics. Lisa Meitner, Planck, said “was born a small inquisitive girl in November 1878. She could not wait for her time to come.”

    Lisa Meitner was an Austrian, later Swedish, Physicist who worked on radio activity and nuclear Physics. Meitner was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission 75 years ago. According to the wikipedia, “Meitner is often mentioned as one of the most glaring examples of women’s scientific achievement overlooked by the Nobel committee”.

    Also in 1879, Methodist Girls High School (MGHS), Yaba, Lagos was founded. MGHS was to produce Ibiyinka Fuwape who emerged valedictorian at the University of Ibadan founded on November 17, 1948, exactly 70 years after the birth of Lisa Meitner whose birthdate is sometimes mistaken for November 7, 1878.

    Ibiyinka Fuwape(nee Adedokun) was to be described by the University of Ibadan Physicist, Profesor Ebun Oni (also a product of MGHS) as Africa’s first authentic woman theoretical physicist. Ibiyinka Fuwape was to be promoted to the rank of Professor in 2005, refered to as the Einstein Year, or the World Year of Physics to mark the publication of Einstein’s three” miraculous” papers of 1905.

    Einstein was a Theoretical Physicist.

    Interestingly Methodist Boys High School, Lagos was founded on March 14 1878 exacly one year before the birth of Albert Einstein.

    But the world waits for the Methodist Girls Yaba, Lagos.

    • Augustine Togonu-Bickersteth,

    London, England

  • Shema’s scorecard in print

    SIR: One of the expectations of democracy is better accountability from government and since Nigeria returned to civil rule, elected officers had been conceiving different programmes to make them accountable to the people.

    Governor Ibrahim Shehu Shema recently released two volumes of brochure dubbed Katsina State Projects 2007/2010 and 2010/2012 on the development projects he embarked on for the state. The brochures were produced by the Kaduna-based Timex Communications (Nig) Ltd.

    One striking idea about the two books is that in each sector, the numbers of projects executed were stated and the cost of these projects. This, no doubt, gives room for verification of not just the physical projects but also the amount expended on the projects, which is a huge departure from the norm. Most governors in their scorecards do not state the cost of projects executed.

    The books are testimonials of his stewardship as governor of the state since 2007. Since taking over from the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua as Governor of Kastina State, Shema has devised new methods of bringing development and accountability to the people. First of this is the introduction of Community Development Committees (CDC) which he has effectively used as means of identifying and executing relevant projects in the state.

    That strategy gave various communities in the state the opportunity to determine projects, which are needed by the people. This strategy has also helped the governor to build projects that will add value to the people.

    Also, the method has enabled the governor to provide responsive leadership to the needs of the people. Through this method, Shema has demonstrated that prudent management of scare resources can bring succour to the people.

    A census of projects undertaken by state government under the leadership of Governor Shema since 2007 revealed about 30 roads which have been newly built, rehabilitated or dualised. If the completion of the Katsina Airport is added to the executed projects, it will be clear that his administration has adequately attended to the transportation and infrastructural needs of the people of Kastina State.

    By building of fertilizer blending plants in Batsari, Bakori, Safana and Maiadua, the governor has set the stage for revolution in agriculture in the state. What is more? His introduction of free education in primary and secondary schools in state has brought enlightenment to the people.

    Thus, the establishment of free education has opened the way for the spread of prosperity; he has given electricity to more than 60 towns and villages in the state. He has built the Youth Craft Centre for Entrepreneurship Development in the state. Shema’s strides in development enabled the Katsina State Universal Basic Education Commission to win laurels in 2009 and 2010.

    Katsina Motel has been upgraded to a three-star hotel with suites, chalets, rooms and a swimming pool. The motel is also equipped with an automomatic power generator. The list of accomplishment is long and inexhaustible touching every aspect of human life.

    • Hassan Sirajo

    2, Cibi Road, Kurmin Mashi, Kaduna