Don’t laugh. Six hours is a lot. It is a diabolical professional ‘engineering and political will’ disgrace of inhuman dimensions dangerously disrupting the daily duties and lives of many millions of citizens, families, businesses and casual travellers -an economic disaster. It makes rubbish of any tourist agenda. It is true that it took six hours on Sunday November 10, Ibadan to Lagos on the former and now desperately dysfunctional defunct on the 120km Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. Still not fit for purpose and postponed till 2020. In that time, the plane passing us in stuck traffic had arrived in London-4000+km. We only wanted to go 120km.
When it was built in the mid-70s, we travelled the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, when it was an ‘expressway’, in 45 minutes sometimes two or three times a day. Then the potholes came from overweight trailers and poor and no maintenance. Yes, we can blame the collapse of the L-I-E on ‘permanent maintenance failures’ by civil servants and their political and military handlers and the nonsense called ‘tolling’ which was ‘extortion/stealing in disguise’ from travellers money and also overweight, above axle capacity articulated trailers and a 50-year deliberate northern power block rejection of railways. Add to this the apparently inhuman, certainly callous and of course the Eighth National Assembly (NASS-8) which refused to release an allocated N150billion in 2018 Works budget for completion. If allocated for 2018, this N150billion would have saved every one of the over one million suffering citizens- on the road sometimes two to six hours of their lives/day wasted throughout 2019. Instead the NASS-8 diverted the N150b to constitution projects. EFCC is making some of NASS-8 members sweat as they ‘account’ for the money. But we have lost forever, those wasted millions of hours in 2018 and now millions of hours every single day x 365 days of 2019. Amazingly the last three months were not enough to finish the job and so the road, a common 120km road is to be finished in 2020 -perhaps????
There are many new areas of study opportunity if only universities open their eyes on behalf of the students to fulfill the projected needs of the nation. Set up departments of drone development, robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, plant chemistry and pharmacology, renewable energy studies in partnership with foreign universities and corporate body support
The word ‘maintenance’ should be compulsorily introduced into our government contracts and lexicon. And government officials and political parties must ‘hands off gratification from contracts’ believed to be 30-70% of the contract sum. Now the Minister of Works tells us the roads are ‘Not as bad as road users claim’. He should sit for six hours on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway. ‘Mr President -Give Us Our Road Back’.
University Foreign Language: Yes, universities mean universal education opportunity and acquisition. But how can a university make foreign languages compulsory for all its courses i.e. every student must learn a foreign language? Is that really the next great thing for university students in Nigeria -another unnecessary burden – being forced to study a language they mostly do not want or need? Presumably university students already have at least one foreign language, English, which is the language of communication. Certainly create new and refreshingly different courses in railway engineering with Chinese support but remember that technology is not the preserve of China alone and many English-speaking countries in the developed world also run high speed railways. If I were a vice chancellor or chairman of council, I would recognize that certainly our university Department of ‘Future Research and Development’ needs to Google and study the 1000 different and overlapping courses and curriculum available in the top 100-150 universities and polytechnics worldwide and synthesise them into some new courses that can be offered locally, with help from abroad if necessary- and preferably in English. It is a pity that too many students in Nigeria are trapped, even before any clear thought, into studying the same old courses and course content.
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How many of Nigeria’s over 120 universities themselves ‘Study the courses and curriculum content of the top 50 universities worldwide’? A comparison with local universities will surely enrich their own courses and content. There are many new areas of study opportunity if only universities open their eyes on behalf of the students to fulfill the projected needs of the nation. Set up departments of drone development, robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, plant chemistry and pharmacology, renewable energy studies in partnership with foreign universities and corporate body support. To this end Dangote, NNPC, Glo, Zenith and other top players in the stock exchange must look beyond their ETF and TEF contribution to tertiary education. They should take lessons from their counterpart corporate bodies abroad who invest in and request universities to develop strategies to investigate and solve problems encountered in their business, service and manufacturing environment. This they can do by sponsoring conferences but, much better, by actually providing grants international cutting-edge high technology science equipment to get cutting edge research done in the core areas of growth.
Ban Plastic bags etc.: Nasarawa has established a ‘Solid Waste Management Plant’ targeted at reducing ‘plastic and polythene material’ pollution to make the state clean and reduce floods. All state governments should take note and implement similar projects before plastic strangles Nigeria. When will Nigeria ban plastic already banned in 10 African countries?
The ‘Amended Deep Offshore Act’ or Bill signed by vacationing president in UK: Will Nigeria really get $1.5b per annum instead of the current $250m? Who will pay for governments which ignored this revenue until the president was in the winter UK environment? Government staff must be made more accountable and prosecutable for the consequences of their actions and inactions.
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