The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Dearth

  • Dearth of intellectual capital bane of educational space

    By Omolola Afolabi

    Thoughts on nation building and social re-engineering formed the thrust of discourse by culture icons, writers, scholars and members of the literary circle on Saturday at a book reading event tagged Book Trekorganised by Committee for Relevant Arts. Venue was Quintessence Gallery, Parkview Estate,Ikoyi Lagos.

    CORA programmes chairman Mr Jahman Anikulapo anchored the session asMr Jimanze Alowes,a journalist and scholar who authored the book The university Media Complex: Nigeria’s Foremost Amusement Chain took readings from some parts of his book.

    Examining whether the current situation in Nigeria is a matter of leadership or scholarship failure, Dr.Alowes said scholars need to develop a sound capacity for critical assessment as well as make manifest the wealth of knowledge daily consumed in the ivory towers.He said the scholars must be able to influence leadership positively in order to steer the ship of the Nigerian state to a successful harbour. He pointed out that model civilisations like Europe and the US that are used as standards by African leaders are all an expression of long conceived ideas that have been given an opportunity to gestate. He reiterated the need for creative ingenuity to bring about original ideas that must be invented at a high level of inspiration and later allowed to descend to a lower level of operation. He gave an instance of a motor vehicle driver who has the ability to drive a car while not necessarily having the dexterity to carry out its manufacture.

    Discussing how interventions must be made on the Nigerian state, he recommended an equal representation of all tribes in Nigeria irrespective of their size at the parliamentary levels. He also shared thoughts on the heterogeneity of Nigeria, saying ‘constitutions should not be drafted by judges but rather the people who are delineated by their representatives in the parliamentin order to have a people-centered constitution where all tribes will be adequately represented.

    DrAlowesrecalled how a Buddha, suggestive of a desired spiritual and political leader must precede a Caesar, a representation of a vicious and despotic potentate. This, he recommended in order to achieve anutopic society. He however lamented the dearth of intellectual capital in the Nigerian educational space. He said it’s a scathing indictment on nationhood and the manipulation that have been allowed to thrive with the intellectuals taking positions of compromise with the political elites must be eliminated in order for the intellectual circle to regain its revered status.

     

  • Dearth of doctors

    •It’s high time the brain drain stopped

    When a lawmaker in the Benue State House of Assembly, Dr Adoga Onah, drew attention to the paucity of doctors in the state’s 23 general hospitals, the information he supplied was alarming. Indeed, Onah, who is the chairman, House Committee on Health and Human Services, had urged Governor Samuel Ortom to declare a state of emergency in the health sector.

    “I lost about eight persons,” Onah had said, adding that the dearth of doctors had led to the loss of many lives in the state. He stated that people would not have died from simple ailments, if doctors were available at the hospitals. Onah lamented that the authorities had not paid sufficient attention to the health sector. The lawmaker observed that although the assembly allocated 15 per cent to the health sector this year, as against the usual four per cent, the current allocation was far from the 50 per cent provision recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

    It is noteworthy that the Nigerian Medical Association (NMA) in Benue State had also drawn attention to the acute shortage of doctors in hospitals in the state, ahead of a doctors’ strike in October 2017.  The association’s leadership had complained that the state had “less than 50 medical doctors.’’

    The commissioner for health and human services, Dr. Cecilia Ojabo, had responded: “They talked of shortage of doctors; we have 91 doctors at the teaching hospital and across the general hospitals in the state…There is nothing yet to warrant declaration of a state of emergency in the health sector in Benue State… there is no cause for alarm… There are four doctors to every general hospital across the state.”

    The commissioner’s figures show that there are clearly not enough doctors. It is ironical to have hospitals without enough doctors. Indeed, the situation in the state is a reflection of a national crisis. The country has a poor doctor-patient ratio, which is said to be one doctor to 4, 000 patients. The WHO recommendation is one doctor to 600 patients.

    Severe shortage of doctors and other health workers remains a big challenge across the country. Medical brain drain is a major issue among factors responsible for the inadequacy of medical personnel. According to a report, an estimated 35,000 Nigerian doctors are practising abroad out of the 72,000 registered with the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria. The United Kingdom and the United States are the top destinations of the migrant doctors.

    For instance, figures released in February by the British government indicate that no fewer than 5,405 Nigerian-trained doctors and nurses are currently working with the British National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom. This means that Nigerian medical workers constitute 3.9 per cent of the 137,000 foreign staff of 202 nationalities working alongside British doctors and nurses.

    What are the authorities doing to retain the health professionals at home and attract those abroad? What are those things that attract these professionals to foreign countries?  Poor working conditions, including inadequate remuneration and inadequate facilities, are usually cited as reasons for medical migration. It is lamentable that many medical professionals trained in Nigeria leave to work in foreign countries where they are better able to practise with a sense of fulfillment.

    This matter comes within the purview of the government, especially as it concerns public hospitals.  It is scandalous and unacceptable that public health facilities across the country are operating far below the desired standards mainly on account of governmental underperformance.

    To fix the health system, the authorities need to prioritise healthcare, increase health-sector funding, and improve the working conditions of medical personnel.

     

  • Dearth of data

    •Just how dysfunctional is our oil industry? 

    HAD the information emanated from a lesser source, it may have been discounted as an exaggeration or an attempt to dis-inform. But this troubling piece of information came from an insider who ought to know, and there lies our deep discomfiture.

    The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum Resources (MPR), Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, has expressed worry over the non-availability of in-country data on Nigeria’s oil industry. She asserted that Nigerians had to go to the secretariat of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to source required data on Nigeria’s oil sector.

    Dr. Yemi-Esan made the declaration at the opening ceremony of OPEC’s data management training workshop in Abuja.

    In her words: “Immediately after the minister’s speech… somebody stood up and said we didn’t have data source on Nigeria. And I was actually ashamed of myself. And I think as we provide data for OPEC, we should address the question of churning out credible data to be consumed in-country. It is a pity when students are looking for data we have to go to OPEC to get data about Nigeria.”

    It is noteworthy that this revelation came out of a workshop on data management organised by OPEC here in Nigeria. As if it is not worrisome enough that vital Nigeria oil data are domiciled abroad, it takes their effort to teach Nigeria how to harness and handle data generated from her oil industry.

    We commend the permanent secretary’s candour at bringing up a seemingly self-indicting information to the public and hope that it would serve as the catalyst needed to move the MPR and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to work in tandem with other stakeholders in the oil industry to set up a robust data centre for Nigeria’s oil industry.

    Nigeria has been in oil production for more than five decades and for a long time, has ranked among the top 10 producers in the world. Crude oil has been the mainstay of the country’s economy and her most important strategic economic asset.

    On this score, it would be expected that a major strong point of Nigeria’s oil industry over these years would be the wealth of data it has managed to capture, warehouse and nurture. It is also trite to state the importance of data to such a vital industry as oil.

    Seismic data, hydrocarbons data, products data, production data, sales data, procurement data, equipment data and a dozen other variants of data necessary for study, research and development of the sector must never be lacking in the labyrinthine setup of the NNPC.

    Though it was not specified the range of oil data that is lacking in Nigeria, for there is a wide spectrum of data generated from the industry. For instance, the NNPC has a subsidiary, Integrated Data Services Limited (IDSL) which seems to be concerned mainly with hydrocarbons and seismic information of the industry.

    There is no doubt that there is need for a data centre that holds and manages the entire gamut of data generated from the industry – upstream and downstream; offshore and onshore.

    Over the years, another subsidiary of the NNPC, the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR) which is the regulatory arm has been found to lack the capacity to monitor and regulate the oil sector in Nigeria.

    For instance, the refrain has been that the DPR still lacked the capacity – in terms of up-to-date equipment and skilled personnel – to monitor crude production output and shipments of the International Oil Companies (IOCs). The prevailing report has always been that DPR only reports figures made available to it by the IOCs.

    In other words, it has no capacity to generate authentic independent figures. But it is apposite to note that without accurate data, it would be impossible to give account of revenues generated, for instance. It is therefore no wonder that perennially, there is always disputation about revenue figures emanating from the NNPC.

    We therefore urge the Federal government to take Dr. Yemi-Esan’s exposition very seriously and move quickly to ensure that a world-class oil industry data centre is promptly set up.

    This is crucial indeed.

  • SMEs: Multiple taxation, dearth of infrastructure hurting our businesses

    Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), particularly those on the Ikorodu axis of Lagos State, have cried out that excessive taxation and dearth of supportive infrastructure, among other harsh operating environment-related challenges, are taking a huge toll on their businesses.

    Some of the small business owners in Ikorodu, who spoke with The Nation, lamented that constant and multiple demands for taxes by various agents of the government were hurting their profitability and threatening the sustainability of their businesses.

    For instance, Logistics &Facility Manager, Hallel Engineering Company, Mr. Adeolu Akinpelu, said his company was faced with the challenge of double taxation by the government under various names and categories.

    Akinpelu said there was a need for the government at all levels to harmonise the various taxes to be paid by different categories of businesses, to avoid the current situation where businesses, particularly SMEs, are forced to pay the same taxes but with different sub-heads.

    He argued that multiplicity of taxes was having debilitating effects on SMEs by cutting into their profit margin. Besides, those who could not cope with the excessive taxation have been forced to either close shop or relocate to other climes where tax regimes are SME-friendlier.

    To the CEO of Zaiphie Transformation, a firm of make-up artists, Miss Ifeoma  Ikechukwu, the challenges facing SMEs in Ikorodu area of Lagos go beyond tax. She said the perception of Ikorodu as being in the backwaters of civilisation due to lack of infrastructure was a pain in the neck of small business owners.

    The beauty artist said: “The price of makeup and hair products increases daily, and it is affecting my business. But, unfortunately, people see Ikorodu as an undeveloped area and insist that our products must be cheap without recourse to the fact that we all buy from the same market,”

    Miss Ikechukwu lamented that the location of her business in Ikorodu was a major disincentive as customer patronage was low because of the poor infrastructure in the area, such as regular supply of electricity, potable water and good roads, among others.

    She, therefore, called on the state government to improve the infrastructure in the area in order to boost SMEs and ultimately, create jobs.

    Similarly, Managing Director, Marthridge Stitches, Mrs. Martha Aimuemojie, complained that because of poor infrastructure in Ikorodu, many of her customers are unable to locate her business address.

    According to her, the difficulty by prospective customers in locating her business address affects the price of her goods and services. She expressed regrets that location determines the price of goods and services, whether one is good or not in the business.

    Another dealer in beauty products, who gave her name only as Mrs. Orakwe, however, said the hurdles before SMEs in Ikorodu cannot be divorced from the general economic downturn plaguing the nation following the collapse of oil prices at the international market.

    Orakwe said the economic recession that gripped the country since the crisis started has forced many people to re-order their priorities, as many Nigerians now prefer to feed their families first before thinking of buying beauty products and indeed, other products and services.

    Apart from the economic downturn, Orakwe also lamented that the seeming gradual disappearance of the apprenticeship culture from the SME landscape was not helping matters. She said nowadays most apprentices want to make money rather than learn from their masters.

    She added that apprentices learn the trades now are cajoled to do so. She decried the lazy and poor work culture among the youth, and called for a paradigm shift.

  • ‘Dearth of capital crippling businesses’

    Businesses in Africa are being stifled by lack of capital, the United Kingdom’s development finance institution (CDC) has  said.

    It noted that though many African businesses have great potential to thrive, create employment and impact on their countries’development, they are being held back by their  inability to attract long-term capital.

    According to its Regional Director for Africa, Imoni Akpofure, who spoke at an investment workshop for reporters in Lagos, businesses become distress as  commercial investors perceive the region as unstable politically.

    She said as part of the institution’s core mandate to bridge the financing gap, CDC has committed huge capital investments in priority sectors of agribusiness, construction, education, financial institutions, health infrastructure and manufacturing to propel sustainable economic growth as well as significant job creation.

    “We apply high-quality commercial investment processes because if the businesses we invest in are not commercially viable with strong financial outcomes, the jobs they create today will be gone tomorrow. We also understand that it takes more than money to build a great business, so we invest our time and expertise  to help the businesses we invest in to improve their management of environmental matters, relations with their workforce and stakeholders and with society at large,” she said.

    On the import of private equity investment to business growth, the Investment Manager, Mr. Gozie Chigbue, said partnership with business owners when investing ensures judicious channeling of resources.

    He said investors should subject their targets to certain prerequisites, especially long-term viability before committing capital. According to him, the seven phases of investment are sourcing, screening, due diligence, financial recommendation, closing and monitoring.

    “You start by funding the right company and finding the right opportunities. You have to make sure you understand the market intently and spend time to talk to the right people involved to avoid uniformed investment in fragile sectors. For us at CDC, the point of investing is not just to make profit but to also create jobs.

    “We invest both directly into businesses and indirectly through private equity to fund managers who we carefully asses the redevelopment impact of their proposals. We take a flexible approach; taking care to match the investment instrument to the specific needs of each business. We are also able to provide a mix of equity, loans and mezzanine finance,” Gozie said.

    CDC since 1948 has invested across spectrums of over 100 industries and sectors in Nigeria such as Azura Power, Indorama Eleme Petrochemicals Company, ECOM Agroindustrials, Swift Networks and Synergy Fund, according to the Environmental and Social Responsibility Director, Mr. Mark Eckstein. He emphasized that beyond making profit, CDC was committed to establishing strong working relationship with host communities of partners. He said: “for instance, Petrochemical and Fertilizer industry, Indorama has since, with the backing of CDC and others made significant improvements including increasing production. Some of the greatest strides have been made in raising environmental and social standards which has been critical in maintaining good relations with the local community in the Niger Delta.”

  • Minister laments dearth of industries

    The Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment,  Dr. Okechukwu Enelamah has described as scandalous the sorry state of the nation’s industries, saying a situation where Nigeria in the 21st century is battling to industrialise and expect her products to compete with nations whose industrial revolutions took place centuries ago is proving difficult.

    Enelamah who spoke during his maiden meeting with Chief Executives of agencies under his ministry and the Heads of Department of the Ministry in Abuja, said: “There was no rocket science in massive industrialisation and foreign direct investment as government will not compromise on the policy of ease of doing business in Nigeria.”

    While pledging his commitment to ensure complete industrialisation of the country as well as attract investment from both local and international partners as well as restoring order in the operations and management of Small and Medium Enterprises in Nigeria through inter-agency synergy and collaborations, the minister however warned that the current administration would not spare any Ministry and Department Agencies of government that becomes a clog in the wheel of national aspiration of simplifying operational requirements for investors who want to invest in the economy.

  • Dearth of funds, others cripple tourism sector

    Paucity of funds and punitive interest rate regime have been identified as some of the problems militating against the development of the tourism sector in the country.

    President, NANET Hotels and Suites, Apapa Mr Ini Akpabio, who spoke in Lagos at the weekend, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to set up a tourism bank in the country to grow the sector for job creation and as well as serve as alternative revenue source to the government.

    He said if such a specialised bank is established for the tourism sector, it will address low access to funds and the  high interest rate that are charged by commercial banks in the country.

    He said: “The tourism sector in Nigeria has not grown as expected by operators. Globally, the industry is fast growing becoming a huge revenue source to government but in our country, its development is slow and frustrating.

    “Therefore, there is the need for government to establish a specialised bank to cater to the needs of the tourism industry.

    According to him, sectors such as aviation, textile, agric have been given financial bail-out by the government, such a gesture has never been extended to the tourism sector, lamenting that a situation where interest rate still stands at double digit of between 27 per cent and 30 per cent can never encourage private investment into the economy.

    He said the Bank of Industry (BoI) and Bank of Agriculture (BoA) were set up to take care of the special needs of the manufacturing and agric sectors, adding that setting up a Tourism Bank will be a wonderful step that will revolutionise the industry, open it up and create opportunities for development.

    According to him, part of the bank’s mandate should be to grant soft loans to both private and public investors in the tourism sector.

    He said:‘It requires huge capital to set up and run a tourism business. If the ban is established, investors will have access to soft loans to run their businesses while the government will get huge revenue in return because such investors will pay tax and other necessary levies which will increase the nation’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and also boost its Gross Domestic Products (GDP).”

    Akpabio urged the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to look in the direction of lowering the high interest paid on loans in the country.

    “The reduction would boost tourism in the country and also increase in-bound tourists to the country,” he said, adding that promotion of most tourism sites in the country was being hindered by paucity of funds.

    Akpabio said many people were willing to invest in tourism but that interest charged on loans was exorbitant.

    He said: “Loans in foreign countries were given out with a three to two per cent or zero interest rates. This enables rapid growth in the business, but here in Nigeria, interest rates are from 28 per cent upwards.This development is absolutely unfair and it tends to affect the growth of tourism business in the country.”

  • Global dearth of IT security personnel rises, says Cisco

    Global dearth of IT security personnel rises, says Cisco

    Globally, the skilled gap in the information communication technology (ICT) security sector continues to widen. This year alone, it reached more than one million, the United States (U.S) tech giants, Cisco has said.

    In the Cisco Annual Security Report presented in Lagos, the firm lamented that malicious traffic continues to grow at an unprecedented levels, adding that threats designed to take advantage of users’ trust in systems, applications and personal networks have now reached startling levels.

    The sophistication of the technology and tactics used by online criminals—and their non-stop attempts to breach networks and steal data—have outpaced the ability of information technology (IT) and security professionals to address these threats, it added, lamenting that many organisations do not have the people or the systems to continuously monitor extended networks and detect infiltrations, and then apply protections, in a timely and effective manner.

    General Manager, Cisco Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra-Leone, Dare Ogunlade, who unveiled the report with the firm’s System Engineer, Security, Adeola Kukoyi said the report’s findings offer a vivid picture of rapidly evolving security challenges facing businesses, IT departments and individuals.

    Ogunlade said attack methods include socially engineered theft of passwords and credentials, hide-in-plain-sight infiltrations, and exploitation of the trust required for economic transactions, government services and social interactions.

    He said: “Organisations across Africa must realise that it is no longer if they will be targeted by cyber-attacks, but rather when Chief Information Security Officers face growing pressure to protect terabytes of data on an increasingly porous network, manage information safely especially on the cloud, and evaluate the risks of working with third-party vendors for specialised solutions – all in the wake of shrinking budgets and leaner IT teams.”

    Ogunlade also noted increased sophistication and proliferation of the threat landscape, lamenting that simple attacks that caused containable damage have now given way to organised cybercrime operations that are sophisticated, well-funded, and capable of significant economic and reputational damage to public and private sector victims.

    Cisco also highlighted increased complexity of threats and solutions due to rapid growth in intelligent mobile devices’ adoption and cloud computing providing a greater attack surface than ever before, adding that new classes of devices and new infrastructure architectures offer attackers opportunities to exploit unanticipated weaknesses and inadequately defended assets.

    The tech firm said cybercriminals have learned that harnessing the power of internet infrastructure yields far more benefits than simply gaining access to individual computers or devices. These infrastructure-scale attacks seek to gain access to strategically positioned web hosting servers, name servers and data centers—with the goal of proliferating attacks across legions of individual assets served by these resources. By targeting Internet infrastructure, attackers undermine trust in everything connected to or enabled by it.

  • ‘Dearth of research aiding spread of tuberculosis’

    Before a large audience, Prof Ade Dosunmu, a lecturer at the Delta State University (DELSU) in Abraka said the dearth of adequate research and knowledge on tuberculosis among medical practitioners in the country was the major cause for the increasing cases of the disease.

    Prof Dosunmu was speaking at the 40th inaugural lecture of the university held at the expansive Pre-degree Lecture Hall. He spoke on Tuberculosis: The new nemesis.

    Apart from trained pulmonologists, the inaugural lecturer said, most general and private practitioners have scanty knowledge about tuberculosis care. This, he said, leads to lack of capacity to manage or diagnose patients suffering from the disease.

    The medical expert also said the inadequate information was aiding the spread of the disease globally, noting that a third of the world’s population was being infected with the disease every year.

    He lamented the poor state of facilities in public hospitals, saying that the supervision of infected patients for treatment period required energy, dedication and follow-up by health supervisors.

     

  • The dearth of historical consciousness in Nigeria (III)

    After the publication of the first part of this article, I received calls from two sets of readers. The first set – the optimists – are of the opinion that we need to be historically conscious if indeed we are serious about Nigeria “moving forward.” They wondered why any serious nation will neglect the teaching of history which often brings with it a sense of national identity and consciousness. The second set – the pessimists – believe that Nigeria, as a “contraption” is already unravelling and we only have to wait for this to eventually happens. To them, the Boko Haram (BH) insurgency is the beginning of the end.

    While I don’t share in their pessimism, I’m also not blind to the fact that we are at a crossroad as a nation with many Nigerians lacking the understanding of what being a Nigerian is or what Nigeria as a nation actually stands for. A colleague told me last week that after reading a simplified, but comprehensive history of America written for children and teenagers, he wasn’t surprised that Americans are the way they are; patriotic about their country.

    So we may ask ourselves why study history, and what does history have to do with all that is happening now? The answer – in my opinion – is because we virtually must, to gain access to the “laboratory” of human experience. When we study it reasonably well, and so acquire some usable habits of mind, as well as some basic data about the forces that affect our own lives, we emerge with relevant skills and an enhanced capacity for informed citizenship, critical thinking, and simple awareness. We need to study it in order to make progress, even though this progress may take years in materialising.

    I’m aware that any subject of study needs justification; its advocates must explain why it is worth attention. In a society that quite correctly expects education to serve “useful” purposes, the functions of history can seem more difficult to define than those of say architecture, engineering or medicine. History is in fact very useful, actually indispensable, but the products of historical study are less tangible, sometimes less immediate, than those that stem from some other disciplines.

    History should be studied because it is essential to individuals and to society as it helps us to understand people and societies. In the first place, it offers a storehouse of information about how people and societies behave. How, for instance, can we evaluate war if the nation is at peace. We can however do this with historical materials.

    Take the BH crisis as a case study. Terrorism – in the scale we have it today – is totally strange to us that is why our military were not effectively trained in counter-insurgency warfare; rather the effort has been on conventional warfare where you are trained to know your enemy who is expected to play by certain international rules and norms governing combats and the treatment of prisoners of war etc. Today’s enemy only puts on uniform as a decoy; otherwise he remains elusive or acts as a suicide bomber with scant regard to the sanctity of human life or decent societal norms.

    So what is a historian expected to do in this instance? He will sift through historical documents; study how similar scenarios played out elsewhere, what was done there and how it was countered. He will also strive to understand the role that belief systems play in shaping individual and family lives. By studying several societies where similar situations subsist, a conclusion can be drawn with solutions provided on how to address the situation.

    Some social scientists attempt to formulate laws or theories about human behaviour, but even these depend on historical information, except for in limited, often artificial cases in which experiments can be devised to determine how people act. Consequently, history must serve, however imperfectly, as our “laboratory”, and data from the past must serve as our most vital evidence in the unavoidable quest to figure out why our complex society behaves the way it does. This, fundamentally, is why we cannot stay away from history: it offers the only extensive evidential base for the contemplation and analysis of how societies function, and people need to have some sense of how societies function simply to run their own lives.

    History also helps us to understand change and how the society we live in came to be. The past causes the present, and so the future. Any time we try to know why something happened—like the BH crisis or religious/ethnic conflicts—we have to look for factors that took shape earlier.

    Sometimes fairly recent history will suffice to explain a major development, but often we need to look further back to identify the causes of change. Only through studying history can we grasp how things change; only through history can we begin to comprehend the factors that cause change; and only through history can we understand what elements of an institution or a society persist despite change.

    So how do we start to put the right foot forward? Realising the importance of history, Lagos State Government started the process of teaching the subject from the basic level two years ago, if handled well it may be the pedestal for grooming generations of Nigerians who would understand what being citizens of this potentially great nation really means despite our current challenges. I urge the state government to explore other avenues beyond the four walls of schools to enable its citizens have a positive and progressive sense of history.

    For those who may not know, history also serves as a platform for moral contemplation. Studying the stories of individuals and situations in the past allows a student of history to test his or her own moral sense, to hone it against some of the real complexities individuals have faced in difficult settings. People who have weathered adversity, not just in some work of fiction, but in real historical circumstances can provide inspiration that can galvanize an entire nation. The late Nelson Mandela and South Africa is a classic example that most people can easily recollect. Sir Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of Great Britain’s singular role in rallying his people to confront Nazi Germany during the Second World War also readily comes to mind.

    In galvanizing a nation, – we all agree that Nigeria, as it stands today, need leaders that can galvanize her – no singular attitude is necessary than having a sense of identity; history provides this, which is unquestionably why all modern nations encourage its teaching in varied forms. Historical data include evidence about how families, groups, institutions and whole countries were formed and about how they have evolved while retaining cohesion.

    In my study of American history, I discovered that for most Americans, studying the history of their family amount to the most obvious use of history, for it provides facts about genealogy and a basis for understanding how the family has interacted with larger historical change. Histories that tell the national story, emphasising distinctive features of the national experience, are meant to drive home an understanding of national values and a commitment to national loyalty.

    Perhaps a key area we need to have a positive sense of the subject is in the area of good citizenship.  Most Nigerians will agree that we have a citizenship crisis in the country today. This is the most common justification for the place of history in school curricula. Sometimes advocates of citizenship history hope merely to promote national identity and loyalty through a history spiced by vivid stories and lessons in individual success and morality. But the importance of history for citizenship goes beyond this narrow prism.

    History that lays the foundation for genuine citizenship returns, in one sense, to the essential uses of the study of the past. It provides data about the emergence of national institutions, problems, and values which offers evidence about how nations have interacted with other societies, providing international and comparative perspectives essential for responsible citizenship.

    One salient feature of an advanced country is the ability to see the importance of nearly every discipline in the development process. While we see the study of history in Nigeria as “irrelevant”, an advanced country will tap into the mind of the historian and use his analytic mindset for progress, for instance in the business world. In the United States, Britain and France, there are historians that undertake historical research for businesses or public agencies, or participate in the growing number of historical consultancies. These categories are important to keep the basic enterprise of history going.