Prof. Uche Uwaleke, a financial expert, has predicted a further decrease in the rate of inflation for March 2017 as it was the case in February.
Uwaleke , the Head of Banking and Finance, Nasarawa State University, Lafia, made the prediction in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN ) on Tuesday in Abuja.
He hinged the decline on the continued appreciation of the Naira due to the interventions of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
He said Nigeria’s currency would continue to appreciate if the interventions were sustained and urged the apex bank to ensure proper monitoring of the situation.
“The headline inflation figure for March is likely to witness further drop year- on -year as we saw in the month of February.
“The pass through effect of the naira appreciation will gradually manifest as time goes on especially if the interventions are sustained.
” The CBN should continue to monitor the situation, to ensure that the current effort of the apex bank at converging exchange rates was not undermined
“Some banks are alleged to be making it difficult for importers with confirmed Letters of Credit to access Forex.
NAN reports that Nigeria’s consumer prices increased by 17.78 per cent year-on-year in February 2017, following 18.72 per cent gain in the previous year.
The inflation rate slowed for the first time in 15 months.
The Vice-Chancellor, Nasarawa State University, Keffi, Prof. Muhammad Mainoma, has expressed concern over the scarcity of funds for the day-to-day running of the institution.
Mainoma made the remark in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Keffi.
He said that the economic recession was taking its toll on the university.
The vice chancellor said that the students were finding it difficult to pay school fees, while the government was also finding it difficult to pay staff salaries.
Mainoma said workers in the university had yet to receive their February salary.
He said the institution had been admitting more than its capacity, with over 30,000 students competing for the limited infrastructure.
The vice chancellor identified inadequate resources as one of the challenges facing the school.
He said that funds were not available to run the university in the manner the authorities would have wanted.
According to him, there have been reports about thefts of motorcycles and bicycles, as a result of overpopulation.
Mainoma said that lack of discipline and overpopulation were major setbacks the administration had been contending with.
Nasarawa State University chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says it is opposed to the financial autonomy granted the institution by the state government.
The chairman of the chapter, Dr Nghargbu K’tso, said this on Thursday when he paid a courtesy call on the state House of Assembly Committee on Education in Lafia.
K’tso said that the union opposed the financial autonomy because the university “is a public institution’’ that should be properly funded by the state government.
He appealed to the Assembly to ensure that institution was properly funded to improve its standard of education and for the overall development of the state.
“We appeal to you to use your good office to increase funding of the education sector in the state, particularly the state university subvention, because the budget is passing through you.
“This is to make the university compete with other universities favourably.
“We are also demanding that there should be a review of the law establishing the university by allowing the management of the university to serve single term of five years, not four years renewable.
“This will encourage excellence and productivity,’’ he said.
According to K’tso, ASUU says no to financial autonomy because the institution is a social service sector which belongs to the public.
“We do not know of any public university that has financial autonomy,’’ he said.
Responding, Mr Daniel Oga-Ogazi, chairman of the committee, assured ASUU that the Assembly, in partnership with the state government, was addressing problems in the education sector in the state.
The lawmaker promised that the Assembly would continue to enact laws that had direct bearing on the lives of the people of the state.
Governor Umaru Al-Makura of Nasarawa State on Tuesday ordered that the Nasarawa State University, Keffi (NSUK), remained closed, pending the implementation of the investigative report on the students’ unrest in February.
Al-makura made the statement in Lafia when he a received the report of the unrest that led to the death of two students.
The state governor, who was represented by the Deputy Governor, Mr Dameshi Luka, said that the university authorities did not consult with the visitor to the university before recalling the students.
He, therefore, announced an indefinite suspension of the resumption date, pending full consideration of the report of the commission of inquiry.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) recalls that the school’s senate in a statement by the registrar, Mr Dalhatu Mamman, had announced April 28 as the date for the re-opening of the institution.
Earlier, while presenting the report, the Chairman, Dr Amin Zaigi, expressed displeasure over the re-opening of the institution, saying that investigations were still going on.
He said, “we find it necessary to note our reservation over the re-opening of the university when we are still carrying out our work’’
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.”
– T. E. Lawrence, British Soldier and Writer
Recently, the media was awash with tales of debauchery. The atrocity was planned by group of young men. By the time they were done, a beauty queen was strangulated like a sacrificial fowl. This is the narrative of the beautiful Cynthia Osokogu, a post-graduate student of Nasarawa State University, who was brutally murdered by scammers and serial rapists in a gruesome manner.
Many, especially the older generation, blamed the homicide on social networking sites. To me, the notion is wrong because any medium can turn its user in when it is overused. The likes of Ezekiel Odera and Nwabufor Okwoma acted out an ambition fuelled on the passion of a dream that is not only broken but washed-out as well. A dream that lacks vitality and validity. Truth is when the axe of a washed-out dream falls, it does not respect class or persons as the cases of Cynthia and the recent kidnapping of royal fathers have shown.
In 1900, with the publication of The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud proposed that dreams are the ‘royal road’ to the unconscious; they revealed in disguised form the deepest elements of an individual inner life. In Hamlet, Shakespeare wrote: “Dreams indeed are ambition. For the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”
Nigeria is a great country that is denied the splendour of her existence owing to the blind ambition of some of her inhabitants. Our ambitions, in most cases turn out to be the grand enemy of peace. Nigeria is full of daydreamers, who act their dreams “without a wink for the other person and without a nickel to loan” (apologies Michael Jackson).
Many people’s dreams are washed-out because they lack true colour and are faded. One sees washed-out dreams on the faces of young men whose hopes of a good life are dashed immediately the left universities. It is the same thing all around the world with many youths graduating and asking: “what is the use of an education that cannot guarantee jobs?” Isn’t it time we begin to find alternatives especially now that it is postulated that by 2030, youth and not oil will be Nigeria’s most valuable resources?
How do we meet with the demand of human capital come 2030 when young people are presently raised in a banana republic where nothing works? The likes of the young men, who killed Cynthia, are daydreamers who became specimens for bad experiment in a country without focus.
We have a government with an ambition of transformational agenda, a policy point which appears to be fine on paper but with operational impact close to zero. The government is full of people who still have a primitive views about the concept of selfless service.
Relics of washed-out dreams in Nigeria are in the type of people we choose to celebrate in the media. They are business “execu-thieves”, “sin-ators” and “come-raids”. The media splashes the sons and daughters of celebrated thieves and feed us with the gist of who wears and spends the most! These are the sons and daughters who waste the stolen funds.
It is a product of a washed-out dream to have a ministry of water resources and yet, more than half of the population cannot get clean water for domestic use. Electricity being erratic in a country of over 160,000 million people with human and material resources and which is being run contrary to what a civilised society should be in 21st Century.
Now let us take a look at our entertainment industry which seems to be growing the same rate it is falling in content. The main element in musical videos and movies is nudity. The likes of Fela Anikulapo were weird but they helped raise the social and political consciousness in the country.
I used to think that the era of copying useless culture from the West was gone until I listened to ‘girl down’ by an upcoming act that did a remix of Rihanna’s Man down. It is a relic of a washed-out dream when artistes do not know that talent is simply not enough. It is high time practitioners in showbiz understood the concept of arts for social relevance and not just art for arts, as most of things we have been seeing from Nollywood seems to suggest.
It is a relic of a washed-out dream that I can write this piece in an alien language while the ability to write in my mother tongue is limited. And what is this I heard about indigenous languages being optional for students? Japan and China are countries that are showing the world that one can be modern without being westernised. It is good to learn from developed countries but it will be bad to abandon parts of our cultures and traditions that form our values.
