Anyone who is over forty, and is educated, would definitely agree, that our education sector is dead!
The sector has been dying, gradually: from the famous Chinese method of death by a thousand cuts!
A litany of hare-brained polices, dug the grave, for the eventually interment of our education!
A few examples will elucidate this.
Our policy makers, (read each administration, and the politicians in control, crackpots if you ask me), insisted on tinkering with the system, in a bid to leave their mark; and they indeed left their mark: teeth marks on the carcass!
The first glaring error, was the promotion of the university degree, as the sine qua non of success in life!
Please note, I am not in any way disparaging,denigrating, or downplaying the worth, and value, of a university education!
It is the best anyone can get in life, if he is qualified to get one!
The reality is that even people without degrees still succeed, if they get educated through other right sources!
We jettisoned a perfect system that encouraged those who wanted to go to trade schools, and told them only a university would do!
So, many unqualified people, cheated in university entrance exams, and slipped into the university system!
While there, their inadequacy, led them to cheat to remain in the system: because they were not qualified in the first place!
At the end of the day, when these "graduates" emerged, they were just certified ignoramuses!
Before this, in those days, people wrote City and Guilds examinations, went to trade centres, and became educated in trades, and other crafts!
And the system benefited!
We had master craftsmen, who were deeply schooled in the theory, and practical sides, of their vocation!
This showed in the way houses were carefully, and lovingly built, welding work faultlessly carried out, and carpenters who were artists in their own right!
Today, that educated, trade school product, is lacking!
So we have executive, university-trained, suit hugging graduates, without the needed technologically educated technicians to flesh out their concepts into reality!
Instead, they need to rely on roadside artisans who might have an idea of what to do, but cannot read designs!
This same asinine policy, led to polytechnics been discriminated against in civil service career advancement!
Polytechnics would have filled this void, but not enough people chose, as a first choice, to attend them, they were always a fall back option, for those who missed out on university education!
The second mistake our country made, was to decouple Nigeria, from writing A Levels examinations in the West African School Certificate Examinations!
Our grouse was that our students were failing the exam, and to address the situation, we set up our own system, the 6-3-3-4 nonsense!
With this policy, we "incorporated" the A Levels, as an automatic part of secondary education,without the exacting, and tasking, and taxing rigor of study regimen required!
So while the rest of the world were involved in rigorous, and exacting, A Levels study, we were pretending to playing school, and deceiving ourselves!
We refused to submit our children to a universally accepted benchmark of tests, and set up our own, we lowered the bar!
In addition to all these hard to understand policies, we came up with the automatic promotion policy!
When I was growing up, if one failed, he repeated that class, period!
With this new policy, everyone was promoted, including the ones who had no aptitude for formal education, till they arrived at the top!
It was a policy designed to impress bean counters with the large number of children in the school system!
The reality was that many of them were impervious to formal learning, and were better off being referred to trade schools!
These failed, but promoted, children, clogged up the system, reducing quality, by putting unnecessary pressure on it, thereby imperiling it!
We now had over bloated classes, and an unhealthy teacher to student ratio, sometimes as high as one to sixty!
In many instances, subjects with practical components like Biology, Physics, and Chemistry, were taught, without laboratories for students!
Our decaying educational infrastructure did not help matters!
We failed to constantly invest in education, to keep it at par with concomitant rises in other sectors!
What our people did, because of corruption, was to increase the cost of government, in this case, recurrent expenditure, instead of capital projects, which would have benefited our education!
We "spent" money on contracts, not on improving education!
We spent a lot of money on contracts for school construction, but were lax in ensuring that good quality work was done by contractors, or that that teacher training, and welfare was catered for!
Education became a cash cow, and the children were well, and truly milked!
It became so bad, that many sat on the floor to learn,especially in primary schools!
The teachers, now demotivated by the abject neglect of the sector, turned to trading in schools, to survive, and only drop-outs, and the seriously called, went into the vocation!
We established one university after another, and neglected the foundation of all education: the primary level!
It was like a man who used inferior, and substandard, materials in his building's foundation, and foolishly went on to install a roof made of gold!
The mass failure we have been witnessing in the last five years, is actually an indicator of the failed policies from twenty years ago! Those defective children are still in the system, and will continue to embarrass all of us all their lives!
They are beyond help,as their foundations are faulty! The best we can do, is just grit our teeth, and close our eyes, as the results come out!
We have reached a level now, when only twenty percent pass secondary school final exams!
Have we asked ourselves why Ghana is not having similar problems with her education sector?
They do not, because they have not tinkered with a perfectly good system out of political expediency!
Instead, they have tweaked it, now, and then, to make the good better, and the bad good!
Why do we think many Nigerians are now sending their children to secondary, and even primary schools, in Ghana?
Because education is taken seriously there!
In the last school leaving exam conducted by West African Examination Council,WAEC, only twenty percent passed the examination!
It is a slight improvement on the two percent that passed the NECO examination two years ago!
We are approaching a level, where a university graduate from Nigeria, will not be comparable to a secondary school leaver in Ghana!
Some weeks ago, I had an interesting conversation with my father-in-law, he has been a doctor for forty two years, and is about seventy five years old!
He told me that, sometimes, when he sees what education has now become, he wishes he were not around to see it!
It is that bad!
During his time in the university in Nigeria, he told me that consultants felt insulted when asked why they did not have private hospitals of their own outside!
They felt research, and teaching was what they were paid for!
The case is no longer true of present day Nigeria! Almost every teacher moonlights to earn more, thereby reducing the quality of time, devoted to the business of preparing for teaching!
Students were usually two to a room, they had people who came to do their laundry, clean their rooms, they ate chicken, fish, fruits, and all manner of delicacies, at the university cafeteria, even when they had no money!
The libraries were well stocked with current books, and no one bribed a lecturer to pass exams!
Those were the days when a primary school pupil could write a letter, and it would not need correcting!
These days, a university graduate, if care is not taken, is nothing more than a "well-schooled" illiterate!
An uncultured philistine!
And it is about to get worse too!
The current government is talking again about changing the system!
When will they get it, that the system is not the problem, but the quality, and quantity, of what we are putting into it!
First of all, our schools need to be conducive for learning, as opposed to being prisons where children are held, to be forced to learn!
Has anyone wondered why, when an average student leaves Nigeria to study, he/she suddenly becomes exceptional in an unfettering environment?
Our institutions are not centres of learning, they are actually torture chambers!
Secondly, the remuneration of teachers, if the best quality human resource are the ones we want teaching our children, needs to be reviewed dramatically upwards!
In Finland, a country renowned for the best educational system in the world, an average primary school teacher's annual salary is $35,000.00 ! That is about five million six hundred thousand naira, in Nigeria!
Secondary school teachers earn an average of $42,000.00, about six million seven hundred and twenty thousand naira!
These figures, to an average Nigerian, sound out of this world!
But if you want the best, and need to retain them, you need to give them the best deal possible, one they cannot get elsewhere!
In Finland, I am told, a masters degree, is a must have for a permanent teaching appointment!
We need to wake up, and face the reality, we do not have an educational system, what we have, is chaos!
Until we realize this, we would be wallowing in ignorance, and disseminating it!
Our aspiration to becoming one of the top twenty economies of the world, by the year 2020, our Vision 20-20-20, will amount to only a wet dream, one fulfilled in another dimension, with no earthly results to show, if we refuse to do right by our education!
MAY GOD BLESS NIGERIA, OUR NIGERIA, FOREVER!
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Friday, September 23, 2011
NIGERIA: TO BREAK , OR NOT TO BREAK ? HOW TO KEEP HER ONE!
Can the fortunes of a nation, be different from what the behaviour of it's people deserve?
What exactly is a nation?
Is it the geographical entity, or the people who constitute it?
Anyone reading the recent comments in the media, or listening to comments from people on the street, would have discovered that there are two dominant views on where Nigeria should go!
One is that this country should be divided along ethnic, and religious, lines: into different countries!
Another, is that Nigeria must stay together, no matter what it takes, without changing!
The centripetal, and centrifugal, forces are equally matched!
For the most part, those calling for the balkanisation of Nigeria are mostly from the Southern part of the country!
They complain that the North is the reason why this nation has not developed!
They vociferously contend that the hold of Islam on the North, has led to Northern backwardness in formal Western education!
This, in turn, has led to the nation's backwardness!
They claim, to rub salt in a very unfair wound; the uneducated North, has managed to rule the educated South for so long!
And the put they blame at the doorstep of Lord Luggard, the man who amalgamated Nigeria in 1914!
One of my very respected friends calls it a relationship in which the poor, uneducated Northern husband, needs to find a way to an amicable divorce with his rich, educated Southern wife!
The North, on the other hand, recognizes a good deal, and is unwilling to change the status quo, and I would not blame them!
In between these two gladiators, is a no man's land peopled by those who cannot clearly define, or articulate, what they want!
They know they do not like the nation the way it is, but do not have a clear answer to the problem!
One of the solutions they have proposed, is a sovereign national conference! They want it as a platform for solving the nation's "obvious fundamental flaws"!
For those who seek the disintegration of this nation, the Sovereign National Conference, would be a perfect way of putting this nation down peacefully!
For those opposing the conference, it is a Pandora's box, a bad game-changer!
The problem with Nigeria did not just start with Lord Luggard creating a new nation from disparate ethnic nationalities: it continued with the founding fathers of the nation!
They were more of ethnic champions, on the national stage!
They did not see themselves first as Nigerians! They saw themselves first as Hausa, Yoruba, Ibo, Efik, Urobo, before they grudgingly accepted their Nigerianess!
This parochialism, or ethnicism, has led to the killing of any national fervor that probably greeted the creation of the new nation called Nigeria!
The civil war,corruption, injustice, military rule, and subjugation of certain tribes like the Igbos in the civil service, and military hierarchy, has attenuated an already tenuous nationalism!
Moreover, the institution of policies like the federal character principle, has not gone down well with ethnic groups who feel they are getting the short end of the stick!
I saw a mock-up map of what entities would emerge from the break-up of this nation!
The armchair "cartographers" divided the nation into five different nations,Arewa Republic, Oduduwa Republic,Niger Middle Belt,United Niger Delta, and Biafra Republic!
For them, that is the panacea for the ills plaguing this nation!
Arewa republic is supposed to cater for the needs of the Islamic/Hausa speaking North!
The Oduduwa Republic for the Yorubas!
Niger Middle Belt for the people who occupy the no man's land of Nigeria's politics, the United Niger Delta for the oil producing states, and Biafra Republic for the Igbos!
Right now, Nigeria looks like a group of skydivers in free fall!
To compound matters, each individual is selfish, and is not working for the overall good, of the group! It is in the middle of this insincere free-fall, that they want to discuss the way forward!
They are shouting at each other, and the wind is at the same moment, obliviating their every word!
If they had been sincere with each other, perhaps they would blindly trust each other!
But the lack of trust, is an obstacle! Eventually, they will need to go their separate ways, or endure a crunching crash to the ground!
Trust is a very rare commodity in Nigeria today! Every action is viewed through multiple prisms of ethnic, and religious, consideration!
When, finally, a "consensus" ( read confusion) is reached, the project has already failed! This is because commonsense is sacrificed on the altar of political expediency, and ethnic, /religious considerations!
I must confess that I used to place the blame at the feet of government for the inability of this nation to work!
That is just a part of the truth! The whole truth, is that Nigeria is not working as a nation; not because it cannot work, but because her people are not allowing the nation to work!
When I was growing up, we were told repeatedly, that order was the first law in heaven!
And it is true!
What I never deduced from the statement then, was that order actually created heaven!
In the same manner, one can contend that hell, is a product of chaos!
What, do you think is our national ethos?
What is the gyroscope that informs, guides, directs, and plots our course as a nation?
It is chaos!
Everything that currently plagues this nation, can be accurately placed at the feet of chaos!
We are so enamored with it, that we would not have life any other way!
All you need to do, to confirm this, is to look at the visible, and latent, symptoms!
How we drive, how we conduct ourselves when resources, or opportunities, are scarce, and even in our daily activities!
A few years ago,I was returning from a late dinner in Cotonou, the capital of Benin Republic, and I observed a strange phenomenon!
Strange from the Nigerian perspective!
I observed a group of seven commercial motorcyclists, waiting at a traffic light, for the red light to change!
There were no vehicles coming in the other lanes, and there were no police men to arrest them, yet they chose to obey the law!
I was amazed!
How many times have I seen people, in broad daylight,in full view of traffic officials, ignoring the traffic light with impunity!
Even uniformed personnel, and government officials, do it with glee! They see it as one of the rewards, or perks, of office!
How many times have I seen impatient drivers, not willing to simply join the line of cars on the road, but preferring to go off-road, and drive on the shoulder of the road!
Sometimes, in Abuja, they even drive on the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians who right of way there!
My friend, Zik Zulu Okafor, told me a story some years ago! He was returning from a film set somewhere in Accra, Ghana, at about midnight!
As they approached a very big roundabout, where they were to make a three hundred and sixty degree turn, one of the Nigerian actors, who also knew the way, told the driver to just make a left turn, and drive inside the roundabout, to save time!
The Ghanaian driver turned, and looked at him, and said " No, I will not, this is not Lagos!
Zik said he was so embarrassed, that he just kept quiet the rest of the trip!
The rebuke was lost on the Nigerian actor, as he argued that the driver was not sharp!
In Nigeria, when you break the law, you are seen to be sharp, or smart!
It is elegant to break the law!
What we do not like about our nation, what offends us, is just a manifestation of the general disorder, from the presidential villa in Aso rock, to the prison in Kirikiri:disorder is the order of the day!
We are a wantonly lawless nation! We have become so conditioned to lawlessness, that it is now the norm! To be law abiding, is to be an aberration! It is termed dullness, and slowness!
In our bid to address this problem, we have clutched at the straw of amalgamation, as the cause of our self-inflicted problems!
Is Nigeria the only nation on earth, with a multi-ethnic, and multi-religious population?
No, we are not!
India, a fellow commonwealth nation, has a higher diversity, but it is making it work for the nation!
We have central governments that are ethnic champions, hence every ethnic group fights for the presidency, since that is the only way they can guarantee their fair share of the national cake!
We fail to work for each other, and expect the nation as a whole to work: it is an exercise in deep self-delusion!
When I look at the proposed nations from the balkanisation of Nigeria, I laugh, because the very reasons for which we want to break this nation, are all localized!
In Benue state, the dominant ethnic group, the Tivs, have always been governors! The Idomas, who do not have the size, but have the same desire, have been shut out!
That is why the Senate President, Senator David Mark, has been pushing for the creation of Apa state for the Idomas! I am aware, however, that even among the Idomas, we also have Igede people, who are a sub-set, in addition to other minor ethnic groups that would be captured in the new state!
In Kogi state, the Igala people, have used their numerical advantage to ensure that the governor of the state is always an Igala man!
That has also prompted the call for Okun state!
And as you have already guessed, there will be more than one ethnic group making up that state!
The warped logic that claims that the North is Islamic, while the South is christian, is false!
There are some parts of the Northern Nigeria, like Zuru, in Kebbi state, that embraced Christianity, before many parts of the South!
Northern Nigeria is neither religiously monolithic, nor ethnically homogeneous!
I have gone to every state in the North, and there are strong populations of Christians in Kaduna, Adamawa, Taraba, Borno, Kebbi,and even Kano: and not all of them are Hausa, or Fulani!
In fact, some people in the North feel insulted, when they are referred to as Hausa!
So when people say let us split, so that the North can implement Sharia, it is the height of myopia!
The South too, is the same!
I suspect that there are more Moslems in Ogun, or Oyo state, than in some Northern states!
But we refuse to face the stark reality, dividing Nigeria will be separating petroleum jelly from butter!
The only way we can address the glaring injustice, and inequity in our land, is to enthrone the rule of law, equity, justice, reward for effort, and order in our nation!
If people are law-abiding, they will not corner the commonwealth, for themselves alone!
If we allow equity, people will be able to reap the fruit of their labour, without being told that they cannot be promoted because of federal character, or some other insane nonsense!
Our nation is sick! Very very sick!
The cure is not a denial of the sickness, but a bold confrontation of the cause!
We cannot pray a solution to our problem, we cannot divide our way to a just nation, neither will violence achieve it!
We must strive to ensure that our laws are just, and enforced!
If we were all to do what we ought to be doing, without someone running after us, we would suddenly discover that we actually have a great nation!
As we approach our fifty first anniversary as a nation, we must begin to ask our governments at all levels, to commit to what is right : to commit to equity, justice, fairness, and the rule of law!
To do otherwise, would be an invitation to chaos! And we all know, that order is the first law in heaven!
If we desire to live in a nation that is heaven on earth, then we must realize, that order, is foundation of heaven!
MAY GOD BLESS NIGERIA, OUR NIGERIA, FOREVER!
What exactly is a nation?
Is it the geographical entity, or the people who constitute it?
Anyone reading the recent comments in the media, or listening to comments from people on the street, would have discovered that there are two dominant views on where Nigeria should go!
One is that this country should be divided along ethnic, and religious, lines: into different countries!
Another, is that Nigeria must stay together, no matter what it takes, without changing!
The centripetal, and centrifugal, forces are equally matched!
For the most part, those calling for the balkanisation of Nigeria are mostly from the Southern part of the country!
They complain that the North is the reason why this nation has not developed!
They vociferously contend that the hold of Islam on the North, has led to Northern backwardness in formal Western education!
This, in turn, has led to the nation's backwardness!
They claim, to rub salt in a very unfair wound; the uneducated North, has managed to rule the educated South for so long!
And the put they blame at the doorstep of Lord Luggard, the man who amalgamated Nigeria in 1914!
One of my very respected friends calls it a relationship in which the poor, uneducated Northern husband, needs to find a way to an amicable divorce with his rich, educated Southern wife!
The North, on the other hand, recognizes a good deal, and is unwilling to change the status quo, and I would not blame them!
In between these two gladiators, is a no man's land peopled by those who cannot clearly define, or articulate, what they want!
They know they do not like the nation the way it is, but do not have a clear answer to the problem!
One of the solutions they have proposed, is a sovereign national conference! They want it as a platform for solving the nation's "obvious fundamental flaws"!
For those who seek the disintegration of this nation, the Sovereign National Conference, would be a perfect way of putting this nation down peacefully!
For those opposing the conference, it is a Pandora's box, a bad game-changer!
The problem with Nigeria did not just start with Lord Luggard creating a new nation from disparate ethnic nationalities: it continued with the founding fathers of the nation!
They were more of ethnic champions, on the national stage!
They did not see themselves first as Nigerians! They saw themselves first as Hausa, Yoruba, Ibo, Efik, Urobo, before they grudgingly accepted their Nigerianess!
This parochialism, or ethnicism, has led to the killing of any national fervor that probably greeted the creation of the new nation called Nigeria!
The civil war,corruption, injustice, military rule, and subjugation of certain tribes like the Igbos in the civil service, and military hierarchy, has attenuated an already tenuous nationalism!
Moreover, the institution of policies like the federal character principle, has not gone down well with ethnic groups who feel they are getting the short end of the stick!
I saw a mock-up map of what entities would emerge from the break-up of this nation!
The armchair "cartographers" divided the nation into five different nations,Arewa Republic, Oduduwa Republic,Niger Middle Belt,United Niger Delta, and Biafra Republic!
For them, that is the panacea for the ills plaguing this nation!
Arewa republic is supposed to cater for the needs of the Islamic/Hausa speaking North!
The Oduduwa Republic for the Yorubas!
Niger Middle Belt for the people who occupy the no man's land of Nigeria's politics, the United Niger Delta for the oil producing states, and Biafra Republic for the Igbos!
Right now, Nigeria looks like a group of skydivers in free fall!
To compound matters, each individual is selfish, and is not working for the overall good, of the group! It is in the middle of this insincere free-fall, that they want to discuss the way forward!
They are shouting at each other, and the wind is at the same moment, obliviating their every word!
If they had been sincere with each other, perhaps they would blindly trust each other!
But the lack of trust, is an obstacle! Eventually, they will need to go their separate ways, or endure a crunching crash to the ground!
Trust is a very rare commodity in Nigeria today! Every action is viewed through multiple prisms of ethnic, and religious, consideration!
When, finally, a "consensus" ( read confusion) is reached, the project has already failed! This is because commonsense is sacrificed on the altar of political expediency, and ethnic, /religious considerations!
I must confess that I used to place the blame at the feet of government for the inability of this nation to work!
That is just a part of the truth! The whole truth, is that Nigeria is not working as a nation; not because it cannot work, but because her people are not allowing the nation to work!
When I was growing up, we were told repeatedly, that order was the first law in heaven!
And it is true!
What I never deduced from the statement then, was that order actually created heaven!
In the same manner, one can contend that hell, is a product of chaos!
What, do you think is our national ethos?
What is the gyroscope that informs, guides, directs, and plots our course as a nation?
It is chaos!
Everything that currently plagues this nation, can be accurately placed at the feet of chaos!
We are so enamored with it, that we would not have life any other way!
All you need to do, to confirm this, is to look at the visible, and latent, symptoms!
How we drive, how we conduct ourselves when resources, or opportunities, are scarce, and even in our daily activities!
A few years ago,I was returning from a late dinner in Cotonou, the capital of Benin Republic, and I observed a strange phenomenon!
Strange from the Nigerian perspective!
I observed a group of seven commercial motorcyclists, waiting at a traffic light, for the red light to change!
There were no vehicles coming in the other lanes, and there were no police men to arrest them, yet they chose to obey the law!
I was amazed!
How many times have I seen people, in broad daylight,in full view of traffic officials, ignoring the traffic light with impunity!
Even uniformed personnel, and government officials, do it with glee! They see it as one of the rewards, or perks, of office!
How many times have I seen impatient drivers, not willing to simply join the line of cars on the road, but preferring to go off-road, and drive on the shoulder of the road!
Sometimes, in Abuja, they even drive on the sidewalk, scattering pedestrians who right of way there!
My friend, Zik Zulu Okafor, told me a story some years ago! He was returning from a film set somewhere in Accra, Ghana, at about midnight!
As they approached a very big roundabout, where they were to make a three hundred and sixty degree turn, one of the Nigerian actors, who also knew the way, told the driver to just make a left turn, and drive inside the roundabout, to save time!
The Ghanaian driver turned, and looked at him, and said " No, I will not, this is not Lagos!
Zik said he was so embarrassed, that he just kept quiet the rest of the trip!
The rebuke was lost on the Nigerian actor, as he argued that the driver was not sharp!
In Nigeria, when you break the law, you are seen to be sharp, or smart!
It is elegant to break the law!
What we do not like about our nation, what offends us, is just a manifestation of the general disorder, from the presidential villa in Aso rock, to the prison in Kirikiri:disorder is the order of the day!
We are a wantonly lawless nation! We have become so conditioned to lawlessness, that it is now the norm! To be law abiding, is to be an aberration! It is termed dullness, and slowness!
In our bid to address this problem, we have clutched at the straw of amalgamation, as the cause of our self-inflicted problems!
Is Nigeria the only nation on earth, with a multi-ethnic, and multi-religious population?
No, we are not!
India, a fellow commonwealth nation, has a higher diversity, but it is making it work for the nation!
We have central governments that are ethnic champions, hence every ethnic group fights for the presidency, since that is the only way they can guarantee their fair share of the national cake!
We fail to work for each other, and expect the nation as a whole to work: it is an exercise in deep self-delusion!
When I look at the proposed nations from the balkanisation of Nigeria, I laugh, because the very reasons for which we want to break this nation, are all localized!
In Benue state, the dominant ethnic group, the Tivs, have always been governors! The Idomas, who do not have the size, but have the same desire, have been shut out!
That is why the Senate President, Senator David Mark, has been pushing for the creation of Apa state for the Idomas! I am aware, however, that even among the Idomas, we also have Igede people, who are a sub-set, in addition to other minor ethnic groups that would be captured in the new state!
In Kogi state, the Igala people, have used their numerical advantage to ensure that the governor of the state is always an Igala man!
That has also prompted the call for Okun state!
And as you have already guessed, there will be more than one ethnic group making up that state!
The warped logic that claims that the North is Islamic, while the South is christian, is false!
There are some parts of the Northern Nigeria, like Zuru, in Kebbi state, that embraced Christianity, before many parts of the South!
Northern Nigeria is neither religiously monolithic, nor ethnically homogeneous!
I have gone to every state in the North, and there are strong populations of Christians in Kaduna, Adamawa, Taraba, Borno, Kebbi,and even Kano: and not all of them are Hausa, or Fulani!
In fact, some people in the North feel insulted, when they are referred to as Hausa!
So when people say let us split, so that the North can implement Sharia, it is the height of myopia!
The South too, is the same!
I suspect that there are more Moslems in Ogun, or Oyo state, than in some Northern states!
But we refuse to face the stark reality, dividing Nigeria will be separating petroleum jelly from butter!
The only way we can address the glaring injustice, and inequity in our land, is to enthrone the rule of law, equity, justice, reward for effort, and order in our nation!
If people are law-abiding, they will not corner the commonwealth, for themselves alone!
If we allow equity, people will be able to reap the fruit of their labour, without being told that they cannot be promoted because of federal character, or some other insane nonsense!
Our nation is sick! Very very sick!
The cure is not a denial of the sickness, but a bold confrontation of the cause!
We cannot pray a solution to our problem, we cannot divide our way to a just nation, neither will violence achieve it!
We must strive to ensure that our laws are just, and enforced!
If we were all to do what we ought to be doing, without someone running after us, we would suddenly discover that we actually have a great nation!
As we approach our fifty first anniversary as a nation, we must begin to ask our governments at all levels, to commit to what is right : to commit to equity, justice, fairness, and the rule of law!
To do otherwise, would be an invitation to chaos! And we all know, that order is the first law in heaven!
If we desire to live in a nation that is heaven on earth, then we must realize, that order, is foundation of heaven!
MAY GOD BLESS NIGERIA, OUR NIGERIA, FOREVER!
Monday, September 19, 2011
PHCN RUNNING ON GENERATORS:A SHAME INDEED!
I have spent the better part of this afternoon, looking for a Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, office to buy units for my electricity meter!
It started like a joke, and towards the end, it became a matter of serious desperation! I was aware that I had less than ten units left, and that was hardly enough to see me through the night! At my fourth attempt, I found a cash office on Adetokunbo Ademola Avenue in Abuja! They had "network"
In the previous places I had gone to, I was told there was "no network"! So, like the children of Israel, I kept searching promised land of "'network"!
At the cash center on Adetokunbo Ademola, I saw a queue that reminded me of the last general elections in Nigeria!
Then I saw them, I saw four generators outside the office! The building has a single tenant, the PHCN! You can imagine my shock! I was still pointing this out to the rest of my co-travellers on the queue, when I walked into the foyer: another shocker awaited me there!
They had two inverters there as well!
I just stood there, speechless!
For me, it was the equivalent of discovering that your medical doctor patronizes a traditional healer!
If PHCN,needs four generators, and two inverters, to operate, then we are all in deep trouble!
They have passed a vote of no confidence in themselves, and we have to be mindful of this!
This is after a recent hike in electricity tariffs in June! It is as if, the more we pay, the less we enjoy!
If we want investors to come in, and invest in our economy, we need to fix the power situation first!This is because like the biblical injunction about seeking the kingdom of God, power is first: when you seek it, and it's fullness, all other things will be added to our economy!
MAY GOD BLESS NIGERIA, OUR NIGERIA, FOREVER!
It started like a joke, and towards the end, it became a matter of serious desperation! I was aware that I had less than ten units left, and that was hardly enough to see me through the night! At my fourth attempt, I found a cash office on Adetokunbo Ademola Avenue in Abuja! They had "network"
In the previous places I had gone to, I was told there was "no network"! So, like the children of Israel, I kept searching promised land of "'network"!
At the cash center on Adetokunbo Ademola, I saw a queue that reminded me of the last general elections in Nigeria!
Then I saw them, I saw four generators outside the office! The building has a single tenant, the PHCN! You can imagine my shock! I was still pointing this out to the rest of my co-travellers on the queue, when I walked into the foyer: another shocker awaited me there!
They had two inverters there as well!
I just stood there, speechless!
For me, it was the equivalent of discovering that your medical doctor patronizes a traditional healer!
If PHCN,needs four generators, and two inverters, to operate, then we are all in deep trouble!
They have passed a vote of no confidence in themselves, and we have to be mindful of this!
This is after a recent hike in electricity tariffs in June! It is as if, the more we pay, the less we enjoy!
If we want investors to come in, and invest in our economy, we need to fix the power situation first!This is because like the biblical injunction about seeking the kingdom of God, power is first: when you seek it, and it's fullness, all other things will be added to our economy!
MAY GOD BLESS NIGERIA, OUR NIGERIA, FOREVER!
THE GANG RAPE AT ABIA STATE UNIVERSITY
I have just watched a very grainy, but tragic, video of five young Nigerians raping a girl somewhere in Abia state university!
The girl, from her expression, seems to be in shock, and is just doing everything she can, to navigate through the nightmare!
One can hear her saying clearly to the perverts, "Have I not tried? She is obviously in fear, and in a life-threatening situation!
Is this the next chapter in the chronicles of our nation's moral demise?
We started our journey to moral oblivion with hired killings! Then we went on to ritual killings,kidnapping, militancy, and now the bus has pulled in to the gang rape terminal!
The sad thing I have come to observe about our long-suffering country, is that once an evil trend is introduced, it is never stamped out!
It seems to take it's place in the hall of infamy, and become a part of our daily lives!
What could cause five supposed, human beings, who have obviously premeditated this rape, to do such a thing?
There is no way anyone will convince me, that the victim deserves the treatment!
They brought condoms, and did not cover their faces!
It points to one thing, they were not afraid, and they knew exactly what they were doing!
Some sick fellows would say the girl deserved what she got, but it only points to their own depravity!
The bone of contention, leading to this criminal act, cannot be more than the girl refusing the overtures of one of the men, or that she behaves as if she is too superior!
When the men are caught, we would find that it is one of the reasons they would give!
I am waiting to see the outcome of this horror show.
Will the Nigeria police behave true to type, and claim that they are working hard to bring the culprits to book, and then allow the case to die like others?
Or are we, for a change, going to see justice done!
There is a great need to rewrite our laws where rape is concerned!
The onus should not be on the victim to prove rape, the law should protect them!
In addition, I would appeal to all those who have seen the video, or hear some chatter about the incident, to help the police arrest these monsters!
My greatest fear from this incident, is that it would not start a new, and deadly trend in depravity!
I have come to discover, that our people are good, at staring bad things, better at copying them, and best at refusing to unlearn them!
This girl's life has been violently altered for life! The physical scars might heal, but the emotional, and psychological ones would be more difficult!
What would be her relationship with men, going forward?
Would she be able to ever entrust her body to a man again?
Will she be able to find someone to marry her, after the shame of her ordeal?
That is why this abominable crime must not go unpunished,
MAY GOD BLESS NIGERIA, OUR NIGERIA, FOREVER!
The girl, from her expression, seems to be in shock, and is just doing everything she can, to navigate through the nightmare!
One can hear her saying clearly to the perverts, "Have I not tried? She is obviously in fear, and in a life-threatening situation!
Is this the next chapter in the chronicles of our nation's moral demise?
We started our journey to moral oblivion with hired killings! Then we went on to ritual killings,kidnapping, militancy, and now the bus has pulled in to the gang rape terminal!
The sad thing I have come to observe about our long-suffering country, is that once an evil trend is introduced, it is never stamped out!
It seems to take it's place in the hall of infamy, and become a part of our daily lives!
What could cause five supposed, human beings, who have obviously premeditated this rape, to do such a thing?
There is no way anyone will convince me, that the victim deserves the treatment!
They brought condoms, and did not cover their faces!
It points to one thing, they were not afraid, and they knew exactly what they were doing!
Some sick fellows would say the girl deserved what she got, but it only points to their own depravity!
The bone of contention, leading to this criminal act, cannot be more than the girl refusing the overtures of one of the men, or that she behaves as if she is too superior!
When the men are caught, we would find that it is one of the reasons they would give!
I am waiting to see the outcome of this horror show.
Will the Nigeria police behave true to type, and claim that they are working hard to bring the culprits to book, and then allow the case to die like others?
Or are we, for a change, going to see justice done!
There is a great need to rewrite our laws where rape is concerned!
The onus should not be on the victim to prove rape, the law should protect them!
In addition, I would appeal to all those who have seen the video, or hear some chatter about the incident, to help the police arrest these monsters!
My greatest fear from this incident, is that it would not start a new, and deadly trend in depravity!
I have come to discover, that our people are good, at staring bad things, better at copying them, and best at refusing to unlearn them!
This girl's life has been violently altered for life! The physical scars might heal, but the emotional, and psychological ones would be more difficult!
What would be her relationship with men, going forward?
Would she be able to ever entrust her body to a man again?
Will she be able to find someone to marry her, after the shame of her ordeal?
That is why this abominable crime must not go unpunished,
MAY GOD BLESS NIGERIA, OUR NIGERIA, FOREVER!
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