I like one of the other answers that starts by saying that intelligence is neither necessary nor sufficient to obtain a PhD. Broadly speaking I agree with this. But there is a minimal level of intelligence that is required.
Many do not know how beautiful The Netherlands is, I know much has been written about the Dutch capital city of Amsterdam with its fabulous red light district and their cycling culture, but there is so much more to that wonderful country and I can tell you that it is better experienced than heard. Now, why study in the lovely little kingdom? At an average of about €8,000 per annum, tuition for non-EU students is much lower than about €15000 which is the average in the United Kingdom. What’s more, some of the courses are taught in English. In addition, you get to study in a harmonious environment and one of the most culturally diverse countries in Europe. Additionally, the cost of living in the Netherlands is comparatively lower than in other western nations of the same standard. On average, a student will need between €800 and €1,000 per month. To fund this, you can combine part-time jobs and study finance. You can also enjoy discounted rates on many public amenities and sometimes there is free public transportation for students either during the week or at weekends. So you see, you get much more than a degree when you study in The Netherlands. You can explore further here or send a mail to admin@cmonionline.com with NETHERLANDS STUDY as the subject and we will be glad to assist you with the requisite resources. Now here is a bonus FACT: Norwegian, Swedish & Dutch are among the easiest languages for English speakers to learn. Many Universities in EU countries have free/affordable tuition but many Nigerian students don’t know this. You can learn any of these languages online and with a recent ruling by the EU Court of Justice that the European Commission cannot restrict the choice of a second language to English, German, or French in its recruitment process your chances of landing a job are even greater if you are proficient in any other European language.
I had been thinking about writing something on e-Learning and how it could shape the future of education in Nigeria but it is hard to discuss topics other than politics during the campaign season. However, when I came across the following tweet a few days ago I was motivated to do a little research and write this short piece: @fimiletoks: University education is a privilege even in developed parts of the world. Basic education is a fundamental human right. Right to free and compulsory primary education. Right to available and accessible secondary education (including technical and vocational education and training), made progressively free. ASUU should realise that in the scheme of play, they are on the lowest rung of the ladder. The least of our worries. In tweeting his musings on the ASUU/Fed Govt imbroglio that has become a permanent fixture in our tertiary education calendar the author also echoed the thoughts of many including yours truly. He went ahead to suggest that the federal government should quit subsidizing tertiary education which is supposed to be a privilege and focus more on providing basic and secondary education which should be a fundamental human right for every citizen. Historically, governments have played a dominant role in funding tertiary education, especially in Africa where the need to bridge the gap created by departing expatriate civil servants at the wake of independence from colonial masters necessitated governments input. The exigency to train a group of professionals was well appreciated thus in the early 1970s the federal government abolished school fees in all the six federal universities and took up the task of funding them. With the subsequent discovery of oil and the attendant boom witnessed by the Nigerian economy, all the federal universities in the country were fully and adequately funded precipitating an increase in the demand for higher education, which in turn led to the establishment of additional tertiary institutions. Consequently, the government’s allocation to universities has continued to increase. This trend has continued to date. As a matter of fact, a study titled “Higher Education Funding in Nigeria — Issues, Trends and Opportunities” presented at the 2016 International Business Information Management Association Conference in Milan, Italy revealed that the appropriation to federal universities rose from N10 billion in 1999 to over N223 billion in 2013. The average allocation per university equally increased from N500 million to over N5 billion in the same period. However, a combination of factors such as inflation and the geometric increase in student population has ensured that these increments amount to little. Between 1990 and 1997, the real value of government allocation for university education declined by 27 per cent even as enrollment grew by 77 per cent. In other words, there’s been a lot of movement without commensurate motion or better still backward motion. What’s more, the pressure and competition for limited public resources from other sectors of the economy; including sub-sectors of education have greatly hindered the ability of successive governments to fulfil its funding obligation to these universities. These and other reasons have been responsible for the incessant ASUU strikes embarked on by lecturers in a bid to force the government to meet its commitments. If we are to go with the Nigeria Universities Commission which put the cost of training an undergraduate to full accreditation at over N1 million per annum, then with about two million enrolled nationwide, funding university education will cost N2 trillion annually. This figure is more than double the total budgetary allocation for the health and education ministries combined. And with the Babalakin led negotiation team standing its ground in the current impasse it has become imperative for us to explore other ways of funding higher education especially now that the demand has moved beyond quantitative to qualitative education. The government is therefore left with no other option than to partner with the private sector if Nigeria is to avoid a total collapse of our already haemorrhaging tertiary institutions. This much Vice President Osinbajo alluded to in a recent workshop when he stated that “while government funding is important and critical, it is not the only source of funding for education — the second source of funding is from non-governmental sources — these include contributions from sources such as school charges, private donations, corporate sponsors, alumni associations, charitable and faith-based associations and among others.’’ Now while some will criticise the idea of the federal government pulling the plug on tertiary education subsidy as being a capitalist proposition, others will question the rationality of implementing such in Nigeria where an average citizen lives on less than $2 a day. However, the more important posers beg; how has the socialist approach improved the standard of education in our tertiary institutions? How has it improved the quality of graduates churned out annually by our universities? Your guess is as good as mine here. The world has been reshaped by the internet and e-Learning is already integrated into education in developed nations. Nigeria cannot continue grappling with the paradox of spiralling cost and the declining standard of education at a time when China is teaching 5-year old pupils coding. It is time for the government and ASUU to agree on a gradual withdrawal of subsidy from our universities. This will free up funds that will be invested in the provision of basic, vocational and technical education. Partnering with the private sector to invest massively in e-learning will help to achieve this. The benefits are too numerous for the scope of this piece but it will be proper to list a few. E-Learning makes higher education more accessible to unique populations such as parents with children, service personnel, students with full-time jobs and those with disabilities. It is also cost saving as it eliminates the often expensive logistics of having the lecturer and students in the same location. I just finished a six-week creative writing course with all the study materials and coursework delivered online. And gone are the days when it
Each morning or in the late afternoons, I am staring furiously into my phone screen. A five letter word. What word is it? Come on, come on. Think.
When two elephants fight, they battle it out with their bodies and do the elephant equivalence of arm-wrestling. There is tussle for dominance and they figure this out by fighting. The fight can range from mild, to weird battles. There is much protocols involved with elephants approaching each other and leading to a fight; and when they eventually fight, the grasses will suffer. The above paragraph contains allegory that mirrors the power tussle between two powerful bodies; the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), and the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN). In this fight, ASUU takes to strike to drive home their demands. In retaliation, the FGN will always invoke the “no work, no pay” legislation as stipulated in “Section 43 of the Trade Disputes Act Cap T8 laws of the federation of Nigeria, 2004”. When this happens, it snowballs into a case of who blinks first. The students then become the proverbial grasses that suffer the consequences. So, what does the prolonged strike mean for these students and the educational system at large? What are the demands by ASUU? Is the government always willing to meet all their demands? What plans does ASUU have following the suspension of the strike? What becomes the way forward for parties involved? These are the burning questions this essay seeks to answer. Demands by ASUU Now, ASUU downed tools on 23rd March, 2020, berating the FGN for reneging on several agreements. The striking lecturers maintain there are five-(5) key outstanding demands that must be met before they call off the strike. These include: i, setting up of visitation panel across all universities, ii, platform to speak with state governments on proliferation of universities, iii, renegotiation of 2009 agreement which addresses the working condition of lecturers, iv, payment of withheld salaries and emoluments, and v, revitalization fund for universities. The Contentious issues… But, of these five-(5) demands, three-(3), seem to be the big elephant in the room. So, breaking them down reveals the contentious issues. First, ASUU want the FGN to discard its Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) as the payment platform for all emoluments. ASUU say the IPPIS fails to recognize the peculiarity of the university system, claiming it undermines the university autonomy and hence, shortchanges the lecturers sometimes. Rather, ASUU pushed for the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) as a replacement for the contentious IPPIS. In a swift reaction however, the FGN posited that ASUU as an employee cannot dictate to its employers how it would be paid. The FGN accused the leadership of the union of deceiving its members and not telling them the truth about IPPIS, citing anomalies and irregularities by the universities’ hierarchy. For the FGN, the country was losing a lot of money through sharp practices in paying lecturers’ salaries. Hence, the need for migrating the lecturers from the previous Government Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) platform to the IPPIS. According to Chris Ngige, the minister of labour and employment, the IPPIS will eradicate the issue of paying ghost lecturers, and eradicate the practice of some lecturers teaching in more than two universities as approved in other to earn jumbo pays. To Ngige, IPPIS will also address the shortfall in tax deductions by dubious vice chancellors in connivance with bursars during salary payments. The Second contentious issue is; ASUU wants the N40-billion sum offered by the FGN as earned academic allowances, to be for members of its union alone. But, the FGN maintain that the funds should be shared with other university unions. Thirdly, is the revitalization fund for university education system. The FGN had initially offered N20-billion while ASUU says it will only settle for N110-billion instead of the N220-billion it originally demanded. The FGN later offered N30-billion for the revitalization fund, bringing the total amount to N70-billion. Needless to say, the revitalization fund, does underscore the need to improve Nigeria’s university education system through adequate government funding. For instance, the funds will help to provide a conducive learning environment that is globally competitive through rehabilitating students’ hostels, expanding lecture theatres, providing reagents in the laboratories and putting modern books in the library. Ending the Nine-(9) Month Strike In the series of back-and-forth nine-months negotiations with the FGN’s team comprising the Ministries of Finance, Education, Labour and Employment, alongside the Office of the Accountant General of the Federation, ASUU demanded that its members be exempted from the IPPIS, pending the approval of their proposed UTAS payment system. ASUU also insisted the arrears of its members be paid before they’d end the strike. However, on Tuesday, December 22nd 2020, the minister of labour and employment, Chris Ngige revealed that the government has met ninety-eight percent (98%) of ASUU’s demands. Hence, on 23rd December 2020, ASUU in its official twitter handle finally agreed to end its nine-month strike, stating the body has reached an agreement with the federal government over major contentious issues. To reach this milestone, the Federal Government agreed to exclude members of ASUU from the IPPIS. The government also shifted grounds, as it agreed to pay outstanding salary arrears to the striking lecturers before December 31st 2020, through the old salary payment platform, the GIFMIS, as well as resolve other demands for a lasting industrial harmony in the university system. In the meantime, ending the strike was not an easy decision for ASUU to arrive at because, its zones and branches were divided on the federal government’s offer and had to put the decision to vote. ASUU’s decision may have come on the heels of the senate president’s plea with the warring parties to find a common ground in the interest of the students; urging ASUU to be prepared to meet the government halfway and end the strike so that students can return to classes. Consequences Now, the strike may have come and gone but the aftermaths continues to haunt everyone. The consequence thereof is that many students have lost one academic session while the strike was on. Also,
… It was a pool party. And they were there. Men who have achieved. Money, power, and fame. Men in their prime who tell time to hold still since they have refused to age and it grudgingly obeys in detente and in temporaneous. They dress young, they dance young, they act young. They are current on all fronts. Most of them married with children but mentally and emotionally single. At this party they threw in a high-brow residence in an exclusive neighbourhood in Ikoyi there was an abundance of food, drinks, drugs and real youth. The youth came exclusively from the girls that were in attendance. Girls in their late teens and early twenties. Well spoken and extensively traveled. Daughters of the materially blessed. All of them students. All of them naked. Some were in the swimming pool, some at the bar, some danced under the cabana, others were hobnobbing with the swimming trunks-clad men at various places in the specially lit pool area that stood under the starry night sky. And I sat with one of them. She was caramel smooth, finely contoured, delicately featured and doe-like. She was twenty going on twenty one. And a sophomore at Babcock University. To every question I asked, she took a drag from the reefer in her hand, blow out the smoke through her mouth and nostrils, took a sip from her glass of Hennessey and coke on ice before she responded. Her voice was sweet. And her smile was rapturous. “I heard students need permission to leave your school. How could you get out this late and stay overnight?” “We have our ways.” “We?” “Yeah all of us.” “From Babcock?” “Not all. Some from Covenant, Redeemers, Madonna, ABUAD, Pan African and stuff.” “No Unilag or UI?” “They ain’t boujee.” “Boujee?” “Yeah. They are crass. Men like you guys don’t want to roll with local cats like those right?” I looked at her silently as she took a drag from her reef. The aroma assailed it. It was caustic yet not aggravating. “What’s that?” “Comorado.” “What’s that?” She laughed. “It’s good stuff. Hits you slowly and then make you soar like Superman.” I looked around and saw the girls doing one thing or another in their nudity. She was staring at me. “Is this your first party?” I nodded. “No wonder you are asking all these hang questions.” “Why do you do this?” “I’m young. I need to live life before it becomes to serious and I have to be all grown up.” “But why the drugs?” “Because.” “Because what?” “Because this is how we roll. Everyone has their poison. If you not on reef, you do codeine or cocaine or heroin or speed or AZT or ecstasy or rophynol or fentanyl or meth or oxy or worst case you inhale glue and get your high.” I stared at her as she inhaled and exhaled languidly. “Why the parties?” “You get your hit for free here. You have fun. You make good money.” “But for you to attend those schools you must be rich.” “My parents are not me.” “But they give you money.” “They pay the tuition and all. Not like they can give me a million in cash.” “Do you get a million here?” “Well, two or three parties can make me that.” “Aren’t you afraid of running into your Dad at places like this?” “Naaaa… my dad is too square and busy but even if he is not then it is his problem, after all, he came here for what I came here for so he can’t tell me nothing.” I fell silent and watched her inhale and exhale smoke. “But you know, your folks put you in schools like that to protect you?” “To protect me?” “Yes.” “They are too busy to even bother.” “No, they are not.” “Yes, they are. They think the school will be both my teachers and my parents.” “I think they are just worried about you getting corrupted.” “I was balling like this under their nose and they didn’t even notice. Funny thing is that even the innocent Jane get influenced in school, so what was the use of all the headache of keeping us locked up in all these secondary schools that front as universities.” “They did it out of love and with the belief that those schools are way better than the public ones.” “Well, they fucked up.” “Fucked up?” “Is this an interview or what?” “No, I am just intrigued.” “And I am horny.” I fell silent. She dragged, exhaled, took a drink from her glass, sucked on one of the ice cubes in her mouth and asked in a whisper. “Are you going to do anything about it?” Written by Jude Idada
Commonwealth Distance Learning Scholarships afford candidates from least developed and lower-middle-income Commonwealth countries the opportunity to study part-time for a Master’s degree through distance learning on selected courses offered by UK universities. You can apply here. Goodluck and thank me later.
The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. ~ William Arthur Ward Stop mentioning my name! Why would a lecturer be wary of his name being mentioned over the phone by a student if there was nothing inappropriate about the conversation? Did he feel the student was being disrespectful by not addressing him as Prof in the usual Nigerian parlance? Or perhaps he is too experienced in such amatory conversations that he suspected it could be recorded? I can imagine the wry grin on the lady’s face when he said that, she would be a learner if she didn’t expect that line. For obvious reasons the news about Professor Akindele’s alleged sex for marks scandal did not surprise many. If you passed through a Nigerian university you will know that this is not an isolated case. What is supposed to be a four year period of study for many ladies is rather a labyrinthine jaunt laced with the ugly side of machismo. Sadly, such incidents are more or less passive stories garishly discussed in canteens and beer parlours across most of our universities. “Its normal now” you ‘ll likely hear from one of the guys huddled around a table full of green bottles. “The babe should have just shagged the brains out of the old man” another will say. “Who knows, he could have been p-whipped into giving an A after just one round” yet another will add, followed by a loud laughter and booze continues. That’s about it, end of story! And on social media, there is also a possibility of being presented with alternative facts to make the victim look like the culprit. The debate will then deviate from the alleged offence to a callow display of chauvinism between fluky feminists and lousy misogynists. Or worse still the lecturer’s church member or Pastor will boldly defend him by claiming that “the lady purposely set him up” and that he is “a man of God, who is too gentle for such act”. The absurdities we often contend with in Nigeria. Of course, we are all aware of what goes on in our institutions of higher learning. The so-called slay-queens are known to entice lecturers regularly in a bid to make unbelievable grades when they can’t even spell their course of study. However, we shouldn’t make this particular incident about them. The lady in question scored 35 marks. She failed and should be encouraged to re-sit the course, that is the proper thing to do. So she has not committed any offence. The offence here is that a lecturer, a professor for that matter is demanding sex as a bribe to give better grades. Someone once said that lecturers are demi-gods while the Vice-Chancellor is the almighty. It is almost true. Our lecturers are way too powerful. I remember one who was notorious for this back in my uni days. He couldn’t care less if the lady was single or married. He just insisted on having his way, and like Akindele he demands in multiples. A lady friend of mine was his victim. She spent extra two years in school because she refused to have sex with him. I am talking about a lady whom I know to be a serious student. On one occasion when he rejected her coursework, it was only my intervention through his wife that made him reconsider. Incidentally, the man was fired a few years later, but only after he must have raped many ladies and frustrated others out of school. If he had a good relationship with the Vice-Chancellor then, chances are that he would have retained his job but I learnt they didn’t see eye to eye so he got sacked. Serious institutions should never allow these type of acts to go unchecked and it was gladdening to read that OAU swiftly set up a committee to investigate the matter. Obafemi Awolowo University is among the few etched in gold dating back to our colonial history. It has to ensure that this embarrassment is properly dealt with to limit the smudge on its stellar reputation. It will be better still to hear from the National Association of Nigerian Students. They are supposed to have the students’ back in matters like this. The National Universities Commission should also set up an independent apparatus for the appraisal of not just issues like this, but many others between students and lecturers. A lot of times students are blamed for the quality of graduates we produce. They are labeled as unintelligent and indifferent. While that may be true lecturers also constitute a huge part of the problem. If a graduand must be found worthy in character and learning to be awarded a degree, how much much more a university don? A lecturer should be an embodiment of all that is good in a society, and not a person found to be unworthy in character. Professor Akindele should come out of hiding and face the music.
THE FULL TEXT OF THE 12TH UNIZIK CONVOCATION LECTURE: “THE IGBOS IN THE POLITICS OF NIGERIA”, DELIVERED BY HIS EXCELLENCY, RT. HON. CHIBUIKE ROTIMI AMAECHI, HON. MINISTER OF TRANSPORTATION Let me acknowledge without any reservation whatsoever, that I am honored by the invitation to deliver this year’s convocation lecture from an outstanding institution named after the great Zik of Africa. In the course of this lecture, with the topic in mind, we shall hear a lot more about The Right Honorable Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe but not about this university and I hope you will all forgive me. I will trace the history of the Igbo people from the middle years to the era of the Trans Atlantic slave trade, the colonial and post-colonial era, relying chiefly on the works of renowned historians, Professor Kenneth Dike, first Nigerian Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ibadan and Professor Elizabeth Isichei. I will also deal with the issue of Igbo identity and Igbo emotionalism, the two main issues that may have impeded Igbo political advancement in Nigeria. Professor Elizabeth Isichei in her book, The History of The Igbo People, is of the view that in the pre-colonial times, The Igbo people had no real sense of ‘pan-Igbo identity’. “The villagers’ view of external reality was a sharp dichotomy, ‘them and us’, with the sense of attachment to ‘us’ growing weaker as the unit grew larger – the family, the lineage, the village, the village group. Invariably, he [the Igbo] felt a strong local patriotism”. She makes the point that a sense of pan-Igbo identity came only when the Igbo finds himself outside Igboland as was the case during the slave trade and “when colonial conquest and rule violently extended the categories through which the Igbo perceived the world.” Prof Isichei also referenced the work of Dr. William Balfour Baikie, a British Naval doctor and explorer who visited the Niger and the Delta in the 1850’s and made enquiries about the Igbo whenever he could. Baikie described the Igbo conceptualization of themselves in words that are still true today. “In Igbo, each person hails from the particular district where he was born, but when away from home all are Igbos”. A question of change and continuity is an interesting subtitle in chapter two of Isichei’s work. Please permit me to quote extensively from it.“The question of whether the Igbo saw themselves as a people in pre-colonial times is, of course, quite distinct from the question as to whether they could be existentially described as such. But the process of describing the distinctive characteristics of Igbo society – what made them a people – involves us in two difficulties. The first is that of generalization. The many local differences in Igbo culture make it difficult to describe them accurately in a book of this length. Each statement should be qualified, and one is in danger of describing the average of all Igbo societies, which does not correspond with any actual Igbo society. This is a difficulty that is implicit, however, in all historical writing. The second difficulty is more serious. It is necessary to describe the society, in order to understand the nature of the changes it was to undergo. But nothing is more repugnant to a historian than to describe a society in, as it were, a temporal vacuum. Societies undergo constant change; the historian, inevitably, focuses on changes rather than on continuities. One’s description of Igboland should be rooted in a particular moment in time, because the society was constantly changing. A description of Igboland, once upon a time, in the mgbendichie, is bound to do violence to a constantly mutable reality”. That is a crucial point because what is true of the Igbo in the past may not be true today. How people respond to issues today may be different from how they responded in the past. But the one that has remained true is the issue of Igbo emotionalism. The Igbo historical past is very important and at certain times it has been quite tragic. But we cannot remain trapped in our past and as someone once said, we cannot wish away the war that took place but we cannot continue to move forward with our heads slightly inclined backward. You will either trip or not move fast enough. Don’t forget that you are in a race with other groups. Nigeria of the sixties is markedly different from Nigeria of today and the Igbo nation would have to adjust to that reality and strategize accordingly. The Portuguese were the first European visitors to South East Nigeria at about 1472 in their search for a sea route to India. They were soon followed by other Europeans who were in desperate need of labour to work on their vast farmlands and to help exploit new discoveries of mineral deposits in the new world. In 1518, Isichei recounted, “the first load of African prisoners was taken directly from West Africa to the West Indies, ushering in over three centuries of the infamous triangular trade. The triangular trade contributed vastly to the wealth of Europe.” Triangular trade is a multilateral system of trading in which a country pays for its import from one country with exports to another country. During the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain shipped goods to West Africa in exchange for slaves that will now be shipped to the West Indies in exchange for sugar, rum and other items which will then be shipped back to Britain. Not all the slaves were taken to West Indies, some were taken to Gabon and Sao Tome and most of them were Igbo. In the 18th century, the slave trade then dominated by the British rose to its climax in Igboland. In 1882, Captain John Adams, who made ten voyages to the area between 1786 and 1800 wrote: “This place [Bonny] is the wholesale market for slaves, as no fewer than 20,000 are annually sold; 16,000 of whom are members of one nation, called Heebo
The aim should always be to exceed the UN benchmark of 26 % and not the other way round. It is the proper thing and will go a long way in addressing some of our long-term problems like tribalism, intolerance and poverty.
Those who posit that naming a national monument in Abuja would have been better or making June 12th our democracy day appear to be more reasonable. However, considering that former President Obasanjo bearing, a south westerner and Abiola’s kinsman blatantly refused to name as little as an alley after his brother, it becomes more commendable that GEJ was courageous enough to do this.
This will close in 13 seconds
