Isa Pantami and the Concept of the Professorship

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Isa Pantami and the Concept of the Professorship

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Critics of Nigerian minister Isa Pantami being made a professor claim that his professorship is invalid beceause, among other reasons,  he does not  teach at the university where the title was conferred.

That argument is problematic beceause, in the context of various kinds of professorship,  a university professor does not have to be a university lecturer in the conventional sense.

The centuries old Oxford Professorship of Poetry, held for four years,  has been held by such non-academics as poet and literary critic  Mathew Arnold who,  as an Inspector of Schools, was never an academic in any university.

 The current holder of the position, Alice Oswald,  is a poet who is also not described as being an academic or even an Independent Scholar as Arnold was. 

Oswald has a degree in classics but her career has been that of  a trained, professional gardner who also writes poetry, as shown on her Wikipedia page.

The Wikipedia page of the Oxford professorship describes it  as a part time job requiring the delivery of  3 lectures during the year.

An official page of the Oxford Professorship of Poetry states the current professor is delivering one public lecture per term.

In unique instances, a person could be awarded a professorship even after only a first degree, as with Friedrich Nietzche, who was granted a PhD, without examination, and subsequently conferred with a Professorship, shortly after his BA, if I recall correctly. At that time, Nietzche might have published his The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, possibly inspiring such unusual elevation. His later work transcended such elevation anyway.

The Pantami issue might require more careful analysis than it is sometimes given.

I don't believe Pantami, as a certified and self confessed terrorist sympathiser at a point of his life, a person who identified with the hate filled instigator of the mass murder of Innocents,  Osama Bin Laden, has any place in public service anywhere in the world, his presence in the Buhari govt helping to burnish the terrorist credentials of that govt as an enabler of Fulani herdsmen/Fulani militia//Fulani bandits and Fulani supremacist terrorism and a less than ethusiastic fighter in the war against Boko Haram Islamic terrorism.

The issue of the Pantami professorship,  however, might not be so clear cut, in my own thinking.

[Moses Ochonu]

Toyin Adepoju,

Stop with the obfuscation. There are three main reasons why Pantami’s promotion or appointment to the position is wrong and illegal.

1. It violates the promotion rules of FUTO, as Pantami does not even come close to being qualified for “promotion” to Professor under those rules. The rules were made by the governing council. See details of the stipulated promotions and appointments requirements in Farooq Kperogi’s column of today.

2. The published job ad (published in the Nigerian Tribune and linked by Farooq), which FUTO’s spokesman claims Pantami responded to when he applied to be employed as Professor, clearly states that to be eligible to apply for the position of Professor, a person needs to have 12 years of post-doctoral teaching and research experience. Pantami has only 2, having finished his PhD in 2014 and then taught for two years before resigning to join Buhari’s administration in 2016.

3. Nigerian law prohibits serving public officers from taking up appointment in another branch of government or in the private sector unless they resign from their present job or are on secondment.

Let’s not even get into the fact that in the Nigerian public academy you cannot “promote” (the word FUTO used) someone who is not in your employment.

And, of course, your analogy doesn’t work because the Professor of Poetry position is not a tenured academic appointment (lifetime employment with associated benefits and privileges). It is a term appointment, the keywords here being “term” and “appointment.” As you yourself stated, it is a temporary 4-year appointment.

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 19, 2022, at 2:12 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:



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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju,

I dream that in the Heavenly hierarchy, the professorship is definitely an elevated position, indeed a heavenly position. It must be the place where the good professors rub shoulders with the ojogbons and the angels.

“Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them
pressed me against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.” (Rainer Maria Rilke: Duino Elegies: The First Elegy

Reading your old postings from 2010, it seems that when it comes to the education sector in Nigeria, nothing has changed that much, and if at all, things have only incrementally got worse since the days when I was at salary grade 10 (a four year contract @ circa 7,000 Swkr a month plus emoluments, free accommodation and 15 % gratuity on that sum) in the Nigeria of the years 1981- 1984 - not that I argued about such a matter at the interview conducted here in Stockholm since I wasn't going to Nigeria for money. My Better Half who is a professional teacher with a Masters in Modern Languages (Italian, French, Spanish) got the interview team to crack up when she said that she hoped that she “would not be a burden on the Nigerian government” - they were considerably relaxed after the cathartic release of tension through so much laughter and I was originally going to be sent to the then Bendel State where Governor Ambrose Ali (God bless him) was spending 50% of the state budget on education. I was looking forward to getting to Benin, where my former classmate Sylvester Abimbola Young was teaching Mathematics, and also because I viewed Benin as one of the cultural epic-centres of Nigeria in the areas of music, dance and for lack of a better word “voodoo” – but alas that dream was not to come true because Better Half had read somewhere that Port Harcourt was “The Garden City” , an idea that captured her imagination and just as the Almighty had instructed Abraham to listen to his Sara, so I too listened – had to listen to my Ebba and eventually heard myself saying, “Port Harcourt, here I come! “

I suppose that a corollary to “There is nothing like a good teacher” could well be

“There are plenty of bad teachers!”

How should Nigeria’s ministry of education expect anyone to give of his best, when even the very best university professors are being so grossly underpaid.

“We Poets in our youth begin in gladness;

But thereof come in the end despondency and madness.”

It’s really going from bad to worse, there seems to be an ongoing general collapse everywhere, even the once upon a time so called “Athens of West Africa” has left the best of days far behind and is now writhing in decrepitude according to this latest report

About the professor bug, you seem to be guarded, as if hedging your bets when you say “The issue of the Pantami professorship, however, might not be so clear cut, in my own thinking.”

N.B: As serious as ever, your friend has now re-baptised the University that anointed Pantami “Fraudsters University of Technology” in Owerri. Not exactly funny, is it? 

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Thanks,Cornelius.

Thanks, particularly, for the Rilke quote. It's the best translation I've read of those powerful lines. Your autobiographical interjections  are always striking. Perhaps you should put them all together one day.

thanks

toyin

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

I find it odd that some people are at times unable to examine issues critically without insisting on being combative. Tiresome.

One of the arguments Farooq Kperoqi marshals against  Pantami's professorship  is that he is not an employee of FUTO that gave him the professorship.
 
Farooq is perhaps the first and the major critic of Pantami's professorship, whose  critiques  I expect practically everyone interested in the subject reads.

I am responding to that angle invoked by Farooq. The issue here is the idea of working for the university in the first place, not the specificities of the job.

 I also acknowledge that there are other claims made against the professorship- ''Critics of Nigerian minister Isa Pantami being made a professor claim that his professorship is invalid beceause, among other reasons,  he does not  teach at the university where the title was conferred.''  

I suspect that the critique against this professorship may in the long run be sustained only in academic rather than procedural terms. ''Academic'' referring to the contribution to knowledge that justifies the professorship.

Universities have been known to modify their own rules, in exceptional circumstances, as in the example of the German philologist and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who  was awarded a PhD without completing a PhD program and was subsequently granted a professorship.

This occured even in the  German system of earlier times and perhaps now, where after the PhD, a person requires a habilitation, a further piece of independent research, earned, according to the Wikipedia article on the subject, ''after several years of independent research,''  before the person can become a professor. Yet, in the same system, carefully monitored by the state Ministry of Education, Nietzsche was awarded a professorship without doing or completing a  PhD or even going through a habilitation.

Freeman Dyson became a professor at Cornell as relatively recently as 1951 and later at the Princeton Institute of Advanced Study, without a PhD. Though never an academic, Baruch Spinoza was offered a chair of philosophy at Heidelberg, which he declined.

Dyson, however, was already a strategic figure in physics. Nietzsche seems to have been powerfully publicatory before being granted his unusual PhD and professorship. Spinoza is one the greatest Western philosophers.

If one applies oneself, one should be able to find similar rule modifications across the centuries in  Western academia, the founders and the centre of the currently globally central academic system. 

One needs to ask what exceptional circumstances could have motivated the modification of the rules for Pantami.

Any critique of a historical situation needs to be sensitive to the entire historical context, so that all angles can be adequately examined. 

Thanks

toyin

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[Toyin Falola]

Some clarifications:

1. That there is a gang-up against Pantami. I think Baba Cornelius or so said this. If not him, I apologize. I am not aware of any gang up against Pantami. No one has insulted the man, to the best of my knowledge. Indeed, Farooq affirmed his qualifications to be a Professor but not in IT. Farooq’s admission of Pantami’s qualification is the highest praise. He said, move your building from Adepoju Center for Computer Studies to Ochonu’s Dept of Islamic Religion and Ethics.
2. What I remember is an ethical coalition, which is different from a gang up. I refused to join that ethical coalition at a point, saying that we have no access to the qualifications of others who handled the promotion.
3. I think Mr. Adepoju may not be quoting Farooq very well when he writes: “ I am responding to that angle invoked by Farooq. The issue here is the idea of working for the university in the first place, not the specificities of the job”. Promoted, I think, is what he was saying. Cumulative experience of teaching, anywhere. And no. of research papers and the quality. He never said that one cannot be made a professor in a school where he has never taught before.
4. I made my usual two sentences on the matter, saying that we should not use the word “fraud”, as this is too over reaching and non-scalable, but a minimalist one of madness and eccentricity, which are scalable and non-measurable. Fraud is deliberative, eccentricity is impulsive. A sick person can do many things and those considered non-eccentric can forgive. Remember the first three temptations Jesus Christ endured before starting his ministry:

“Tell these stones to become bread.”

“Throw yourself down from the highest point of the temple”

“Bow down and worship me”—that is, the devil

Christ refused. He was being asked both to commit fraud and display his madness.

TF

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

I was responding to a recent Facebook post by Farooq stating precisely that Pantami is not qualified to be a Prof at FUTO bcs he is not an academic there. He urged that Pantami should relocate to FUTO as an academic and the criticism would cease.

I would have linked that post but the phone I'm using right now wont allow that.

Ironically, Farooq is permissive to Pantami on his terrorist sympathies background by suggesting the Pantami should apologise for his earlier terrorist sympathies and continue with his ministership, if i recall correctly, while, in my view,  Pantami has no place in any such job on account of his previous terrorist sympthies, the continuity of which remain in question.

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[Moses Ochonu]

Toyin Adepoju,

There you go again introducing what the Americans call non sequitors—irrelevant, unrelated matters.

FUTO did not modify their rules for appointing professors and have NOT claimed that they did that for Pantami. They instead claimed that he was assessed under their rules and found to be qualified, a blatant lie, since those rules and requirements are now in the public domain.

Second, they advertised the job in a National Daily for crying out loud, and the requirements and eligibility criteria in the ad clearly exclude and disqualify Pantami. FUTO have not claimed that they either disregarded their own advertised requirements and criteria or that they modified same for Pantami. Obviously, they know better than to claim that as that would put the VC and other officials in bigger trouble than they already are in and cause even more scandal for Pantami.

Third, with all due respect, there is a lot you don’t know about the Western academy. You just go to google and Wikipedia and randomly pluck cases from Germany and Britain that bear absolutely no relationship to the Pantami case, and that, even if they did, wouldn’t matter because Pantami’s appointment violates FUTO and NUC regulations and violates federal government rules against double appointment/employment.

by the way, do you even know the difference between Professor of Practice and tenured professorial appointment in the Western academy? I ask because you are conflating the two.

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 20, 2022, at 4:47 AM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:



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[Moses Ochonu]

1. “I think Mr. Adepoju may not be quoting Farooq very well when he writes: “ I am responding to that angle invoked by Farooq. The issue here is the idea of working for the university in the first place, not the specificities of the job”.Promoted, I think, is what he was saying. Cumulative experience of teaching, anywhere. And no. of research papers and the quality. He never said that one cannot be made a professor in a school where he has never taught before.“

—Falola

Indeed, this is the issue, which Adepoju is deliberately misreading, for reasons known only to him and God. 

To be appointed or promoted to the position of Professor, FUTO’s own rules and their own job advertisement say you have to have 12 years cumulative teaching and research experience post PhD. Pantami has 2. That alone should have been a disqualifier without even invoking the FG’s prohibition of double employment.

And, of course, Pantami not having a terminal degree or research and teaching experience in IT but in Businesses Management should have been another outright disqualifier. How do you appoint a Business Management professional who has never worked in or researched on IT or Cyber Security a Professor of Cyber Security? Is this the political realm, where you can appoint a historian CBN Governor or Minister of Agriculture or Science and Technology?

When you see such brazen, high profile illegality and unethical conduct being perpetrated, if you have an ethical core, you’ll speak out against it. If you see people who should know better justifying or obfuscating it, it winds you up a bit.

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 20, 2022, at 4:47 AM, Toyin Falola <toyin...@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Let's try to focus on ideas, avoiding  combative and unnecessary negative personalisations that will distract us.

This discussion, as I present it, is not necessarily one on which two starkly opposed sides are in conflict. Its better understood as a dialogue of people approaching a subject from varied angles, orientations that assist with seeing various approaches to the tissue and drawing conclusions.

Wikipedia is the most up to date scholarly platform in history.

If any other one exists or has ever existed, I would be pleased to be directed to it, with demonstrations of why that platform should be so understood. I can reference  relevant texts by academic publishers on Western academic history and practices, but for a basic discussion such as this, I dont need any references beyond Wikipedia.

 As a scholarly resource, Wikipedia insists on its articles being carefully footnoted with references to the information sources that inform any point made in its articles, enabling further investigation by the inquisitive reader, facilitating the essence of scholarship, unending enquiry. 

I suspect, Moses, that you are getting carried away with an absolutist approach to this issue. The impression I get from such a newsmedia account as the Nigerian Tribune report on FUTO's stand  ''Why We Made Pantami Professor —FUTO'' does not suggest the issue is an open and shut case as you are presenting it.

They are stated as claiming they have appointed and not promoted him, “based on his qualification which he merited through long years of research works.” They reference Pantami's earlier job as DG of the National Information Technology Agency, which they describe as ''being like a research institute,'' adding that ''in such a research institute, somebody could be there and at the same time would be publishing papers that could make him qualify. He said based on that, a particular university 'could decide to appoint someone as a professor.'  ”

FUTO is thereby described as making a claim similar to the examples I have provided from the Western academy. The formal rules exist, but those rules may be modified in exceptional circumstances. 

The question should then be, what are the circumstances in Pantami's case?

What is his contribution to knowledge represented by his  ''long years of research works" which they claim for him? I seem to have read Farooq arguing that he has only a few publications. In the sciences, you dont need more than a few publications to make a decisive impact, as represented by Einstein's three 1905 papers of which one or more got him the Nobel Prize, with the fourth one coming in 1908, beyond which four papers I doubt if Einstein is known for any other foundational contributions to  science. 

Since Pantami is not an Einstein, if not this debate would not be taking place, is he closer to Grigory Perelman, whose Fields Medal in mathematics was awarded on the basis of his work on the Ricci Flow posted on a non-peer reviewed  site? 

If it is not, because if it were, its likely to be public knowledge, than what is it, is the central question that FUTO should be asked, in my view.

What is his contribution to knowledge that merits the award of a professorship? What are the views of his peers around the world that validate such an award? Some of his peers  should at least be aware of his work and assess it in terms favorable to, even if not identical with the FUTO professorial assessment. 

I am of the view that these are the central questions, both in terms of the substantives and in terms of strategy. Any effort to discredit his appointment on procedural grounds might not be ultimately sustainable, because alternative explanations could always be provided, as I believe I am demonstrating. 

Focusing on the contribution to knowledge Pantami has made that merits a professorship could also help further enrich approaches to the idea of contributions to knowledge in Nigerian academia, a question recurrently rethought in academia but particularly germane for academic systems seeking their own identity away from the academic metropolises represented by  the West. 

What counts as a contribution to knowledge in a field? How may the relative significance or weight of such contributions be assessed?  How may answers to these questions differ across disciplines?

Perhaps you can share with us why you think the Professor of Practice vs Tenured Professor distinction in the Western academy  can help clarify this issue.

Thanks

toyin

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

In the Nigerian Tribune article, ''Why We Made Pantami Professor —FUTO'', FUTO is quoted as claiming they appointed, not promoted Pantami. ''Somebody who is not your staff, you cannot promote him'' they state.

My problem with some of the critics of the Pantami professorship is that their critiques are inadequately grounded.

 Moses states- 

''And, of course, Pantami not having a terminal degree or research and teaching experience in IT but in Business Management should have been another outright disqualifier. How do you appoint a Business Management professional who has never worked in or researched on IT or Cyber Security a Professor of Cyber Security? Is this the political realm, where you can appoint a historian CBN Governor or Minister of Agriculture or Science and Technology?''

Pantami states on his website that he has a PhD in Computing and Information Systems  from the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen. His Wikipedia page presents him as having taught  Information Technology at Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University. 

Is that information being disputed?

Also, the essence of the idea of the professorship is a person's contribution to knowledge. All other considerations, such as teaching, are complementary.

 How many names are we to count who made significant  contributions to knowledge  in fields different from their academic training?

Friedrich Nietzsche, trained and working as a classical philologist, but who is best known as a philosopher? Ulli Beier, whose graduate work was in phonetics, but who is famous  as a founder of African and particularly Yoruba Studies? Jean Paul Satre, best known as a philosopher but who was also an imaginative writer in various genres, influencing perhaps his award for the Nobel Prize for Literature? 

Going to the website of the person inspiring this controversy, its clear he's significantly  prepared for potential critics. He provides PDFs of   his journal articles by year, from 2007 to 2021, and among which articles on Information Technology are evident. He names  his books on cybersecurity. Lists  his  talks  at conferences and workshops. Lists his technical papers. 

His Research Gate page, a website for self uploading of scholarly papers, has 24 publications, all downloadable, all in Information Technology. 

The question now is- to what degree does this phalanx of evident and claimed achievement demonstrate contributions to knowledge justifying a professorship in Cyber-Security?

That most of these achievements exist there can be no doubt. 

The Guardian Nigeria, along with other Nigerian newmedia,  carries a story of the launching of one of the books.  I am not able to find evidence of the existence of the other books, all listed as published in 2021. 

The articles, however, are downloadable from his website and his Research Gate page.

Having carried out the little research I have done on this man, its clear he's ambitious, a serious and consistent worker, well organised and a good presenter of himself, as evident from his website and Research Gate page. I suspect he's a man capable of achieving the professorship in a more transparent manner but might have been in a hurry or did not anticipate the problems of the method he has used. Sadly, his professorship might not be able to  ultimately  rise from this cloud of suspicion. 

Thanks, 

Toyin

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Mostly an aside ( I should really not like to but in to get caught in the cross-fire where the elephants of the academe are exchanging words 

From a purely legalistic standpoint - and assuming that Pantami was not appointed an “Honorary Professor “, then I also assume that Professor Moses Ochonu’s positions would be unassailable in a court of law/ court of arbitration about this matter. Of course, the laws of that Owerri institution could be amended to accommodate Pantami’s appointment – could be amended to make him an exception, but could his appointment be ratified retroactively? Normally, not, but in some places, all things are possible...

I’m wondering why no one seems to be reacting to these words from Vincent Adepoju which to me are quite alarming. He wrote,

“I don't believe Pantami, as a certified and self confessed terrorist sympathiser at a point of his life, a person who identified with the hate filled instigator of the mass murder of Innocents,  Osama Bin Laden, has any place in public service anywhere in the world, his presence in the Buhari govt helping to burnish the terrorist credentials of that govt as an enabler of Fulani herdsmen/Fulani militia//Fulani bandits and Fulani supremacist terrorism and a less than enthusiastic fighter in the war against Boko Haram Islamic terrorism.”

We have been there before, the youthful indiscretions of Shakespeare's Prince Hal for example, before he was crowned Henry V, but true, not all indiscretions are easily forgiven or forgivable, and normally, that aspect of Pantami's past would have prevented him from obtaining any security clearance to visit the White House, back then, but today although everyone knows that Bin Laden eventually went underground in Pakistan where he enjoyed some sympathy and understanding for some years, Pakistani government officials are not now persona non grata in America because they once gave succour to to the enemy, not are e.g. Palestinians because of the general Palestinian reactions to 911, as and when it happened.

So, professor or not, if Pantami can ensure non-stop electricity to Nigeria or is qualified to be the technological commander-in-chief in defending the nation against cyberattacks that would devastate the country's banking system for example , he shouldn’t be given a cabinet appointment because once upon a time, like many, many other Muslims the world over, he applauded 911? And hypothetically speaking, even if he merits it he shouldn’t be awarded the Nobel Prize for any of the branches of Science on the grounds that he was once “a certified and self confessed terrorist sympathiser”?

Because of his support for generally unpopular/ lost causes late Jan Myrdal was not the most popular man in Sweden

On the 11th of September oblivious of the terrorist attacks that where going on I was listening to an Arthur Rubinstein concert on mezzo – on the headphones... When I eventually got to town, a Caribbean fella bought a round of drinks at the table where I was sitting and said, “Cheers to Bin Ladin” Needless to say, yours truly did not take a sip and got the hell out of that place – which mind you was a very popular pub-casino, in downtown of Stockholm!

On the light side, and outside of real life, the very first professor that I ever encountered was in English literature, in Conrad’s The Secret Agent about a bunch of God-forsaken, good-for-nothing anarchists who wanted to blow up Big Ben (to give themselves maximum publicity) and so, not unexpectedly, in that novel, the so called “professor" in question turns up as the bomb-maker; he is known as the professor because he once worked at the chemistry department and enjoys the special status and reputation among his anarchist friends because he knows his stuff (bomb-making) and these days Inspector Heath at Scotland Yard would have identified him as a terrorist, and if he had been inspired by Islam or Osama Bin Laden and not by Christianity/ Marxism / Pan-Africanism, the “professor” would have been charged with preparing to commit a terrorist act.

Here is Chapter 5 which I would subtitle “ The Professor”

There’s always a lot of talk about context in this forum, about context, the larger picture, the whole picture, “holistic” and “analysis” two of real Professor Moses Ochonu’s favourite words; fact is that there’s no telling the extent of the good that some much needed reform could do when we stop and consider how the structures, nomenclatures and gradations in the meritocracy that that we (postcolonial Africa) have inherited from the good old colonial days and that we continue to patch and perpetuate, how such structures (and salary scales) could be adjusted / amended to be made more relevant to our current development needs

Criteria for appointment as a professor in Sweden

What I see here in Sweden for example, are a whole lot of professors in the 30 – 40 years old age group, which should leave people in the Nigerian University system wondering, how such professors have managed to have put in 15 years of active teaching and research service/ experience before bagging such appointments...and mind you, Sweden is an essential part of the international community, especially with reference to Science and technology and, like Nigeria very active in exchange programmes albeit less so with regard to e.g. the brain drain to the United States.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Well, the problem, Toyin Adepoju, is that you refuse to look at the evidence and you're basing your position on Pantami's Wikipedia and Researchgate pages. By doing that, you're taking the discussion backwards. 

You came late to the discuss but you stubbornly won't go back and read up on what has been conclusively established through Farooq's numerous investigations, in which he obtained information from Pantami's employers in Saudi Arabia, his doctoral institution in the UK, his time as lecturer in ATBU, from FUTO, the Tribune job ad of FUTO, FUTO's own promotion guidelines, etc.

You're also ignoring the pronouncement of national ASUU, who also conducted their own inquiry, and the new position of FUTO ASUU, which initially supported the promotion/appointment but has now condemned it.

1. Newsflash: If you haven't noticed, Pantami lies, A LOT. Early in this scandal, it was conclusively established with inquiry from Robert Gordon University that Pantami's PhD was not in Computer and Information System but in Business Management. For his doctoral dissertation, he studied the IT policies and practices of NNPC. There was nothing technical about it, just a study of IT practice in a corporate organization, using the rubric and methods of the Business Management discipline.

2. FUTO lied and are lying to cover their blunder. The initial announcement, which you have chosen to ignore, uses the word "promoted" for Pantami. In their clarification, they changed it to "appointed" after realizing that Pantami was not in their employment and does not plan to be. The Two successive VCs who oversaw the fraud merely "sold" a "professorship" to him to satisfy his vanity.

3. But even their defense/clarification you cited is contradictory because their explanation violates the requirements and eligibility criteria in the job advertisement they claimed Pantami responded to. Of course, they won't say if or why, for Pantami, the requirements in the job ad do not apply, nor if or why they ignored FUTO's own promotion requirements that Farooq quoted copiously from.

4. Go and look at the job ad that Farooq linked to and tell us if Pantami was even eligible to apply in the first place, if, for the sake of argument, we take FUTO's words that he applied. You keep avoiding that fundamental, black and white matter. If I only taught for two years after my PhD and a job ad says applicants must have 12 years of post-PhD research and teaching experience, will I even bother to apply?

5. The stuff about researchgate and wikipedia is comical. Researchgate merely takes what's on your public CV and professional page (true or false or embellished) and aggregates them. Researchgate is not a fact checker. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, including the subject of the entry.

I would advise you to go back and read all the investigations done on this matter before you jump into it because the answers to what you're bringing up have been conclusively established. This is the danger of joining a conversation midway and thinking you're raising valid questions or speaking from an informed position.

And there are things you don't know, such as the fact that Pantami approached three Northern Universities to be appointed professor and they all turned him down on account of his not being remotely qualified.

There are other scandalous pieces of information that are not public, which I will not reveal because I have to keep confidences. The fact is that this is a sophisticated scam, and some respected people were involved in brokering what was essentially a transaction to satiate Pantami's vain desire to have the prefix "Professor" attached to his name. I'll leave it at that.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfMEBjibdNZg659fezae9J%2BhoPTEg97_VFqjUnQxaw40WQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Moses,

Can you point us to any conclusive investigation that addresses the core of this issue- the question:

Has Pantami demonstrated a level of achievement that justifies a professorship?

I have been reading Farooq and you on this subject. I have read the  ASUU communiques on this subject.

I am yet to see such an investigation.

You are not addressing that beceause you don't have the knowledge to do so nor have you enquired of those who are qualified to do so.

You keep invoking what I am demonstrating are tangential issues.

Until you are ready  to investigate that substantial issue, you are dancing round the concept of the professorship in relation to Pantami, a professorship being an academic position the reuirements for which a university is free to modify in exceptional circumstances.

Get busy and face the substantive issues and stop relying on other people.

Whatever might be the actual intentions of Pantami and FUTO, their positions are not negated without demonstrating that his achievements are not commensurate with a professorship.

Thanks

Toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPpa707xmsS1Ab8kN3CPPKaEHXgyQ-2rVEisb3w6jFgR2w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Can you point us to any conclusive investigation that addresses the core of this issue- the question:

Toyin Adepoju,

I am not your assistant, Oga. Don't be lazy. Go and read Farooq's numerous Facebook updates and columns on his Facebook page on his personal website, which contains all his columns. I know for a fact that you have not been following or reading Farooq's interventions on this scandal and that you're lying about doing so because you're raising questions that have been definitely settled with inquiries to Robert Gorden University, the University in Saudi Arabia, etc. 

How else do I know? Just yesterday, when you posted about one of these settled questions on Farooq's comments section on Facebook, he responded by telling you that he had no time to keep repeating what he had written in the past, to keep going in circles. He then posted a link to his old piece that addressed it and asked you to read it. Instead of reading it and getting informed, you left his page on Facebook and brought the same settled question to this forum, pretending that you were raising legit issues.

Has Pantami demonstrated a level of achievement that justifies a professorship?

Absolutely not. He has exactly 10 published papers post-PhD, well short of the NUC and FUTO requirements for the position of Professor, and only 4 of those papers are in peer reviewed journals.  The rest are published in predatory, pay-to-play trash journals. And he only has 2 years of post-PhD teaching and research experience. If you have been reading Farooq's intervention on this scandal as you claim, you'd know this.

I have been reading Farooq and you on this subject. I have read the  ASUU communiques on this subject.

You have not. This scandal is several months old, and Farooq has been writing about it for months. You've clearly not read his earlier investigative posts and columns on this issue, otherwise you'd not be raising these issues now, which others raised when the scandal first broke months ago and Farooq tackled at the time. You've only read Farooq's and my posts from the last few days, and you're lazily supplementing this with Wikipedia and Researchgate as you yourself stated.

Yesterday, I posted three reasons why Pantami cannot and should not be appointed or promoted professor at FUTO. You've not challenged or even disputed even one of them, but you're here talking about Professor of the Practice traditions and term professorships in the Western academy, when you clearly don't even know that those are different from tenured, academic professorships.

Why do I even bother to engage you sometimes when you're clearly impervious to evidence and insist inexplicably on simply muddying the waters.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfOYYPeRpRnKpnDq9o9Ya3G%2BiSNskMTkvmXVF_MKe9eBSw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Moses,

You have no background in the academic field in question. You are therefore not in any position to assess the academic achievements of the person in question.

You can't point to any substantive investigation of his achievements bcs the investigations are surface investigations at best.

Get busy sir and stop quoting Farooq.

I have addressed all your arguments. They are not sustainable in the long run. 

Don't you think you should focus on issues instead of insisting on fighting? 

Thanks

Toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPrKpMpoBFJNh-YajMvfCu5Z7%3DqGdYmzPeS_gVxPmSLwpg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

My comments on this issue  from now on are to the general public. If I am to address Moses again, I shall do so directly. I find his combative stance unhelpful to examining various aspects of the subject.

The arguments against the Pantami professorship are significant but inconclusive, in my view. They need to be more rigorous.

As it is, this inconclusiveness means Pantami is likely, if not certain, to escape from this crisis.

The FG is most likely not interested and will let the storm blow itself out.

The smoke helps divert attention from Pantami's history of identifying with Islamic terrorism, a history the FG defended as not enough to prevent his being given the ministership of Nigeria's digital economy, particularly since Pantami is understood as having reformed, from what I recall.

What are controversial stories of fence jumping in getting a professorship beside a history of terrorist identification, particularly in a country bedeviled by terrorism, a past for which he has been forgiven?

He has various vocal supporters, helping to showcase the issue as more controversial than definitive on either side.

After some weeks or months, the critics possibly lose steam and everyone moves on.

But a victim remains. 

Pantami.

I wish he had addressed his academic aspirations differently.

As a minister in Nigeria, you are where many would like to be but will never be.

Some academics might rather be you than be academics.

If you so much want to be part of that world, use the wealth from the ministership in pursuing that dream.

Save money. Invest. After leaving office, find your way to  places like MIT, Caltech, Stanford, Cambridge, Google abd Space X, centres 

 of the global information technology revolution. 

With the credentials of a former minister of the largest Black nation and perhaps the largest African economy, there is almost nowhere you can't enter.

Leveraging the exposure gained from managing such a cutting edge portfolio can enable rich opportunities to share your knowledge, apply it to various contexts and patiently build a publishing presence and network that can get you an undisputed professorship in many high profile places.

Unless something creatively drastic happens, he is now likely to be known as a dodgy minister, an Islamic cleric who has demonstrated terrorist leanings and a questionable professor, all allegations prominently addressed on his Wikipedia page, though the article also references what are described as his achievements in his ministerial job, although the terrorism controversy takes up most of the article.

Sad.

Toyin

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Toyin Adepoju,

Has your position degenerated to such a farcical level? Does one have to be an IT expert to know that a person with 2 years cumulative postdoctoral teaching and research experience is unqualified for a job that requires 12 years postdoctoral research and teaching experience? 

Do you have to be an IT expert to know that a person who has 10 papers for a job requiring at least 15 is ineligible to apply in the first place let alone getting appointed? 

Not sure you know that university promotion and appointment committees are interdisciplinary and may not even have an expert on the field of the person being assessed for promotion or appointment. This is deliberate. The task of the committee is to assess compliance with university, faculty, and departmental and, in the case of Nigeria, NUC promotion and appointment criteria. Files of applicants from all fields pass through and are assessed by this committee. Just a free lesson for you on how universities operate and how they do appointments and promotions when a powerful minister is not the applicant.

I know that you're a fiercely independent scholar who rejects the strictures of university affiliation, the protocols of academic publishing, and the demands, requirements, rigor, and criteria of institutional assessments. I admire you for that, but brother, if you want validation within the university, you must play by its rules. Pantami has to fulfill the requirements, whatever you think of the rules and requirements.

I myself have some issues with university requirements, but I'd be a hypocrite if, after accepting them and going through them, I supported the circumvention of those requirements and traditions by a corrupt coalition of Pantami, the FUTO authorities, and the brokers who facilitated the transaction.

If you want validation outside the university, you may disregard university regulations and processes. And if you want to fight academic conventions and deconstruct them from without or make a philosophical case against the existence of rules and requirements for assessment and validation, you're welcome to do that. Some of us may even join you. But until you succeed in your mission, you or Pantami must meet the requirements of an academic position in order to apply to be considered, let alone be appointed.

You cannot just make your own rules or reject extant rules because you have an issue with the strict rules and rigors of admission into the professoriate. And you certainly cannot reject or support the desecration of the existing requirements because you fall short of those requirements. That's the crux of the issue in this scandal.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfNGCtPSzGkJ6OpbK7AHSiEM9PgvZ7XE25gbaVe%2BaSXEYw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

It’s funny how memory can play tricks on the unwary, so that even as I am reluctant to butt in where the academic champions are flexing their muscles (in accord with the African proverb that says, “When the elephants fight, it's the grass that gets trampled”) I seem to remember this piece of Shakespeare as going “Tut, Tut, but me no but, and uncle me no uncle“, when in fact it’s "Tut, tut! Grace me no grace, nor uncle me no uncle: I am no traitor's uncle; and that word ‘grace.’ In an ungracious mouth is but profane. “

Hopefully, I’m not butting in and this is but another aside from my quiet corner on the other side of the Atlantic ocean where we have more important matters to be worried about, such as what Sweden deems should be our role when Mighty Russia have recently been test-firing their hypersonic missiles (flexing some nuclear muscle) which, along with constant electricity, is the kind of muscle that Nigeria needs, and less of vacuous/ useless/empty big English grammar, to be taken seriously as an emerging “world power” so that when Nigeria says something, the world listens...

I suppose this is autobiographical too: I phoned Baba Kadiri this evening requesting that he congratulate me and to ask him how am I supposed to react when according to Ojogbon Falola, I have now joined Baba Kadiri’s ranks, the title “Baba Cornelius” having been conferred on me by none less than Ojogbon Falola himself.

Baba Kadiri smiled and told me that Ojogbon Falola was within his rights to confer the title of “Baba “on me since age-wise I am the Ojogbon’s senior (and I suppose that’s where the buck stops). BTW, I was feeling a little apprehensive about winding up on the same problem platform as Isa Ali Pantami the legality of whose professorship/ Babaship  is now being disputed by people of the same cultural and national background who would normally have no qualms about addressing Brother Pantami as “Mallam”

I asked Baba Kadiri if there is an element of wisdom attached to the title “ Baba” and of course, he concurred since he is a Baba too.  I’m also aware of Baba as a Hindu and Persian title of endearment and that it’s sometimes used as an honorific Hebrew title, hence we have Baba Sali.

Whenever I hear the name Baba Sali, somehow (inadvertently) I associate the name with Rabbi Yitzhak Kaduri whose last will and testament was interpreted to mean that Jesus is the Mashiach/ Messiah

I should humbly beg to disagree ever so slightly with Ojogbon Falola about the use of the term “ganging up against someone”. I understand that with the mere entry of the word “ gang” – into the picture, the upright person that Ojogbon Falola is would naturally tend to associate “ ganging up” with some kind of criminal activity, as in that infamous “ gang of four” which turned up in Chinese history in the third quarter of the last century.

This evening Baba Kadiri euphemistically redefined the alleged ganging up as “ friendly hostility”

Whenever it's about ethics, and it neraly always is, we have to tread gently. 

Ojogbon Falola goes to some lengths in trying to defend his rebuttal of the idea that nobody “ ganged up” against Brother Pantami, that it was “ an ethical coalition” ( to which my irreverential level one retort is, like hell, it was, “an ethical coalition” just like the US-led coalition that invaded Iraq on the pretext of looking for weapons of mass destruction” – which only goes to show that you don’t have to call yourselves a bunch of criminals to justify some criminal activities or vice-versa; in the case of the invasion of Iraq, even without any go-ahead from the United Nations, when nice man Kofi Annan (Madeleine Albright's godchild and nominee) was the legally anointed Secretary-General of the United Nations)

Because of all the fuss, if it's that important to him, Dr Pantami could easily dis-appoint himself /rescind the honour get himself appointed Professor / visiting Professor by some other University of Technology whose modus operandi would not be infringed by appointing him to the position of Professor

[Gloria Emeagwali]

“Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, 

including the subject of the entry.”MA

This point has been made several

 times but Mr. Adepoju, by editorial

 fiat, insists that Wikipedia is the most

 up to date scholarly source in history!

Holy Moly! Put some water in your

wine, Sir, or as the Bambara people

say, add some water to your ginger

beer. 

Now CH or IB must tell me

what the equivalent is in Sierra Leone.

GE

Professor Gloria Emeagwali 
Prof. of History/African Studies, CCSU
africahistory.net; vimeo.com/ gloriaemeagwali
Recipient of the 2014 Distinguished Research 
Excellence Award, Univ. of Texas at Austin;
2019 Distinguished Africanist Award
New York African Studies Association 

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 20, 2022 3:53 PM
To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Isa Pantami Various

 

Please be cautious: **External Email**

On Feb 20, 2022, at 18:32, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAAHJfPqB8vT23aDb9kGdn1s5vF7ETXc3z8H6A_eG5-824jhS0w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

The equivalent advice to Scholar Adepoju would be that he dilute the "omole"/ “monkey soup" or it's equivalent ogogoro ( in Nigeria ) and akpeteshie (in Ghana). Adepoju's professors and those who he looks up to as authorities must also advice him to take Wikipedia with grain of salt. I'm amazed that someone who professes a background in philosophy would be willing to swallow everything that is thrown up from the whale's belly ( i.e. Wikipedia), so uncritically, hook line  and sinker 

Pope advised long ago :

Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring :

There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,

And drinking largely sobers us again.

Otwee Emporo

[DR SIKIRU ENIOLA]

Conditions for Appointment of Professors MUST Change - FUTO's Prof. Pantami Saga explained differently

By Prof Aliyu Mohammed Paiko

Obviously, the Triple Helix model of Innovation that the National Universities commission (NUC) is advocating and promoting, and which is the current global best practice, is strange to a lot of people. The courage of FUTO and Pantami to practically actualize this in our University system needs to be encouraged and applauded, NOT criticised ignorantly by even the so called experts in the academia.

In concepts such as the Knowledge Economy, the Triple Helix model of innovation seeks to promote interactions between the Academia, industry and Government in order to Foster Economic and Social development. Therefore, the model is conceived such that the 3 different bodies collaboratively play their roles to ensure that innovation is fostered and development eventually occurs. 

Those following this development therefore, would not be surprised when recently, NUC is promoting that Professors in the Academia shouuld go on their Sabbaticals to Industries or Government Regulatory agencies like NUC, Tetfund, NNPC, RMRDC etc., instead of the old practice of going to other universities. Similarly, University Councils and Senates are being encouraged to appoint as Tenure, Visiting or Adjunct Professors from highly experienced professionals in the Industry or Government, to come into the university from time to time, to share industry or policy experiences with the students. This, it is envisaged, would go a long way to promote innovation by giving students additional perspectives. Time it was when Professors of building Engineering, Robotics, Computer science, Business Administration, History, or any discipline for that matter were mere theorists with practical expertise. Working collaboratively with experienced industrial or Government policy practitioners is thus envisaged to change all that and if students are added to the equation, they would be better for it.

I am therefore not surprised that Pantami, as the minister of the Digital Economy and one of the Champions of the Knowledge Economy in Nigeria is taking a lead in this direction. Further, that this is happening with a University of Technology, the story cannot be more comprehensive.

Reading Pantami's acceptance letter and noting that he was placed on a different Salary scale and to which he declined to receive payment and also confirming that the President was aware of his appointment, should ordinarily have made people curious, to find out what was going on, instead of the ignorant condemnations, very uncouth masturbations that greeted the situation. 

We Nigerians have severally challenged the Nigeria education system to be more innovative and asked for introduction of new perspectives to improve our graduates to make the economy better. We have condemned our academic system as declining or becoming more outdated and sometimes, you read that our graduates are unemployable because they lack relevant industry or policy experiences. Thus, as much as we always clamour for change and are not willing to change or accept changes in the way things are done, surely change can only continue to elude us or remain a mirage. We are not still in the stone age, when in Nigeria, Professors were only teachers using old text books or sat underneath trees, dreamed up data and got them published in International journals of everything for everyone, at Samaru or Nsuka or Ibadan printing press. We are in the 21st century when an undergraduate project has become a product that makes life easier for millions of people globally. 

Our understanding of Research must expand, as Innovation, which will change lives may not necessarily be the product of only a Professor's moulded ideas inside the walls of a University alone.

We must recognise that collaboration, synergy and multi disciplinary thinking are the best approach to practical innovation. To that extent therefore, it becomes pertinent that we modify our definition of who a Professor is, to also include professionals in the industry and in Policy positions in Government that have lots of experience to share (teach) to students, to improve our economy. Academia must open its doors to accommodate experts of industry and experienced policy makers, as co-teachers, fellows, or Visiting Professors. The world is changing fast, and so should our perspectives and our definitions. 

Consequently, based on these premises, and as promoted by NUC the regulatory body for University Education in Nigeria, my opinion is that Isa Pantami is eligible to be appointed as Professor and FUTO deserves our accolade for taking the bold step. Others should follow and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) needs to be told clearly to stop dabbling into issues outside their mandates. They are not remotely responsible for appointment of, or promotion to Professor in the university system.

As even when committees are set up to review conditions of appointment or promotion of Academic staff, the process starts in the Senate to draw members, goes to management Committee before being sent to the Governing Council for approval. 

Aliyu Mohammed Paiko is a Professor of Nutritional Biochemistry & Biotechnology, Dept. of Biochemistry, IBBUL.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/SN7PR06MB7247F9CDA0E00D2006B998DCF8399%40SN7PR06MB7247.namprd06.prod.outlook.com.

[Terngu S. Nomishan]

I'm surprised at some of the submissions by people who should have known better. I have gone to Pantami's personal website and studied all his publications. I realized that most of the articles on his website are not published in any academic journal or even peer reviewed. Many others are convocation lecture presentations. The few academic journals on his website and research gate are led by other people and he is only co-authored. 

I have also downloaded his PhD thesis only to discover that it is a business management research. If any body wants to argue about this issue in favour of Pantami, the person should simply answer the questions on the table.

- The job is for someone with a Cyber security qualification, so is pantami qualified to be giving with his PhD in business management?

- The job requires 12 years of Postdoctoral teaching and research experience, is pantami qualified with his 2 years of Postdoctoral teaching and research experience?

- The job also require 15 academic publications. Pantami has 12, most of which are not peer review academic publications, is he qualified with this?

- The FUTO management claim that they did not promote Pantami but appointed him. Whereas on Pantami's website he stated that he was promoted by the FUTO senate, can this be clarified?

- Can anyone arguing for pantami provide us with evidence of his supervision of PhD candidates, master's and PGD candidates, which is another necessary requirement for the job?

- If pantami was appointed by FUTO as they claim, didn't such an appointment contradict the laws of the country? 

- If pantami was promoted as he claim on his website and Wikipedia page, when was he employed by FUTO, how many years did he work they, what exactly was he doing?

- Isn't it a punishable offence to lie to the university authorities on his qualification? What he has done is character assassination, attempted fraud, mischief and corruption. Isn't all these punishable by Nigerian laws?

If Nigeria was a serious country, this guy is supposed to be arrested outrightly.

Terngu S. Nomishan

[DR SIKIRU ENIOLA]

https://www.withinnigeria.com/news/2021/11/08/asuu-pantamis-appointment-as-professor-by-futo-followed-due-process/

The position above is that of ASUU FUTO. It was a result of in investigation panel of qualified academics. 

Pantami's  distant past might be controversial but his stigmatization arose from the publications of the anti digitalization of the Nigerian mobile communication system. The battle against the reckless and the criminal sales and use of Sim cards, the various manipulations by the operators and their non cooperation with security specifications brought up this anti Pantami war. 

As at now, the platform is being drastically sanitized. It is always important to recollect and factor in the background narratives of media trials in Nigeria. Of course, there are now media bandits.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfM_GbS%2B0yrYQqyTnmjY9KMKz8EjB610j3eT9pJ4uXdR5w%40mail.gmail.com.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

On Academic Assessment

Academic assessment, everywhere in the world, is done primarily by experts in the field in question. If not, the assessment fails to be an academic assessment. All other contributions from others who are not experts in the relevant field, no matter how eminent they might be in their own  fields, is complementary at best.

Academia represents a community dedicated to the development of specialised knowledge by people in particular fields. Its not centred in general knowledge, which at best, acts to frame the specialised knowledge of the expert. 

Being a scholarly expert implies gaining a mental map of the field in question, its boundaries and configurations, what is known, what may be known and what cannot be known, as far as these last two can be ascertained, its epistemic and metaphysical complex, how knowledge is developed in the field and the role of that knowledge within the configuration of human knowledge generally, a map to which one has contributed to  constructing through one's efforts in the field, a matrix enabling one assess the quality of work in that field.

In assessing the expertise represented by a PhD, the higher levels of academia and certainly the professorship, it is such expert knowledge that is called upon, not the general knowledge of any other kind of knower, whatever their expertise in other fields. 

Thus, in Nigerian academia, at its best, the aspirant's papers are  assessed by experts in their university as well as experts outside Nigeria, and a particular number of these assessments must be favourable for the aspirant to be successful, as evident  when I was an academic in Nigeria.

 It is the reports from the experts the assessment committee studies to reach a decision. The committee does not deem itself, without input from the relevant experts, as competent to take such  a decision, otherwise the decision process is not an academic assessment.The same applies across the world, within various modifications.

All other members of promotion committees who are not experts in the field in question are complementary to those who are experts. 

Only the expert can assess the significance of claimed contributions to knowledge, which is what academia is about in its essence, not volume of publications, or even years in service, which are  general metrics at best, whatever might be the volume of Pantami's publications in academic fora or his time in academia.

Such expert assessment enables an Alexis Sanderson, for example, to be a professor of religion at Oxford, even though he had published no book, a requirement in English academia. Within such flexibilities, the exceptions I have been pointing out from Europe and North America were developed. 

''What exactly is Pantami's contribution to knowledge that justifies a professorship?,'' is the central question, complementary to that of the other procedures involved in his appointment. 

Insisting on seeing an effort to widen the scope of investigation as an effort to support Pantami, inspiring self righteous  attacks from Moses, is equivalent to a form of religious dogmatism and is of little value except helping to clarify issues through debate.

A critic of Pantami who insists on tackling the issue through straightjacketed  lines of approach, dogmatically inisting  on not critically examining other perspectives, is not likely to have definitive impact on the controversy.

         

Investigative Strategies on the Pantami Professorship

Some people are insisting on impressing your views on those of Adepoju.

For Moses, once you urge  examining various angles of the Pantami professorship saga that deviate from fully accepting the line he is toeing, you are supporting the fraud  Pantami is described as perpetuating. There can be no middle way in his own universe on this subject.

Yes. Rules have been transgressed. But universities across the world, across the centuries, are known to have transgressed their own rules in exceptional circumstances, examples of which I have given.

Can't FUTO invoke same in this instance? 

It is already being done for them by a lawyer who is arguing for the absolute jurisdiction of a university in how it awards professorships, both in its known laws and the discretion of the vice-chancellor outside the strictures of those laws.

Insist on FUTO demonstrating what Pantami has achieved that justifies his professorship. Ask them to present the performance metrics they used and justify their application to Pantami, I am urging.

''No,'' the dogmatists insist. ''We shall stick to the published laws of FUTO alone. We shall disregard academic precedent across history and remain on this narrow line.''

''Pantami used ministerial power and money to buy the professorship, as shown by the various irregularities in the process and we shall keep harping on that,'' they insist.

Really?

Great to expose those irregularities but what is your ultimate goal? Educating people about them, getting FUTO to rescind the professorship, getting FG to investigate and possibly sack Pantami or get Pantami to resign so as not to continue to embarrass the Buhari govt?

I would be surprised if any of such seemingly plausible scenarios  plays out apart from educating people about the issues and placing future participants in such controversial processes on notice.  Even then, the strategy being employed means that significant plausibility is likely to be maintained by the Pantami camp at the end of it all.

Because you chaps are refusing to plug the holes in your argument, Pantami is likely to escape from this crisis, a person who, like his appointer , Buhari in the Presidency, has no business in that  ministerial job in the first place on account of his dangerous past terrorist affiliations, the continued existence of which  one cannot dismiss.

Imagine a better organised pro-Pantami defense. All they need to do is develop a rich analysis of his publications and writings, publications and writings available for the whole universe to see and download on his website and his Research Gate page, demonstrating how they  have contributed to the field and informed his performance in his ministerial job, make sure they publish and distribute those books he states on his website that he has written and presented their ISBN nos, frame the whole argument in terms of claims of exceptionalism leading to rule modifications which famous universities elsewhere have demonstrated,  and you guys' case could start to look like nitpicking. 

One of his defenders has already started on a similar route, referencing Pantami's expressive skills.

Styles of Scholarship

I like this from Moses-

''I know that you're a fiercely independent scholar who rejects the strictures of university affiliation, the protocols of academic publishing...I admire you for that, but brother... ''

...

''...if you want to fight academic conventions and deconstruct them from without...you're welcome to do that. Some of us may even join you.''

I dont agree with the second part of the first quote-

''I know that you  [reject] the ... rigor...of institutional assessments'' ''or make a philosophical case against the existence of rules and requirements for assessment and validation.''

I fully identify with that rigour and those rules and requirements for assessment and validation. As I have written various times on this group, that rigour is what makes academic writing the world's best source of processed knowledge, its best source for critical non-fiction. 

I simply want to apply that rigour by myself, in my own way, without aspiring to anyone's approval because that's what works for me. I don't aspire to be an academic because I know that such an aspiration requires being what I am not and that approach has not worked for me.

Before now, I did not have much interest in Pantami. I dismissed him on account of his being able to keep his job in spite of his previous terrorist affiliations, thereby justifying my often publicly  expressed asessment of the Buhari govt as a terrorist govt.

I understand this issue purely from the perspective of an opportunity to examine academic practice and its place in Nigerian politics.  Having studied Pantami's online self presentation, however, I conclude  that there is much anyone, particularly scholars, can learn from his website organisation and his Research Gate page.

The days when scholars, including institutional scholars, are known only by their CVs and publications in purely academic fora or presentations on their institutions' websites, an online presence deleted when they leave the institution, are gone or on the way out. 

Some have embraced the culture of having their own websites, ideally constructed by a skilled professional, showcasing their work and providing as much access to it as possible, as exemplified by such a person as the widely acclaimed scholar of Jewish mysticism Elliot  Wolfson. His faculty page. His personal website.

Wikipedia's Pioneering of Communal, Critical, Time Sensitive Scholarship

I am interested in reasoned efforts to counter my description of Wikipedia as the most up to date scholarly source in history, not expressions of disagreement without rationale being provided. I am keen on efforts to define scholarship and demonstrate why Wikipedia is either not scholarly  or is inadequately  so. I am also interested in efforts to prove that humanity has ever developed any scholarly source that responds with the same speed to ongoing events. 

All scholarly sources should not be taken uncritically so I'm puzzled as to why anyone would think that recognising the unparalleled  qualities of a scholarly source such as Wikipedia means using it uncritically. I'm interested in explaining why I describe  Wikipedia as a scholarly source unique in human history, but I'll need a corresponding investment in effort from those interested in such a discussion. 

Using the fact that anyone can edit Wikipedia as a means of demonstrating the inadequacy of Wikipedia as a scholarly source shows inadequate understanding  of the editing, oversight and verification mechanisms of Wikipedia, in which editors regularly crosscheck the ocean of entries in the encyclopedia, providing guidelines for their improvement or modifying them, something I learnt first hand in trying to incorporate my blog posts on the Ghanaian symbol system Adinkra into the references on the page on that subject.

Wikipedia represents a move away from the idea of critical scholarship as limited to bastions of intellectuals secluded within institutional enclaves or working in isolation or in terms of degrees of networking  as Independent Scholars, championing instead the idea of critical  scholarship as a communal, if anonymous activity.

I am a connoisseur of encyclopedias as efforts to encapsulate fields of knowledge or all the world's knowledge, having grown up on a  print edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, one of the best encyclopedias  ever. I retain,  as a treasured collection, battered volumes of our family's 1971 edition, the entries of which I read so fervently as a teenager, the pages of those entries that inspired me most, on the German writers Goethe and Rilke, on the Italian writer Dante, on St. Augustine, among others, becoming brown from my fingerprints. 

I read with relish the names of the writers of such marvellous articles, articles containing  enchanting lines which I will never forget, John Burnaby on Augustine's fusion of diverse cultural currents in shaping Western Christendom from all the way in North Africa, Elizabeth Wilkinson on Goethe's polymathism, the writer on Rilke on his blend of religious and secular vocation,  that on Yeats on his dynamism of symbols, the writer on Abraham Lincoln on how he became a folk hero like Brer Rabbit, the equivalent of the tortoise in African folktales, articles written by some of the most prominent scholars in their fields, their names listed after each essay, their institutional affiliations stated, Freud on psychoanalysis, the field he created etc.

The stylistic power of the print Britannica is amazing. I consult my volumes of the 2004 Britannica  and the 1971 ed but the  days of the print encyclopedia are going or gone. In this new  world, also peopled by such juggernauts as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Wikipedia is supreme in terms of scope and currency, in relation to accuracy and analytical power. 

Thanks

toyin

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/3769c892-3091-4435-938a-9d080a5db0d9n%40googlegroups.com.

[Moses Ochonu]

Previously Unseen Bombshell ASUU Report on Pantami’s Fraudfessorship

By Farooq Kperogi

Someone shared with me this February 12, 2022, report of the ASUU committee that investigated Pantami’s professorial fraud.  In case, you’re not able to read everything, here are 17 highlights of the report.

1. The ASUU FUTO committee set up by FUTO to exonerate Pantami of professorial fraud was carefully handpicked without the input of the ASUU FUTO congress. One member who had a moral conscience declined his nomination to serve on the committee. 

2. Three deputy vice chancellors intimidated ASUU FUTO congress by their presence at a meeting where Pantami’s issue was discussed, ensuring that they issued that absolute disgrace that deodorized his professorial fraud.

3. ASUU FUTO members were against the Pantamized professorial fraud but were scared of speaking out for fear of victimization. Only two young academics spoke out publicly against it.

4. After accepting his fraudulent professorial appointment and claiming that he would resume duties at FUTO on March 31, 2021, he has never set foot on FUTO and “never came for documentation.” So, technically, he isn’t a FUTO employee. Also note that he "accepted" his "appointment" months before it was offered.

5. Pantami has no office in the Department of Cyber Security, and the HOD has never seen him.

6. Contrary to FUTO’s tradition where a committee of deans examines professorial appointments, only one Professor G.A. Chukwudebe examined Pantami’s application. But Chukwudebe is NOT a professor of cyber security; he is a professor of electrical engineering!

7. Pantami was “promoted” (yes, PROMOTED) from Reader to Professor even though he was never a Reader anywhere in the world. He was Lecturer I at ATBU and an early career Assistant Professor (equivalent to Lecturer I) at the Islamic University of Madinah.

8. His “promotion” is “contrary to the decision of Council as communicated to Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim which indicated that he was appointed and not promoted.”

9. He was assigned a PhD student to co-supervise in September, months after he became a “professor,” although FUTO requires PhD supervision prior to appointment or promotion to professorship. 

10. Pantami has not met the minimum requirements of the job ad to which he applied since he doesn’t have up to 12 years of post-PhD experience.

11. Pantami’s articles were never subjected to a plagiarism check, which has been a requirement for promotion to professorship at FUTO since 2018.

12. There’s no evidence that Pantami is an expert in cybersecurity (his PhD is in management from a business school), and he has hidden his CV from public access, indicating that “something is being covered up.”

13. As a tenured staff of FUTO who is not on an official leave of absence or on a sabbatical leave, Pantami does not attend mandatory meetings such as senate meetings, faculty board meetings, academic board meetings, etc.

14. Although Pantami claimed he would teach FUTO students virtually, he has never done so, and FUTO doesn’t even have the facilities for virtual teaching. 

15. Pantami’s name does not, in fact, appear on the schedule of courses to be taught at FUTO, showing clearly that he only wants the title but not the job of a professor.

16. Promotion and appointment to the rank of professor typically takes a long time at FUTO (and many qualified FUTO employees are still waiting in line) but Pantami’s was concluded in just three months!

17. ASUU members who participated in Pantami's professorial fraud should be suspended from the union for a year, and the VC, Nnenna Oti, should be suspended from the union indefinitely.

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 21, 2022, at 5:45 AM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/usaafricadialogue/CAGBtzfOjpJKKEO-jSSq-61c6jDhN%3DhEzqPjkx8NEo%2BfZS2y7Ug%40mail.gmail.com.

[Owojecho Omoha]

Home makes a big difference, even if we stay as fugitives.

So little so much, for Nigerians who think they have escaped being further hurt by those who caused their escape, and refuse to acknowledge the raging war against bad leadership being fought by ASUU in Nigeria.

Owojecho OMOHA

Department of English,

University of Abuja,

Nigeria.