Senator Adeyeye responds to ASUU

[Ikhide]

"First, the National Assembly of Nigeria should henceforth appropriate at least 26% of Nigeria’s current revenue to education alone. Second, Government in Nigeria, especially the Federal Ministry of Education, has been denigrated into a beast of burden. The metastasis of asphyxiating bureaucracy demands the streamlining of the endless parastatals that drain resources while making little or no contribution to national well-being and progress. Third, to raise revenue for funding a national redemption program in education, all imports should attract a mandatory education tax of one percent. Fourth, beginning from January 1, 2014 till December 31, 2018, all workers in Nigeria must contribute 5% of their income as education taxes. Embezzling any amount of these revenues targeted for education should be taken as an act of treason. This should attract the most severe penalty such as impeachment, imprisonment and perhaps death penalty. Fifth, the costs for running the offices of all elected and appointed political office holders should immediately be pruned by 50%. Something tells me that the implacable demands by ASUU are fueled by resentment at the cult of obscene privileges which Nigerian politicians have become. But our task is to curb needless privileges rather than add to them."

- Senator Sola Adeyeye

 http://xokigbo.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/senator-sola-adeyeye-responds-to-asuu/

 

- Ikhide

 

Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Okay o, di show don start o. I'm happy that our progressive friend, Senator Sola Adeyeye has waded into this matter with commonsensical, constructive suggestions and reasoned critiques of the ASUU position.

I know Professor Adeyeye personally, and he cannot be branded an establishment person or a hater of ASUU. He is calling it as he sees it. He is saying what some of us without loyalty to ASUU have been saying---that some of the demands and expectations of ASUU are simply unreasonable, even outrageous when juxtaposed with academic cultures all over the world. Sometimes I wonder what some of these demands and expectations are modelled on. I know we like to copy things from other climes and cite academic conventions from the West as gold standards of compensation, but most of the remunerative demands and innovations that ASUU has pushed and continues to push are alien to American, British, Canadian, and other Western academic systems.

I agree with Senator Adeyeye "that the implacable demands by ASUU are fueled by resentment at the cult of obscene privileges which Nigerian politicians have become." However, this comparison is misleading and misguided, for as Senator Adeyeye stated, "our task [as academics] is to curb needless privileges rather than add to them"

 I hope that Dr. Ajiboye will take Senator Adeyeye up on his challenge to debate the ASUU-FG problem on prime time Television. It would go a long way to enlighten the public and cut through the all the sophistry.

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There is enough in the world for everyone's need but not for everyone's greed.


---Mohandas Gandhi

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

“He (Senator Adeyeye) is saying what some of us without loyalty to ASUU have been saying---that some of the demands and expectations of ASUU are simply unreasonable, even outrageous when juxtaposed with academic cultures all over the world… Sometimes I wonder what some of these demands and expectations are modeled on.  ”

 

Mo

 

It is heartening to know that the Senator has something to say about the “ demands and expectations” of a tiny, tiny, select, leechy minority of Nigerians- legislators and other public officials whose demands and expectations are equally “outrageous ( or even worse) when juxtaposed with public service cultures all over the world “ and are met without fail?  Many Nigerians and I sometimes wonder what some of those demands and expectations all of which are regularly met out of government budgets, regardless of budgetary constraints and stresses are modeled on.

 

oa

 

oa    

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com [mailto:usaafric...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Moses Ebe Ochonu
Sent: Monday, October 28, 2013 11:49 AM
To: USAAfricaDialogue
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Senator Adeyeye responds to ASUU

 

Okay o, di show don start o. I'm happy that our progressive friend, Senator Sola Adeyeye has waded into this matter with commonsensical, constructive suggestions and reasoned critiques of the ASUU position.

 

I know Professor Adeyeye personally, and he cannot be branded an establishment person or a hater of ASUU. He is calling it as he sees it. He is saying what some of us without loyalty to ASUU have been saying---that some of the demands and expectations of ASUU are simply unreasonable, even outrageous when juxtaposed with academic cultures all over the world. Sometimes I wonder what some of these demands and expectations are modelled on. I know we like to copy things from other climes and cite academic conventions from the West as gold standards of compensation, but most of the remunerative demands and innovations that ASUU has pushed and continues to push are alien to American, British, Canadian, and other Western academic systems.

 

I agree with Senator Adeyeye "that the implacable demands by ASUU are fueled by resentment at the cult of obscene privileges which Nigerian politicians have become." However, this comparison is misleading and misguided, for as Senator Adeyeye stated, "our task [as academics] is to curb needless privileges rather than add to them"

 

 I hope that Dr. Ajiboye will take Senator Adeyeye up on his challenge to debate the ASUU-FG problem on prime time Television. It would go a long way to enlighten the public and cut through the all the sophistry.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Yes, yes, and yes, to all that you wrote above. But you seem to have completely missed the overarching point that Adeyeye was making, which is distilled in a single sentence, which I am reproducing here: "our task [as academics] is to curb needless privileges rather than add to them."

And that is the point, that academics should not be comparing themselves with politicians, or their pay and benefits to politicians.' In the US, academics never reference politicians' remuneration in discussing their needs or greivances. During the economic meltdown, state legislators were cutting and slashing allocation to state universities. Did they cut their own pay and perks? No. In fact many state legislators increased their perks in the midst of the recession, causing public outrage. Yet in lamenting the cuts to public universities' budgets by states, I never once heard or read academics reference the salaries or perks of those responsible for the cuts--state legislators. That's because they knew that it would be a losing argument, a form of self-indictment when you begin to draw comparisons between your needs and what is recognized all over the world as politicians' penchant for awarding themselves outrageous benefits while denying same to regular citizens. Nigeria may be an egregious instance of this, but it is global phenomenon.

Academics and their expectations and tastes are not supposed to mirror those of politicians. If your value system mirrors that of politicians, you should never have entered academia to begin with. Which is precisely the problem in Nigerian higher education: the system is filled with many folks who don't belong there, who don't subscribe to the humanistic values of academia, who are motivated solely by pecuniary impulses, and who, as a result, frame their demands and priorities using baselines established by profligate politicians and their fiscal conducts.

Senator Adeyeye, to his credit, has been a lone voice in the national assembly, beginning from his days in the House of Rep, calling for a radically downward review of salaries, allowances, and benefits for legislators and office holders. When he won the senatorial election two years ago, he publicly declared in a Saharareporters interview that, given his well known objection to the outrageous salaries and perks of legislators, he would take from his senate salary what he would have been earning as a Professor in the US and donate what is left to his community/constituent in the form of projects and charity. He is the only federal legislator to my knowledge who has made such a public declaration. 

He has again declared that advocacy of pay cut for legislators and political officers in the write-up under discussion. Quite courageous if you ask me. He cannot be called a hypocrite on this matter. And he cannot be portrayed as a typical politician, as intolerant ASUU officials are trying to do, because he is not a typical politician. He is a heterodox political figure bucking and upending the trend. If anything, he is being very modest as some of us know the fight that he and people like Hon. Uche Onyegocha fought against corruption in the House of Rep between 1999 and 2003. How many of us will be able to maintain our moral and ethical commitments in the orbit of a corrupt, rotten institution like the Nigerian senate? I particularly like the fact that senator Adeyeye is not behaving in a politically opportunistic manner in regard to the strike, especially as an opposition who could have easily slammed the FG's handling of the crisis and aligned himself opportunistically with ASUU as many opposition figures have already done to score political points. This, to me, shows courage and conviction. 

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

Has the Senator ceased to be an academic? He calls himself professor does he not? He should start by exemplifying his righteousness with the corrupt elite group that he apparently is part of should he not? When and how often have you heard or read that he preached/preaches to his colleagues and other leeches in government on their profligate practice of public governance and betrayal of trust? Why has he chosen to start with ASUU?  “They” traditionally pick soft targets/victims  do they not? Thank goodness ASUU is not a too-soft one. The Igbo say that true beauty starts from the inside. Righteousness should too.

Who is to say that the National Assembly does not have a higher annual budgetary allocation than Nigeria’s tertiary  education sector does, if all the Assembly’s members’ cryptic financial steals are properly booked and reported? Why does the National Assembly not insist that all in government keep all transactions’ books properly and sanction violators? The Senator knows that that government cannot afford to keep an agreement it entered freely with ASUU, signed without duress, and announced to the Nigerian public. He does not seem to know however, that Nigeria cannot afford the cost and nature of government that he has been proudly part of. Is this ignorance of his one of convenient choice? We know of course that awareness and knowledge can be conveniently a’la carte for perfunctory politicians.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Ogugua,

At this point I have to wonder if you're up to some mischief, since you chose to completely ignore everything I wrote and and go on a tedious tangent. You can't even take yes for an answer, as though you're simply hungry for a debate. You're are largely debating with yourself now since I began my post by saying I agree with you on everything you said about the government's failings, waste, corruption, etc. The Senantor clearly does too, going by his write-up. I don't waste my intellectual energies on the government. The government has enough critics, and there is no critique of the Nigerian government that is new or breaks new ground. One gets jaded after a while. But I digress.

You are completely wrong when you insinuate that Senator Adeyeye has not criticized the NAtional Assembly's excesses and outrageous compensation culture. Just plain wrong. For goodness sake, even his rejoinder to the ASUU fellow is dripping with radical, courageous criticism of the waste and corruption that plagues the government and the national assembly. To boot, it recommends very radical measures for curbing the compensation of National Assembly members and public office holders. Did you even bother to read his piece, or my piece before putting finger on keyboard? You're making the same mistake as Dr. Ajiboye, the ASUU official who attacked Adeyeye for using public funds and his national assembly jumbo pay to send his children abroad for education without first doing a basic background check, which would have revealed to him that Adeyeye left Nigeria in 1980 with his family, twenty years before he entered politics and that his children would have advanced in their various educational and professional pursuits by the time he entered politics in 1999. 

In your case, you categorically stated that 1) Senator picked on ASUU first or that "he has chosen to start with ASUU"; and 2) that he has not criticized the corruption and profligacy in public governance and among his colleagues in the national assembly. Both claims are categorical falsehoods. The first claim is easy to demolish since Senator Adeyeye has been at the forefront of the struggle for probity in the National Assembly since 1999, proving that ASUU is not his first target. Before now, I don't even remember him ever criticizing the union, at least not publicly. Conversely, he criticized his colleagues on the floor of the House several times for their excessive pay and perks, and for the Ghana-Must-Go culture of corruption that routinely plagued the House between 1999 and 2007. There are press clippings to testify to this if you care to go into the archive. Along with Hon. Uche Onyeagocha and one or two other progressive members of the House whose names I cannot recall, he protested loudly against the House leadership and his colleagues when the first Fourth Republic legislative scandal broke over furniture allowances. They were the so-called "trouble maker" caucus in the House, the spoilers detested by their colleagues for foiling and protesting against malfeasance and corrupt deals in the House. Adeyeye was not only a thorn in the flesh of his colleagues, he constantly railed on the floor of the House and in media interviews about waste, excessive compensation packages, and corruption in public governance. Yes, he and Comrade Uche Onyeagocha were outnumbered by their greedy colleagues and were never able to effect the radical anti-corruption and accountability reforms they envisioned for the House, but they at least never stopped protesting their colleagues excesses. Not only that, I remember that tiny caucus declining to participate in foreign travels, allowances, and perks they deemed questionable and excessive. They didn't just talk the talk, they walked it too. For me that's courage.

When the Third Term bribery scandal broke, most legislators were coy on the details and nature of the bribe loot. Not Adeyeye. He was one of a few who took to television and the airwaves to reveal the details of the bribing and how he turned down the money, all this at a time when OBJ and his folks were denying any bribery related to Third Term. When Nuhu Ribadu, Obasanjo's hatchet anti-corruption man publicly denied that huge bribes had been offered to legislators to induce their acquiescence to the Third Term gambit, it was Professor Adeyeye who publicly debunked Ribadu's claim and challenged the latter to a public televised debate on the subject. Ribadu never took him up on the offer.

Senator Adeyeye may not have been as vocal in the senate as he was in his two terms in the House, but to his credit he has not partaken in the outrageous perks either. Which is precisely why he has the moral and ethical standing and courage to criticize that culture in his write-up and to call for radical cuts to the pay of public officials and legislators, himself included. 

The man has earned his stripes and along with them the right to criticize an increasingly disruptive and misguided body like ASUU. It is easy and cheap to stay on the outside and take pot shots at politicians, bureaucrats, legislators and others inside the system. We all do it because it is easy, comes with no cost, and is no act of courage. What is not easy and denotes courage is to be an insider and be able to muster the gumption to criticize the system and one's colleagues. That's what Senator Adeyeye has CONSISTENTLY done since entering public life. I am pretty sure he has his failings like the rest of us but I know of no other Nigerian politician who is capable of playing this courageous role of an insider critic, a role which comes with costs that are both pecuniary and relational. And I know of no other politician in the Fourth Republic who has rejected excess salaries and perks and/or has donated the excess portion of their jumbo pay to charity and constituent projects as the Senator is doing. In Nigeria we prefer blanket labels that do not isolate cases that buck the narrative. And, of course, we see critics as enemies. That is one of ASUU's many foibles. They won't even take some responsibility for the obviously poor state of teaching in our universities, a reality that continues to doom the future of most of our university-going youths.

So far during this FG-ASUU wahala, ASUU and its members have blamed the following for the poor state of instruction in our universities and for the production of poor graduates: 1) Funding, 2) the NUC giving out fake or undeserved accreditations, 3) students who are distracted by ipads and ipods!!! No soul searching on the part of ASUU and its members, no taking of responsibility, absolutely no self-critique, and no self-critical conversations about improving the standards of instruction that would demand more from ASUU members.

Criticizing the government is the easiest thing a Nigerian can do. Criticizing a union like ASUU takes courage and conviction. I commend Adeyeye for the courage. He is criticizing both sides, apportioning blames and folly on both sides. He has not spared his colleagues or the system in which he operates. That, along with the fact that he is in solidarity with ASUU on the funding issue, should blunt any attempt to portray him as an ASUU-hating politician.

And to close, I am forced to ask what you'd do differently if you were in Adeyeye's position, resign from the senate--or stay away entirely from politics? Would that not amount to abandoning the prison to the prisoners? Is it inherently wrong to go into politics, to be a politician? Is public service a domain that academics should not venture into? I read your post and I can't quite understand what you expect of Senator Adeyeye. If you don't agree with his criticism of ASUU, fine. But you have failed to demonstrate what it is that you think he is doing wrong. 

The FG-ASUU agreement that you speak of has been litigated extensively on this forum and found not to be a cut and dried document that you and a few other folks portray it as. In fact because it started life as an ambiguous set of general principles, it has been the subject of review and renegotiation before--in 2012, a process that resulted in the oft-cited MOU. I lived in Michigan and I now live in Tennessee, states with a strong auto workers union,  and I know that the auto workers union routinely renegotiate signed contracts with the auto companies, with the former often giving concessions to the auto companies in the overall interest of the industry's survival and in the full knowledge that certain demands and aspects of signed contracts are either unimplementable or are too vague to be considered binding. In that spirit, Adeyeye is not saying that the government should repudiate agreements with ASUU; he is saying that in implementing these agreements, which are vague and open to multiple interpretations, each side should give some ground and that ASUU in fact should rethink some of its more unreasonable demands. What is wrong with this? After all, are the two sides not mostly haggling over how, when, and at what pace to implement the general principles already agreed upon?

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

For some friends and supporters, Adeyeye can do no wrong. He cannot be a subject of legitimate commentary and other discourse even though it is his choice to be a Senator. He is now a career legislator.  I do not know the man.  I would not change anything though if I did.  I still  do not understand  that he finds the company that he is in, one he should be part of if he is the man that some people say that he is. Whether or not he was always duly elected to the high office of legislator is a conversation for another time. Everyone  knows about selections for elections in Nigeria.

MO may have read my post but may not have fully understood it. I question Adeyeye’s posturing on the ASUU challenge which strikes me as roundly hypocritical. He sits there as a Senator, drawing compensation that he knows he and his colleagues have not earned, and are therefore undeserving of. He has lived and worked overseas. He must be presumed to be not oblivious of the imperatives of and compulsion for efficient budgetary  allocation and utilization of public funds, especially in a developing country.  He knows that the resources expended on him and his colleagues for little or useless work can be better employed in the true service of the Nigerian people. He still finds it in good conscience and taste to  criticize concerned fellow citizens who at a high personal cost to themselves and their families, have undertaken to fight a good, public interest  fight that he is better than most Nigerians, positioned to fight but has meekly fought at best. All he seems to be willing to do is talk sometimes about waste in government. What about some action from him?  Has anyone thought for a moment about what might may continue to happen to higher education funding  in Nigeria, if ASUU had not brought this overdue subject to the front burner again? Adeyeye  and his colleagues would remain seated in Abuja, soaking in and sedated by corruption and waste, plundering Nigeria’s abundant resources on themselves, families, friends, and frivolous causes.

Like Adeyeye, many Nigerians have their children studying outside Nigeria. Unlike him, these Nigerians and I demand that the Nigerian government recognizes that the proper and competitive funding of public education in Nigeria is a higher priority than the undeserved and imprudent compensation of legislators and other public officials, and does what needs to be done.  Adeyeye talks about what he calls resentment driving ASUU members determination to change government’s public education policy. What in the woods is wrong with legitimate resentment?  Resentment is sometimes justified. If Adeyeye is right, ASUU members’ resentment is better than warranted. Enough of holier-than- thou posturing. Talk is cheap. Action is it. Let progressive change begin.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Thanks, Ogugua.

This Moses  anti-ASUU stance is at times tiresome.

If a nation spends most of its money on running the govt what will be left for development?

Did the CBN gov himself nor declare categorically that most of the country's money goes to running the govt?

When a country at the bottom rungs of the global economy like Nigeria chooses to remunerate its political appointees at much higher levels than is done in the US, the world's most powerful economy, an economy Nigeria is perhaps centuries behind, is critique of such meaningless, anti-development expenditure equivalent  to equating oneself with a politician?

thanks

toyin 

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

OA,

First off, I think it is cowardly of you to be throwing around negative insinuations about Professor Adeyeye and his election to the National Assembly when you know that he is not on this list to defend himself and return the salvo. But hey, he's a public figure so he is fair game. He signed up for this. I'll not take Panadol for Adeyeye's headache, as they say. If he chooses to join this list, I trust his feisty intellectualism will win the day. Nonetheless let me ask what is inherently bad in being a career legislator--if that is what Adeyeye is--after a career in academics? And how does serving two terms in the House and a half term in the senate make one a career legislator? 

Second off, you have yet to prove your charge of hypocrisy on Adeyeye. Perhaps you and I are working from two different definitional standards. How is he hypocritical when he has been a vocal, disruptive critic of waste and corruption in the public institutions in which he has served, has publicly declared many times that the salaries and perks of legislators are outrageous and immoral, has led protests within the House for cuts and probity, has demonstrated these ideals by rejecting many perks associated with his job and by donating anything in excess of what would be a fair salary considering his opportunity cost of leaving a US professorship. Would you do that, OA? What else would you have done that the Senator has not done? He would be a hypocrite if he had sucked up quietly these benefits while criticizing the culture of waste, profligacy, and vulgar compensation in the National Assembly and the culture of entitlement that is the most prominent marker of the modern ASUU. But he has consistently walked the talk.

"He knows that the resources expended on him and his colleagues for little or useless work can be better employed in the true service of the Nigerian people. He still finds it in good conscience and taste to  criticize concerned fellow citizens who at a high personal cost to themselves and their families, have undertaken to fight a good, public interest  fight that he is better than most Nigerians, positioned to fight but has meekly fought at best."

This is a classic case of barking up the wrong tree. Next, you'll be blaming Adeyeye for not solving Boko Haram, election rigging, corruption, inter-communal crisis, oil bunkering, and other challenges facing Nigeria. Are you suggesting that being a Senator robs him of his citizenship right to criticize ASUU or any other body he does not agree with? What can Adeyeye, as a lone Senator, do to single handedly solve the compensation culture of the national assembly? Beyond refusing to personally take what he does not feel he deserves and protesting on the floor and in the media---both of which he has routinely done--what else could he do? Please suggest the actions that Senator Adeyeye should have taken other than what he is doing? Perhaps you have a more radical physical or violent action in mind, or a resignation. Please do tell us. And, again, you lie blatantly when you suggest that Adeyeye "has meekly fought at best" the waste, corruption, and bloated compensation of the national assembly and the other branches of government. No, sir, he has been in the trenches, fighting the system from within, disrupting legislative sessions, screaming, and even joining external protesters. I presume that he has only slowed down because of age--the man is no spring chicken, you know. Adeyeye has earned his stripe, and he has the street cred and the moral pedestal to criticize both ASUU and the FG, which he is doing. More power to him!

 "All he seems to be willing to do is talk sometimes about waste in government. What about some action from him?" 

Repeating the same fallacy over and over will not make it true. Do a little research on Adeyeye in the Fourth Republic and see that, contrary to your statement above, he hasn't simply stopped at the level of talking about waste in government; he has taken action aplenty. You probably would do more if you were in his position but you haven't told us what you'd do differently, so like most of your points this critique, too, is hanging.

 "Has anyone thought for a moment about what might may continue to happen to higher education funding  in Nigeria, if ASUU had not brought this overdue subject to the front burner again? Adeyeye  and his colleagues would remain seated in Abuja, soaking in and sedated by corruption and waste, plundering Nigeria’s abundant resources on themselves, families, friends, and frivolous causes."

Again, other Senators may fit the description here, but not Senator Adeyeye. For goodness sake is it not possible for a person to be in a corrupt institution and not partake in it--to guard one's personal integrity? I hope this is not a case of projection. 

"Like Adeyeye, many Nigerians have their children studying outside Nigeria. Unlike him, these Nigerians and I demand that the Nigerian government recognizes that the proper and competitive funding of public education in Nigeria is a higher priority than the undeserved and imprudent compensation of legislators and other public officials, and does what needs to be done.  Adeyeye talks about what he calls resentment driving ASUU members determination to change government’s public education policy. What in the woods is wrong with legitimate resentment?  Resentment is sometimes justified. If Adeyeye is right, ASUU members’ resentment is better than warranted. Enough of holier-than- thou posturing. Talk is cheap. Action is it. Let progressive change begin."

 "Unlike him"? You seem to be grasping and straining for contrast with Senator Adeyeye because on the issue of funding, he agrees with you completely; heck, he even goes further than you and ASUU in suggesting that the percentage of the national budget dedicated to education be increased beyond the 26 percent recommended by UNESCO. He has even gone ahead to lay out his ideas about how to raise the money to fund this increase. I don't agree with all his proposals, but at least he is putting something on the table as opposed to some people who just talk about funding this and funding that without making any concrete proposals as to how to achieve optimal funding levels. Adeyeye does not dismiss the resentment that is driving ASUU's demands. He recognizes it as legitimate. If he didn't he would not have suggested ways of eliminating that resentment by 1) cutting the salaries and perks of public officers including legislators, and 2) increasing funding many folds to education.

I hate discursive dishonesty. The least you can do in a discussion is to be faithful to what your interlocutor has written or to at least recognize what they've written instead of carrying on on false premises, erecting and knocking off straw men along the way. You keep repeating claims that you wrongly attribute to Adeyeye and you keep drawing contrast between you and ASUU on the one hand and Adeyeye on the other--contrasts that DO NOT EXIST.

 For goodness sake the man is no angel (none of us is), but give him credit for 1) leaving the US academy and getting into the filthy firmament of Nigerian politics, and 2) rejecting or donating the obscene compensation of the institution in which he is serving, and 3) criticizing, protesting, and exposing the corruption and shady businesses of his colleagues when he sees them.

Being a Senator does not mean ceasing to be a concerned citizen who is free to criticize the shenanigans of a union that many reasonable people, including a few former ASUU officials, now say has become part of the problem of higher education in Nigeria.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Toyin,

Uncritical loyalty to ASUU, your employer, or to anything/anyone is a disease. You seem strangely beholden to ASUU even though you're no longer an ASUU official. For reasons best known to you and your maker, you prefer fighting ASUU's cause to fighting for our long-suffering Nigerian students. Hence, for you ASUU can do no wrong, and it's all the fault of the bad evil government.

A few quick notes:

"When a country at the bottom rungs of the global economy like Nigeria chooses to remunerate its political appointees at much higher levels than is done in the US, the world's most powerful economy, an economy Nigeria is perhaps centuries behind, is critique of such meaningless, anti-development expenditure equivalent  to equating oneself with a politician?"

Well, you can critique the government's wastefulness and the world-record compensation of public office holders and legislators from sun up to sun down. I will agree with that critique a thousand percent. Millions of Nigerians are doing exactly that on a daily basis. The compensation package of public servants is a source of permanent outrage among the citizenry, which is why you rarely can open a newspaper these days without encountering stories or Oped-Eds criticizing the waste, corruption, and bloated perks of public officials. ASUU members are citizens too, so obviously they should feel and express this outrage and articulate it as compelling critiques of this culture of waste.

However, and this is a big "however," when you advance that critique in the context of your demands, when ASUU uses that critique to anchor its demands and to justify its expectations and culture of entitlement, it is self-defeating and self-indicting. It advertises the moral and ethical compass of ASUU to the public, portraying its members as no different from the politicians whose compensation they are criticizing. Academics are supposed to reject, critique, and proffer ways to curb excessive financial burdens on the state, not seek to pile on. This is where I agree with Senator Adeyeye. How is it a productive argument when you're basically saying that you want what the politicians have or a certain percentage of what the politicians have, using the politicians' outrageous compensation as a baseline for your own demands. Why are you starting from a compensatory reference point that is universally condemned as vulgar and excessive? 

This is precisely why smart academics elsewhere never reference politicians' compensations and perks when lamenting their own. They may critique these compensations in their classrooms, in private, and in their capacity as concerned citizens, but when it comes to articulating their grievances and expectations, the politician's pay and perk cannot underpin a winning argument.

On my anti-ASUU stance, please bear with me. There is a method to my critique. I am an interested stakeholder, as I have said many times. I have nieces and nephews in the system and I support them financially. So, I am interested in what they are getting or not getting out of the system. Which is why the issue of poor instruction and poor pedagogical outcomes is dear to me. One expects the issue of good teaching to be at the top of ASUU's menu of concerns, but it is not. It is not even on the menu. ASUU will not subject its members to any quality control and standards-improving mechanisms. Instead, ASUU's culture of denial and failure to take partial responsibility for the rot in the system conditions it to default to blaming external actors and factors.

Further, I have said that I am also a victim of ASUU's problem of poor instruction and strike-giddiness. When I saw your bewilderment at my claim to have been victimized my poor instruction, I shook my head and realized that I needed to do an elaborate response explaining my point. However I never got around to it and that strand of the discussion was overtaken by events. 

First, my university education was slowed down by two lengthy strikes. It was not pleasant sitting at home idling away, not knowing when school would resume. I would not wish such a fate on anyone.

Second, and more important, it does not give me joy to say this but I had MANY lecturers who did not take teaching seriously, who at best saw it as a necessary nuisance. As a result, my university experience was largely underwhelming, even disappointing. To make up for the dearth and poor quality of teaching, the nature of which I have already described in previous posts, including the case of lecturers who quite frankly needed to take college classes themselves and needed remedial English classes to boot, I read a lot on my own. It is easy to look at me and say "how could he have been a victim of the culture of poor instruction in Nigerian universities--he turned out great." So, without going into too much detail that may be seen as disrespect to some of my past lecturers or as arrogance on my part, let me make two general points:

1. I succeeded in the university IN SPITE of MOST of my lecturers and their failure or inability to teach. Many of them did not want to be teachers--we could tell.

2. I also succeeded because of the dedication and commitment of VERY FEW (emphasis on very few because they were a tiny minority of the lecturers that taught me in the university) lecturers, who were passionate about their jobs, showed up consistently in class, taught well and didn't simply dictate outdated notes, mentored, gave you audience, pointed you to sources, marked your scripts and sometimes gave you helpful comments, did not create hassles for you by losing your scripts, and certainly did not sexually harass your female classmates.

So it is not a mystery that I succeeded, or that in the midst of the rot a few good students have emerged and are still emerging and going on to succeed in various professions at home and abroad. There are other variables that help explain this phenomenon of exceptions, which statisticians may be better equipped to speak to, but even in the US where I live one often comes across stories of brilliant, talented and motivated kids emerging from the worst, neglected public schools. It's not a mystery.

Exceptions do happen, but one should be careful not to use them as representatives of the entire system. The truth is that the majority of our university graduates are coming out with poor aptitudes and poor language, analytical, and subject skills. And to blame it all on funding and the FG's well known culture of neglect, corruption, incompetence, and indifference is deceptive. ASUU needs to take some responsibility and stop blaming primary and secondary school teachers, funding levels, NUC fake accreditations, and students' fondness for ipads and ipods--anything but ASUU members themselves.

If some folks want to blame only the FG and its failings, good luck to them. As for me, I insist on holding both the FG and ASUU accountable and responsible for what is happening to our youth.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

CORRECTED

When are these people from abroad who know so much about what must be done in Nigerian institutions going to go to Nigeria to lecture in Nigerian public universities and work in other Nigerian institutions?

Please, please, please, we need heroes in the front line.

Nigeria has many theorists, many intelligent people.

We need leaders.

Leadership by example.

They dont have to be in govt.

We have the examples of Soyinka, Fela and Beko Ransome -Kuti , Gani Fawehinmi etc

Is it not possible to go on leave from those wonderful places like the US and do some work in Nigeria, in a Nigerian university, among the struggling masses, not in fat cat govt jobs, giving a good example?

I have interacted online with some Nigerian social critics whose discourse drips with contempt for Nigeria and these people dont impress me in terms of leadership by example.

Even in  the little online kingdoms they manage they are no better than what they rail against in the name of being social critics of the mother country.

Please help us through active service in Nigeria. 

Theoretical postulations are valuable but we need more than that.

We need active leadership.

We need heroes.

thanks

toyin 

On Wed, Oct 30, 2013 at 9:00 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <tovad...@gmail.com> wrote:

When are these people from abroad who know so much about what must be done in Nigerian institutions going to go to Nigeria to lecture in Nigerian public universities and work in other Nigerian institutions?

Please, please, please, we need heroes in the front line.

Nigeria has many theorists, many intelligent people.

We need leaders.

Leadership by example.

They dont have to be in govt.

We have the examples of Soyinka, Fela and Beko Ransome -Kuti , Gani Fawehinmi etc

Is it not possible to go in leave from those wonderful places like the US and so some work in Nigeria, in a Nigerian university, among the struggling masses, not in fat cat govt jobs, giving a good example?

I have interacted online with some Nigerian social critics whose discourse drips with contempt for Nigeria and these people dont impress me at all.

Even in  the little online kingdoms they manage they are no better than what they rail against in the name of being social critics of the mother country.

Please help us through active service in Nigeria. 

The theoretical postulations are valuable but we need more than that.

We need active leadership.

We need heroes.

thanks

toyin 

[Anunoby, Ogugua]

MO

 

You seem to me to be well practiced in the art of calling people names when you disagree with them. I am not. You must be one of a tiny few who would remotely adjudge that it is cowardly of me to take the strident public position that I have, against Adeyeye’s public statements on the ASUU challenge. The claims you make about Adeyeye have so far not persuaded me to change my mind about the rectitude of the man’s position on the ASUU challenge. You speak for the man without any authority as far as I know. I appreciate that choice is yours to make. You have continued to make claims about the man based on newspaper reports and other unverifiable sources of questionable legitimacy. You expected one and all to accept your claims as factual truths because you peddle them. You seem to know the man better than the man knows himself.  I have no problem with that.

Yes, Obasanjo did fight corruption as president of Nigeria. He campaigned against it. He proclaimed against it. Is there however, incontrovertible evidence that he was not corrupt as president? How many Nigerians  believe that he was not corrupt as president? Do you believe I dare to ask you that the man was not corrupt, and in some cases more corrupt than some, he caused to be hounded by government security agents and criminally prosecuted in court?  Do you believe that he has ceased to advance or benefit from corrupt practices now that he is out of office, I dare to ask you? The man was and remains one of the more vociferous public critics of corruption in Nigeria. Hypocrisy is real in Nigeria’s politics. Is Adeyeye’s position on the ASUU challenge hypocritical to me? I believe that it is. What is your problem with that? Is it no longer my choice to believe as I choose to after evaluation of the verifiable information available to me?

I choose to participate in public conversations very carefully. When I do, I take my participation seriously. I listen to all arguments. I do not change my mind because of brief or lengthy forum postings. I do not change my mind because I am called names. I do not change my mind because a forum bully is out and about. I change my mind because I am persuade by verifiable and factual arguments made civilly. I also know when participation in a conversation is a wasteful employment of conversers’ time and my mind.

You seem to me to be mostly interested in bullying people you disagree with regardless of the available facts. You drive to win even when it is not important to. Why else would you call people you disagree with names? Many people know that a position taken in fury is seldom informed by reason. They know that a case is not more persuasive because it is emotion and passion laden. My hope is that Adeyeye gets to be aware of my position on the public statements credited to him on the ASUU challenge. If he does, he might try to truly understand the reasons for my disagreement with him and then alter or maintain his position as he deems justifiable necessary. Let me make your day today. You have won. Let there be peace. Thank you.

 

oa

[Chika Onyeani]

Chika Onyeani in red dress dancing with the Baka Pygmies

Kribi, Oct. 14 – It is not everyday that you get to boast about dancing with the Baka pygmies of the Cameroon, but I did. 

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[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

This looks to me like fiction-

'However, and this is a big "however," when you advance that critique in the context of your demands, when ASUU uses that critique to anchor its demands and to justify its expectations and culture of entitlement, it is self-defeating and self-indicting. It advertises the moral and ethical compass of ASUU to the public, portraying its members as no different from the politicians whose compensation they are criticizing. Academics are supposed to reject, critique, and proffer ways to curb excessive financial burdens on the state, not seek to pile on. This is where I agree with Senator Adeyeye. How is it a productive argument when you're basically saying that you want what the politicians have or a certain percentage of what the politicians have, using the politicians' outrageous compensation as a baseline for your own demands. Why are you starting from a compensatory reference point that is universally condemned as vulgar and excessive?'

Has ASUU ever stated what I highlighted above in Moses claim?

I am curious about this-

'The truth is that the majority of our university graduates are coming out with poor aptitudes and poor language, analytical, and subject skills'

Is this really true?

On one side is Moses, who describes most of his teachers as bad teachers and argues that good outcomes from Nigerian university education-from what year or decade, please?- are 'Exceptions...but one should be careful not to use them as representatives of the entire system.'

On the other side is myself who describes my education in terms of what Moses characterises as  a first class education with stellar teachers. 

Why are Ikhide and Moses seeing these bad students, representative of the majority of Nigerian university graduates,  and I cant see them?

My own former students, obtaining their PhD from Oxford, another doing a PhD in another English university, one attending  a most prestigious MIT graduate program, others  working in banking, teaching, academia  and other sectors of the Nigerian economy  do not fit this description. 

The stream of University of Nigeria, Nsukka graduates in the fine arts, from the 60s to the present, from the days of Chike Okeke to Dimprozulike and others more recent who have become a fixture in the global African art scene do not fit this description. 

The youngest generation of Nigerian artists, such as Adeola Olagunju from the Ladoke Akintola University of Science and Technology, do not fit this description.

Striking Nigerian art critic Ekiko Ito Inyang-you could Google his name- does not fit this description. 

Tolu Ogunlesi who graduated  in 2004 from what he describes as a  Citadel of Nothing, University of Ibadan, one of other Citadels  of Nothing as he described Nigerian universities, does not fit that description.

I read Ikhide's  tribe of Facebook readers, one of whom stated, in chorus with Ikhidespeak  social criticism,  that in all her activities today her time in the so called ASUU classrooms contributed  nothing to,though she did not respond to my question of how she gained her skills as a blogger and her skills relation to other activities  she is engaged in- and  the tribe of readers of the see-nothing-good-with-Nigeria critic do not fit that description, some of them being very well expressed.

Chijioke Ngobili whose testimony about UNN after his 2011 graduation I posted here  does not fit that mold.

I belong to a good number  Nigerian listserves, have many Nigerian Facebook friends, belong to various Nigerian Facebook groups and read various Nigerian Facebook pages,  read Nigerians' comments  on various platforms such as Sahara Reporters and Naira Land,  and I cant  find these people, this majority of Nigerian graduates who  are coming out with 'poor aptitudes and poor language, analytical, and subject skills'

How does one find these people?

thanks

toyin 

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Moses,

I wrote this before reading your post.

I still like the piece for its rhetorical punch-nothing wrong in praising oneself- and will respond to the rest of your post in a follow up. 

It is true that uncritical loyalty is wrong.

It is also true that a determination to feast on and magnify anything negative is also wrong.

It is the latter attitude I  observe in you in relation to ASUU.

I could take the time to analyse your contributions to this debate to demonstrate why it best described in this way.

I wont do that because I am not convinced I need to give that kind of time to addressing what I think most people here can see for themselves.

The facts are known to everyone.

What is in contention is the interpretation of the facts.

The 'ASUU are thugs,thieves, rapists of the nation, and Nigerian academics largely louts school'  to which Ikhide and yourself belong is clearly an extremist school.

The school of 'ASUU and Nigerian academics are purely victims of circumstance, good people shortchanged by a bad system ' is another partly extremist school. 

I think the debates so far demonstrate this.

My major concern here is to state that much about social existence and even individual life is resolved more through action than thought.

Thought and action on their own can take you only so far.

Moses, when are you going to become a practical activist in the reform of Nigerian higher education?

When will you go on leave from the US where realities are so different, in a prosperous society with foundations in nation wide land theft and dispossession and ethnic near erasure of an indigenous population and centuries of free labour in the form of African slavery , followed by decades of feeding off the disempowerment of the now freed slaves through Jim Crow laws, and come down to our country still struggling for direction after being cobbled together for their own ends by imperialists  and contribute to building the place with the wonderful knowledge, analytical skills and  moral discipline you have developed  in your decade in the land of the civilised universe where you yet, God forbid though!,  could find yourself  in a Harvard Higginbottam University Professor ( one of a few of a kind among many professors) Skip Gates situation,   handcuffed  for being unruly as you demand that a policeman  show you his ID as he demands you prove you belong   in your expensive house.

Of course, that would never happen to you in Nigeria.

Being a Nigerian big man, not to talk of at the Skip Gates level, certain indignities will not come your way. 

You could be in danger of being kidnapped for a ransom, though, precisely because you are a big man.

The kidnappers could be nice to you, explaining the necessity of thus urging you and yours to contribute to their own well being on account of conditions in the land, as they insist they respect you, as veteran actor Pete Edochie of unimpeachable   gravitas  reported happened to him when he was kidnapped. 

I will not mention the other possible, although seemingly unlikely, and much less salubrious-sweet word- outcome of such a scenario since it wont help the rhetoric being built up here.

But your bigmanism is recognised, unlike the sad/tragic non-recognition in the Skip Gates case. 

Come down and help us.

We need help.

thanks

toyin 

On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 3:05 AM, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Adediran Bepo]

It is either many of the respondents to the FG-ASUU impasse on this Forum, especially those in the diaspora are interested in the debate or are simply feigning iognorance of certain realities as contained in both the Agreement (2009) and the MoU (2012). Sen. Adeyeye is no longer the issue here. If he is interested in a third, fourth or fifth term agenda, let him have it and not use this Forum as a launching pad for his re-election campaign. 2015 is just round the corner!

Some of us who live in Nigeria, not in Michigan or wherever and are in the eyes of the storm as ti were, know where the shoes pinches. How can someone compare the auto industry with the education sector, for crying out loud! Can't you guys just get it? Are we manufacturing cars in the universities here?

If the interpretation of the ambiguous clauses is the bone of contention, let the FG go to court, not ASUU. If it takes the volume of discourse on an issue to resolve an impasse, this strike would have been called off before the end of July 2013!

If the gentlemen and ladies on this Forum feel so moved, concerned and patriotic about the outstanding issues, then please send in some dollars, pounds, and euro to Jonathan to solve this problem, once and for all. At least there is a diaspora committee in the NASS and there is diaspora fund repatriation.

End this debate and end this strike. By midnight today, Nigerian time, if this strike is not called off by virtue of your contribution on this Forum, then we need to take on other subject matter germane to the development of Nigeria.

Shalom!

'Diran Ademiju-Bepo, PhD

University of Jos.

 

----

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

OA,

I did not call you names. I called your behavior of continuing to attack the integrity of a man who is not a member of the forum and can therefore not respond or defend himself cowardly. It is indeed cowardly. I call it as I see it. If you don't like it, tough luck. It seems to me that those who are masters of ad hominem are the quickest to scream name calling, especially when their logical flaws are exposed. The reason this debate even went as far as it did is because you won't even be satisfied with someone agreeing with you; you have to invent contrast and disagreement that don't even exist. When I debate I debate with ferocity and passion because there are serious things at stake in these debates and these positions mean a lot to me. I do not apologize for my style. You don't have to debate me or respond to me if you're going to perceive my turns of phrase as name calling to garner sympathy and change the subject. Your response to my post started this discussion, not the other way around. You simply don't have to engage me. Especially if you think that you'd be engaging a "forum bully" (and you have the nerve to accuse someone of name calling) I won't lose anything.

 Thank you and have a wonderful day.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Toyin,

What is fiction there? Where have you been? Have you been reading the ASUU press releases, speeches, interviews, and even postings on this forum? Have ASUU officials and ASUU members not been referencing the bloated salaries and perks of politicians in making an argument for increased remuneration and funding?

Quite frankly if you truly believe that Nigerian graduates who possess the deficits that I described are in the minority and that the majority of our graduates are sound, then you and I have nothing to discuss because we inhabit different realities and universes. 

There is a facebook posting by the poet Olu Oguibe, which is an excellent retort to this hackneyed, impulsive canard of asking diaspora Nigerians to go home and contribute whenever folks disagree with their positions and prescriptions on Nigerian issues. He does a much better job of the response than I can ever do, so if I can locate the post I'll send it to you or better yet post it here. You're advancing that narrative of return in the same predictably sarcastic and condemnatory way that some home-based folks do. One does not have to be home to make a contribution. Nonetheless, without disclosing personal involvements in particular Nigerian universities, let me say that when I saw Oga Tade Aina's announcement about a new program for bringing us home for short periods of collaboration and other "brain-gain" engagements, I signed up for more information. My friend Pius Adesanmi is currently in Ghana "helping out," to use your term. I hope this service will buy him a lifetime immunity from these tiresome accusation that diasporans are critiquing from a distance and not returning to help or activate change at home.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

"If the gentlemen and ladies on this Forum feel so moved, concerned and patriotic about the outstanding issues, then please send in some dollars, pounds, and euro to Jonathan to solve this problem, once and for all. At least there is a diaspora committee in the NASS and there is diaspora fund repatriation."

Wow! How insightful! Another "bash the diasporan" contribution. So this is what passes for intelligent contribution and prescriptive intervention nowadays. Why am I not surprised? And we wonder why Nigerian university education is in the state that it is in.

[blargeo...@gmail.com]

ASUU,
Must we look to the west for all our solutions. ASUU must look within to proffer new solutions to same old problems, it is time you shifted your paradigm, strike is time worn.
Those who criticize, whether in the diasporia or home based, love this country too and they desire the best for the apology we call our universities and institutions of higher learning.

Bash ASUU, prop ASUU, redemption of our education sector is the name of the game.

Sen. Adeyeye has intervened in his own little way, a sane and lone voice in a congress of baboons.

Thanks.

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

---

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Sender: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 16:46:26 -0500

To: USAAfricaDialogue<usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[shina7...@yahoo.com]

Toyin,
I was just wondering how far your inductive indentification of individual graduates can get you before you realised that you can't even go too far. If we are producing stellar students, why then all the hullabaloo about degenerating higher education standards in Nigeria? Of course there are students who have been diligent to step beyond the limitations of their university education. They need to do that if they must make it in the competitive market where they face others who received better education. Or: do you believe education is only restricted to the university? But what about the millions of unemployed and unemployable youths? Did you factor them into your queries?

Contrary to your angst against Ikhide and Moses, you've been pushing an extremist position which fails to recognise ASUU's complicity in this entire wahala. I am here; you are there (to turn your own argument against you). Any time a strike looms, a table of the emolument of politicians materialises as the locus of agitation. This is what you call fiction. It is fiction to you because you aren't here. And may be not diligent enough to follow the case of ASUU that you lionises so diligently. Hiding behind inductivity won't save you.

I am here. I know.


Adeshina Afolayan

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

---

From: Oluwatoyin Adepoju <tovad...@gmail.com>

Sender: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 12:30:58 +0000

To: cc: USAAfrica Dialogue<usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[orunmi...@yahoo.co.uk]

Moses, if it is cowardly to "attack the integrity of a man who is not on this forum" simply because he is not on this forum, then we have. No business here. We should only talk about and "attack" only those who are on this forum so they could defend themselves.
The last time I checked, a few members of ASUU and NOT ASUU are on this forum. Since ASUU or any of its official spokesperson is not on this forum to defend it, doesn't it follow that we should stop "aattacking the integrity of a union who is not on the forum?

TA

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.

---

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Sender: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 15:36:18 -0500

To: USAAfricaDialogue<usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Okechukwu Ukaga]

"First off, I think it is cowardly of you to be throwing around negative insinuations about Professor Adeyeye and his election to the National Assembly when you know that he is not on this list to defend himself and return the salvo." -Moses Ebe Ochonu

Not at all. 

Professor Adeyeye is a public figure and so fair game as you, Moses, rightly noted in the sentence right after the above. Further, it has never been the norm or practice among contributors on this list to restrict negative comments to only those they know are on this list and in position to return the salvo. Remember some of the comments on this list about public figures such as Mugabe, Achebe, Awolowo, Ojukwu, Gowon, Obasanjo, Zik, Philip Emeagwali, Ibori, Atiku, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Obama, Ted Cruz, Femi Fani-Kayode, Gabriel Oyibo, David Mark, ASUU officials, Boko Hamarm leaders, and Nigerian Aviation Minister Stella Oduah -just to name a few. Even when the (crazy, in my opinion) University of Lagos student claimed that he used science to prove that gay marriage is improper, the student, his department head, and the Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, all got negative feedback from some contributors on this list. 

Those who play in the public arena know not to be surprised or overly disturbed by public scrutiny and/or negative comments.  

-OU

Okechukwu Ukaga, MBA, PhD
Executive Director and Extension Professor,

Northeast Minnesota Sustainable Development Partnership, University of Minnesota, 

114 Chester Park, 31 W. College Street, Duluth, MN 55812

Website: www.rsdp.umn.edu  Phone: 218-341-6029  

Book Review Editor, Environment, Development and Sustainability (www.springer.com/10668),

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." - Richard Buckminster Fuller

[orunmi...@yahoo.co.uk]

OU,
I agree with you that we have a duty to engage anyone on the forum once their actions or statements impact on the larger society. So, Moses' comment about Prof Adeyeye not being on the forum and for that reason he shouldn't be "attacked" holds no water.
For me, the current face-off between FGN-ASUU deserves our collective attention. However, people like Moses have a set mind on the matter and that is not the mark of superior intellectualism that he lays claims to. Is it possible, for instance for ASUU or FGN to be either totally wrong or right in this matter? Of course not. We must be open-minded and make our criticism constructive. As an ASUU member, I definitely may not agree with all the positions of or strategies of the union especially the strike option but, I teach in a public university in Nigeria so, I know how frustrating it is getting employers to do the right things to prevent strikes. What most of our colleagues in "lesser endowed" countries take for granted- good libraries, lecture theatres, laboratories and..., Internet connectivity are luxuries to most of us. Most of us have 3 or 4 modems serviced from our pockets to be able to come a bit closer to our colleagues in the Diaspora.
We need to look closer and more objectively at why ASUU is on strike beyond these diversionary outburst about how ASUU is envious of our lawmakers and others who are bleeding us silly. For me, these monies could be better spent on developmental projects; education, roads, power, health etc. That is the angle from which ASUU is coming from- how can our educational sector be in such a mess while a few people live so extrvagantly?
Yes, ASUU is always quick to strike people like Moses are saying. Agreed. But I tell you, a lot goes on to prevent it. Now, lecturers want to protest peacefully and they are prevented from doing so. Isn't that an invitation to anarchy?
Finally, I believe strogly that the Diaspora has a lot to do to correct the rot at home but it can't be done if it does not objectively assess the situation.

TA

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.

---

From: Okechukwu Ukaga <ukag...@umn.edu>

Sender: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 17:47:20 -0500

To: <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

ASUU is not an individual; it is a corporate body, a trade union, and there are several ASUU members on this forum who are defending ASUU vigorously and even attacking ASUU's critics for good measure. So, the equivalence you're seeking to posit is not tenable. Thanks for trying though.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Okechukwu,

Point taken. Thanks for acknowledging the fact that I followed up my point with a clear recognition that, as a public servant, Adeyeye is fair game. I like people who are sensitive and faithful to the substance and context of my posts.

My point to Ogugua, perhaps clumsily stated, is that insinuating that Adeyeye is an election rigger/thief and a corrupt legislator without a shred of evidence, a clear, cheap attack on the man's personal integrity, is cowardly, especially when the person making these serious insinuations has absolutely no evidence and knows full well that the target is not a forum member and so cannot defend his integrity. I stand by that point. As you acknowledged, I wasn't arguing that it is not fair game to critique Adeyeye. Thanks again.

[Mobolaji Aluko]

My People:

But we are shifting the focus from the real thing to Adeyeye and miscellany:  we must ask the three questions:

1.  Can the FGN pay the N92 billion now and the N1.3 trillion over four years that ASUU is requesting?  I believe that it can, particularly if it tightens its belt in a number of other areas in which there is wastefulness.

2.  Will the FGN pay it?  I say it won't...it has stated that much.

3.  Must the FGN pay it,  OTHERWISE ASUU will not call off the strike? I say ASUU should call off the strike with the N40 billion offered and the N700 billion on the table.

These are the pertinent questions at this time - and my knowledge and sincere beliefs - not all this red monkey business that we are harping on...Adeyeye etcheram, ad nauseum.

And there you have it.

Bolaji Aluko

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

So you guys are still speaking long grammar on this ASUU-Government wahala? At this moment, we are in Port Harcourt enjoying choice dishes and wines at the burial of the first lady's mother, at the government's expense of course.  Tomorrow, we will continue the "choppings" at Okrika. ASUU can go on striking, who cares. Abeg make I join di kill ASUU chorus joo.

CAO.

[orunmi...@yahoo.co.uk]

Moses, trying to do what? This pretence to higher intellect leads no where. Perhaps you need to read my post again; I admitted that there are ASUU members on this list but none of us is the official spokesperson of ASUU's. Thanks for pointing my attention to the obvious fact that ASUU is a corporate body too. You see, I was ignorant of that before this lecture from your intellectual eminence! Perhaps, you should go a little further to tell me the major and minor difference (s) between a corporate body and an individual.
I've read very constructive interventions to this debacle on this forum such as those of Prof Oke Iheduru's that showed very clearly an open mind disposed to pointing the way towards a better future for the education sector just as I've read those with one eyed view of the issues and your is one of them.
I've followed your style of picking a paragraph, sentence or clusters of sentences for analysis without opening your mind to salient issues in the body of the posts. Well, as I've noted, it's a style and you are entitled to it.
I won't be drawn into persuading you to look at issues more objectively, from all indications, you have your mind made up about ASUU and its members. Some of us are on the ground here and we know what efforts are made to give the little that we have to the system even though people like you feel that the quality of graduates being produced by our system is as a result of ASUU's incompetence or that of its members. Your intellectual eminence, the rot that ASUU alone is protesting against is worse in our primary and secondary schools. I was president of Rotary club of Igando-Egan, I have pictures of public schools' classrooms that will shame any nation and her citizens. The teachers stand outside of the classrooms to teach their pupils because of the heat and odour of sweats from pupils who are bundled together like chickens yet the teachers won't protest because they have to earn their daily bread.
I don't know how old you are but you may just consider sending your child to any of these schools and see if your perception will change or not.
As I've said again and again, the Diaspora must objectively investigate the rot in the education sector to see how they can work with those at home to save this endangered sector.
I don't know any scholar worth his/her salt who will love to be outside the classroom or libraries for even a month. If you think those of us here are enjoying this strike, then you're mistaken. Despite this, what has to be done has to be done to correct the situation.
My degrees from B.A to PhD were got in Nigeria and I was a victim of these strikes, too. If I was abusing my lecturers for being on strike then, now I know better. Were the conditions better, perhaps, I would have got more from my teachers at Ife and Ibadan. Now, I want to give my best to my students and the system is frustrating that! Moses, you don't know what is on ground. You really don't.
ASUU is not perfect, its strategies definitely are not, too but its intentions for the future of this country are noble. Whether Nigerians see this or not is a different thing. To roughly quote Mahatma Ghandi in his autobiography, "it is only the reformer who is anxious for change, those whose life he wants to affect positively may not care".
I wish you well.

TA

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.

---

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Sender: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 22:09:04 -0500

[Ibukunolu. A. Babajide]

Dear friends,

This exchange is symbolic. As most African countries fall to the brigandage of those in power a few citizens draw a line in the sand and stand up to fight the brigands.  Majority sit idly by and appease the abusers and demonise the victim.

What have you seen done right in Nigeria in the last 40 years?  Is it the health agriculture or industry not to talk of education?  Everything will collapse around us as government apologists who should know better continue to offer weak and unconscionable on behalf of the thieving fools in government.

We better all smell the coffee and all rise up to send the message to this band of irresponsible thieves who claim to be governing us!

A word is enough for the wise.

IBK

Sent from my Windows Phone

---

From: orunmi...@yahoo.co.uk
Sent: 1/11/2013 3:34 PM
To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com

[Ikhide]

Bolaji,

 

We shall see. Six months now, and other people's children are at home self-medicating themselves in the name of education. There is clearly enough blame to go around. What for instance has this coven of eggheads done to improve upon the mayhem. We were quick to draft a petition against Ted Cruz the other day simply because he made a joke about 419 artists (I signed it gladly) but imagine a well crafted letter signed by as many of us as possible writing to ASUU and the Federal government to resolve this issue, including in the letter well-thought out recommendations for short, intermediate and long-term improvements to our ailing educational system, including STRUCTURAL changes that must happen in order to resuscitate our educational system. Imagine that. We don't care really because we are not affected by this, by which I mean the vast majority of us here have paid for safe havens for our children. Let the children of the poor eat igbekere. Who cares?

 

ASUU is reeling because of the backlash against her, and she is lashing out like an abusive spouse. I believe in data and I can prove ASUU's incompetence and self-serving methods. My first loud piece on their nonsense was in 2009, exactly FOUR years ago. I made specific references to its broken websites (including broken links). Those links are still broken today. I wrote again in 2009. Same indifference. This year, I simply changed the date of my rant and then went at them full bore. They are greedy. Suddenly we have now discovered broken buildings. Go to the archives here; there were people spending months assuring us that our universities are top notch and the Ikhides of our world are VS Naipauls. ASUU has suddenly found her voice and is using language to describe the horror, language that makes Ikhide's sound tinny like Mother Teresa. We all have our share in this responsibility.

 

Again, I say it, it would be IRRESPONSIBLE for the government to simply hand over money without a coherent comprehensive plan of action. Bolaji, as you know, budgets (operating and capital) facilities management and working with unions and other stakeholders is what I do every day for a living. When next you come, I will arrange a tour for you of the new Paint Branch High School, the secondary school your kids attended. It cost us $120 million to build, a secondary school. It will cost us millions to maintain every year. My point? Education is an expensive undertaking. Looting the resources only makes it worse. I ask you, where is the data on the previous FIVE years of allocations and expenses for say UNIBEN? Where did the money go? From the vice chancellor down to the lowliest janitor, there is a culture of looting. Let us not lie about these things, stealing communal funds is now part of our culture. We have no shame. And there is no transparency, you can ask for UNIBEN's expenditures from now until doomsday, you won't get it. Whatever ASUU gets will be stolen, looted, by PhDs. Yes. I said it.

 

Again, I say to you, Bolaji, nothing will happen. ASUU will get some money, most of it will be pilfered and in three years they will be back. Ikhide will brush the cobwebs off his old rants, change the date and push "SEND!" And we will fight happily ever after.  Mark my words.

 

As for Professor Sola Adeyeye, only a coward will look the other way when his child is being attacked. Many people don't know this, but Professor Adeyeye is one of the finest writers Nigeria ever produced. If you want to engage him, you better know how to write and think. He will reduce you to mere smithereens  like he did that ASUU "spokesperson." SMH. And I must concede, Professor Adeyeye is more than a friend to me, so I am biased. There are three people that will never be my adversaries: Professor Mobolaji Aluko, Professor Olusola Adeyeye and Dr. Debo Akano. Those brainiacs started me on this lunatic part of advocacy in 1993. I will go to war with them any day. We have gone our different ways on this democracy palaver (I now think democracy was a mistake) but I couldn't ask for better friends. And to this playground, if and when you meet Professor Adeyeye, turn to him, and say, "Awo, SG says Hi" and watch that glint in his eyes as he says, "Ehen so you know Ikhide! Let me tell you about that iwin!" It will be a long day for both of you. I love that man. I am biased. Yes.  Excuse me while I go take lunch to my boy in school. I will not be back.

 

- Ikhide 

 

 

 

- Ikhide

 

Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/

Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide

Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide

On Friday, November 1, 2013 8:34 AM, "orunmi...@yahoo.co.uk" <orunmi...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Moses, trying to do what? This pretence to higher intellect leads no where. Perhaps you need to read my post again; I admitted that there are ASUU members on this list but none of us is the official spokesperson of ASUU's. Thanks for pointing my attention to the obvious fact that ASUU is a corporate body too. You see, I was ignorant of that before this lecture from your intellectual eminence! Perhaps, you should go a little further to tell me the major and minor difference (s) between a corporate body and an individual.
I've read very constructive interventions to this debacle on this forum such as those of Prof Oke Iheduru's that showed very clearly an open mind disposed to pointing the way towards a better future for the education sector just as I've read those with one eyed view of the issues and your is one of them.
I've followed your style of picking a paragraph, sentence or clusters of sentences for analysis without opening your mind to salient issues in the body of the posts. Well, as I've noted, it's a style and you are entitled to it.
I won't be drawn into persuading you to look at issues more objectively, from all indications, you have your mind made up about ASUU and its members. Some of us are on the ground here and we know what efforts are made to give the little that we have to the system even though people like you feel that the quality of graduates being produced by our system is as a result of ASUU's incompetence or that of its members. Your intellectual eminence, the rot that ASUU alone is protesting against is worse in our primary and secondary schools. I was president of Rotary club of Igando-Egan, I have pictures of public schools' classrooms that will shame any nation and her citizens. The teachers stand outside of the classrooms to teach their pupils because of the heat and odour of sweats from pupils who are bundled together like chickens yet the teachers won't protest because they have to earn their daily bread.
I don't know how old you are but you may just consider sending your child to any of these schools and see if your perception will change or not.
As I've said again and again, the Diaspora must objectively investigate the rot in the education sector to see how they can work with those at home to save this endangered sector.
I don't know any scholar worth his/her salt who will love to be outside the classroom or libraries for even a month. If you think those of us here are enjoying this strike, then you're mistaken. Despite this, what has to be done has to be done to correct the situation.
My degrees from B.A to PhD were got in Nigeria and I was a victim of these strikes, too. If I was abusing my lecturers for being on strike then, now I know better. Were the conditions better, perhaps, I would have got more from my teachers at Ife and Ibadan. Now, I want to give my best to my students and the system is frustrating that! Moses, you don't know what is on ground. You really don't.
ASUU is not perfect, its strategies definitely are not, too but its intentions for the future of this country are noble. Whether Nigerians see this or not is a different thing. To roughly quote Mahatma Ghandi in his autobiography, "it is only the reformer who is anxious for change, those whose life he wants to affect positively may not care".
I wish you well.
TA

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Sender: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Date: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 22:09:04 -0500

To: USAAfricaDialogue<usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Senator Adeyeye responds to ASUU

ASUU is not an individual; it is a corporate body, a trade union, and there are several ASUU members on this forum who are defending ASUU vigorously and even attacking ASUU's critics for good measure. So, the equivalence you're seeking to posit is not tenable. Thanks for trying though.

On Thu, Oct 31, 2013 at 5:49 PM, <orunmi...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Moses, if it is cowardly to "attack the integrity of a man who is not on this forum" simply because he is not on this forum, then we have. No business here. We should only talk about and "attack" only those who are on this forum so they could defend themselves.
The last time I checked, a few members of ASUU and NOT ASUU are on this forum. Since ASUU or any of its official spokesperson is not on this forum to defend it, doesn't it follow that we should stop "aattacking the integrity of a union who is not on the forum?

TA

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[Mobolaji Aluko]

Ikhide:

You wrote below as follows:

QUOTE

Education is an expensive undertaking. Looting the resources only makes it worse. I ask you, where is the data on the previous FIVE years of allocations and expenses for say UNIBEN? Where did the money go? From the vice chancellor down to the lowliest janitor, there is a culture of looting. Let us not lie about these things, stealing communal funds is now part of our culture. We have no shame. And there is no transparency, you can ask for UNIBEN's expenditures from now until doomsday, you won't get it. Whatever ASUU gets will be stolen, looted, by PhDs. Yes. I said it.

UNQUOTE

Not quite so....

On this narrow point of university revenue, I will respond to you by providing the table below for 18 Federal universities (including your UniBen), presented to the Federal Government as part of a letter to the Federal Minister of Education by the Committee of Vice-Chancellors (CVC) just before the 2012 Memorandum of Understanding was offered by Federal Government on January 24, 2012, following a meeting with ASUU on January 19, 2012.  The 

The entire letter by the CVC's will be found here,  along with all the other documents:

http://www.nigerianmuse.com/20131003183855zg/nm-projects/higher-education-in-nigeria/all-the-2009-government-asuu-ssanu-nasu-and-naat-agreements/

but I have also excerpted it here.

2012 January CVC Letter to FME

 

Ikhide, you are not as attentive as Moses Ochonu - you are too quick to abuse ASUU,  so I urge Moses to READ through CVC's letter CAREFULLY, and come back with his comments on it.

Let me, like a broken record, repeat my the three critical questions (and some ripostes):

1.  Can the FGN pay the N92 billion now and the N1.3 trillion over four years that ASUU is requesting?  I believe that it can, particularly if it tightens its belt in a number of other areas in which there is palpable wastefulness.

2.  Will the FGN pay it?  I am convinced that it won't...it has stated that much.

3.  Must the FGN pay it,  OTHERWISE ASUU will not call off the strike? I say ASUU should call off the strike with the N40 billion EAA downpayment offered and the N700 billion (over four years) for NEEDS capital projects on the table.

A show-down is in the offing, and is not necessary; the interest of the students must be paramount.

And there you have it.

Bolaji Aluko

[Mobolaji Aluko]

Ikhide:

Okay, I don't have the info for you.  It does not mean that it does not exist.  I don't believe that you have spent enough time either with the table or with the letter to appreciate their full import. I am concerned that you are jumping into pre-conceived conclusion.

In any case,  if my response  will make you consider ASUU in a little better light, so be it! :-)

Best wishes.

Bolaji Aluko

On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Ikhide <xok...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Haba, Bolaji,

 

Coming from you, that is disappointing. I am trying to help. I asked for data, precise data, in return you showed me a letter in which were scrawled numbers. At your goading or urging I tried my best to analyze the information and told you that no one on this playground can draw conclusions based on the letter, And I took the time to explain to you why, with my imported education training in the matter. Now you are telling me that I am asking for too much. You cannot tell me what the actual expenditures were for just two years? You cannot tell me what we spent all that money on? I can almost understand now why ASUU should be upset. It is just that they do not have the skillsets to ask management and government the right questions. With the mindset of management and government, this journey will be long. Can you imagine what would happen to you in my position, if you asked me for data on our CIP and I simply said, "Abeg go siddon!" You would be fired on the spot! LOL!

 

Bolaji, I have asked for basic data, if you guys don't have that, then the situation is worse than I thought.

 

- Ikhide

 

Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/

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On Friday, November 1, 2013 1:55 PM, Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:

Ikhide:

You are asking for too much.   The CVC was responding PRECISELY to what the FME asked, and cannot now come and respond to all your questions....certainly not I.

Besides, come down to UniBen, your alma mater, and help it with all your imported Education accountability experience.

In any case, what you are asking is NOT what will solve the ASUU problem.  But I might be wrong.

Bolaji Aluko

 

On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Ikhide <xok...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Bolaji,

 

Thanks for sharing. Please pay attention. The table you have helpfully provided does not tell me much. You cannot reduce the budgets and expenditures of a major institution, say UniBen to a line item. I am sure there is more detail that goes with all of this. Help me here

For the University of Benin, we are told that "Capital Development Costs Met from IGR" is $118 million (2010) and $271 million (2011). The IGR for UniBen was $710 million (2010) and $1.16billion (2011). The data is not helpful, I can guess that much of the revenue was gulped by salaries and employee benefits (I have no proof of this). It appears that in 2011, a little over 700,000 US dollars was committed to capital development projects (bricks and mortars) which, if you ask me, is absurd, certainly disgraceful. The next year, the figure was doubled, still disgraceful. And you wonder why the buildings are chicken coops. This is the kind of data that ASUU should be using to make its case if it was not too lazy and/or interested in being paid. Now, it is possible that other funds are dedicated to funding the renovation and maintenance of the buildings. I still cannot tell from your document.

 

Do you have a breakdown of actual expenditures versus budgeted for each of both years? Do you have a simple breakdown of the cost figures, what were they used for? HVAC, new buildings, modernizations, soccer fields, etc etc? How am I or anyone expected to talk intelligently about funding just with this one letter? That is absurd. Surely you have more details than this? I can provide details of my school system's CIP budget, line by line, school by school, going back as many years as you want. I am not even asking for that, I am asking for only UniBen and for just TWO years. I am sure there is a document somewhere that shows all this. All I can surmise right now is that UniBen allegedly spends a measly 17 percent of its revenue on the capital budget. Given that there is no proof that much of it is not looted, you can now understand why we are where we are. Bolaji, this is worse than I thought. I am even more outraged. I will hold my outrage until I get even more data from you. This letter makes little sense from a funding perspective. And why are the revenues that measly? It seems to me that if all people are doing is writing letters with sketchy numbers on them, then there's little or no accountability. Bolaji, you are on my turf, so you pay attention. ;-)

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

TA (I don't know your name, so I'm only going by how you signed off your comment),

"ASUU is not perfect, its strategies definitely are not, too but its intentions for the future of this country are noble. Whether Nigerians see this or not is a different thing."

First, have you heard the saying that the road to disaster is often paved with good intentions? Look it up. It will do you and your ASUU comrades some good.

Second, have you stopped to think that if, as you stated above, Nigerians don't "see [ASUU's good intention]" the problem may not be Nigerians but 1) ASUU's repeated use of the disruptive and destructive tactic of strike, 2) ASUU's failure to persuade an increasingly smarter and skeptical public that its rhetoric of being a selfless fighter for the salvation of Nigerian higher education legit, and 3) ASUU's refusal to take partial responsibility for the rot in the system? Reflect on this.

Third, you can rail all you want about the state of our education system as you did in at least 60 percent of your latest post. You're simply going over familiar territory, preaching to the proverbial choir. We all know how bad things are. We may live abroad but our family members are in these educational institutions, and we come home regularly. So, get off this silly home versus diaspora canard. It doesn't advance the debate in any way. We're all Nigerians with a stake in the system. Your being home doesn't mean you care more about the system than we do. The extent of the problem in the Nigerian educational system is well known even to those who don't live in Nigeria. The issue is what to do about it, and this is where we differ with ASUU.

ASUU and its members blame the problem solely on external factors--the FG, NUC, primary and secondary school teachers, ipads and ipods, etc etc--we've heard it all through this latest strike wahala. Not one ASUU document or official has taken any responsibility for the state of instruction and research in our institutions or pointed to poor instruction and poor research culture as one strand of the problem of higher education in Nigeria. It's always the fault of someone else, not ASUU's, even when we know that the union subsidizes and will not confront the entrenched culture of bad or non-existent teaching in our universities. I ask you, Mr. ASUU man, what has ASUU ever done to improve hiring practices in the system, to subject members' to higher teaching standards or to some metrics of pedagogical and research excellence? 

Not everything begins and ends with funding. There are problems that rest squarely on the shoulders of ASUU and its members. Is it the FG's fault when lecturers would not show up to teach; when they show up only to dictate from outdated notes; when they are inaccessible to students; when they refuse to grade papers on time or release results; when they detain Masters and Ph.D students unnecessarily because they won't read their chapters; when they make their postgraduate students into their slaves, making them run personal errands for them for years before finally examining their work; when they harass students for sex and money in exchange for grades--are these all the FG's fault? What has funding got to do with these problems. These are problems of impunity, lack of oversight and scrutiny, and the absence of teaching evaluations, all of which ASUU and its members will not agree to. A simple question for you: will you and your ASUU colleagues agree to a simple anonymous evaluation system; a requirement that every course be taught with a prepared syllabus; a requirement that lecturers show up to teach their classes unless they are prevented from doing so by emergencies and conference attendance; a requirement that teaching evaluation be a one rubric for promotion; a requirement that hiring should follow best practices of scrutiny, interviews, and minimum standards, etc?

You get hooked on certain rhetorical devices and it is difficult to see other possibilities. The funding mantra has become part of ASUU's problem. The union has abused a legitimate problem of funding, turning it into a rhetorical football, to be kicked into the public square during every strike. There is a theory in the field of conflict management, my ancillary field, which states essentially that some conflicts become difficult to resolve because the parties' identity and legitimacy among their constituents become dependent upon  a particular rhetoric and grievance, so that even when that grievance is removed or an attempt is made to remove it, they will either a) sabotage its removal or b) continue to invoke it. This is the conundrum that ASUU has created for itself. The union is simply a victim of its past successes and its failure to manage those successes. The mantra of funding as a mask for more pecuniary pursuits has become so central to the union's activism that even when the funding issue is being addressed, however slowly, the union will not acknowledge it and instead will continue to use the "lack of funding" rhetoric to legitimize itself and to justify its increasingly unpopular struggle. Two days ago, Toyin Adepoju posted a shocking story regarding two huge research funds running into millions of dollars--one run by the Lagos State Government, the other by the Ministry of Agriculture. According to the story, there have been two calls for research proposals from Nigerian academics but none has been received so far. Is this, too, the FG's fault, a problem of funding?

And yet we want more funding. Seems like we ask for funding without even thinking about the mechanism for putting the funds to work. It is quite pedestrian, especially in the Nigerian context, to instinctively blame everything on funding. It is a legitimate problem in many sectors, but it is easy for it to be abused. I guess that is what sells a struggle. 

Finally, please cut the sarcastic crap about me claiming intellectual superiority. I have made no such claim. If you don't point me to where I made the claim, I'd urge you to stop clowning about it. If you have an intellectual complex, go and deal with it. I am comfortable in my intellectual skin. We're debating here as equals and marshaling as much persuasive logic as we can. If you fall short, don't blame me.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Do I really need to respond to Shina?

Has he made any statement not responded to in my last two  posts?

I dont think so.

On the abroad- Nigeria dichotomy.

I am increasingly unimpressed by the more vocal  diaspora Nigeria critics.

I dont see those I have interacted with  as serious people.

My interaction with some of them shows them to be little better than loud talkers.

Engage some of them consistently  and they become like worms faced by sunlight. 

We can postulate all we want from afar, theorise till infinity, but you cant build a nation from a distance.

Its not possible.

No nation was built that way, unless you are truly developing a revolutionary movement like revolutionaries  who influence the home country from exile.

If you cant take part in the grunt work then dont arrogate a moral  overseer role to yourself as the more vocal of these critics like to do.

Read what is written by this character: 

'Education is an expensive undertaking. Looting the resources only makes it worse. I ask you, where is the data on the previous FIVE years of allocations and expenses for say UNIBEN? Where did the money go? From the vice chancellor down to the lowliest janitor, there is a culture of looting. Let us not lie about these things, stealing communal funds is now part of our culture. We have no shame. And there is no transparency, you can ask for UNIBEN's expenditures from now until doomsday, you won't get it. Whatever ASUU gets will be stolen, looted, by PhDs. Yes. I said it.

Ikhide

A  rant largely based on speculation.

Has he asked for the records of this  expenditure?

No, he has never and never will.

Its all about to fuming  in rhetoric as if you are saying something serious.

I think my motivation on responding at this time stops here.

thanks

toyin

[Mobolaji Aluko]

Ikhide:

You are asking for too much.   The CVC was responding PRECISELY to what the FME asked, and cannot now come and respond to all your questions....certainly not I.

Besides, come down to UniBen, your alma mater, and help it with all your imported Education accountability experience.

In any case, what you are asking is NOT what will solve the ASUU problem.  But I might be wrong.

Bolaji Aluko

 

On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 1:50 PM, Ikhide <xok...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Bolaji,

 

Thanks for sharing. Please pay attention. The table you have helpfully provided does not tell me much. You cannot reduce the budgets and expenditures of a major institution, say UniBen to a line item. I am sure there is more detail that goes with all of this. Help me here

For the University of Benin, we are told that "Capital Development Costs Met from IGR" is $118 million (2010) and $271 million (2011). The IGR for UniBen was $710 million (2010) and $1.16billion (2011). The data is not helpful, I can guess that much of the revenue was gulped by salaries and employee benefits (I have no proof of this). It appears that in 2011, a little over 700,000 US dollars was committed to capital development projects (bricks and mortars) which, if you ask me, is absurd, certainly disgraceful. The next year, the figure was doubled, still disgraceful. And you wonder why the buildings are chicken coops. This is the kind of data that ASUU should be using to make its case if it was not too lazy and/or interested in being paid. Now, it is possible that other funds are dedicated to funding the renovation and maintenance of the buildings. I still cannot tell from your document.

 

Do you have a breakdown of actual expenditures versus budgeted for each of both years? Do you have a simple breakdown of the cost figures, what were they used for? HVAC, new buildings, modernizations, soccer fields, etc etc? How am I or anyone expected to talk intelligently about funding just with this one letter? That is absurd. Surely you have more details than this? I can provide details of my school system's CIP budget, line by line, school by school, going back as many years as you want. I am not even asking for that, I am asking for only UniBen and for just TWO years. I am sure there is a document somewhere that shows all this. All I can surmise right now is that UniBen allegedly spends a measly 17 percent of its revenue on the capital budget. Given that there is no proof that much of it is not looted, you can now understand why we are where we are. Bolaji, this is worse than I thought. I am even more outraged. I will hold my outrage until I get even more data from you. This letter makes little sense from a funding perspective. And why are the revenues that measly? It seems to me that if all people are doing is writing letters with sketchy numbers on them, then there's little or no accountability. Bolaji, you are on my turf, so you pay attention. ;-)

 

- Ikhide

 

Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/

Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide

Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide

On Friday, November 1, 2013 12:59 PM, Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Ikhide]

Haba, Bolaji,

 

Coming from you, that is disappointing. I am trying to help. I asked for data, precise data, in return you showed me a letter in which were scrawled numbers. At your goading or urging I tried my best to analyze the information and told you that no one on this playground can draw conclusions based on the letter, And I took the time to explain to you why, with my imported education training in the matter. Now you are telling me that I am asking for too much. You cannot tell me what the actual expenditures were for just two years? You cannot tell me what we spent all that money on? I can almost understand now why ASUU should be upset. It is just that they do not have the skillsets to ask management and government the right questions. With the mindset of management and government, this journey will be long. Can you imagine what would happen to you in my position, if you asked me for data on our CIP and I simply said, "Abeg go siddon!" You would be fired on the spot! LOL!

 

Bolaji, I have asked for basic data, if you guys don't have that, then the situation is worse than I thought.

 

- Ikhide

 

Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/

Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide

Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide

[Ikhide]

Bolaji,

 

Thanks for sharing. Please pay attention. The table you have helpfully provided does not tell me much. You cannot reduce the budgets and expenditures of a major institution, say UniBen to a line item. I am sure there is more detail that goes with all of this. Help me here

For the University of Benin, we are told that "Capital Development Costs Met from IGR" is $118 million (2010) and $271 million (2011). The IGR for UniBen was $710 million (2010) and $1.16billion (2011). The data is not helpful, I can guess that much of the revenue was gulped by salaries and employee benefits (I have no proof of this). It appears that in 2011, a little over 700,000 US dollars was committed to capital development projects (bricks and mortars) which, if you ask me, is absurd, certainly disgraceful. The next year, the figure was doubled, still disgraceful. And you wonder why the buildings are chicken coops. This is the kind of data that ASUU should be using to make its case if it was not too lazy and/or interested in being paid. Now, it is possible that other funds are dedicated to funding the renovation and maintenance of the buildings. I still cannot tell from your document.

 

Do you have a breakdown of actual expenditures versus budgeted for each of both years? Do you have a simple breakdown of the cost figures, what were they used for? HVAC, new buildings, modernizations, soccer fields, etc etc? How am I or anyone expected to talk intelligently about funding just with this one letter? That is absurd. Surely you have more details than this? I can provide details of my school system's CIP budget, line by line, school by school, going back as many years as you want. I am not even asking for that, I am asking for only UniBen and for just TWO years. I am sure there is a document somewhere that shows all this. All I can surmise right now is that UniBen allegedly spends a measly 17 percent of its revenue on the capital budget. Given that there is no proof that much of it is not looted, you can now understand why we are where we are. Bolaji, this is worse than I thought. I am even more outraged. I will hold my outrage until I get even more data from you. This letter makes little sense from a funding perspective. And why are the revenues that measly? It seems to me that if all people are doing is writing letters with sketchy numbers on them, then there's little or no accountability. Bolaji, you are on my turf, so you pay attention. ;-)

 

- Ikhide

 

Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/

Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide

Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide

On Friday, November 1, 2013 12:59 PM, Mobolaji Aluko <alu...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Ikhide]

LOL! Nigeria! Oro pe si je sha!

You express an opinion, some character will say, ah, this is shallow and uninformed! More analysis!

You do analysis, another character will say, ah, you are asking for too much, do you think this is America?

You open your mouth to complain about Nigeria, a character will say, oya come home with your imported education!

You come home, another person will say, ehen, e don hammer, he is now chopping with both hands, useless senator!

You hold Nigeria for leg, e shake hand, you hold am for hand e shake leg! You can't win! I give up, man, I give up!

 

I mean, how do you solve a nation's challenges without data? Who does that? Nigeria is not a serious country.

I give up! Mek I face my America jare, who send me message! Am I there?

 

- Ikhide

 

Stalk my blog at http://www.xokigbo.com/

Follow me on Twitter: @ikhide

Join me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

You know, Bolaji, returning to your three framing questions, there is a part of me, the cynical part, that actually wants the government to do everything possible to release the 1.3 Trillion naira to ASUU in the number of yearly tranches that ASUU has suggested, whatever cost it may impose on the government. Do this and take the funding issue off the table. Then let's see what ASUU will use to justify its next strike in four or five years, let's see if there is any improvement in teaching or in the quality of our graduates in four or five years, and, finally, let's see if ASUU can get away with a strike solely founded on a quest for more money for its members in the absence of the overflogged funding and needs assessment issue.

After all, as many folks have argued on this forum and as your own tables and other information sets have shown, there has been a remarkable, if inadequate, improvement in university funding in the last ten to thirteen years, with nothing to show for it by way of improved teaching or research or improved outcomes a.k.a graduates. In fact there is every indication that the funding improvements have actually corresponded to a further decline in the quality of graduates that universities have been producing.

Maybe if this happens, ASUU will finally be forced to look inwards, at its members' inadequacies, at several other consequential factors, and at the generally abysmal state of  instruction (and research) in our universities.

[Diran]

Moses, quite a number of members of this Forum know you and your pedigree more than I do, for now. Coincidentally, I am also Moses, but I don't use the name, lest I be caught in the same web of intellectual shortsightedness as you.

The gentleman TA was my student at Ibadan while on his MA in the '90s. (And I won't tell you his full name!). He went to the "Greatest UI"after "Great Ife" as he has mentioned here. But I am relieved that he has adequately taken you up on the issue I would have loved to engage you on, that is, your style - isolating a paragraph or sentence in order to vent your spleen.

But you made another point about 'pecuniary' pursuit. May I ask: what took you across the shores  to the United States, not pecuniary pursuit? No wonder BA said you don't read through a post before you respond since ....from the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh?....

I stand by what I said in my earlier post. And I agree with TA in his post to you....

But in response to the 3 questions BA posed, can we just suggest a roadmap in addition to the 2012 MoU-Roadmap? If the FG knew all along that it cannot meet its obligation, why did it not come out to say just that and PLEAD with ASUU not to take a backward glance at the 2009 Agreement and rather begin from the  2012 MoU which letter and spirit was dictated by no less a person than the incumbent SGF? With the 40bn for Earned Allowances (leaving a balance of 52bn on which no commitment was made) and 100bn+200bn in three tranches over the next three years(?) which brings the total to 700bn for infrastructure, then the issues are almost resolved. 

The question here: is the immediate installment of 200bn factored into the budget that the President is getting ready to present to NASS in 11 days' time? And in all fairness, it appears as if the President wants to conclude all ceremonies about his mother-in-law's interment before dropping the gavel on the new agreement/proposal!

 Let us wait till next week and see what the two parties have up their sleeves for the university system.

Shalom!

'Diran

(first born...)

Sent from my iPad

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Diran,

One cannot win with you people. If one ignores your post, you scream. If one responds to what is worthy of a response in your post and ignores the tangents, the diversions, and the irrelevances you accuse one of responding to some paragraphs and ignoring others. Ikhide is right; you guys are lashing out in all direction but you're failing to do what is absolutely necessary--soul searching. 

The more you guys crawl out of the woodwork to make these outbursts the more I realize that ASUU is feeling the sting, the backlash it did not anticipate. The criticism is sinking in. This is the first stage of crititical reception--denial and aggressive push back.

This may rub you the wrong way but the truth is that I pick what is worth responding to in a post I choose to respond to. I can't respond to every rant. For instance when your student, TA, rants about how education across all levels is rotten, devoting several paragraphs to it, how do you expect me to respond to that except to remind him that he is merely going over familiar facts, preaching to the saved, if you will. I penalize my students for regurgitating familiar facts instead of developing sound analysis and compelling arguments. Why should I then reward a PhD with a response when he is merely repeating what every Nigerian at home and abroad already knows?

Further, when he rants about my being abroad and therefore being ignorant of the rot in Nigerian education, how he is at home and in the trenches, bla bla bla, how the heck does one respond to such inanity? If in this age of massive interconnections and instantaneous virtual informational ubiquity your student insists on monopolizing knowledge of Nigeria's well known educational rot and on assigning ignorance and indifference to diaspora Nigerians on account of their location, how should I respond? What is worthy of a response there? You tell me.

On pecuniary benefits, you should go back to the archive and read my submissions on that. I have absolutely no problem with pecuniary demands and pursuits and have stated that several times. ASUU is a trade union like any other (even if it sometimes wants to be seen to be more) and should absolutely pursue pecuniary benefits for its members. What I have a problem with is the insistence on the part of ASUU and its members that pecuniary considerations are not ASUU's motive. This is deceptive.

Another thing I have a problem with is that following from this originary gesture of deception, ASUU wants to be seen as a reformist organization, not just a trade union fighting for the pecuniary interests of its members. It cannot have it both ways, claiming to be a trade union doing what all trade unions do when it suits it and then claim to be motivated by a reformist agenda when its pecuniary demands draw a backlash from the public. This dual, conflicted identity is one of the union's problems. You cannot claim to be a reformist organization when 1) you will not acquiesce to simple reforms that will hold your members accountable to their students, employers, and the public, and 2) you've become a huge part of the systemic rot you claim you want to reform and you won't even acknowledge that obvious fact.

Please go back to the archive and refresh your yourself on our elaborate discussion on the ambiguities and disputes surrounding the 2009 agreements (yes, there were multiple types of agreements as Bolaji's posted documents clearly show) and the 2012 MoU. My position is very clear on that. Bolaji has intervened on that. No need to relitigate the issue. ASUU and the FG are renegotiating on and off as we speak to clarify and work out a mechanism for implementing the agreed principles. Eventually, ASUU will either accept what is being offered or will continue until the government caves, Either way, my point remains: that ASUU is part of the problem, that the strike tactic is now well worn, a magnet for public backlash, and, finally, that recent history has shown that increased funding and remuneration without ASUU taking responsibility and embracing instructional reforms will not result in improved learning and improved quality of graduates, which in my opinion the biggest issue in this whole debate.

And on a lighter, final note, so this is the best you can do to rescue your student -:). I'm underwhelmed. I have posed a set of questions to him in an earlier post. Perhaps you can help him answer them. This tag-team is failing because I can't even distinguish between the student and the teacher.  

Peace to you sir.

[Rex Marinus]

Dr. Aluko, Ikhide is asking very valid questions. The expenditure table is far too general  and does not give adequate information about specific allocation and expenditure. There's not much you can do with a budget outline that simply says "overhead expenditure" -N250m. What went to the library? What went to research? What went to facility upgrade and maintenance? What went to office supplies, and what to payroll? etc. I do not see any precision here, and I do really think that various Nigerian university administrations need to clean up their acts.
 
ASUU's strategies are actually far too dated. I've always asked, what input do Nigerian parents whose children are  in these universities make in all these negotiations? Theyb too are stakeholders frequently overlooked in this process. What strategic lobbying capacity has ASUU established in the National Assembly which is actually where the bacon is fried? ASUU could certainly use the likes of Professor Adeyeye, but how many times and by what means has the ASUU leadership established official and unofficial contact with its key supporters within the Federal Parliament? Who has ASUU raised money and supported to get into parliament; the office of the governor, or the local government? ASUU's organizational capacity is weak, and its mission and tactics have not changed in the 21st century. There is a military-era ideological hang up in its approach to the politics and reality of the democratic era.  They may as well have a great cause, but they have certainly over-extended their credits in public opinion, and their message is drowned out because they have used the same methods over and over, and this has induced public lethargy. One of the cardinal principles in organizational psychology is: do not loose your audience. You strike to elicit public sympathy, and public sympathy hopefully translates to public pressure, and public pressure ought to force the hands of the authority against whom we've ranged pressure. In this case, ASUU has inadvertently forced sympathy in the direction of the government on this issue. Besides, ASUU does not have groundwork operations and networks that could create a horizontal support base and network with other sectors of interest in Nigerian public education: teachers at the two other levels - the primary and the secondary levels - community leaders; community organizers, students, and parents, who could force political consequence as a result of their action. With none of these forces in play, with ASUU, the universe is growing radically indifferent. And ASUU has been reduced to the situation where it is now shadow-boxing!
 
But let us in fact look at ASUU's fight: it has been made to seem like a fight for more emolument. It is not about the quality of public education. If it were, ASUU would be talking also about some self-accounting by University faculty, and the means to accomplish that process as a general principle in the negotiation. It would also have gone into the later stage of the negotiation without precondition. By self-accounting I mean: it is not only infrastructural decay that is at the heart of the crisis of education in Nigeria. There is also systemic decay. The various obnoxious edicts of the military era in the 1980s that turned Nigerian universities from its system of collegial governance to its military-style, top down executive management, has led to poor accounting capabilities, tyrannies, and a degradation of the culture of learning, research, collegiality, and free inquiry. The universities have become fiefdoms; hotbeds of religious and ethnic fanaticism with Professors becoming more clerical and evangelical than critical and skeptical. There is psychophancy; dobaaleism, narrow-mindedness and bigotry. University faculty have been known to retail handouts, demand sex  or money for grades; are hardly peer-reviewed; publish in questionable two-penny journals just simply to pad-up their cvs, and so on. There is hardly original research going on. There is fundamentally, very little, credible infrastructure for peer oversight in Nigerian universities, and it shows a lot in the quality of work they do, including awarding dubious doctorates to candidates who can hardly speak or write English, the language with which they instruct and carry on research! The evidence is often in this forum, truth be told!
 
ASUU must also, therefore speak about these and about its own internal failures to regulate or gatekeep the process which has led to the failures that we live with today. Recruitment exercises for new faculty are so in-bred, that once great Universities like Ibadan founded as truly national universities today seem so provincial. Its governance and as well its recruitment of students are largely on a much reduced radius, staffing quality now make it incapable of really being a great university - the sort it promised to be when it was chartered in 1948. There are such many fundamental flaws that it'd take a longer treatise to articulate the internal contradictions. Look, even the design of new university infrastructure reflects the state of mind and consciousness of contemporary university administrators: there is a profound lack of an aesthetic consciousness. There is very little respect for the students: their living environment; their dining and residential experience; the general culture of life that makes a university a culture of its own has been lost, not simply because of the funding problem, but because those who have managed and those who work in that system have chosen to create band live within an inferior system. Although funding is no doubt central to this crisis, the real crisis is in the CULTURE of the Nigerian academy,  or put this way, in the DECULTURATION of the Nigerian university as a site of learning, inquiry, and socialization. ASUU bears a lot of responsibility in this, and must begin to hold itself accountable for this decay too.
Obi Nwakanma
 
 

---

Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 13:55:38 -0400

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Senator Adeyeye responds to ASUU

From: alu...@gmail.com
To: xok...@yahoo.com
CC: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Farooq A. Kperogi]

On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 6:17 PM, Diran <diran...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Moses, quite a number of members of this Forum know you and your pedigree more than I do, for now. Coincidentally, I am also Moses, but I don't use the name, lest I be caught in the same web of intellectual shortsightedness as you. ---Diran

Diran,

So there is something about the name "Moses" that invariably instigates "intellectual shortsightedness"?  And that's why you "don't use the name"?  LOL!!! I do really hope that this is a badly executed joke. I really do. If not, I would be mortally embarrassed on your behalf. I can't even begin to imagine the sort of wooliness and egotistical pedestrianism that can inspire that gem of mortifyingly infantile logic amid a serious exchange about how to resolve the perennial strikes by ASUU.

Farooq

Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/farooqkperogi

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

[Mobolaji Aluko]

Diran:

1.  I did not write of Moses Ochonu (the other Moses to your humble self)  that "No wonder BA said you don't read through a post before you respond since" - presuming I am that "BA."  (Bolaji Aluko).   In fact, I wrote the opposite - that he seems to THOROUGHLY read my posts more than others who seem to have trenchantly taken pro- and anti-ASUU positions, no matter what new information that i am able to offer.  It was of Ikhide I wrote that IN A PARTICULAR CASE - that of the IGR table that I gave - he did seem to come out in a hurry.

2.  Let me hazard a guess: 89.25% of the people who have been discussing "2009 ASUU Agreement", "2012 Memorandum", etcheram, ad nauseum, all of this time HAD NOT READ IT before they were posted anywhere, and STILL have not read them where I posted them, namely:

  http://www.nigerianmuse.com/20131003183855zg/nm-projects/higher-education-in-nigeria/all-the-2009-government-asuu-ssanu-nasu-and-naat-agreements/

 because they don't want to be confused with the facts, and/or do not want to own up that they have NOW read it, but that it was NOT as they thought it was. In all honesty, if you are not an ASUU activist, or a VC, or one of the negotiators, the incentive to read these documents is not there, provided more money shows up in your university account, and there is improvement in varsity facilities.  But such an important documents cannot be such remote in the public intellectual space:  what are we university staff for, supposedly the highest intellect in society, CHARGED with conferring same to others?

3.  Oga Diran, what was so earth-shaking about the 2012 Memorandum for it to become a starting point?  Absolutely nothing.  Here is the most significant portion of it:

In Section 3a for example, there is ambiguity here.  Following the immediate stimulation of N100 billion, will the yearly N400 billion be attained AFTER the next three years, or is it meant to be provided in EACH of the next three years following the release of the N100 billion.  What happens after the next three years if it was the latter: is the N400 billion maintained, or does the support fall off to zero?

Section 3b simply says that we will maintain the status quo by "continuing" what we are already doing.

Section 3c: what does "significantly" actually mean RELATIVE to 26%?

Section 3d:  this "acceptance in principle" had been accepted in the 2009 Agreement.  It was the WORKING out that we have now arrived at, with a realization consequence.

4.  What is the Roadmap ?

(A)  in the immediate term, 

    

  (i)  if Government wishes to PAY up ALL of what ASUU is demanding, it should pay up NOW, 

  (ii) if Government does not wish to pay, it should stop increasing EAA or NEEDS Project money in dribbles, because it gives ASUU encouragement that the longer it stays out, the more money Government will keep adding to EAA, NEEDs money.

  (iii) Government should pay up (disburse) on the N100 billion NEEDS project money (so as to make ASUU not feel that it was only fighting for the EAA (which has been disbursed)), and also so that the state universities can also have a sense of achievement from this ASUU strike (the EAAs are not to be paid to state universities, only the Projects money.)  TetFUND money for 2013 too MUST be paid immediately to relieve the fear that Government is robbing Paul to pay Paul - using TetFUND money that should have been released already to pay the N100 Billion.

  (iv)  ASUU should call off its strike IMMEDIATELY now, and constitute a few eminent Nigerians as GUARANTORS - presuming of course that they continue to distrust government's intention. Students are suffering.

  (v) Government should declare a NATIONAL EMERGENCY ON EDUCATION, make it a 10-year NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUE, and convene major stakeholders to determine priorities from primary school all the way to tertiary, and hold EVERYONE responsible in some tangible ways.  It is INEVITABLE that government MUST increase statutory budget to education.

(B)  in the intermediate term:

   (i)  full AUTONOMY (not necessarily independence) should be granted to universities, working out what this means in terms of students, staff, curriculum, finances, governance, accreditation, etc..

   (ii) an inventory of academic personnel and facilities should be done, and based on student/faculty ratios and space, the TRUE carrying capacities of universities should be established.  Where these have been exceeded, a multi-year plan to bring them in line should be done; where it is under-achieved, ditto.

  (iii)  a new relationship between Government, NUC (which should be significantly re-organized), TeTFUND and the universities, bearing in mind that some are FEDERAL, STATE and PRIVATE.

   (iv) emphases in all situations on QUALITY rather than QUALITY

   (v) a JOBS program that asks: where do all the graduates (pipeline: from primary schools to tertiary) go to?

(C) Long term...

 (I) a Marshall plan to ensure that tertiary universities in Nigeria feature prominently on the global scheme of things.

And there you have it for now.  O tan ninu mi for now... vernacular for I am done for now.

Bolaji Aluko

On Fri, Nov 1, 2013 at 6:17 PM, Diran <diran...@yahoo.com> wrote:

[orunmi...@yahoo.co.uk]

Diran and Moses,
I don't know where this argument back and forth will lead to or if it is capable of returning some sanity to our messy educational sector with particular reference to our universities but, I will like to make the following remarks pertaining the issue and my person in relation to this whole debate and my last post and what it has generated, specifically;
1. Diran, I was never officially your student at any stage of my academic pursuit. No. You were on you PhD while I was on a Master's programme. Yes, you were, as academic culture of Ibadan expects, attached to my class by Professor Femi Osofisan to handle tutorial in a Dramatic Literature course. To claim to being my lecturer would amount to you claiming that at that point in time, you were a lecturer in the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Ibadan. Before posting this, I got in touch with colleague in the department. If my claim is wrong, I'd apologise if not please retract your statement. We are scholars and should dwell on fact and verifiable truth.
2. Perhaps, Moses, you should read my posts at the begging of this whole debacle. I NEVER argued against the fact that the problems facing the university system is purely funding or that lecturers are not engaged in some of the ignominious activities such as victimisation, sexual harassment, inducement and intellectual laziness and so on. Yes, in truth ASUU at national and local levels must act to correct this and that adequate funding, commensurate remuneration, research grants and infrastructural development in synergy with sanction for erring lecturers are needed to address these problems. I remember pointing out that ASUU has an Ethics Committee to handle such abuses. Perhaps what is needed is to ensure that this committee works as it should. I'm aware of some lecturers that have been sacked for such offences and ASUU never defended them. Moses, that ASUU is doing nothing is not true that it needs to do more is not in contention.
3. My allusion to your claim to higher intellect derived from a post in response to Diran where you wrote that if a particular thinking could come from a university teacher, that explains the quality of our undergraduates. I can't remember the particular post now as I'm replying to this in the midst of a whole lot of work. Sir, the day I sense that I'm intellectually inferior to any scholar local, foreign or Diaspora, I'd pack my bags out of the system and leave the space to batter candidates. I came into the system by conviction that I could contribute something to the system. So, Moses, inferiority complex with me, no, never.
4. My full name is AZEEZ, Adetunji but I prefer the short form- Tunji Azeez. Most of my students call me TA. I teach at Lagos State University, Lagos and I'm current Acting Head of Department.
5. You asked if I would be willing to subject myself to evaluation by my students. Yes, I would, gladly. Let me inform you that in my Department, even before I became Acting Head, we have distributed questionnaires to our students at the end of semesters and sessions to examine ourselves. This has been revealing and we are making corrections. We also organise what we call "family meeting" with students and staff. We make it very informal and our students have spoken freely and none of them has been victimised after. At these meetings issues relating to attendance at lectures by staff and students, extortion, sexual abuse etc have been trashed. We have acted promptly, also, on anonymous letters by students against lecturers by investigating claims. I believe that we need to do more but we can only do more when students report cases officially without fear of reprisal. Although, I understand their fears but, we always encourage them to speak up as we aren't training docile people or robots for the society.
6. Moses, I got to LASU in 1998 and in all my years, I can't remember being absent from class without a cause. I must add that I also have not been late to class up to 15 times in 15 years. If I was to be absent or late for a few minutes, I always communicate this to mystudents. I've said this believing as you said that we are in an age where information can be got in no time. So, please feel free find out if there's any truth in my claims.
7. Yes, truly, there are lecturers who regurgitate old notes, I don't. And this is why I get frustrated with the system for not providing basic instructional materials so one could give one's best. This was what I meant when I wrote in my post that what some of our colleagues in other countries take for granted, we labour to get. Yet we must compete with colleagues outside the country. That was what led to my "rants", "inanities" "regurgitation" as you prefer to call my long talk about the rot in the system. Really, Moses, I wish things were better, when they do, most of us will be more ffilled and productive. That was why I wrote that the Diaspora needs to understand what's truly on ground to be able to work with those at home for the good of the nation. I remember posting, here, professor Tejumola Olaniyan's book donation recently to my Deparment. By the way, if you could be kind to assist us, too, despite our differences, I'd be glad.
8. I still insist that your position on ASUU is one sided and, Moses, that won't help the debate to move the system forward. Yes, our strike option is time worn but if ASUU has no option for now, people can suggest. Some of us have suggested that we do a documentary on our univerities and post on youtube and other media for Nigerians to see. This and other media can galvanise the people. However, you are not correct to say that ASUU's demands are pecuniary. No. Of course, there is nothing stating that ASUU shouldn't ask for pecuniary benefits if they are deserved.
9. I also maintain that you pick only those things that interest you in a post without linking what you've picked to the larger argument. If it's a style, as I said in my post, there's nothing I can do to change it. However, I strongly advocate that we be as objective as possible in our analysis. We can't be infallible and admission of new ideas or a better evaluation of old ones is the hall of scholarship.
Finally, please, when you pick and respond to what interests you in this post, include my request for assistance in your interest. Do have a nice weekend.

Tunji Azeez

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Sender: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 19:21:35 -0500

To: USAAfricaDialogue<usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Okay o, over to you Diran; who is guilty of poor reading and poor comprehension now that Bolaji has disowned the petty premise of your post? The larger take away for me is Bolaji's point that some folks are commenting blindly on the MoU without having read and analyzed its content. I guess they're relying on the propaganda of their ASUU branches. They want to treat the document as a sacred baseline of negotiation and implementation, a fetish to be uncritically adopted. But it is an ambiguous document that is subject to clarification, interpretation, and renegotiation. This fact is hard for ASUU partisans to accept. And, as Bolaji said, even those of them who read the MOU pretend that they have not because they find that the contents are not what they've been led to believe by their ASUU propagandists. This is what happens when one suspends one's critical faculties and instead donates one's credulity to a body like ASUU.  

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

I am pleased there is a robust body of perspectives and passions at play in this debate.

Wonderful!

This is clearly a powerful group.

I wish I was ambitious enough to organise the debates of this group into books.

I should be able to thus make some neat money.

Thanks

toyin 

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Pricelessly put-

'We need to look closer and more objectively at why ASUU is on strike beyond these diversionary outburst about how ASUU is envious of our lawmakers and others who are bleeding us silly.

 For me, these monies could be better spent on developmental projects; education, roads, power, health etc. 

That is the angle from which ASUU is coming from- how can our educational sector [ and other sectors] be in such a mess while a few people live so extravagantly?'

TA

Where will the money to spend on development come from, if as the CBN gov states, you spend most of it on running the govt?

We need to make sure development money is well spent, but the money must be available to be so used. 

thanks

toyin 

[shina7...@yahoo.com]

" I still insist that your position on ASUU is one sided and, Moses, that won't help the debate to move the system forward. Yes, our strike option is time worn but if ASUU has no option for now, people can suggest. Some of us have suggested that we do a documentary on our univerities and post on youtube and other media for Nigerians to see. This and other media can galvanise the people. However, you are not correct to say that ASUU's demands are pecuniary. No. Of course, there is nothing stating that ASUU shouldn't ask for pecuniary benefits if they are deserved" --TA

If insisting, as the basic starting block to resolving this impasse, that (a) we accept that both ASUU and the FG are at fault in the degeneration of our universities; and (b) that ASUU is a bit confused (a bit?) about the way forward for the rehabilitation of this system, then this debate should end. Ko soro mo!

These two facts are, as far as I am concerned, incontrovertible and Moses has made it the central article of his critique. I think it isn't fair to say he's been one-sided. I certainly don't know what you mean by saying ASUU's demand isn't pecuniary. I will say we are even lost in that grey space between the pecuniary and the noble (don't begin a debate around this; I don't mean the pecuniary is bad).

Even Oga Ikhide (can you believe that?) has been diligent to contribute to a deeper and robust understanding of the wahala. It is now I am beginning to come to a deeper appreciation of his insistence on a data culture that utilises the new digital technologies and social media (read again his last post on the data imperative).

Many years ago, at the dawn of Nigeria's independence, Prof Wolfgang Stolper decried Nigeria's data deficit-what he called 'development without planning'-as a significant lack in our policy making and implementation. The Nigerian universities have inherited this deficit. Even the government hasn't learn the lesson. Ask diligent demographers around you and you'll hear terrible stories of number contradictions. Even our census figures are cooked! Data is, well, almost, everything. And ASUU has not been at the forefront of amassing the precious statistics to make its case(s). Isn't this the basis of Ikhide's accusation about the website? The data dynamics could also be a serious plank in a new strategy to bring attention to the plight of the universities. This impasse would be resolved, again, one way or the other. And, trust me, government will return to its old way. You CAN'T trust government, at least this one I know in Nigeria. It isn't interested in education (however hard that may sound). We the interested stakeholders must find a SANE method to shame government into taking responsibility all the time. And we can only succeed when we carry others along, especially the students. Hasn't Moses also been stringent about that?

The strike option has become strikingly nauseating! Let ASUU listen.

Adeshina Afolayan

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

---

From: orunmi...@yahoo.co.uk

Sender: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2013 12:49:12 +0000

To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com<USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Im sad about this style of expression-

'The strike option has become strikingly nauseating! Let ASUU listen.'

Im sad because such a style of expression assumes alternatives are ready to hand.

They are not.

The political culture of Nigeria is still embryonic and crude.

Developing an alternative to strikes implies a profound rethinking of strategy.

It implies a different mode of insertion into the body politic.

Such a definitive restrategising   might take at lest ten years to be in place.

Even then, it would be challenged   by the culture of discontinuity that often bedevils Nigerian political life.

The system is too shaky, epileptic and often in crisis.

How does one plant solid roots of extra- government political institutions in dialogue with government in such an unreliable and mercurial environment?

As we write, 2015 looms, and blood has already been flowing-in relation to Boko Haram-I dont want to explain the specifics of that now- in relation to 2015.

A section of the North insists-we must have the Presidency back-Asaro Dokubo and some other Niger Delta elements insist that their son continues  as President or the consequences will be dire, if the second hand report I read are accurate- some are gleefully hoping the anticipated SNG will lead to the breakup on the country. 

I would advise anyone in the North who is not ethnically native there to think carefully about leaving there months before the election and consider returning months after  the coast is clear.

The history  of the region speaks for itself.

Sympathies  with our Northern brethren for my bald statement of this.

In such a volatile context, the use of basic, primary  tools of negotiation  are the most realistic.

Memoranda of Agreement.Strikes if they are not met and the other party is recalcitrant. 

In my next post I will respond to the issue of an adequate climate for genuine creative  dialogue and examine Obi Nwakanma's  proposals  and their implications.

thanks

toyin  

 

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

I personally, am pleased that people here have stood up to  the tactics of Ikhide and Moses.

They both have something to offer but the context in which what is of value in their contributions emerges does not inspire some in the resolve to wade among the broken bottles to find something that could inspire one and which one could use.

It is therapeutic, though, that they have had the opportunity to vent their spleen as inspired by this subject.

Having done that, and others responding in various degrees of agreement and disagreement, it would be helpful to settle down to a discussion of strategy, devoid of grand condemnations, sweeping dismissals and outright rejections of what  A or B has to say because they are one side of the fence or the other.

Ikhide has recently successfully struggled to make  pragmatic suggestions, with only a modicum of the usual absolute negativisation, if I am not inaccurate about the 'modicum' part. 

Obi Nwankanma has recently made a contribution that is devoid of bitterness. 

Even though one might disagree as to whether his characterisation  of the Nigerian university system is representative, people might be able to recognise  some of his sober appraisals  in terms of some of their own experience.

He also some exciting ideas on how to do away with strikes.

He does not invoke the most unappetising  notion of surrendering  Nigerian academics to the whims of a mercurial and, at times vicious political environment by splintering the union into powerless local branches. 

He is suggesting what is in effect, a repoliticisation of ASUU. 

I examine each of his suggestions in my next post. 

thanks

toyin 

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

“The strike option has become strikingly nauseating! Let ASUU listen.”
--------Adeshina Afolayan.

What are the other viable options open to trade unions like ASUU, especially, in situations where employers continually refuse to listen to legitimate demands for improvements in conditions of service made by such trade unions?

CAO.

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[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

TA,

As Shina has ably stated, you don't give me enough credit for balance. I know what it is though. I believe it is called selected perception--you see what you want to see in my post that validates your preconception and ignore things that disturb and dilute that interpretation. We're all guilty of it from time to time. No worries; I won't quibble with your preferred characterization of my views. It is clear that I hold both ASUU and the FG responsible for this mess--I only choose to focus more on ASUU because the FG has no shortage of critics while ASUU is often lionized, exculpated, or showed with excuses.

More important to me is the fact that your latest post shows that you get it, unlike most of your ASUU comrades, even if you're still straining to absolve ASUU of some responsibility and advancing alibis for its failures in the areas of accountability, students' interests, and standards that I emphasized. What do I mean when I say you get it? What you're doing in your department is precisely what ASUU should be championing at the national level, especially since it wants to be seen as a reformist body concerned with higher education in Nigeria, and not simply as a trade union trying to extract monetary benefits for its members. Even as I'm heartened by what you are doing, one must wonder whether 1) this department-specific effort will have a broader effect across your university let alone across Nigeria, and 2) whether it can become INSTITUTIONALIZED. ASUU, I submit, should be the vanguard of this effort.

I commend you for leading by example as HOD and for being committed to your students personally. You, my friend, are a rare breed in the Nigerian academy, and I am sure you will agree with this postulation without fiegning modesty. To tell you the truth though, personal examples and departmental initiatives are not enough. We need ASUU to pledge itself to some institutionalized metrics of pedagogical and research standards as well as evaluations that factor into promotion decisions, pay raises, etc--all of these in exchange for the pecuniary and funding concessions it is demanding. There is absolutely no indication that ASUU will acquiesce to this. Therein lies the problem.

Furthermore, ASUU should be championing a more transparent hiring process that stops the "I'm just teaching" crowd of accidental academics from getting into the system because it seems to me that these are the folks who are most guilty of the vices I've been harping on. ASUU is not doing anything in this regard. It is heartening that you agree that ASUU is not doing enough to curb the ethical and moral problem of sexual harassment, extortion, handout merchandizing, and other infractions.

I'd love to see more openness on your part to critiques of ASUU, but I'm heartened that we're largely on the same page, and you agree with me that the interests of students should be paramount in ASUU's agenda, not a rhetorical afterthought to be invoked during strikes to curry public sympathy.

Meanwhile, I leave you with an interesting facebook exchange on the wall of one of my mentees, a recent graduate from a Nigerian university, who is obviously not happy with the student-unfriendly attitudes of Nigerian academics, as opposed to what he experienced in England while doing postgraduate studies there.

• Mohammed Dahiru Aminu But in the headquarters of capitalism, people are sane, in Nigeria, people are not. I attended a public university in England, despite it being public, my HOD wouldn't ask me to get out of his office before laying my complaint to him. In UNIMAID, my HOD doesn't think that as student I am important enough for him to lend me audience. But I am not surprised. The UNIMAID professor doesn't care about students because his salary will continue to be put in his bank account provided Nigeria sells oil, even if he's uncouth to his subjects.

  3 hours ago via mobile · Like
• 

  Mohammed Dahiru Aminu Perhaps in Nigeria, with more education, wisdom diminishes. A university vice chancellor who is usually a professor, when asked to think of revenue generation (for university autonomy) in the university comes up with an idea: to sell "pure water!"

  3 hours ago via mobile · Like
• 

  Mohammed Dahiru Aminu Until the professor is done mourning his wife, no one graduates. I went to England for a masters degree, and I don't have to know whether my supervisor or my lecturers have wives or not. Having a wife is entirely your business. As a student the death of your wife, you being my teacher, should not affect my graduation date.

  3 hours ago via mobile · Like
• 

  Mohammed Dahiru Aminu You told me about a PhD student in a Nigerian university who was asked to submit a research proposal five years after enrolling in the PhD program. Some postgraduate students at the University of Maiduguri wouldn't graduate until they defend their thesis. When will they do that? Until UNIMAID finds a professor from another university (the external examiner) who agrees to travel to Maiduguri to conduct the thesis defence. No professor has agreed to go to Maiduguri knowing that it is the seat of insecurity. Now, my shock is that no one in UNIMAID has the wisdom to say "let's organise the thesis defence in another town or city" so that an external supervisor can go there without feeling he's risking his life. Must thesis defence be done INSIDE the place called the University of Maiduguri?

  2 hours ago via mobile · Like
• 

  Mohammed Dahiru Aminu With this and more, I am certain that going by our peculiar attitudes, we can never be successful running government universities. All we are saying is that if it doesn't work, why waste time? Try a new experiment.

  2 hours ago via mobile · Like
• 

  Mohammed Dahiru Aminu The point above about the professor's wife is made in line with the case of a friend who cannot graduate from his masters program in a Nigerian public university because his thesis supervisor lost his wife. I am surprised that the loss (entirely the professor's business) of a professor's wife impedes a students graduation.

  2 hours ago via mobile · Like

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Thinking Through

 

 Repoliticising ASUU

 

  As Suggested by Obi Nwakanma

 

On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 4:12 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <tovad...@gmail.com> wrote:

Obi Nwakanma

                                

On the Challenges of the Nigerian University System

 

 In Relation to the Ongoing ASUU Strike

 

On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 4:01 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <tovad...@gmail.com> wrote:

                                                                                                                          Repoliticising ASUU

                                                                                                            As Suggested by Obi Nwakanma

                                                                                                                 Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

Nwakanma's suggestions are  in quotation  marks

1. Lobbying the Govt

 "What strategic lobbying capacity has ASUU established in the National Assembly which is actually where the bacon is fried?"

Vital point because it suggests the need to approach ASUU-Govt relations as an ongoing process.

Such continuity, ideally, across changes of government, could go a long way towards ensuring that dialogue between ASUU and the govt does not began and end with negotiations and conflict situations.

Difficulties with this suggestion- the academic mindset, to the best of my limited understanding, might be different from the mindset of the world of politics outside the university and of the political class. 

It might require different skills and attitudes. 

How can this gap be bridged?

One approach is to work with serving academics who have been in politics or have worked with political appointees. 

ASUU members might need to be informed that such methods do not necessarily  imply selling out on the democratic principles by which the union is run, or represent an effort to ingratiate  oneself or ASUU with the political class, but to open and maintain consistent lines of communication. 

 Nwakanma further suggests, as a means of achieving this goal -  "ASUU could certainly use the likes of Professor Adeyeye, but how many times and by what means has the ASUU leadership established official and unofficial contact with its key supporters within the Federal Parliament?"

Every human likes to be recognised, their value commended. Such an approach as Nwakanma suggests could help decrease or eliminate shouting matches between ASUU and the govt.
 

       Dangers with this Approach

How does one ensure ASUU and the interests of academics and the university system are not sold out through this new partnership?

How do we make sure  academics are not fed empty promises that never materialise as members' confidence in the integrity  of the union is sapped by confusion as to the transparency  and precision of the strategies being employed?

How do we make sure  ASUU liaison figures  with the govt dont become corrupted by the smell of self empowering opportunity coming from the national seat of power?

One of the worst developments that can emerge is loss of faith by academics as a group in the value of the union.

An every person  for himself approach will be sheer hell.

To the degree that some staff are guilty of malpractices  right now, that could be be escalated in an environment of hopelessness, since one would have to address one's needs purely by oneself.

2. Active Participation  in Politics as a Power Broker

"Who has ASUU raised money and supported to get into parliament; the office of the governor, or the local government?"

A particularly interesting idea.

This approach extends the first one in suggesting an even more dynamic engagement of ASUU with the government by sponsoring people into power, people who share ASUU's ideas,  and who would be expected to reciprocate the gesture by making sure the union's vision gets fair and respectful hearing and, hopefully, implementation.

Is it practical?

A govt that spends most of its revenue on running itself, as the CBN governor describes the Nigerian govt,  can be described as  a predator govt.

Would ASUU not be betraying itself and the nation by actively encouraging buying into such a clearly exploitative system by supporting members of the govt into office?

ASUU's demands could be met but would the soul of the union not be destroyed thereby?

Will all vestiges of being an independent citizen body in civil society not be removed , members alienated, the public  coming to see ASUU  as ultimately a sell out, a selfish group that has been moving towards such an unholy marriage  at the expense  of Nigerian university students  while hypocritically  pretending to pursue interests that include but go beyond personal interests?

3. Involving All Stakeholders in Civil Society in the Struggle for a Better Educational System

"ASUU does not have groundwork operations and networks that could create a horizontal support base and network with other sectors of interest in Nigerian public education: teachers at the two other levels - the primary and the secondary levels - community leaders; community organizers, students, and parents, who could force political consequence as a result of their action. "

Very interesting because it suggests  sharing vision and strategy with all members of civil society who have a stake in the educational system , thereby theoretically multiplying ASUU's power to engage in dialogue with the govt from a strong base.

How realistic is the idea?

The idea looks sound to me because it expands ASUU's dialogue base and thereby its allies.

There is an important price to be paid if it is to work.

Students are perhaps the most powerful constituency outside the govt in relation to ASUU.

The national university student union president made it clear in an interview forwarded to this group that he could not be seen identifying with ASUU as the ASUU  leadership wanted him to do because ASUU  and its members do not keep faith with students.

He stated that  unfair disciplinary  action against student union activists is  met with silence from ASUU.

He accused ASUU members of molesting  students without a  response from the union, perhaps among other issues I dont remember now. 

I left the Nigerian university system 11 years ago, and know almost nothing about its state beyond the University of Benin, where I was.

In that limited context, however,  I observed a strong elitist mentality among significant numbers of senior academic staff, even towards  junior academic staff.

Non-academic staff and students often belonged in a different social universe, not surprising, and perhaps inevitable,  and if it applies across Nigeria, it would not be unique to the country, since the routes of self and institutional development and of sociation  of these groups are different.

          Cultivating the Loyalty of Students 

It is crucial, however, to cultivate the loyalty of students. They can speak out with a loud voice in the union's favour in the appropriate contexts.

Such cultivation would involve ASUU taking a consistent active interest in Student Union affairs, with particular reference to general issues of student welfare and more specifically, student union activism, recognising in such activism a reflection in a different context, of its own struggle for its members' welfare and the well being of the university and of society. 

Infringement on student's rights for engagement  in student union activism must be met with a carefully considered and powerful response from   ASUU, consistently, so the point is made and never forgotten.

Academics will need to consistently  do their best by students, keeping in mind that  by being fair to them, you are cultivating an ally in a collective struggle. 

                   Sexual Relationships with Students 

One of the more glaring complaints about Nigerian academics relates to relationships with female students.

Rather than simply state academics should avoid such practices,  it could be vital to acknowledge that in any context where humans are together, particularly  for long periods, it  is likely  to or almost or will certainly involve a sexual dimension.

An academic has to learn how to navigate these contexts in a way that is in one's best interests without working against the interests  of others involved.

The issues here are complex and involve a significant number of variables.

One can narrow these down by stating categorically that the vision of relationships between consenting adults cannot be compromised. Any coercion, direct or indirect, is an injustice. 

Academics also need to school themselves to manage sexual coercion from students.

I've not read this being discussed in this context but its real. 

Such schooling involves making sure one places oneself in contexts in which one's vulnerability is reduced and one is thereby better empowered to make decisions.

It is also important to cultivate an understanding of the opportunities available to one so that one is not pushed into relying purely on local talent, as it were.

A senior colleague I discussed this with suggested getting a girlfriend from a different educational institution, a girlfriend from a class one was teaching being absolutely taboo, according to another colleague, since that could readily blow up in one's face.

Another colleague, this time, in England, indicated that trying to force female students into  relationships  is ridiculous since they must come to you anyway, eventually, on account of your visibility, the authority and knowledge you embody, all these being attractive forces. Trying to micromanage such opportunities is where the problem comes in, according to this colleague. 

Also, the Nigerian online space is becoming increasingly  sophisticated, Facebook, in particular, and other media  providing tailor made platforms  for relational encounters.

 All it takes to find these platforms  is some careful searching, and if one is so motivated, consistent visibility. 

 Cultivating the Loyalty of  Primary and Secondary School Teachers 

I wonder how this can be done.

Would they not ask what they stand to gain as a group from ASUU initiatives? 

Cultivating the Loyalty of   Community Leaders,  Community Organizers and Parents

Achieving this would be priceless but would have to involve absolute transparency  and justice in dealing with students by ASUU members so the parents  of these students would more readily lend support to ASUU.

It would also be vital for ASUU to involve  itself in decision making in relation to and monitoring of university expenditure so as to make sure that just distribution of resources is made apart from addressing  academic  staff welfare, as Ikhide has judiciously  suggested in his detailed post on the subject of financial  and academic planning. 

This expenditure  needs to be made public, in the spirit suggested by Ikhide.

 ASUU could then point to such public  data as evidence of keeping faith with the resources  provided in trust  and the need for  collectively cultivating positive growth in the educational system.

 

Information Management

The subject of information management is central.

Ikhide has a vital point here which he made difficult to appreciate bcs of the context of calumny in which he enveloped it.

The character of the suggestions made by Nwakamma as well as the report by the former ASUU figure posted here suggests this challenge is best seen as a permanent struggle, in which transformative growth over time is the goal, necessitating  rethinking of strategy  as contexts change and new opportunities emerge.

The virtual universe is now the most ubiquitous information system on the planet and must be be vigorously  embraced.

A website, a Facebook page or a blog  is your primary face to the world.

It has to be maintained with the care you give a beloved child. Nothing else will do. A striking example is the Facebook account of the Ekiti State governor, Kayode Fayemi.

If ASUU is able to modernise at this level , particularly its information management, a new era would have emerged in the history of the union. 

Facebook, in particular, is an octopoidal  network with which one can penetrate a  broad swathe of the Nigerian demographic,  if well used. 

ASUU Uniport has a very active and impressive Facebook account 

The ASUU Umaru Musa Yaradua University Facebook account , if I got the name right, is also busy but not as impressive as that of Uniport

There are other Facebook groups and pages related to ASUU, the one most closely related to a national ASUU Facebook page being ASUUNews,  but I cannot  see one that describes itself as set up  for the national body. 

An ideal ASUU Facebook account in my view, might be a group, because the group format  particularly encourages boding among members and demonstrations of loyalty.

 I could respond later to the other points made by Nwakanma, which deal with Nigerian academic culture. 

     

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Obi Nwakanma

                                

On the Challenges of the Nigerian University System

 

 In Relation to the Ongoing ASUU Strike

 

[shina7...@yahoo.com]

I suspect that this is a trick question since so many people have outlined so many options and alternatives on this forum.

But then, hear me: the government often cave in under intense and coherently channelled pressure by any section of the society with the wherewithal to mobilise the populace. ASUU has that potential to mobilise the populace around such a fundamental issue as education. And, lucky lucky, we have a society that is increasingly becoming sophisticated with such issues. Let ASUU create a huge data dynamics enabled by a frightening Internet arsenal. And let's see what happen.

Some other people have also alluded to ASUU getting involved in the nation's budget framework as a watchdog.

We'll win more support, I believe, if we get in touch with our students and get them on our side. They have a whole lot of tricks to teach us. Else...we ossify!


Adeshina Afolayan
*Toyin go yarn again, and it's the ossify that go do am. But we are moving. The only sore point is ASUU listening.*

Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device from MTN

---

From: Chidi Anthony Opara <chidi...@gmail.com>

Sender: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2013 15:12:16 +0100

To: USA African Dialogue Series<usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

"What are the other viable options open to trade unions like ASUU, especially, in situations where employers continually refuse to listen to legitimate demands for improvements in conditions of service made by such trade unions?"

----Chidi

I really don't understand this penchant on the part of Chidi and Toyin to take the discussion and debate back to issues already litigated. If you don't like the options/alternatives to strikes that have been suggested, say so. Don't claim that there are no viable alternatives to strikes. Several options have been laid out, only to be dismissed by the same folks who are now claiming that there are no alternatives to striking.

Clearly, as many people, including former and present ASUU members, have been saying, the model of the paralyzing national strikes has become counterproductive, a disruptive and destructive option that is now deeply implicated in the problem that it purports to solve.

In articulating a critique of the four-yearly strike culture of Nigerian universities, contributors have suggested alternatives, even if naysayers want to pretend that this has not been done. Let's run through the list of alternatives outlined on this forum:

Jibrin Ibrahim suggested lobbying the national Assembly since that is where money is appropriated. This was promptly dismissed by Toyin, on account of his argument that Nigeria is not politically sophisticated enough for lobbying to be effective--whatever that means.

Others suggested coalition building to put pressure on the FG to do the right thing, the same suggestion that Obi Nwakanma has restated. This, too, was dismissed as ineffective, as an effective surrender to the FG.

Ikhide and myself and others suggested the decentralization of ASUU and its struggle. This has been met with derision without even an attempt to examine its logic. National strikes disrupt the academic calendar in irreparable ways and leave enduring negative systemic legacies that deepen the rot that ASUU claims to be combating. The point of decentralization is to remove this systemic risk of national strikes. It is also to localize the struggle for funding and better faculty conditions so that it can be better managed and organized and its goals better communicated. Further, local strikes and struggles have no capacity to disrupt the national higher education calendar. No educational system can survive frequent disruptions of its programs. 

Decentralization not only respects the peculiar financial,cost-of-living, geographical, and cultural realities of particular locales, it also makes it possible to reward merit and punish laziness in the two key areas of research and teaching. The current ASUU model of negotiating a centralized salary and benefits package that does not take merit, productivity and pedagogical output into consideration is a recipe for mediocrity and a key factor in the absence of teaching and research standards and aspirations in the system. This in turn is largely responsible for poor instruction and poor mentorship, which result in poor graduates. What is the point of working hard to publish and conduct ground breaking research or to become a good teacher and mentor when you cannot leverage these into securing individualized pay raises and rewards, when your lazy, unproductive colleague who does not publish and does not show up in class gets paid the same thing as you, thanks to a centrally negotiated ASUU-FG contract?

Decentralization of union activities can address these problems, allowing local unions and individual university administrators to collectively determine reward structures that speak to their peculiar institutional realities and reward teaching and research excellence. The centralized benefits package system is anachronistic, a throwback to a different era, a monument to mediocrity, impunity, and the absence of instructional and research accountability.

When you have a decentralized ASUU, the proximity of local ASUU officials to their university administrators and the possibility of continuous face-to-face dialogues that are unencumbered by the priorities and dictates of a national ASUU will avert strikes and create a platform for continuous problem solving and creative solutions tailored to each institution's needs.

Anyone can go on strike. It is the lazy man's option. It requires no intellectual rigor. That is why ASUU prefers this option. They know that if they go on strike, they will get all or some of what they're asking for and that they can go back to this well as many times as they want, but at what cost to their reputation and public standing? It seems that ASUU is yet to consider the reputational cost of the strike option. It takes tactical creativity to think outside the strike box and come up with alternatives. ASUU is too lazy and unimaginative to do the mental heavy lifting, the innovative brainstorming necessary to replace the national strike model, a model that is clearly now part of the problem of higher education in Nigeria.

Even without the decentralization of ASUU, striking can be made unnecessary if ASUU simply becomes more nimble in enriching its tactical toolkit. Let me elaborate:

1. On salary and benefits, instead of renegotiating salaries every four or five years as agreements that are often disputed and become the basis of national strikes, why can't ASUU push for a system of yearly inflation raises such as what obtains elsewhere. When you get a yearly inflation-based raise, there is no need for periodically negotiated contracts that are often the linchpin of strikes. This is not an ideal arrangement in that it would perpetuate the unfair system of remuneration that takes no account of productivity and merit, but at least it would make contracts and the strikes that they produce irrelevant. An even more creative approach could add to this system of inflation-based raises merit increases to be determined by a committee set up in each university, which would operate with a set of objective criteria in the areas of research, teaching, and service.

2. On funding, ASUU can make strikes over funding unnecessary by embracing and working out, along with representatives of government and university administrators, a system of data-driven projections that anticipate enrolment growths and future infrastructural needs and prepare for them, articulating statistical models on maintenance expenses etc. Ikhide is absolutely right that this would require the constant production and updating of data and the mining of such data to enrich projections and budgetary allocations. It may look daunting but it is not rocket science. It can be done if ASUU, a body that counts demographers and statisticians among its members, truly wants to institutionalize a continuous funding regime rather than continuing with the current system of arbitrarily asking for certain amounts based on current assessed needs only to return a few years down the road to raise dust about funding yet again.  

The alternatives are there if ASUU and its supporters open their minds and get out of the default mode of instinctively resorting to strike whenever they have an unmet grievance. A union that wants to be seen as a reformist organization has to transcend the cheap, hackneyed, and increasingly counterproductive tactic of national disruptive strikes.

[Moses Ebe Ochonu]

Shina,

Don't mind our forum friends, Toyin and Chidi; it is selective perception at its best. They keep asking questions about alternatives to strike that have long been answered by several forum members. You won't see what you don't want to see, especially when you're already wedded to a certain narrative, in this case the ASUU talking point. At least Toyin is longer saying that the narratives of rot in the university system is "fiction" or a "lie." I thought he would use his now familiar trope of "fiction" to describe Obi Nwakanma's detailed indictments of ASUU and its members' infractions, especially since the compatriot went farther than I ever went in dramatizing the complicity of ASUU and its members in the rot. It's a great sign of progress that Toyin is not calling Obi's characterization of the problem fiction as he did mine and others'. It may seem slow but we're converging and cohering around some consensuses.

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

What is going on here, really?

I cannot be persuaded to take seriously even a useful idea made by a person or people whose stance is always couched in simplistic perspectives that choose to ignore much of the historical  and social reality in the name of sweeping  demonisations.

Can I afford the energy to wade through the vitriol  to address  the logic of one or two ideas  they claim to present?

This being a group of scholars, why dont we drop these ASUU condemnations and demonisations since that is an issue of judgement that there will never be agreement on and which will always arouse strong negative emotions and focus on concrete  strategies, examining  their strengths and weaknesses?

I am prepared to engage with anybody who focuses on strategy   and abandons  the 'I Must Condemn  or Dismiss ASUU Stance' or 'I Must Describe Nigerian Academics as Largely Rogues' stance.

Once anyone insists on such a stance in the midst of whatever else they might be stating, I wont even bother to address  you because I would consider the energy to be spent in combating the mental walls you have erected  to be better spent on other pursuits. 

The whole of USAAfrica can spend weeks debating the pros and cons of whatever  such a person might have stated, but I wont be bothered.

Is  disgust at such a spirit as I criticise not why the debate seems to move forwards and backwards, while those who are happy to keep fighting think that because they are able to vet continuously, they are winning a battle? ? 

Nwakanma  made a sober presentation that avoided histrionics, abusive name calling and totalistlistic  demonisation. 

He also recognised the social factors that have worked against the university system, placing the development of the system within a timeline.

That is a far cry from the tenor, framing and at times content of what passes on this debate for criticism of ASUU and the Nigerian university system.

thanks

toyin 

[Diran]

Adetunji Azeez,

congratulations on your Acting Headship. It is a recognition and I join many other well-wishers to appreciate God for you. I don't know how long you have been in the saddle, but keep up the good work as you have enlightened most, if not all of us on your steadfastness to your calling and students. I initially wanted to ignore your insinuations, but on a second thought,(I didn't have to consult colleague), I decided to make a few things clearer to you. 

Tunji, The point remains that you were once my student, even if a 'tutorial' student. My journey in UI was also handsomely beautified by senior colleagues taking us tutorials while they were on their postgraduate programme. Some of them are Professors today! And anywhere I see them, I accord them the Honour due to a teacher and a lecturer. May be that is where we differ. And you should know that Honour is reciprocal.

Having said that, may I reiterate that I count is as a rare privilege for which I remain eternally grateful to God and my mentor, teacher and Professor, Femi Osofisan to have been asked to handle a 'tutorial' for him, as my supervisor then. I know you were not the only one under the sound and influence of my voice in those 'tutorials' and you know that without those 'tutorials', if I want to massage your  ego a little, or the other way round, your cumulative assessment would not have been complete for the MA you eventually got. For your information, I returned grades to my Prof, who was officially your lecturer on your behalf, because I was the one in charge.

That I was not officially a lecturer in the department then as you claim is far from the truth. I was officially a Teaching Assistant, as we were all designated, with a number of other colleagues, empowered to take classes and other assignments as the HoD deemed fit and if you must know, and that was how I came to become your lecturer. Or is there a difference between a teacher and a lecturer? We all had official communication from the University to legitimize our service. In the university system, is it not graduate assistants that are assigned to Professor? That Ibadan chose to recognize us as Teaching Assistants to us is a matter of nomenclature.

I count the years 1994-2000 as the beginning signpost of my teaching career, during which period you were my 'tutorial' student. As I said above, I have been privileged to have countless students before you, with you and after you, many of them better than you under my tutelage, students who show gratitude to their former teacher, to engage in a diatribe with you. At both the  undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Many of them are teaching in tertiary institutions across the country and beyond, one of them is even a Professor today! I am proud of all of them. In fact, till date, I still remember my former informal lesson teacher in Primary Five-Six as one of my teachers in life, as someone who had an influence on me. You see. 

When You say you were never my official student, I give it to you as I am not in a hurry to add you to my list of ex-students. I don't take credit for what I was not or am not. If at that stage of my post-graduate training as you acknowledged in your post I could be entrusted with a graduate class, what does that tell you? You fondly called me First Born, and I usually called you Second Born of Orunmila. Remember?

So, my dear Adetunji PhD, Acting Head of Department, you may keep,your apology to yourself. It is not necessary. If what I have here reads like a retraction statement, which you earnestly seek and want, feel free to take it so. The facts are there to,judge. 

To Moses, your points are well taken. Sometimes, because some of the posts don't appear in a thread, you mix up some detail. I have decided to start using the name Moses like you as from now. LoL!

To Farooq, you are right, mine was a badly executed joke . I pray you are all assuaged. 

And like Someone said...I think it is BA ( now I have to be careful!),  o tan ninu mi, that is , I am done for now.

As we await the outcome of the GEJ parley with ASUU and other stakeholders this Monday over the impasse, I wish all our Moslem compatriots a Happy New Year!

Shalom!

Moses K. 'Diran Ademiju-Bepo PhD

(Aka Mask the Priest)

Sent from my iPad

[Chidi Anthony Opara]

Have we looked at the viability of the options we propose? I have heard, for instance, that ASUU should lobby the national assembly for more allocations in the budgets. Have we taken into consideration, the money and clout needed to pull through a successful lobby in Abuja? Does ASUU have the money and the clout? I have also heard of ASUU mobilizing students to support their demands. Those who propose this option are perhaps of the belief that those students who did the “Ali must go” demonstrations in 1978 are still in school, they are not. To mobilize Nigerian students of today, one has to have the key to a bank vault. Can ASUU mobilize such resource? I can go on, but no need for that.

The question is; which of those options suggested are viable in Nigeria? Some of them, I concede, may have worked elsewhere.

As my people at Arugo Motor Park Owerri would always say; na we dey here, na we know wetin dey here.

CAO.

To: USAAfric...@googlegroups.com<USAAfricaDialog...@googlegroups.com>

ReplyTo: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Senator Adeyeye responds to ASUU

Diran and Moses,
I don't know where this argument back and forth will lead to or if it is capable of returning some sanity to our messy educational sector with particular reference to our universities but, I will like to make the following remarks pertaining the issue and my person in relation to this whole debate and my last post and what it has generated, specifically;
1. Diran, I was never officially your student at any stage of my academic pursuit. No. You were on you PhD while I was on a Master's programme. Yes, you were, as academic culture of Ibadan expects, attached to my class by Professor Femi Osofisan to handle tutorial in a Dramatic Literature course. To claim to being my lecturer would amount to you claiming that at that point in time, you were a lecturer in the Department of Theatre Arts, University of Ibadan. Before posting this, I got in touch with colleague in the department. If my claim is wrong, I'd apologise if not please retract your statement. We are scholars and should dwell on fact and verifiable truth.
2. Perhaps, Moses, you should read my posts at the begging of this whole debacle. I NEVER argued against the fact that the problems facing the university system is purely funding or that lecturers are not engaged in some of the ignominious activities such as victimisation, sexual harassment, inducement and intellectual laziness and so on. Yes, in truth ASUU at national and local levels must act to correct this and that adequate funding, commensurate remuneration, research grants and infrastructural development in synergy with sanction for erring lecturers are needed to address these problems. I remember pointing out that ASUU has an Ethics Committee to handle such abuses. Perhaps what is needed is to ensure that this committee works as it should. I'm aware of some lecturers that have been sacked for such offences and ASUU never defended them. Moses, that ASUU is doing nothing is not true that it needs to do more is not in contention.
3. My allusion to your claim to higher intellect derived from a post in response to Diran where you wrote that if a particular thinking could come from a university teacher, that explains the quality of our undergraduates. I can't remember the particular post now as I'm replying to this in the midst of a whole lot of work. Sir, the day I sense that I'm intellectually inferior to any scholar local, foreign or Diaspora, I'd pack my bags out of the system and leave the space to batter candidates. I came into the system by conviction that I could contribute something to the system. So, Moses, inferiority complex with me, no, never.
4. My full name is AZEEZ, Adetunji but I prefer the short form- Tunji Azeez. Most of my students call me TA. I teach at Lagos State University, Lagos and I'm current Acting Head of Department.
5. You asked if I would be willing to subject myself to evaluation by my students. Yes, I would, gladly. Let me inform you that in my Department, even before I became Acting Head, we have distributed questionnaires to our students at the end of semesters and sessions to examine ourselves. This has been revealing and we are making corrections. We also organise what we call "family meeting" with students and staff. We make it very informal and our students have spoken freely and none of them has been victimised after. At these meetings issues relating to attendance at lectures by staff and students, extortion, sexual abuse etc have been trashed. We have acted promptly, also, on anonymous letters by students against lecturers by investigating claims. I believe that we need to do more but we can only do more when students report cases officially without fear of reprisal. Although, I understand their fears but, we always encourage them to speak up as we aren't training docile people or robots for the society.
6. Moses, I got to LASU in 1998 and in all my years, I can't remember being absent from class without a cause. I must add that I also have not been late to class up to 15 times in 15 years. If I was to be absent or late for a few minutes, I always communicate this to mystudents. I've said this believing as you said that we are in an age where information can be got in no time. So, please feel free find out if there's any truth in my claims.
7. Yes, truly, there are lecturers who regurgitate old notes, I don't. And this is why I get frustrated with the system for not providing basic instructional materials so one could give one's best. This was what I meant when I wrote in my post that what some of our colleagues in other countries take for granted, we labour to get. Yet we must compete with colleagues outside the country. That was what led to my "rants", "inanities" "regurgitation" as you prefer to call my long talk about the rot in the system. Really, Moses, I wish things were better, when they do, most of us will be more ffilled and productive. That was why I wrote that the Diaspora needs to understand what's truly on ground to be able to work with those at home for the good of the nation. I remember posting, here, professor Tejumola Olaniyan's book donation recently to my Deparment. By the way, if you could be kind to assist us, too, despite our differences, I'd be glad.
8. I still insist that your position on ASUU is one sided and, Moses, that won't help the debate to move the system forward. Yes, our strike option is time worn but if ASUU has no option for now, people can suggest. Some of us have suggested that we do a documentary on our univerities and post on youtube and other media for Nigerians to see. This and other media can galvanise the people. However, you are not correct to say that ASUU's demands are pecuniary. No. Of course, there is nothing stating that ASUU shouldn't ask for pecuniary benefits if they are deserved.
9. I also maintain that you pick only those things that interest you in a post without linking what you've picked to the larger argument. If it's a style, as I said in my post, there's nothing I can do to change it. However, I strongly advocate that we be as objective as possible in our analysis. We can't be infallible and admission of new ideas or a better evaluation of old ones is the hall of scholarship.
Finally, please, when you pick and respond to what interests you in this post, include my request for assistance in your interest. Do have a nice weekend.

Tunji Azeez

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.

---

From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meoc...@gmail.com>

Sender: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Date: Fri, 1 Nov 2013 19:21:35 -0500

To: USAAfricaDialogue<usaafricadialo...@googlegroups.com>

...

[orunmi...@yahoo.co.uk]

Diran,
I am just amused. Simple. Since some of your students while you were also a student are now Professors and you are proud of them congratulations.
If you want to regard yourself -a colleague on the postgradute programme at Ibadan- my teacher you are free to do so. As you said, we may disagree on this and, as things are, we certainly have disagreed. I had Tutorial Lecturers back then in Ife but at that time, they were faculty members, fully employed and paid by the university and till date, I regard them as my lecturers. I'm still very much in touch with them. In this case, I don't see you as one. As you said in your post, we even jocularly called each other "first born and second born" of Orunmila (Professor Osofisan) because we were both aware of our status as Postgraduate students- you on your PhD and I on the MA. This matter is really simple; you have decided to see me as your student but I say no. Hold on to your position and I hold on to mine.
As for having "tutorialised" better student, I don't think you are in a position to judge my academic ability based on your tutorials. My teachers at Ife and our teachers at UI specifically should be left to assess me against THEIR other students. I'm not laying claim to intellectual superiority with anyone. Since I had grades good enough to earn me a 2nd class upper at Ife and a PhD grade in Ibadan, I'm content with my modest intellect.
As you stated, you have had countless students before me I.e from 1994-2000. Well, I got to Ibadan in the 1996/97 session so I may not be able to imagine how countless your students were between 1994 / 1996 when I got in.
Thanks for the congratulatory message. This, first born, is my last post on this, no matter what. I sincerely hope that the crisis that brought us all out would be resolved soon so we can all go back to work. Surely, I'm taking a few things away from this whole debate that will impact positively on my students and department. I thank all those brilliant minds who have shown an uncommon passion for our beleaguered nation.
Moses, I hope someone or some of us should compile all this into a book for posterity. I volunteer to work with anyone on this. The discussions are quite incisive and we must not let them be confined to the archives. Perhaps, Toyin Adepoju or any other person may be appointed to lead the team that would do this if my suggestion flies.
I wish everyone well.

TA

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone provided by Airtel Nigeria.

---

From: Diran <diran...@yahoo.com>

Sender: usaafric...@googlegroups.com

Date: Mon, 4 Nov 2013 09:24:17 +0000

To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com<usaafric...@googlegroups.com>

--

[Diran]

Sent from my iPad

Begin forwarded message: