Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Exclusive Interview: Dr. Yusuf Bangura ( Sierra Leone) Speaks on the Past, the Present and the Future

Responses from the home turf:

http://bintumani.websitetoolbox.com/post/show_single_post?pid=1273961728&postcount=2

Re - The apparent discrepancy and deviation from the norm of a
universal (flat) salary for secondary school teachers. This
discrepancy occurred in the good old days when two Sierra Leone leones
(Le) was the equivalent of the, stubborn, tenacious and determined, in
sickness and in health, through thick and thin, the always reliable,
Queen Elisabeth II & the good old £ British Bulldog Pound Sterling.

Ye, change has come – and not just to America!

Times have changed - and some of us have also changed with the times
some of us have got
short-changed.

"Nigger kill other niggers
Just because one didn't receive the correct change."

source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/l/lastpoetsthelyrics/niggazarescaredofrevolutionlyrics.html

Time now is
so i'm told

that you have to carry a large portmanteau to the bank to clear a two
thousand dollar cheque. To take away the two billion Leones load of
cash that you'll get in exchange for that 2,000 dollars – you'll be
needing a police escort - or both you and the cheques will have to be
provided with something like a well-armed military escort
OK, I'm exaggerating, in any case not like the military escort that
escorted us from Port Harcourt Airport direct to Umuahia in March
1983...

http://www.thelocal.se/blogs/corneliushamelberg/





On Jun 16, 11:35 pm, Yinka Banwo <yoba...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Its great once again to read from Yusuf Bangura. Thanks a lot for sharing this interview.
>
>  My teacher,Yusuf Bangura was one of those who influenced  my intellectual development at Ahmadu Bello University, along with other great scholars like Profs Temu, Swai, Gloria Emeagwali, Patrick Wilmot, Jibo Ibrahim, Ocello Oculli, Yusuf Bala Usman and Abdul Raufu Mustapha in the mid 1980s. One could recall the great  "Yusuf Bangura vs Yusuf Bala Usman debate" on the causes of The Nigerian Economic Crisis (what we as students called  the 'fight' between the long man and the short man!).
>
> ________________________________
> From: Cornelius Hamelberg <corneliushamelb...@gmail.com>
> To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
> Sent: Saturday, 16 June 2012, 13:31
> Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Exclusive Interview: Dr. Yusuf Bangura ( Sierra Leone) Speaks on the Past, the Present and the Future
>
> An interview in which Dr. Yusuf Bangura makes so many interesting
> observations about Sierra Leone and his eight year stint at Ahmadu
> Bello University in Nigeria. A little point of discrepancy though: He
> reminisces,  "one of my best friends, Ernest Williams, a fresh FBC
> graduate at the time, who was also teaching at the same school, earned
> 63 Leones" This is difficult to fathom. I worked at Mathura  a girls
> secondary school in the North of Sierra Leone from mid August to 31st
> December 1969 and earned something like 250 leones  plus free housing
> and a transport /car  allowance. This was when Ms Jonah was the
> principal.....63 leones? My memory is not playing tricks on me  and
> there could surely not have been such uneven salaries paid to Sierra
> Leone graduate school teachers.?
>
> http://www.thepatrioticvanguard.com/spip.php?article6557
>
> Exclusive Interview: Dr. Yusuf Bangura Speaks on the Past, the Present
> and the Future
>
> - Friday 8 June 2012.
>
> Sierra Leonean academic giant Dr. Yusuf Bangura (photo) lives in
> Geneva, Switzerland. He has lived and worked in that city for quite a
> long time as part of the UN establishment there. In this interview
> with PV publisher Gibril Koroma, he talks about the past, the present
> and the future in both Sierra Leone and Nigeria while sharing his own
> personal experiences. Ladies and gentlemen, here is Dr. Bangura:
>
> Patriotic Vanguard: Please briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
>
> Yusuf Bangura: My name is Yusuf Bangura. I recently retired from the
> United Nations Research Institute for Social Development in Geneva
> after working for 22 years on a range of research projects. My last
> major assignment was the coordination of the Institute's flagship
> report Combating Poverty and Inequality: Structural Change, Social
> Policy and Politics, which was published in 2010. I have worked on
> diverse subjects in the field of development, covering numerous
> countries and regions around the world. Before joining UNRISD in 1990,
> I taught political science at the Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria
> for eight years and at Dalhousie University in Canada for a year. I
> was also a visiting researcher at Uppsala University and Stockholm
> University in Sweden from 1988-1989.
>
> My basic training was in international political economy at the London
> School of Economics and Political Science, where I did my
> undergraduate and doctoral studies. I wrote my PhD dissertation on the
> declining role of the pound sterling as an international currency and
> the political economy of decolonization in Africa. I left Sierra Leone
> in 1971 when I was 21 years old. I attended Samaria primary school and
> Prince of Wales school in Freetown, and did my sixth form at the St.
> Edward's Secondary School, also in Freetown. Before proceeding to the
> LSE in 1971, I taught English and Geography for a year at the Services
> Secondary School at Juba. I'm married to Kadiatu (formerly Mansaray),
> and we have two children: Mariama, who is 29 years old, and Bangali,
> who is 20.
>
> PV: You grew up in Sierra Leone in the 50s, at a time when life was
> not so bad, I guess. Please share with us how things were in Sierra
> Leone in those days.
>
> YB: I have very fond memories of life in Sierra Leone in the 1950s and
> 1960s. I grew up in an environment where hard work was admired and
> rewarded; and the basic institutions for progress, such as schools,
> hospitals, public utilities, and the bureaucracy functioned very well,
> even though their social reach was limited. It was relatively easy for
> children from poor backgrounds with access to these services to make
> progress and eventually join the ranks of the middle class. Most of
> the friends I grew up with believed that we had a bright future. We
> also believed that we had a capable state that would help us realize
> our dreams.
>
> Let me give you one example that I believe changed the trajectory of
> my life. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Sierra Leone government had
> what was called a "National Scholarship" award for students with the
> best grades at the GCE "A Level" examinations. Recipients of these
> scholarships were entitled to study at any university in Britain or
> any other country in the Commonwealth. This was a great incentive for
> students to focus on their studies and travel abroad. The names of
> successful students would be announced on the radio and the
> newspapers, turning such students into celebrities among their peers.
> I decided in my second year at sixth form that I should compete for
> the award. I scaled down most of my social engagements, including my
> participation in the very popular "Common Entrance Outing" organized
> by Freetown's youth at the fabulous beaches of Lumley, Godrich, Laka
> and Number Two River. And it paid off. It confirmed the argument in
> one of the most fascinating non-fictional general books that I've read
> Outlier: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell, about the value of
> hard work, or what he called "the 10,000 hour rule", as opposed to
> simple talent, to understand success.
>
> The other interesting thing about the scholarship award was that the
> Sierra Leone state had the infrastructure at the Ministry of Education
> to help students handle their applications to foreign universities and
> provide guidance about how to live in foreign countries. The ministry
> handled all matters related to passports and visas and we were given
> an allowance to help us settle down in the first month of our arrival
> in Britain. There was an "Education Attaché" at the Sierra Leone High
> Commission in London that handled student affairs. It paid our fees to
> the universities and transferred our subsistence grants to our bank
> accounts every month without any of us having to go to the High
> Commission to pressure officials to make the payments. I was a
> beneficiary of this caring and efficient state for seven years. If you
> did well in your undergraduate studies, the state would extend the
> scholarship even up to PhD level, which happened in my case. I recall
> when in 1974, I applied for the M.Phil course, which was a condition
> for admission to a PhD programme, my undergraduate tutor wanted me to
> apply for a university scholarship. I told him that we should not
> worry about finance, as I was confident that I would get a Sierra
> Leone government scholarship. I was deeply nationalistic.
>
> I always tell my children that those of us who were born between 1940
> and 1970 were very lucky to enjoy Sierra Leone's heritage of sound
> human capital. We had a university that was one hundred and twenty
> years older than the next generation of universities that the British
> built in Ibadan in Nigeria, Legon in Ghana, and Makerere in Uganda in
> the 1940s. Indeed, many of the early post-colonial elites in these and
> other African countries were largely trained in Sierra Leone. And our
> primary and secondary schools were truly first rate. I will always
> remember our Economics and Government teacher at sixth form, Denis
> Williams, who taught us how to get at the heart of an issue, develop
> complex arguments and question everything.
>
> I would like to highlight one other point about the 1950s and 1960s:
> the standard of living for the growing elite, including the lower
> middle class of teachers, nurses and clerks was good. I earned 36
> Leones a month as a secondary school teacher at Juba, and one of my
> best friends, Ernest Williams, a fresh FBC graduate at the time, who
> was also teaching at the same school, earned 63 Leones. The school
> gave every teacher a generous monthly transport allowance of 20
> Leones. Ernest and I were able to hire a taxi on a contract basis to
> take us to Juba every morning, and collect us from school in the
> afternoon and take us home at Campbell Street every school day for a
> whole year.
>
> PV: You taught at universities in Nigeria the 80s during the oil boom
> in the midst of military rule.What were your experiences as a
> university lecturer at the time?
>
> YB: I went to Nigeria in 1980, at the tail end of the oil boom, which
> began to show signs of decline by 1982. I stayed until 1988, when the
> crisis became deep and the military government was fighting various
> groups on the campuses and the wider society in its efforts to impose
> an IMF-inspired austerity programme. Much of my research focused on
> trying to understand the origins and dynamics of the crisis, the
> highly mismanaged and unpopular structural adjustment programme, and
> the contestation between unions and the state in managing the crisis
> and adjustment programme. I immersed myself fully in the Nigerian
> social science community and network of groups advocating progressive
> social change. I was warmly embraced by colleagues, students and
> social activists. Even today, many Nigerians who have not met me
> believe that I'm a Nigerian. Some of my closest friends are Nigerian.
> Indeed, Nigeria is another home. I try to keep abreast of developments
> there.
>
> Three things stand out for me in my engagement with Nigeria. The first
> is the sheer size of the informed middle class and social movements.
> There are more than 100 universities and 40 big towns ...
>
> read more »

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