Government, institutional leaders ("priesthood") and the common people ("laity") have a role to play in improving general ("ecumenical") life.
Those who write reports such as yours SHOULD NOT REST until something is done about them, because many of the OTHER reports that you write originate from the kind of rot that your group saw. I once spoke to a former VC who was constantly in the news being victimized by his students. When I asked him why, he lamented but confessed that "Those students are ANIMALS, but we made them so by where they live, how little they eat and where they take their classes, so they could care less, and a little match lights their violence." University life must be a step up
But when it comes to personal hygiene, those DOWN there can do better than just wait for ever for government or their supervisors to give them brooms and mops and waste baskets, or cutlasses to mow their surroundings. I insist that to live like a pig because those "instruments" were not bought for you is to be a pig.
Leadership counts. If the Ambassador that you referred to INSISTED that from then on, he would use his bathroom in that public place, you would see it improve permanently - or at least while he is Ambassador. It is not original to me, but I understand that the quality of maintenance of an entire facility is as good as its toilets, and I have taken that to heart in my own institution. Despite the bad water situation in Nigeria, if in each toilet a mop, a bucket of water, a WC bowl cleaner and a cloth towel is put in each - and each person is encouraged to PURCHASE his own toilet roll - then those who clean it will not feel like India's "untouchables."
Finally, one hopes that with the recent unfortunate 'copter crash that claimed some lives, roads to remote locations in Nigeria where important people and their deceased-to-be-buried parents come from will be more quickly developed.
And there you have it.
Bolaji Aluko
On Sat, Jan 19, 2013 at 5:44 PM, Ayo Obe <ayo.m.o.obe@gmail.com> wrote:
And in the case of the police training institutions, the President has several reports about the collapse of the infrastructure and the need for serious upgrading. When I was on the Police Service Commission the only tour we undertook was of training institutions. In Maiduguri we found training still going on in what had been 'temporary' accommodation for thirty years, where there was just one room, where students hung mattresses from the ceiling, lowered them at night to sleep, hoisted them in the morning for breakfast, then cleared breakfast to have their lessons. That was eight years ago.We produced a report which was received and shelved, as were other reports highlighting this same problem. The President cannot claim ignorance when he has a Minister of Police Affairs. When he launched a code of conduct for police officers recently, was it on the basis of reports that he had read or just because of wanting to give the appearance of having done 'something'?Recall one former Minister of Foreign Affairs who recounted the way he left his office on the top floor, went downstairs and on his way out declared a desire to use the bathroom on the ground floor. He said that you needed to see the panic on the faces of the junior officers as they begged him to return to his executive floor and use his executive facilities. Millions will be devoted each year to buildings and overheads, yet we are expected to accept that lavatories and 'water' closets need not use actual water because the pump to supply it is not working and the person whose job it is to maintain a huge keg of water is 'off today.'We don't have the 'untouchable' caste that they have in India whose job it is to maintain public toilets, so they are used down to a level where only desperation will force anyone in, and then left in that condition. It is only at the airports that some effort is made to maintain facilities. But Ministers are ushered in past all this unpleasantness, to the executive lift which takes them to the executive floor where they enjoy executive facilities.
AyoI invite you to follow me on Twitter @naijamaYes, go check round all our institutions of learning/training from secondary to tertiary to NYSC orientation camps and you will find even worse scenarios. Our leaders all know, they only pretend not to. Which way Nigeria?Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld from Glo Mobile.From: Ikhide <xokigbo@yahoo.com>Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2013 09:24:20 -0800 (PST)To: Toyin Falola<USAAfricaDialogue@googlegroups.com>ReplyTo: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.comSubject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Harrowing pictures of Nigerian Police Academy cadets' living conditons--My people,Please view these pictures. How do we explain this travesty? Have we no shame? I think every living Inspector General of Police since Independence should be hauled before the people to explain this savagery.- Ikhideps.I have news for you all; many public '"educational insitutions are just as bad."
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