Ikhide's essay is best understood as entertainment, laced with unsubstantiable fiction mixed with fact.
I'm not bothering to read the full essay.
I doubt if it will have much of value.
It becomes a form of entertainment in his characterisation of the visual images of the ASUU leadership.
I really enjoyed the sheer fun of that.
It becomes a mean kind of imagined reality when he starts invoking First Class tickets abroad and schooling abroad as the norm for wards for children of Nigerian academics.
Where would they get the money from?
How much are they paid?
The fees in England, at least, for foreign students are more than double those for home students.
For a postgraduate course you are looking at £9 a year and above.
I know one Nigerian academic who has a child doing a postgraduate course in England after completing her first degree in Nigeria, but this person lives both on their salary and on a consistent stream of fellowships from the West.
Is it the claim that they are studying in countries where it is cheaper?
I know one academic whose child is is studying in an African country after studying in Nigeria but also know another who did all his studies in Nigeria.
What is the percentage of Nigerian academics whose children study outside Nigeria?
Is any research on the subject being referenced by the writer?
Why should he?
It is fashionable to broadcast one's moral authority by spitting on Nigeria, using its inadequacies as basis for absolute condemnation.
Living in a country built on some of the worst brutalities in history, as you enjoy the spoils of such blood wealth makes it easier to cast the stream of spittle in a forceful arc so it will land more readily on the struggling place from where you escaped to civilisation, arriving at a time when the bulk of the founding horrors have been distilled for their value and the booty shared in a way that you too can benefit from.
A sense of proportion is unhelpful in such a necessity of self righteousness. .
The essay becomes fact when it references genuine claims about the need for ASUU to police its members, such as the Farouk essay.
The essay becomes farce in stretching the Farouk essay into a parody of itself.
I used to get excited about such ultimately funny ways of addressing the challenges of Nigerian education but why bother about the untuned squeaking of birds trying to comment on what is beyond their will to grasp?
For serious discussions of this subject, anyone who is interested could go to the
Nigerian Biomedical and Life Sciences Yahoo group, in particular, where various sides of the subject have been dedicatedly trashed,
and Yanarewa and Raariga Yahoo groups.
thanks
toyin
On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 1:04 PM, Segun Ogungbemi <seguno2013@gmail.com> wrote:
--Ikhide,I don't know if you ever went to university in Nigeria. If you did, I want to know when and where?I went to University of Ibadan in the early 70s and my Hall was Independence. I left Nigeria on Scholarship to SMU Dallas in 1978.After my Ph.D at The University of Texas at Dallas in 1984, I returned to Nigeria to fulfill my part of agreement as a Federal government scholar to serve my country.Ikhide, when I came back in July 1985, the first place I went to visit was my Alma Mater and of course my former Hall, Great Independence. I first went to the toilet room. I ran out because of the poor state that I found it. I went to one of the wings of Hall, it was a nightmare. I held my breath and asked if I were actually at UI. I got into my car and wept.When I got to Ogun State University Ago-Iwoye now Olabisi Onabajo University to resume there in September 1985, the newly established university attracted me not because of its infrastructure but a place of challenge for me to develop the students and younger academic staff.The poor salary of academic staff turned my wife away from our institution called Ivory Tower. She went back to the US but I remained because of the agreement I signed as a Federal scholar that I would return to serve my country after the completion of my programme at UT-D.In those days many of our lecturers were poor and that could explain the kind of low esteem they received from their students and society in general. The military regimes contributed to the mess the university system has found itself. The poor state of infrastructure on campuses and the unwillingness on the part of governments to fund public Universities made it compelling for ASUU to take the governments to task.The Federal government willfully entered an agreement with ASUU and reneged on its fulfillment.It is ASUU struggles that have saved the University system from a complete collapse.There is more to write about the state of Nigerian public Universities. Today no university in Nigeria is ranked among the 10 top Universities in Africa. It is sad.Ikhide, let me ask you, if you are concerned about the current state of our public universities, what would you do to make the governments fund the institutions so that the lecturers do not go on incessant strike?Now that you see in a nutshell the state of ruin the university system is experiencing, would you be willing to come to your fatherland to make your contributions like some of us?No society is perfect and I see your criticism as out of place most especially your language. Nobody can be persuaded that you have a knowledge of what the condition of Nigerian tertiary institutions look like.Please avoid making provocative statements on ASUU.Thanks.Segun Ogungbemi.
Sent from my iPhone--
The Academic Staff Union of Universities of Nigeria. ASUU. ASUU is on strike again. Who cares? They are thugs, they are always on strike, nobody seems to know why, except that it involves being paid a boatload of money by their counterparts, those thieves euphemistically called the Nigerian government. ASUU. My contempt for that body of narcissistic thugs knows no bounds. There is really not much one needs to say about how these rogues in academic robes have colluded with any government in power (AGIP) to defraud and rob generations of beautiful children what is their right – a good education. To say ASUU is on strike is to state the obvious, they are nearly always on strike, even when they are at work, they are on strike. Their members want to have sex with every child that walks into their pretend classrooms, when they have satisfied themselves, they pimp their helpless wards, yes, they do, to their friends, constipated generals and pot-bellied rogue-politicians who have too much money in their thieving pockets.
If you don't believe me, Farooq Kperogi has a disturbing piece here on the sexual harassment epidemic in Nigerian universities. You read that piece, and when you have stopped shuddering, you understand why fully less than 10 percent of Nigerian university dons have children living in that mess called Nigeria, let alone inside the filthy chicken coops that pass for classrooms from preschool to the tertiary level. In those criminal hovels, children of the poor and dispossessed are trapped and mis-educated by those whose children are being nurtured in the West. Their children will come back home from North America and Europe on holidays to the pretend suburbs of Abuja and Lagos island, wave a Cold Stone ice cream cone at the wreck built by their thieving parents and berate Nigerians for being wretched Nigerians. They often travel First Class. Ten percent? I made it up of course. I am a Nigerian intellectual. We are lazy like that. It could be less even.
Follow me, let's go to the silly website of ASUU right here. Let us visit their officers, all of them mean looking men, except for one harried looking token lady who has the cringe-worthy patronizing title of "welfare secretary." I am sure she does important things for the #OgasAtTheTop of ASUU. Maybe she is responsible for making pounded yam and bringing water so the men could wash their filthy hands. SMH. Yes, Nigeria is the patriarchy from hell, in Nigeria, misogyny reigns even in the 21st century and even among the men of the ivory tower. Hiss. Here's ASUU's list of men "leaders" and one token woman: Dr, Nasir Isa Fagge, president, Bayero University, Kano, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, Vice president, OOU Ago-Iwoye, Professor Ukachukwu Awuzie, immediate past president, IMSU, Owerri, Professor Victor Osodoke, financial secretary, MOUA Umudike, Dr. Ademola Aremu, treasurer, University of Ibadan, Professor. Daniel Gungula, internal auditor, MAUTech, Yola, Dr. Ralph Ofukwu, investment secretary, FUAM, Makurdi, Dr. (Mrs.) Ngozi Iloh, welfare secretary, University of Benin, and Professor Israel Wurogji, legal advisor, University of Calabar. All the men and one woman have horrid looking pictures of themselves on the website, except for Professor Wurogii, ASUU's "legal advisor" who either is too lazy or too busy to provide one. He is perhaps genuinely afraid for his life – not from the SSS but from irate abused students who have spent the past decade trying to get an education from these thugs.- IkhideStalk my blog at www.xokigbo.comFollow me on Twitter: @ikhideJoin me on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ikhide
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