Sahara Reporters: Would you have wished that Carnegie had sent him [Professor Pius Adesanmi] to Nigeria instead? It seems to us that Ghana's gain is Nigeria's loss with this appointment?
Professor Tade Aina: Well, the Corporation supported Nigerian universities such as Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, the University of Jos and Ahmadu Bello University between 2000 and 2009. But in 2009, when we were developing the current strategy , the governance environment in Nigerian universities with endless strikes, incomplete and/or truncated reforms and transformation initiatives, the predominance of poor and uninspiring leadership at Executive and Council levels and an increasingly opaque rather than transparent orientation led us to withdraw from direct support to Nigerian universities. We still support Nigerian academics indirectly (and there are outstanding and impressive scholars still working in Nigeria) through the disciplinary and thematic networks and the competitive fellowships grants and through grants to TrustAfrica, Dakar and CODESRIA, Dakar. The Nigerian higher education terrain, indeed the overall education sector requires an urgent and complete overhauling. The decay and the rot in institutions, processes, structures, standards, norms and values have taken such deep roots that the cleaning up needs to be deep and unprecedented! There are a few pockets and perhaps courageous islands of institutional sanity and integrity, but in the words of the old Ibadan politician, most of the education sector is a "peculiar mess"! That is why Prof. Adesanmi is not enjoying his fellowship in that terrain.
Professor Tade Aina: Well, the Corporation supported Nigerian universities such as Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, the University of Jos and Ahmadu Bello University between 2000 and 2009. But in 2009, when we were developing the current strategy , the governance environment in Nigerian universities with endless strikes, incomplete and/or truncated reforms and transformation initiatives, the predominance of poor and uninspiring leadership at Executive and Council levels and an increasingly opaque rather than transparent orientation led us to withdraw from direct support to Nigerian universities. We still support Nigerian academics indirectly (and there are outstanding and impressive scholars still working in Nigeria) through the disciplinary and thematic networks and the competitive fellowships grants and through grants to TrustAfrica, Dakar and CODESRIA, Dakar. The Nigerian higher education terrain, indeed the overall education sector requires an urgent and complete overhauling. The decay and the rot in institutions, processes, structures, standards, norms and values have taken such deep roots that the cleaning up needs to be deep and unprecedented! There are a few pockets and perhaps courageous islands of institutional sanity and integrity, but in the words of the old Ibadan politician, most of the education sector is a "peculiar mess"! That is why Prof. Adesanmi is not enjoying his fellowship in that terrain.
"The Nigerian higher education terrain, indeed the overall education sector requires an urgent and complete overhauling. The decay and the rot in institutions, processes, structures, standards, norms and values have taken such deep roots that the cleaning up needs to be deep and unprecedented! There are a few pockets and perhaps courageous islands of institutional sanity and integrity, but in the words of the old Ibadan politician, most of the education sector is a "peculiar mess"! That is why Prof. Adesanmi is not enjoying his fellowship in that terrain."
- Professor Tade Aina, is Program Director, Higher Education in Africa, Carnegie Corporation, New York. Professor Aina is a distinguished member of this distinguished forum.
Read the rest of the interview here
Well, we congratulate Professor Pius Adesanmi and wish him well in Ghana. He will be an asset to their institutions.
- Ikhide
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