USA Africa Dialogue Series - Fw: A NATION’S ELUSIVE SEARCH FOR QUALITY

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-----Original Message-----
From: maggie anaeto <maganaeto@yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2014 18:34:19
To: <ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com>
Subject: A NATION'S ELUSIVE SEARCH FOR QUALITY

A NATION'S ELUSIVE SEARCH FOR QUALITY

Ayo Olukotun

"Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and focused effort" – Paul Meyer

Let us begin with two appetisers from the news flow before the main course. The first concerns puzzles around the raging insurgency in North East Nigeria. African Independent Television (AIT) brought live to us at the weekend, a magnificent scenario from Yola, Adamawa state, supposedly a sorely afflicted Boko Haram enclave. An international congregation with several American professors assembled to observe the 10th Founder's Day of the American University of Nigeria, Yola. Ever since poet laureate, Niyi Osundare's graphic lament that the "universe has dropped out of our universities", we have stopped to think of them as truly international. But right here in North East Nigeria, very close to the violently anti-intellectual vanguard for an Islamic state, is a most precious evidence that the 'universe' has sneaked back into some of our universities.
The second puzzle connects the role of local hunters in recapturing Mubi, Adamawa state from the insurgent army. Our military is often portrayed as cowardly deserters and ill-equipped fighters while Boko Haram is constructed as tightly organised, armed with sophisticated weapons and virtually invincible. How come then that local hunters equipped with old rusty guns successfully routed the insurgents when our military could not? Something is missing somewhere and this writer would not mind some help with resolving the puzzle.
Before settling down to today's discourse, here is another short take. Mr. Raufu Aregbesola, recently re-elected governor of Osun state, though intelligent, is an unlikely professor of socio-linguistics; the discipline that studies the reciprocal interaction between the use of language and society. At the 2014 convocation lecture of the University of Ibadan held last week delivered by Aregbesola however, the politician delved into the way in which the use of language shapes political behaviour. According to him, the unprecedented militarisation of Osun state in the prelude to the recent gubernatorial election featured the deployment of, by his estimation 73, 000 soldiers wearing black masks. The issue however from the point of view of language is that these acts of terror were preceded by months of boastful claim that the People's Democratic Party would CAPTURE Osun state. It is a short walk the governor insisted from a mindset that seeks to
capture rather than merely win to the comprehensive mobilisation of the security apparatus just to police an election. So much for titbits.
The celebration around the globe last week of the 2014 World Quality Day provides an auspicious occasion to reflect on our approach as a nation to issues of quality. Interestingly, just before World Quality Day a tragedy occurred in Central India which is closely connected with laxity on quality and safety standards. In the aftermath of a shoddy and shabby sterilisation surgery, probably involving the use of infected equipment, 13 women died sending shock waves around India and the globe. There could not have been a more important lesson on quality and safety standards in every aspect of a nation's life.
Coming to Nigeria, we do not know for sure just how many people have died from fake drugs, quacks parading as doctors or nurses, from unsterilized equipment or 'surgeries' carried out in dingy and unhygienic locations. There is the probability however, that one other cause of sudden deaths discussed in a clear exposition by Professor Niyi Akinnaso in The Punch, November 18, 2014, is the consumption of unsafe, toxic, or fake medicines and products. The recent surge in the number of Nigerians dying from cancer suggests that more than ever before there are hazards arising from lack of adherence to quality.
If the World Health Organisation is to be believed approximately 60% of all anti-malaria drugs in Nigeria are fake. That statistic is only a metaphor for a country brimming with fakeries of every considerable kind. Fakeries apart, companies and economic players appear to be getting away with blue murder. A few months back, the Director General of the Consumer Protection Council, Mrs Dupe Atoki, read the riot act to Coca Cola, Nigeria and the Nigerian Bottling Company over increasing complaints of violation of safety procedures from consumers of soft drinks. According to her, the Council had being inundated with "complaints such as rusty bottle tops, rusty cans and foreign particles in beverage products." It is doubtful whether Atoki who is coming in the mould of Dora Akunyili has gotten thus far the kind of cooperation required to make necessary changes.
In other words, health, safety and longevity are being jeopardised daily because of the lack of attention to quality. We seem to have lived too long with substandard products and services that we are beginning to gradually adjust to them as a way of life. Take the area of governance for example. Standards have come so low that governors and aspirants to high office are citing among their achievements the payment of salaries. This can only come from an abnormal trait in which default on salaries has become a norm notwithstanding the fact that money is appropriated for that purpose. You may also wonder whether road rehabilitation or construction are worthy of mention as 'achievements' by aspirants for election or re-election. But that is what happens when a country adjusts to low standards or degradation.
Quality is a degree of excellence or distinction. A few years ago, the United Nations chose as the theme of World Quality Day 'In Pursuit of Excellence'. Quality is about affirmation and assurance that products and services are fit for the purpose for which they are intended. That is precisely why institutions are created to enforce standards and quality, monitor compliance and sanction offenders.
An often discussed area of alarmingly declining standards is the educational sector. A senior academic described to me recently, how unpleasantly surprised he was when in the course of a training workshop for secondary school teachers in English Literature in one of the states, he found out that many of these teachers had not read the prescribed texts. Imagine trying to teach one of Chinua Achebe's novels to secondary school students without having read it! Things like these spell real trouble for the educational sector which is supposed to be the bedrock for development and modernising change.
The recent World Quality Day organised around the theme, 'Building a Quality World Together' should provide us with the necessary impetus for re-introducing quality indeed excellence into key aspects of our national life. The opening quote from Meyer suggests that this will not happen without a national plan as well as a purposive leadership that makes excellence its goal. Looking the other way when substandard products and services are given right of way is to defeat an agenda for promoting quality and standards.
Similarly, our regulatory bodies, such as the Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON), National Agency for Food and Drug Administration Control (NAFDAC), Consumer Protection Council (CPC) among others should be given the tools and resources that they require to make a difference. Finally, we must reinvent our reward system in such ways that the remiss and corrupt are sanctioned while outstanding and qualitative work is given public recognition.

Prof Olukotun is Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Entrepreneurial Studies at Lead City University, Ibadan. ayo_olukotun@yahoo.com 07055841236














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