Prof Falola, Congratulations to you and your family on the marriage of your daughter. God bless.
Sent from my HTC
----- Reply message -----
From: "'Olatunde Babawale' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>, "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - ASUU: Moderator's Caution
Date: Tue, Aug 22, 2017 4:25 PM
From: "'Olatunde Babawale' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>, "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - ASUU: Moderator's Caution
Date: Tue, Aug 22, 2017 4:25 PM
Oga,
Hearty congratulations on your daughter's wedding. May the Lord bless the marriage bountifully. A ku oriire o.
Tunde Babawale
Dept of Political Science
University of Lagos
-- University of Lagos
On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 3:47 PM, 'ayandiji daniel' via USA Africa Dialogue Series<usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:Congratulations to the new couple and the family of our indefatigable moderator.Diji
From: Mobolaji Aluko <alukome@gmail.com>
To: "usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Monday, August 21, 2017 1:23 PM
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - ASUU: Moderator's Caution
Moderator TF:Is this your daughter who secretly calls me "My, People?" that got married? Big congratulations to her and her proud parents! May she have as many children as the new couple agree - plus one set of twins.Bolaji Aluko
On Sunday, August 20, 2017, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:--Moderator' note:My daughter got married yesterday, but even at the wedding my mind was consumed by this issue. I take OU's statement below as an excellent summary. Let me build on it:
1. I think, by and large, most people understand lapses, weaknesses, even evil. They are visible. Or, as in the case of dealing with officials who request bribes from us, we are victims. Thus, from Mali to Somalia, people talk. They know.
2. Human beings want to take care of their needs. Parents are not deceived. I doubt there is any parent who is deceived. So you have a choice: do you want your child to stay at home and rot, setting you into depression or do you want the child to leave the house and go to the worst school? I know the answer: go to the worst school!!!
3. From policy issues, I ask myself all the time, what do I do if I cannot do something? A contradiction? Yes, the fact that I know that something is bad does not mean I can correct it like making an instant coffee. I once served on a committee on prostitution. The EU wanted to round them up and threw them into detention camp. We were to decide 24 hours later. I could not sleep, I developed fever, I began to throw up, I opened a bottle of brandy and drank it all. Should I endorse prostitution or endorse detention and deportation? Anyone who tells you that this is simple has a limited understanding of how society works. I lobbied against detention and deportation, very difficult, but I won. Does this mean I endorse prostitution? I did not but I asked myself: with states that don't care about their citizens, what do they do when they dump the girls in Dakar and Lagos? Thus I said can we not teach them trade and give them money?
4. Arising from 3, you want the ideal, as we all do, but you slide into pragmatism, as this is what can work.
5. And from 4, from pragmatism you move to hope. I went to the worst secondary school in the Western region, with two play mates executed for armed robbery. I dropped out after two years. How does a high school drop out become a successful scholar? When Moses was at Bayero those of us in the South were mocking his Department. He may not know this!
6. And from hope, we begin to pray for a better future.
I am an incurable optimist. When I tell people that I have never in my life met a bad person, people mock me. I have only met people who don't think like me, who don't look like me, whose values and religions are different from me, who listen to different songs, eat different food, etc. but they are just different, not bad. All these institutions will grow, only that they won't grow at my pace. All these negative values will disappear, only that they won't disappear at my pace.TF
Sent from my iPhoneI have been following this conversation and gyrating from agreeing silently with Moses to agreeing somewhat with those with opposite views (e.g. that the problems we see in the Nigerian university system and ASUU represent problems of the larger society and all its institutions). So for me, it is not an "either or" situation but "both and". From this point of view, I find Moses to be absolutely correct, but not flexible enough --all things considered. Nevertheless, I appreciate his courage in relentlessly making his points. The question I have, and what I suspect the moderator is seeking here, is how do we move from critical ideas to positive action? The problems are known. They are not new. ASUU strategy and "results" are also known. What new practical steps should be taken by who, etc, etc? Towards that end, I appreciate insights from Bolaji Aluko and others that touched on some of these, and acknowledged the complex, interrelated, and nuanced nature of these problems and the context in which they occur/exist. My 2 cents.OU
On Aug 19, 2017 7:31 PM, "Olayinka Agbetuyi" <yagbetuyi@hotmail.com> wrote:
Moses:
You may not be getting the questions of the moderator in the right perspective. For me the moderators questions do not antagonise your perspectives but reinforce them.
When the moderator asks what forces and processes create the values that we dislike in the Senator and the police and ask whether we should not task ourselves with reforming them my mind goes to those defensive legislators under fire who cite sexual harassment of academic as evidence they dont have clean hands either.
That means the acadrmics created the bad legislators and police because tbey are the products of unsound educational system.
The rider is how do we as academic reform the system. The ASUU is the mouth piece of the academic establushment. Beyond criticising them, what do we want them to do to get their acts together in terms of concrete proposals so the university system can produce better senators and police in the future, starting with better faculty NOW!
You and I have made known our suggestions. I think he is inviting more suggestions. I will give a coda to my previous suggestions:
The core primary public universities have a duty to LEAD in this regard.
A situation where female UNIVERSITY students take their bath in the OPEN is the most disgraceful occurrence that can befall any modern country (we are not in the 16th century for Gods sake!)
From the sheer number of prominent graduates in industry and government produced by the combination of ABU, OAU, UI, UNN, UNILAG, alone through alumni outreach enterprise these institutions can solve the problem of epileptic power supply and water generation permanently.
I have stated in a previous posting a few years back how a village in Kaduna was powered permanently through a $50, 000 solar energy plant. Universities by definition are village communities. If the big 5 can through alumni solicitations make power generation and water generation stable. The minimal condition for academic enterprise has been put in place.
Entrerprising institutions can even sell power to surrounding villages. To earn revenue to fund computer centers at no cost to students to produce those materials which are being currently sold by merchant/lecturers thereby bucking their trade. I out time ad undergraduates nk lecturer could sell Ngugi's Petals of Blood to us for gains when it arrived in the bookstore the following wrek after it was published!
Those institutions unlike UI and OAU who do not possess dams can sink multiple boreholes near halls of residences.
With permanent electricity in the big 5 computation, effective library activities and befitting sanitary situation follow to the extent through coordinated action they serve as hub of distributiin of learning materials to newer and smaller institutions.
ASUU can be the facilitator and coordinator of these.
The idea that ASUU is a trade union like the workers in a plastic manufacturing plant is as sickening as being told that members of the Nigerian Guild of Editors are on the same level as the members of the NUJ. They are not. Academics set the tone for the moral fibre of the nation. They MUST rise up to that responsibility.
Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.
-------- Original message --------From: Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com>Date: 19/08/2017 23:26 (GMT+00:00)To: USAAfricaDialogue <usaafricadialogue@ googlegroups.com>Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - ASUU: Moderator's Caution
Oga moderator, are you saying that the ills of the Nigerian academy that we have been outlining are products of larger societal forces? If so, is that not a cop out and a recipe for inertia and helplessness? Do we wait until these larger forces are extirpated before we expect or demand better from ASUU and its members? That would be music to ASUU's ears. It would also amount to exculpatory pandering to our colleagues in Nigeria. Perhaps before your important questions come into play, we need to first persuade our colleagues to take responsibility, hold themselves accountable, acknowledge the enormity of the rot beyond the familiar rhetoric of funding, and quit being defensive.
Not sure I get the logic of the reference to Senators and the police. Are we wrong to expect that academics who write tomes criticizing the excesses of the two groups should do much better in their professional lives and in their obligations than those they criticize?
And what is odd is that many of our Nigeria-based colleagues seem to have two separate scripts on these problems, one private and one public. It is understandable, but it still rankles. In private, the defensiveness gives way to brutal honesty. You know this as well as I do. I guess their attitude is analogous to your "don't empower our enemies" and "don't ruin the chances of the honest ones who want to apply to things on this side of the water."
On Sat, Aug 19, 2017 at 3:45 PM, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu > wrote:
Small questions for you to move the argument forward:1. What forces and processes create values and habits that we find disturbing?For instance, what forces produced the Senators we dislike, and the police that take bribes from us? How do we unleash counter forces and processes to eliminate those things? Why are you not asking me and you to do the reform?2. Can an institution, as in the police, reform itself or does it require greater forces outside of it to reform it?3. Can the abnormal not become the new normal if 2 does not occur?TFFrom: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@ googlegroups.com> on behalf of Shola Adenekan <sholaadenekan@gmail.com>
Reply-To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@ googlegroups.com>
Date: Saturday, August 19, 2017 at 1:29 PM
To: dialogue <usaafricadialogue@ googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - ASUU: Moderator's CautionProf Aderibigbe, you said "Why don't we all go back home take over from the "never do good" Nigerian ASSU members and live happily thereafter and forever. Just a thought!" If I have a dollar for every time someone gave that response with regards to debates about ASUU's strike actions, I'll probably be a (US) dollar millionaire by now.With due respect, what you wrote above is a cheap shot. What people like Moses and I are advocating for is actually what we advocate for in Europe and America, which is that it is the duty of academia to be the guiding lighting for societies. It is our job to speak truth to power. What we call for is that ASUU needs to take a closer look at itself and examines its imperfections. University teachers should of course, be well-paid but earnings should be deserved.ASUU will get its members the pay-rise it is asking for, but what then? Will ASUU fight the culture of nepotism within its rank? Will it tackle sexual harassment of students (https://www.jstor.org/stable/ 24487380?seq=1#page_scan_tab_ contents)? Will it address the frequent intimidation of junior colleagues and students(http://www. vanguardngr.com/2016/11/ students-lament-compulsory- handouts-tertiary- institutions/) ? And what about corruption within the university system (http://www.gamji.com/ article6000/news7987.htm)?SholaOn 19 August 2017 at 21:33, Ibigbolade Aderibigbe <gbolaade.aderibigbe@gmail.com > wrote:On a comic NOTE Why don't we all go back home take over from the "never do good" Nigerian ASSU members and live happily thereafter and forever. Just a thought!!!!
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