Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - I AM NOT AN INGRATE -

Why are all these ASUU people sharing the same article everywhere? LOL. This is the second time someone is sharing it on this same listserv! When you have no argument, you hold on to other people's flawed arguments as a crutch. There is nowhere in my article--or in Moses' article--that the claim is made that Nigerian universities don't produce stellar graduates.

You want me to repeat my article and say I've praised my former teachers and then point out that exceptions don't define a pattern? So because one person, or a few people, achieved success in spite of "ill-equipped" teachers, we should accept that everything is now hunky-dory, that Nigerian universities are now pedagogical elorados? OK o!

 That ASUU people are unembarrassed about sharing this article makes our point.

Farooq

Farooq A. Kperogi, Ph.D.

School of Communication & Media

Social Science Building 

Room 5092 MD 2207

402 Bartow Avenue
Kennesaw State University

Kennesaw, Georgia, USA 30144
Cell: (+1) 404-573-9697
Personal website: www.farooqkperogi.com

Twitter: @farooqkperogi

Author of Glocal English: The Changing Face and Forms of Nigerian English in a Global World

Nigeria's Digital Diaspora: Citizen Media, Democracy, and Participation

"The nice thing about pessimism is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised." G. F. Will

On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 3:57 PM Ademola Dasylva <dasylvaus@gmail.com> wrote:

As cc'd from Abdelgafar Facebook page:                        Tribute to my Supposed "Ill-Equipped" Lecturers in Nigerian Universities .

I got admitted to study Physics at Ahmadu Bello University in 1993 and graduated in 1999. Within that 6 years, one year was lost to the ASUU strike and another year lost to ABU internal crises that brought Gen Mamman Kontagora as Sole Administrator of the university. I enrolled for MSc in 2001 and graduated not without losing another year to the ASUU strike. I got Bachelor's and Masters' degrees, thanks to the "ill-equipped" Lecturers. Then I got employed as Assistant Lecturer to join the gang of "ill-equipped" Lecturers in Nigerian universities, and i enrolled for a PhD in ABU.

I actually thought I was poorly trained and ill-equipped. I remember traveling home (Ihima, Kogi state) for holiday around 2006 or 07, and a cousin brother met me in my family house and we went to visit a cousin sister who was also home for holiday. We were discussing and she asked why I didn't search for a scholarship for my PhD program? I was like, can I cope with their level abroad? And she replied; we are not as bad as you think. She tried to demystify the complex in me.

Then in 2008, the PhD proposal I was working on in ABU won the IDB Merit Scholarship Award for High Technology. I then applied for a PhD at Leicester and the HoD of Engineering department was impressed with my proposal and accepted me as his student for the PhD. I didn't realize I had learned so much from my "ill-equipped" Lecturers in Nigeria till I arrived in Leicester in 2009. I remember a colleague in the lab (High Voltage Lab, Leicester), a Chinese, saying "Abdel if I knew as much as you know in my first year, I won't be scared of my APG viva". APG is the first year of PhD at Leicester that if you fail you will end the PhD journey and get an MPhil. All through the 3 years PhD, my supervisor was always proud to mention to anyone that Abdel came to Leicester and within 6 weeks he developed a working proposal. That was how much our "ill-equipped" Professors and Lecturers gave us to move further in our chosen careers.

There was a job advert in the department in 2011 for Teaching Fellow and I didn't apply. The secretary to the HoD (my supervisor) who got an impression from my supervisor that I am a very good student specifically asked why I have not applied for the job since I am ending my PhD.

My second supervisor invited me for a farewell lunch with his family. And while touring Market Harborough, his wife said; "Steve, why will you and John allow Abdel to go back to Nigeria when you said he is one of your best PhD students? Why don't you keep him in the university?" We just smiled. Some of us in the gang of "ill-equipped" lecturers in Nigerian universities actually had a chance to stay back at the ready-made western universities system and condemn our colleagues at home but chose to return to help develop our university system.

Few months after my return to Nigeria, my PhD supervisor informed me of a postdoc position coming up in Norway and recommended me to get the job. At NTNU, Trondheim Norway, they called me "a postdoc with a difference". Thanks to the discipline of hard work planted in us by my "ill-equipped" Professors and Lecturers during our BSc and MSc programs in ABU. When I was coming back, I told my senior colleagues in Trondheim that I am going to develop a High Voltage laboratory and research. We have achieved the development of High Voltage Laboratory with 400kV HVDC generator and 100kV HVAC generator by January 2021. The lab is dedicated to my supposed "ill-equipped" Lecturers who set the foundation.

Some of our supposed "ill-equipped" Professors should rather be celebrated that despite the harsh condition of service, they are still able to produce students that left Nigeria and are now "well-equipped" in universities in Euro-America. There is no way we would have gone abroad without the Bachelor's degrees from our supposed "ill-equipped" Lecturers in Nigeria.

I am not an ingrate.

©️Amoka

Prof. Ademola Omobewaji  Dasylva,  FNAL
(Professor of African Literature, Oral Poetics & Performance), 
Department of English;
Coordinator,  Ibadan Cultural Studies Group (ICSG);
Chairman, Board of TOFAC (International);
Recipient, 2009 Distinguished  Africanist Award for Research Excellence, University of Texas at Austin, USA
Recipient, 2019 Asante Award for Outstanding Research in African Studies, University of Georgia, Athens, USA.
Rm. 68, Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan, Nigeria.
+234(0)802 350 4755

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