No Moses, what I argue is that we should be suspicious of claims of selective justice because that is the classic way to politicize justice. When selection occurs as they do we should agitate not for the disruption of that prosecution but for its inclusiveness. We should use that case to force the hands of government for more prosecutions not less.
My point is justice works through the establishment of precedence. The case you call selective the law calls precedence. Once precedence is established, it makes the law stronger and the prosecution of other cases both possible and necessary for justice to be fair, which is the ultimate goal. I hope I have made myself clear. But Fairness for you begins not with setting precedence but with group prosecutions!! Whatever the difference, you and ASUU are arguing not about basic justice and making examples of the Idiagbons but fairness. The irony just seems interesting.
My point is justice works through the establishment of precedence. The case you call selective the law calls precedence. Once precedence is established, it makes the law stronger and the prosecution of other cases both possible and necessary for justice to be fair, which is the ultimate goal. I hope I have made myself clear. But Fairness for you begins not with setting precedence but with group prosecutions!! Whatever the difference, you and ASUU are arguing not about basic justice and making examples of the Idiagbons but fairness. The irony just seems interesting.
On Fri, Jun 24, 2016 at 10:52 AM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:
Bode:No. ASUU is motivated by a desire to protect its members from being held accountable. I am not motivated by any protectionist instinct since, unlike ASUU, I am not beholden or obligated to anyone. Big difference. All I said in the case of corruption is that, the result (at least from 1999 till date) indicates clearly that a selective war is counter-productive and ineffectual. The evidence is clear. ASUU is not proceeding from any evidentiary or historical premise since this legislation is without precedence in Nigeria. It's reaction is purely impulsive and self-interested. Finally, unlike ASUU, I have never said that efforts, even selective and politicized ones, to hold some public officers accountable should be halted. I have only said that the efforts should be depoliticized and should be expanded beyond its apparent selectivity. Accordingly, when Bolaji suggested ways of expanding the proposed legislation to capture more potential sexual harassment scenarios on our campus, I supported his recommendation. I don't like selective justice because it is counterproductive in the long run. By the way, in order for you to equate my logic with ASUU's you'd have to reify ASUU's rhetoric that the proposed bill is selective. Do you believe that ASUU's claim is right? Many Nigerians would disagree with them. You, as I recall, never denied that Nigeria's past and current wars on corruption have been selective. Our difference was that you said a holistic anti-corruption war was impossible, that selectivity was inevitable and necessary, and that you wholeheartedly supported the ongoing selective and politicized war on corruption.--On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 11:34 PM, Bode <ominira@gmail.com> wrote:"The bill is discriminatory, selective, spiteful, and impulsive and lacks logic and any intellectual base by attacking the character and persons of those in tertiary institutions rather than addressing the issue holistically," he said.
The irony here, which I already subtly alluded to, Moses, is that you share a lot of the rhetoric of ASUU than you probably realize. ASUU's criticism of the bill uses the same language I have heard you use insistently in attacking Buhari's anti-corruption program. the objective may be different but the logic behind your reasoning is the same. I don't share that logic whether articulated by you or ASUU.--On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:24 PM Bode <ominira@gmail.com> wrote:Thanks John
... So Worst case... A student-client (talk of equivalence) can't be guilty of sexual harassment. That law does not apply to them?On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 8:31 PM John Mbaku <jmbaku@weber.edu> wrote:ken:The law allows me to drop the client for such advances. I cannot, however, do so unilaterally. I must apply to the court to withdraw from the case, in order to allow the client to have the opportunity to secure alternative counsel. However, the burden is on me and not the client--I am the professional.Similarly, a professor who finds himself/herself in a position in which he/she is being hounded by an amorous or opportunistic student for sexual favors, should report the matter to his/her department head and the student can be assigned to another instructor. In my college, we actually have a due process officer whose job it is to handle such complaints from both professors and students. A professor should never sleep with a student and excuse himself/herself by arguing that he/she was seduced! The burden is on the professor. He/she is the professional and power holder!--On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 2:36 PM, Bode <ominira@gmail.com> wrote:John, a little too narrow, i think. you are not just a lawyer, you are also a citizen. It would be my assumption that your client if she repeatedly makes unwanted advances will at some point risk violating some law if not your legal professional code. right?--On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 12:47 PM, John Mbaku <jmbaku@weber.edu> wrote:Moses:There should not be any dispute on who has the power in a relationship colored by a power imbalance--a professor has all the power and the student (regardless of so-called "female power") has no power at all. Professional ethics require that a professor should never date or have sexual relations with a student under his or her direct supervision and a student who is taking a course from a professor is under the professor's direct supervision for the purpose of this definition. In my department, we prohibit fraternization between faculty and students, even if the student is not currently taking a course from the professor or is one who is not likely to register for that professor's courses. The problem is this: Consider law student Y who is registered in the Department (School) of Law. She/he is not currently taking a course from Professor X and is not scheduled to take any courses from Professor X and will be able to complete her/his studies without taking a course from Professor X. Under our ethics rules, Professor X is still not allowed to fraternize with that student, period. This is the right policy. And, should student Y approach Professor X and try to "seduce" him/her, it is incumbent upon Professor X to resist (and maintain the professionalism required of someone in his/her position) or suffer the professional consequences.I am a lawyer and the ethics of my profession mandate, for example, that I not fraternize with a female client. Even if the client tries to "seduce" me, I must stand clear and maintain only the professional relationship. If I succumb, the punishment is on me and not on the client. Why? I am the professional and hence, I am held to a higher standard. The same should go for anyone who signs up to educate our children, whether at the primary, secondary, or university level!--On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 9:49 AM, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:Bolaji,We are in general agreement on this. We both agree about the greater responsibility of the lecturer and thus the greater gravity of his sexual predation. We have enormous power. With power comes responsibility. To whom much [power] is given much is expected by way of responsibility, so goes the saying. The abuse of that power to prey on female students for me is an exceptionally egregious crime. That does not mean that students do not engage in a range of code violations and misconducts (misdemeanors and felonies). They should be sanctioned for all these either within the rules of the institutions (if they are violations of institutional codes) or within the criminal justice system if they are criminal acts. I agree with your outlined four categories of harassments above. But I insist that the biggest problem facing Nigerian universities as of this moment is the first category--staff/faculty harassing students, especially female students. While students are routinely punished for harassment behavior and while it is very easy to discourage and punish student harassment of lecturers (including bribery of all kinds), lecturers are rarely punished for their harassment of and predatory behavior towards [female] students. This must be dealt with and given priority IMHO.On ASUU, it may interest you to know that I have not always been a critic of that body. As an undergraduate in Bayero University in the mid 1990s, I was what you might call an ASUU supporter/defender. I was in my first year when we had to spend five months at home on account of ASUU's strike. I supported them all the way, even though I hated being in limbo at home. In our second or third year, there was another prolonged ASUU strike. Not only did I support ASUU, I wrote an op-ed that was published by the defunct National Concord newspaper in which I vigorously defended ASUU's stance while criticizing the government and the folks managing the educational sector. Not only that, my campus was virtually a hotbed of ASUU activism. The iconic former ASUU president, Professor Jega, was a lecturer there. He and his ASUU revolutionaries regularly addressed us in symposiums where we were fed a steady diet of ASUU's message. It was a compelling and powerful cause and we bought into it. Farrow, Kperogi, my classmate in BUK, can testify to my pro-ASUU antecedents.No one would deny the justness of that cause and the fact that it paid off mightily in the 2000s. The issues of remuneration and funding have largely been dealt with, with massive increases on both counts. ASUU should now be in the consolidation phase, and in self-scrutiny mode. Instead it has completely lost its way, sullied by greed, arrogance, and a bloated image of its importance. It has become a victim of its successes, allowing itself to become little more than an organ of national hostage taking and extortion. What's more, ASUU has lost its messianic mission of being a voice for reform, standards, and ethics in the university. It now only cares about money, about winning more monetary concessions for its members. Not only does it resist reform and accountability, it vigorously protects its members from being held to any ethical or professional standards. It now subsidized professorial impunity and irresponsibility.You now literally have lecturers who do not show up to teach, who do not supervise, and who do not mentor. I am not even going to touch publishing. ASUU vigorously protects them with its negotiated agreements. Being an ASUU-protected lecturer in Nigeria confers freedom from scrutiny--both academic and ethical. Has the body not become a promoter of mediocrity, of perfidy? We also have lecturers now who, in addition to not doing their jobs, prey on their female students. ASUU stands in the way of holding them accountable and protecting these students. Is this not an organization in decay, an organization contemptuous of its own past? ASUU is trapped in a perennial identity crisis. It does not know what it wants to be, a trade union fighting only for the pecuniary benefits of its members or a body concerned with the health (academic, ethical, infrastructural, etc) of the university system. Until it resolves this fundamental crisis, it will continue to lurch awkwardly from its regular money grabbing national blackmails to its unconscionable defense of incompetent and predatory lecturers to its tragic opposition to student-centered reform of ethics and professorial academic obligations.I simply cannot in good conscience support an organization that is now a major part of the problem of higher education in Nigeria. My attitude towards ASUU evolved along with the body's calamitous descent into the miasma of greed and fraternal mutual protection, a decline that has seen it abandon the interests of students in favor of professorial impunity.--On Thu, Jun 23, 2016 at 4:26 AM, Mobolaji Aluko <alukome@gmail.com> wrote:Moses Ochonu;I do not wish to have this straw-issue of "equivalency" of harassment by students and professors to distract us from our common outrage over sexual harassment in the workplace and study-space. I actually never claimed "equivalency", but like ying and yang, and "bribery and corruption", student predation (as a bribery) should have its own punishment which might be different both from professorial predatory behavior and/or professorial submission to student predatory behavior (succumbing to "bribery")I hope that we understand that there various kinds of harassments:(1) staff harassment of students(2) student harassment of staff(3) student harassment of student purely for themselves(4) student harassment of students (ie intimidation or blackmail) to force them to harass staff (particular academicstaff) for the first-harasser's advantage.All of these must be sanctioned.The university community MUST be treated as an ADULT community, and VIOLATION of University civil codes MUST be separated from CRIMINAL conduct. While not all violation of university code is criminal - for example, violating a curfew or dress code is not criminal, but can incur sanctions - sexual harassment, rape, theft, destruction of university property MUST be treated as criminal. Until this is done in Nigeria, many of the rubbish that goes on in Nigerian universities - and Nigeria in general - will continue.Also, much as I too criticize ASUU, the stridency with which the organization is criticized should be toned down, because it has over the years served a greatly useful purpose. The fact of the matter is that over the years, we have had several governments that are CONTEMPTUOUS of intellectuals and intellectualism, At a meeting with other VCs, ministry officials and contractors, when he talked to me "anyhow" over a minor issue, I once had (about two years ago) to remind a Minister of Education (State) that he was talking to a President (Vice-Chancellor) of a University, and not any riff-raff. He was taken aback, and "joked" (in his mind) that he could sack me. I said he should try it.....and we were on NTA-TV. He later backed down, and asked the TV station not to use the piece......Even the present Buhari government has not shown much better respect for intellectualism, as the recent VC so-called "sack" has shown. Unfortunately, ASUU has been a fair-weather partner in defending the academia...and sometimes its defence comes out as clumsy.Bolaji Aluko--On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 11:13 PM, Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:Toyin Adepoju,The thrust of your lengthy post, save for the digressions into tangential and unrelated matters, can be distilled to two tragically flawed and shockingly misogynistic arguments on your part:1. You do not believe that patriarchy, male power, and the marginality of women in the Nigerian society at large and in Nigerian universities in particular engenders the sexual victimization of female students.2. You do not believe that the power asymmetries between lecturers and their students, the fact that the former have so much deterministic power over students they teach and mentor, make lecturers' sexual predation more serious, more egregious, and therefore deserving of an appropriately harsher punishment than the manipulative behavior, sexual or otherwise, of students. You are insisting on equivalency.So, in your world, neither patriarchy nor professorial authority exists or privileges male lecturers and gives them oppressive powers over their female lecturers.You, sir, are not worthy of serious engagement if you truly believe this fiction.And NO American university equates the sexual misconduct of professors over their students with the misconduct or manipulative behavior, sexual or otherwise of students--NONE. Yours is a blatant lie and I challenge you to demonstrate otherwise. Universities, both in the US and Nigeria, of course, have disciplinary codes for students who engage in a wide range of stipulated misconducts, including sexual ones, but we would live in a world that venerates and justifies might, ignores its responsibilities, and forgives its excesses, if they were to equate those misconducts with those of professorial authority figures. Thankfully that is not the case, and EVERY campus in the US recognizes the immense power differential at the heart of the professor-student relationship and takes care to make sure that its guidelines for dealing with ethical violations in that relationship reflects that power discrepancy. When it's a male-female situation, that power differential is magnified multiple folds. Professors are placed in a position of responsibility over students, not the other way round.And by the way, since you cited the US system, can you tell us how many cases there have been of students sexually harassing their professors? As far as I know, the number is statistically negligible. Even in Nigeria, where lecturers have even more power, how many such cases occur relative to lecturers' sexual predation? If a student does something unethical with or to you, you as an authority figure will have no trouble getting that student punished, so why should that be a problem? Your example of students flashing their professors is analogous to the risible excuse that some rapists give: that their victims dressed provocatively and thus asked for it.It seems to me that we are obsessing over a negligible and easily punished and discouraged problem of female student manipulative behavior. The power and authority of professors serve as adequate deterrent and keeps the incidents down. Even so, all universities have mechanisms for dealing with students who cross the line into sexually harassing behavior. Let's focus on professors/lecturers who abuse their authority to commit rapes against their students. Making this about students' manipulative behavior, which is much rarer and can easily be punished, muddles the professorial sexual crimes we are discussing.--On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 1:36 PM, Oluwatoyin Adepoju <oluwakaidara1@gmail.com> wrote:While recognizing this as important, particularly in the context of the development of the culture of academic journal publication as developed in the globally dominant Western academy and questionable practices demonstrated by a number of Nigerian based journals across time, along with the lack of sustainability demonstrated by some of the better academic journals based in Nigeria which developed an international reputation in what may be described as a high point in Nigerian tertiary education in the 60s, such as Odu-on philosophy, Okike and Black Orpheus-on literature and art, I would be wary of dismissing ASUU or its staff on such grounds bcs the conditions vital for developing a thriving culture of academic journal publishing in the same manner as the Western academy might not have existed in Nigeria since the social and economic upheavals recurrent in Nigeria with and after the civil war.In an earlier discussion on ASUU, indirectly referenced by Moses' dismissal of ASUU in his first post as a 'mediocrity promoting body', a perspective I think it would be difficult to substantiate, he made a very important point about what he described as 'bean counting', which I understand him as describing as the practice of substituting number for quality in assessing academic publications in Nigerian universities. He pointed out that journal articles are not weighted in relation to the quality/prestige of the journals in which they are published but are simply counted in numerical terms.On ASUU and Academic Standards in Nigerian UniversitiesIs a more realistic option not to recognize the inevitability of consensual amorous relations between students and lecturers and create formal rules and informal guidance for managing these?I think so. Such rules could involve a contracting circle of limitations in relation to the level of power the lecturer enjoys over the student, with students one teaches being those most vulnerable, those one is not teaching but may teach and those one will not teach representing degrees of decreasing vulnerability requiring different strategies of managing relationships with.This balance is necessitated by the fact that a university is an environment for adults, not children. University education requires a high degree of responsibility for one's success in navigating both academic and social challenges away from family supervision, and all participants in that environment need to enjoy both the opportunities and the protection vital for such an environment to work adequately. No one should be penalized for choosing to work or study in a university in the guise of being an adult dealing with youth, or being a female dealing with men among other framers equivalent to penalization. At the same time, it may be ideal if lecturers are able to treat such erring students as people who need guidance and pastoral care.Any student who does that, and if adequate evidence can be provided to indict her, if the lecturer chooses to so proceed, should be punished in terms of the full weight of the law as such a lecturer should also be punished if he were to seek to exchange sex or any other unlawful personal satisfaction for marks.He insists that students trying to seduce lecturers is youthful behavior that should not be criminalized. At what point did deliberate use of sexual power become merely youthful behavior? Is sexual awareness not central to the points of transition from childhood to adulthood? Is he aware of the level of student initiated criminality at play in the history of Nigerian campuses , from prostitution to terrorism through arson targeted at university records and lecturers' offices to mass and individual murder, with the institutionalization of student cultism, these cults becoming infamous for carrying out group and individual assassinations across the years?He begins with an opening post demonizing ASUU and its supporters on this forum :Interesting.Moses Ebe Ochonu has made some valuable points, but as usual he projects his anti-ASUU, anti-Nigerian university lecturers in Nigeria bias that dilutes his stance so significantly.
'the usual noisemaking ASUU-affiliated members of this list, who impulsively flock, like flies to spoilt food, to defend ASUU when it comes to matters of the pocket and the union's perennial financial blackmails misnamed strikes'.
'ASUU...That mediocrity-promoting, money-grabbing body of enablers and perpetrators is, alas, opposed to any effort to hold the large gang of rapist-lecturers and sexual abusers on our campuses accountable.Sahara Reporters' summation of the outcome of the scandal, "Sexual Harassment Audio Tape Forces Top Unilorin Lecturer Out Of Job"not only makes it clear the university is taking action on the issue but that the university has issued a statement on it. The new medium states that "Investigations show that the university failed to take the case seriously until the video went viral on social media, suggesting that the institution is normally negligent in such matters". It would be helpful if ASUU were to make a strong statement on the story but does the union not doing so provide grounds to condemn the corporate body?Internal vs External Disciplinary Mechanisms
I understand the report on ASUU's stance about the proposed bill as stating the union describes its members as being negatively profiled by the law in question and as ambiguously worded in a way that opens them to victimization, stating that universities have their own laws and processes for dealing with the challenges of sexual harassment of students by lecturers, mechanisms which exist and do demonstrate a degree of effectiveness in Nigerian universities, although I dont know how effective they are across the board. Is there not therefore a world of difference between the explicit and implicit meanings of the statement attributed to ASUU and Moses's summation that ASUU is "opposed to any effort to hold the large gang of rapist-lecturers and sexual abusers on our campuses accountable?".
Bolaji Aluko provides a very commendable summation of the issue from the perspective of administrative experience within the system being discussed. I wonder though,why he thinks an agreement has to be renewed in this instance to remain relevant. Does the agreement have an expiration date? Even if it does, which I doubt, should the relevant systems the agreement is meant to guide operate in a vacuum until this renewal takes place? As for the agreement being violated, if it has, does that mean it should be ignored? As for the autonomy/independence distinction, I would like to know what exactly that is supposed to mean and how it applies here.Current Nigerian Govt and Anti-CorruptionAs for those invoking the name of someone called Buhari into this subject and hoping for a positive legacy on the issue to be effected by a terrorist [ 'the use of violence or threatened use of violence (terror), often targeting civilians, in order to achieve a political, religious, or ideological aim- Wikipedia], a person who threatened that 'the dog and the baboon', metaphorical for opposing politician contestants, would be bathed in blood if he lost the 2015 elections and who has been the chief supporter of the mass murdering Fulani terrorism and colonization drive across Nigeria, support given through his strategic silence at the mass murders and tardy speech when forced to comment by national outcries, as well as justifying the attacks by the Fulani herdsmen by claiming farmers have taken over grazing routes marked out in other people's property for the herdsmen as he uses foreign exchange unavailable for education and business in buying grass to feed the cows of his ethnic/religious herdsmen killers, a dictator whose anti-corruption war is primarily an instrument for enthroning an ethnic hegemony while ignoring glaring corruption cases in his own party, whose replacement of VCs on assuming office recapitulated in tertiary education his ethnically centred strategy in the intelligence services, the electoral office, the armed forces and other control centres of the nation, I wonder why you think you should expect anything substantial from a character whose primary interest is ethnically centered power consolidation and internal colonization and who has no conclusive personal exposure to even the lower levels of the educational system being discussed, as witnessed by the ongoing court case where he is using the nation's money in hiring the most expensive lawyers rather than produce the secondary school leaving certificate he claimed to have as a prerequisite for the scandalously low level of education required to run for the Presidency of Nigeria.Need for Protection from Sexual Harassment for Students and Lecturers
Moses is eager to project a face of moral indignation and challenge but refuses to recognize what I would describe as its implications within the psycho-social network of a university and the Nigerian university in particular.
In response to Olajumoke's position, I argue that all forms of predatory behavior must be penalised. A student should not try to take advantage of a male lecturer by showing him her breasts in the process of requesting that he pass her in a course he is teaching, nor come to his office after school hours or on holidays to try to make herself available for marks, nor come uninvited to his house in pursuit of such a goal, nor indicate in an exam paper that she is available so she may be passed.Moses sums up the reality across the workplace-'they will need plenty of luck to find another profession where sexual and other temptations requiring maturity and self-restraint are absent. The academia is a professional arena fraught with sexual tensions' and is eager to point to US policy on sexual harassment, but does not add that in US workplaces, predators are punished across the board regardless of their levels of institutional power, meaning students who prey on lecturers and lecturers who prey on students are both punished, with a US university whose rules I quoted in a debate on this topic in this forum spelling out this point out very clearly.
Bode's response says much on this "I understand the absolute need to punish the powerful especially with the endemic nature of abuse by teachers but we shouldn't fall into the opposite danger of romanticizing and normalizing reprehensible behavior simply because the persons involved are powerless students etc, what is the value of education that does not make students and faculty bear full responsibility for their actions no matter how differently we weight the actions as we should".
The Morality of Consensual Sexual Relations Between Students and LecturersAs for the claim that sex between lecturers and students is always wrong as made by Olajumoke, I am wary of such unrealistic summations. The human being is primarily an embodied entity, and central to that embodiment is human sexuality. I consider it unrealistic for adult men and women-describing all university students as adults- to congregate in such large numbers, in an environment that provides such freedom as a university, and not engage in sexual relations across lines of authority. I expect it is practically impossible. Students and lecturers have been known to engage in relationships that led to marriage, for example. Are such relationships to be outlawed? Are we going to argue that its okay as long as they dont have sex while the student is still studying in the university ? Would the absurdity of such a position not be clear to practically everyone? Are we going to insist that for such relationships to be valid they must occur within the context of intentions to set up a home together? Is that not unrealistic since the lines of progression in relationships that lead from friendship to intimate relations and beyond are often subtle and unpredictable?Academic journal publishing and academic publishing in general are particularly time and energy consuming, even more so since they require a strong economy or creative marketing and publishing strategies for them to be economically viable for the publishers. This viability includes the ability to make enough money across the spectrum of publications running from textbooks vital for providing insight across subjects and more specialized works addressing breakthroughs in aspects of particular subjects. Along those lines, a member of the staff of Oxford UP once stated that his publishing house never runs at a loss unlike a number of academic publishers, not surprising given the scope of strategies Oxford UP employs to reach a broad readership, the most striking perhaps being their Very Short Introductions series which presents the latest research on particular broad fields in ways that the average reader can follow easily, a strategy I dont know any other academic publisher doing as successfully, with Cambridge's Canto Classics series, impressive at it is, not approximating the visual and practical, colorful, pocket sized appeal and breadth of subjects as the Oxford series. I read of a related effort from a US academic publisher but still not at the level of balance of plus factors as the Oxford approach.Academic journal publication at present also operates in terms of access to a large workforce of academics who are prepared to work for free as assessor of journal articles. I wonder the likelihood of building such a workforce in large numbers in an environment like that of Nigeria bedeviled by system failure- low levels of access to public services such as electricity and water, recurrent loss of priceless energy and time in seeking fuel for cars and generators, political instability leading to instability in the educational system, demonstrated in graphic terms by the recent controversial replacement of vice-chancellors in the universities founded by the past administration, further entrenching a culture of subservience to political powers outside the university to whom vice-chancellors are primarily beholden for their offices, perhaps contributing to the temptation for the VCs to become overlords within their constituencies, lording it over those constituencies from within as the VCs are lorded over from outside.It can be argued that academic journals are largely international organs transcending national or cultural boundaries, making it unnecessary to argue that a nation needs to have journals run by its nationals if it is to maximize its academic productivity, but is that international vision at best not a yet unrealised ideal? As far as I can see in the humanities, although I have not examined the subject systematically, I get the impression, that to a significant degree , the editorial policies of journals are not always representative of possibilities that may emerge from the various parts of the world where the discipline is studied, with Analytical Philosophy described as being dominant in England and the US and Continental philosophy in non-English speaking Europe, with Indian philosophy only relatively recently being discussed as a partner in addressing philosophical questions in such books from Western academic publishers as Self, No Self? : Perspectives from Analytical, Phenomenological, and Indian Traditions (2010) published by Oxford UP ( whom I particularly admire) rather than being treated as books for area studies scholarship outside the mainstream of philosophy as understood in the West, although Oxford UP's Art History and Art Theory volumes in the Very Short Introductions series briefly discuss non-Western art and thought, but from within the perspectives of and from an emphasis on Western art and thought.Operating at the highest level of scholarship represented by the most demanding journals and academic publishers requires access, over years, for an academic, and for a university or group of universities, across generations, to the latest developments in the fields in question as they emerge in academic journals and books, and taking active part in those developments, a task the Western universities stretch themselves to enable for their staff and students, with even Harvard, perhaps the world's richest academic institution, recently declaring its difficulties in maintaining its subscription to its traditional corpus of academic journals and Timothy Gowers, Field Medal Prize winner at Oxford, leading a boycott of Elsevier to protest what many describe as unrealistically high subscription costs from the publisher even though the academics the publisher relies on for the academic work that makes the journals possible are doing the work for free, developments fueling the move to open access publishing, at times using media that require no input from publishers, such as blogs.How would Nigerian universities and academics cope in a world in which even Harvard is complaining of high subscription costs of journals? Compounding such developments , academic books are among the most expensive in the world. Two of the latest books in Yoruba art are Rowland Abiuodun's Yoruba Art and Language : Seeking the African in African Art, an indispensable work in Yoruba and African aesthetics, and Suzanne Preston Blier's Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba : Ife History, Power, and Identity, c.1300, both published by Cambridge UP. The cheapest price for Blier's book, quoting prices for purchase and delivery delivery to Nigeria, on Bookfinder , the best book selling site I know and which gathers info from book sellers in the West and Asia, is $86.00 while that for Abiodun's book is $140.33 with such books being published on a daily basis by Western academic presses.Those who are better informed about individual and institutional purchasing capacities in Nigeria are in a better position to assess the implications of these prices and the volume of production they represent in relation to keeping abreast with the disciplinary developments these books demonstrate.
Another challenge Nigerian academics might be facing is a disincentive to publish books since books might not be given assessment in weighting for promotion in Nigerian universities relevant to the effort it takes to prepare them, a situation exacerbated by a publishing industry challenged by operating costs increased by systemic problems ranging from access to electricity to low or non- production of publishing machines and difficulties in acquiring these machines on account of low purchasing power from within the Nigerian economy contributing to a situation in which I have observed that almost all the best books on African art I know of are not published in Africa because the mobilization of the scholarly and material resources vital for the research and publication that produces such books seems to be best achieved outside Africa with the aid of wealthy institutions that can finance such research and publication.Yet books are indispensable on account of the level of elaboration they involve and can't be replaced by the briefer remit of academic articles, vital as those are. A way out of the challenges of paper based publishing is represented by the Internet, which needs to be maximized in spite of challenges of Internet access in Nigeria. A beautiful example of such maximization is Critical Interventions : Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture , the journal begun and run independently, to the best of my knowledge, by Sylvester Ogbechie for some years, although he did it from his US base, and it was readily affordable, charging £5 to download an article, until perhaps after the journal's very successful outing of bringing together a consortium of scholars in addressing the subject of African fractals across an interdisciplinary spectrum,with the major writer in that field Ron Eglash as guest editor, its publication became managed by a traditional academic publisher, Taylor and Francis, and one now needs £83 per issue as an individual to read articles in that journal. Ogbechie discusses issues of journal costs and open access in "Proliferation of Academic Journals".Another problem I observe, in Nigerian academic assessment, though I dont have a broad overview on the subject, is the idea that the professor does not need to publish, leading to stagnation that could inspire the temptation to make professors insistent on keeping younger staff from rising to meet them at their level of stagnation and hypocritically raising the bar for assessment while not making any effort to provide any incentives for members of the professoriate to perform at a higher level than the lower standards at which they got their professorships in the first place. A method has to be found to re-describe the professorship as a level of expanding creativity, perhaps borrowing from the older German conception of the professor as I seem to have read it somewhere, as a person professing on a subject at a level of achievement equal to a unique world view, or something like that.Summation- Nigerian academia needs to be understood and engaged with in terms of its challenges and prospects if its potential is to be maximised.thankstoyin--On Wed, Jun 22, 2016 at 12:32 AM, bcultral <bcultral@gmail.com> wrote:
Sent from my Boost Mobile Phone.
Bode <ominira@gmail.com> wrote:
The members of the House of Representatives whose visas were revoked by the US recently show how widespread this abusive behavior is. I suppose sexual predatory behavior in high Schools must be as bad if not worse given the vulnerability of the much younger kids.
I recall a friend about two decades ago who told me she went into an office to inquire about vacancies and employment. she had just graduated from college. The man she met at the personnels brought out condoms of different colors and asked to pick her favorite color! There should not just be laws protecting kids and women in workplaces and schools, as the Nigerian Universities Commission is pushing for, there should also be awareness programs and compensations for victims .
More importantly, none of this would matter if no one goes to jail for bankrupting the country. The singular most important legacy Buhari can leave is to be the president who instituted the rule of law. Everything else is contained in this act. Without the rule of law, there will be no justice for our girls, or the poor, or our friends ....
If no one goes to jail, Buhari has failed! The country has failed! Yes, everything comes down to this!!
Bode--On Mon, Jun 20, 2016 at 8:46 PM Moses Ebe Ochonu <meochonu@gmail.com> wrote:I posted the link to a tape of a University of Ilorin HOD attempting to rape one of his students in his office and boasting about previous rapes of the same student as well as others. There was no reaction from the usual noisemaking ASUU-affiliated members of this list, who impulsively flock, like flies to spoilt food, to defend ASUU when it comes to matters of the pocket and the union's perennial financial blackmails misnamed strikes. They avoided the topic like a plague. Even our honorable home-based colleagues, who are usually the lone voices of rectitude from the other side of the Atlantic, stayed away from the topic.--The scandal has been raging for several weeks now but ASUU, whether national or the local UniIlorin branch, has yet to issue even a statement. Now we know why. That mediocrity-promoting, money-grabbing body of enablers and perpetrators is, alas, opposed to any effort to hold the large gang of rapist-lecturers and sexual abusers on our campuses accountable. Read the story below and weep for higher education or what's left of it in Nigeria. As usual, when it comes to being held accountable, they shamelessly run and hide under "university autonomy." But somehow, the narrative of autonomy never extends to monetary and compensation issues. ASUU exists simply to help its members to a bigger share of the proverbial national cake while protecting them from having to actually do their jobs and from being held accountable for this failure and for crimes against students.What a shame! Nonsense!'Sex-for-marks bill' is a violation of our rights, say lecturers
34AdvertisementThe Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) says the 2016 sexual harassment bill before the senate will undermine the autonomy of universities.
Biodun Ogunyemi, president of the union, said this at a public hearing on the bill, organised by the senate committee on judiciary, human rights and legal matters.
The sexual harassment bill was sponsored by Ovie Omo-Agege (LP- Delta Central) and co-sponsored by 57 other senators.
The bill seeks to criminalise sexual harassment in tertiary institutions and among other things, proposes a five-year jail term for lecturers found guilty of sexual harassment of students.
Ogunyemi said universities were established by law as autonomous bodies, adding that there were laws that clearly articulated redress procedures.
"As a global norm, universities and other tertiary institutions are established by law as autonomous bodies and have their own laws regulating their affairs," he said.
"This includes misconduct generally among both staff and students, with clearly articulated appropriate redress mechanism.
"Any law or bill which seeks to supplant these laws violates the university autonomy.
"In this particular instance, the bill violates the federal government of Nigeria and ASUU agreement of 2009 and as such should be rejected."
He said that the bill was discriminatory because it was targeted at educators.
According to Ogunyemi, it is unfair to come up with such a bill; sexual harassment is a societal problem and not peculiar to tertiary institutions.
He also said that the bill was a violation of section 42(1) of the 1999 constitution, adding that it was embarrassing that the legislative arm could seek to make such law that would violate the constitution.
Ogunyemi also pointed out that besides violating the constitution, the bill failed to take cognizance of various extant legislation that adequately dealt with sexual offences.
Faulting the bill, he said it failed to provide convincing evidence to show that sexual harassment in tertiary institutions had attained a higher magnitude than other spheres of the society.
"The bill is discriminatory, selective, spiteful, and impulsive and lacks logic and any intellectual base by attacking the character and persons of those in tertiary institutions rather than addressing the issue holistically," he said.
"Furthermore, the bill is dangerous and inimical to the institutions as it contains several loose and ambiguous words and terms which could also be used to harass, intimidate, victimise and persecute, especially lecturers, through false accusation."
The National Universities Commission (NUC), on the other hand, supported the introduction of the bill "in view of its relevance" and called for its passage.
Julius Okogie, executive secretary of the commission, said while federal and state universities had administrative structures for handling grievances, there was nothing wrong in having a legislation to help with that.
"University miscellaneous provision act gives them power to formulate policies and by-laws to guide them and most institutions have structures to handle these incidences," he said.
"However, there is nothing wrong if there is a legislation to add to what is on ground. We are only saying that universities are doing something about sexual harassment, which may not be enough".
Okojie called on the senate to extend the scope of the bill to cover primary and secondary schools.
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JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
Nonresident Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution
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--JOHN MUKUM MBAKU, ESQ.
J.D. (Law), Ph.D. (Economics)
Graduate Certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources Law
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Attorney & Counselor at Law (Licensed in Utah)
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Weber State University
1337 Edvalson Street, Dept. 3807
Ogden, UT 84408-3807, USA
(801) 626-7442 Phone
(801) 626-7423 Fax
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