IT'S HERE! You asked for it, You got it! NIGERIAWORLD.NET FreeMAIL! It's Fast, Private, No Junk Mails. Brought to you by Nigeriaworld  SIGN UP   NEWSTALK   GENERAL MESSAGES   DIASPORA ISSUES   REUNIONCENTRAL   SCIENTIFIC NIGERIAN   BUSINESSLINK   FUNNIES   SPORTSTALK NIGERIA   ANNOUNCEMENTS   CHATROOM

Osita Onuma: An enigma and a whiz kid worthy of celebration. Truly, I celebrate. He is a Nigerian like me. His dexterity is acclaimed and I am neither too proud nor shy to shout from the rooftop that Osita is mine and I am Osita’s. Afterall, Fergus Keane: a BBC Foreign correspondent in his book wrote, “ Success has many relatives and Failure has many orphans.” This is true. I have never met Osita and he does not know of my existence. My knowledge of him is based on reports from Weekly Trust edition of July 8th 2000. I am thoroughly convinced he is a young man, with whom I wish to be identified. Our relationship is like a mirage in the bright afternoon sunshine in a desert. That inexistent relationship is minutiae in the grand scheme of his examination achievements. I careless, he is from Enugu State or Zamfara or Ekiti. I refuse to masticate on our tribal differences. That, he is an Igbo and I am Yoruba, matter not to me. We are both Nigerians. Even though the revisionists are still at the battlefront of a war that ended over a quarter of a century ago which declared no victor and no vanquished.

Unashamedly, I profess familial relationship for Osita’s success as propounded by Keane because I deplore fraudulent Nigerians in diaspora, who are footloose with the laws of their host countries. Those Nigerians that need a Nigerian born legal practitioner to pervert the course of justice on their behalf (as if it is ethical). I mean those ones that are disgusted with law enforcement because they are unable to “get away” with the law and its procedure as in Nigeria. They are the same types that gloatingly but foolishly say “if this was Nigeria…….” I do not delight in their custom or company.

As for Osita Onuma, I parrot his achievements. This is a victory that is ambivalent in its celebration. A victory that is resounding and gained through hard work yet stained by men who want to cozen their offices for personal gains. Their intended celebration is not to share the success of Osita. These are the leeches that drain our country, all in the name of all that separate us.

I am euphoric even though I receive no stipends. This is a victory that I do not possess its details or verifications. I base my euphoria on newspaper reports on Osita achievements and the delivery of Presidential gift by the Nigerian High Commission, London.

The reported facts are as follows: In 1998/99, Osita achieved the best result at Imperial College London; scoring 98.5% average in a Post-graduate Course Examination. Following his success, Nigerian High Commission, London is reported to have delivered to him a gift of £1,000 from President Obasanjo. It is also reported that the Vice – Chancellor of the University Of Nigeria: Professor Gini Mbanefoh requested approval from the Minister of Education: Professor Tunde Adeniran to attend Osita’s convocation. It is also reported that the Minister indicated interests in attending the convocation.

In the process of verifying the authenticity of the Osita story, Professor Cornelius Chukwu vowed and proffered more insight into the achievements of the young man. Chukwu is reported to have said that a personal convocation is being arranged for Osita as he could not make the scheduled date of the University. Guess who, the Professor provided as a guest at the personal convocation: The Queen. Incredible. If what is attributed to Professor Chukwu is correct, my humble advice to him is to follow a precept of Disrael: “It is better for people to wonder why you do not speak than wonder why you do”

Let me reiterate that the focus of my article is not monomaniac. Albeit, it is centered on the excellence for which a young man deserves my recognition and praise. Sincerely, I am truly proud of Osita and he remains my hero. However, the concomitant enthusiasm of Vice Chancellor Mbanefoh, Education Minister Adeniran and President Obasanjo is a perfidy to the ethos of present day Nigeria.

Of the three officials, Obasanjo could be absolved for his altruistic benevolence, if the money he gave Osita is a personal gift. If not, the gift bears the hallmark of a bootless gesture and a tacit admission that Obasanjo’s government has lost the plan to develop our institutions of learning.

The premise of my argument is the deplorable state of our higher institutions of learning, abject neglect of educational research and development, strangulation of Student Movements and lack of a clear and coherent educational policies based on scholastic needs and long term planning.

We see that UBE is taking place across the nation. There is no gainsaying that this government attaches a great deal of importance to education. I commend its efforts. But education is not only about equipping the populace with the 3Rs(Reading , Writing and Arithmetic) It is not about the number of contracts awarded to build new classroom which will be suffered of maintenance and it is not about the threat of the failed Ex-Minister in charge of NEPA and now Ministry of Justice who menacingly threatens to hang students because of exercising their rights of choice of association by joining cults. It is more.

The government should focus on developing our educational system. This is not to say that we do not have a developed educational system. We do. But, the destruction of our Schools and Universities through inept policies, quota, favoritism, State and Federal intervention need to be checked. Both State and Federal levels of government must determine once and for all, where control of schools should lie. May be if our Universities were functionally equipped, Osita could have stayed in Nigeria to compete with the best in the world.

I propound the argument for education policies and control to be centralised with powers delegated to Local Authorities for the schools in their areas. Whilst Universities are the charge of the Federal Government. The Local Authorities should be mandated to satisfy prudent accountability by separating and accounting for funds from Federal Government earmarked for Schools in their areas. These funds should be expended with the approval of a body of school governors, parents and school Inspectors attached to each school. For this arrangement to work efficiently, transparency and accountability must be the watchword. Statutory provisions must be in place to penalize recalcitrant Local Authorities who misuse education funds.

The contention that education should not be retained in the ambit of the Federal Government can be rebutted to the extent that Immigration Services and National Security are in its ambit. The protection of our children is the protection of our sovereignty. These children are our future.

Michael Foot, former leader of the British Labour Party in a book on Aneurin Bevan writes “I know the right kind of leader for the Labour Party is a desiccated calculating machine who must not in any way be swayed by indignation. If he sees suffering privation and injustice he must not allow it to move him, for that would be evidence of lack of proper education or absence of self-control……” We need to educate our children properly to avoid a tickling powder keg upon which we operate. A time bomb that breed injustice and deprivation. The other and perhaps the more cogent reason to argue for centralization and delegation is the strain of revenue of most states devoid of large commercial centers.

Another reason is the clear distinction between the resources of State and Federal Government Schools. It is bizarre that we train our children in a system that separates and creates a local elitist education through public funding. Somewhat the system is perverted and it is an affront to the rightful and natural expectation of the taxpayer who funds these schools.

The delegation of control to Local Authorities as custodians of funds apportioned for education in their areas is an inclusive system. The decision-making process of funds expenditure should remain with Head Masters/Mistresses, parents’ representatives, schools’ governors and trained schools’ Inspectors. The parents will have a stake in the decisions affecting their wards’ training, and the schools governor and schools Inspectors roles should be contrasted for checks and balances to deliver successful schools. My proposal is a starting point for a discourse.

I return to the £1,000 presidential gift. It sends a wrong message because the money that could be spent within our economy and for our schools, possibly for the provision of books and or computers is given a presidential stamp to be spent in another economy for the benefit of another college. The tendency is that the president meant well. Meaning well is not what we expect of our government. We expect and demand they do well in areas that affect the lives of our children and ultimately our future. My gripe is the symbolic interpretation and inequitable treatment that the presidential largess informs.

If the president had set up an endowment of his personal funds or there is a national apparatus to honour students, then every clever student could have a natural expectation of winning an uncontroversial award and not an award that is purposeless in the midst of a decayed education infrastructure and system. More than the honour that Obasanjo may wish to bestow on clever students, there is a need to abrogate such decrees and statutes that gag our students or grant State Governors the power to close down Universities.

The powers exercised by State or Federal governments to close down schools and Universities at will, are archaic and have no place in the 21st century. Closure of Universities should be the preserve of the Chancellors and Vice-Chacellors. This is why it is crucial that the Justice Minister introduces effective Public Order legislations which are conducive to good policing. Before drafting and enactments of such legislations the Justice Ministry should consult widely with student bodies amongst others, lest the legislation will be doomed before its enforcement. The president should also guarantee that in the lifetime of his government the Army would never be called into civil disobedience involving students, unless the external security of the nation is threatened. I accept that ‘security of the nation’ in this context can be used as a subterfuge to extirpate youthful exuberance and dissent.

I return to the troubling aspect of Osita’s throes because there are other issues in the Osita story. Take the alleged request and interests of Mbanefoh and Adeniran to attend the convocation and here lays the sordid aspect of the convocation.

Convocation of graduands is not a national affair. It is a circus to dress up and a day of joy for the graduands, his classmates and families. A day that parents sigh relief and give gratitude for the legacy they have, in most cases sacrificed themselves to hand to their wards. A day parents rightly pat themselves at the back, forgetting all acrimonious shrapnel that cover the road of this great journey. Even on that day, parents who have treated their children with shameless abandonment are not ashamed to dress up proudly and grin in family photo-calls because they want to be seen as having achieved the success for a child they abandoned on the heap of life. It is a day that family feuding is set aside and a day to be happy for the child that has achieved examination success.

It is for the above meaning of the convocation day that I am at a loss to factor Professor Mbanefoh and Minister Adeniran into the meaning of Osita convocation. If the report of their interests are true, I am perplexed at the caliber of the Minister and the Vice-Chancellor of University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Osita’s convocation is a day he celebrates his academic gain and if the Vice -Chancellor and Minister were not caught in the publicity surrounding the convocation, their gains; to mention a few are : Estacode, allowance for leaving their stations on official duty, free travels to London, England with befitting Hotel accommodation and their mis-informed opportunity to meet Queen Elizabeth of Britain. Osita is the person who worked hard for this day. Contrast his gains to the Minister’s and Vice-Chancellor. The above gains of these officials are inimical to the crusade of a nascent need for accountability and probity. It needs to be emphasized that the convocation has become controversial and the attending publicity will deny the Vice Chancellor and Minister of their anticipated trappings.

It is time for our governments to approbate that this senseless and wanton nefarious come to an end. The recent probing of Ex- Milad of Ondo State is revelatory. The payment of out-State allowances to officials who travels in a convoy of cars, who stay at State-Houses whenever they are in Lagos or Abuja and whose entertainments and food are procured with scarce State Funds is a perfidy. These officials such as State Governors are paid salaries and other benefits that are incomparable to their achievements, if they are assessed for the improvements in the lives of the governed.

As Obasanjo likes to lead by example, he should take the lead at revealing the sweeteners of office payable when he is out-of-station. Thereafter, he should direct that this juice of office be pruned. This is not advocating that Officials should finance the State when they are out-of-station but they should borrow a leaf from the probity shown by Professor Aluko when he was a junior lecturer at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He was said to have refused taking more than he expended while out-of-station, when the acceptable behaviour was contrary to his sense of duty. This is the time to look for the likes of Aluko and a time our legislators to make these sweeteners illegal. High hopes in light of their own records. Surly amongst them are men and women of honour. So, there is still hope!

When such laws are enacted, the Ositas in our country may not receive their own £1000 from the President but our children can be assured that there is a government willing to develop their talents to compete with the best students in any parts of the world and their achievements will not be embarrassed by government officials who want to line their pockets in the name of the achievements they celebrate at their convocations.

Banjo Odutola

The writer is a solicitor of the of the Supreme Court, England and Wales and a Lawyer at a Firm of Solicitors in London, England