As it relates to new settlements in Makurdi, it is obvious that compromise of access roads and water channels which have been unchecked for years has robbed Makurdi Township of its beauty and thrown it back to pre-modern days aside compounding the flooding crises among others problems.

It appears we have no government agencies responsible for checking these anomalies. Recently, we were greeted with news that Benue Urban Development Board has marked no fewer than 300 buildings that contravene law for demolition in Makurdi. This may appear to be a signal of return of sanity to urban planning and development which was since bereft of any genuine control in tandem with modern urban planning/development.

But we should not celebrate yet. It may just be the usual ritual of marking and later allowing construction to continue or building to remain standing even if relevant laws are contravened. Pertinent posers are:
1. When were the buildings marked? Because there are many such houses and fences marked since 10 to 15 years back and are still standing? How long does demolition process/procedure take? It is not that we desire demolition for ourselves or others but lack of sanction has been a great source of encouragement to contraveners.

2. Is the demolition going to be holistic? If so, there are many houses and fences still standing on access roads and water channels in some of the areas mentioned that have not been marked. If indeed it will be holistic, shouldn’t it be a sigh of relief for the voiceless settlers in some of the settlements where access roads have been completely taken over by unreasonable, wicked and sacred cows thereby locking up the inhabitants of such settlements?

3. Is this drive not just a revenue drive in disguise? Because fears are that the board might just only restrict the contravention of law to “building approval” in which case, once affected persons regularize their buildings to get necessary approvals, blind eyes might be turned to the access road and waterway issues.

4. Does the board really have plans of all the various settlements in question? Because another agency, Land and Survey, it is that surveys and draws the plan. Does a copy of the plan go to the Benue Urban Development Board, saddled with responsibility of controlling development among others? If not how can the board accurately approve buildings without knowing whether such buildings are not or on access roads or water channels? Or the board relies only on the site plan provided by the owner of the building and which could be inaccurate?

While we wait to see, we can in anticipation, appreciate the Benue Urban Development Board for having woken up, after much harm has been done, to now take a position that building on water channels is wrong and requires sanction. We are hoping that this new position does not exclude condemnation and sanctions for erecting of buildings and fences on ACCESS ROADS, which is now the trend in Makurdi, thus revealing the failure of the relevant state agencies over time. This trend has clearly thrived on corruption and impunity.

For instance, most of the houses said to have been marked for demolition were marked over 10 to 15 years back without any action. Is that not encouragement to others to also contravene the relevant laws? Many new settlements in Makurdi now lack access roads, which were provided for and exist on the PLANS of such settlements. There exist beautiful houses in many of the new settlements but the owners lack access roads to them thus giving them a semblance of a slum. These all happening while we have the relevant agencies on ground supposedly working. Master plan of most of these settlements have been overly compromised. As a result, even some water ways and access roads are most likely not redeemable any longer.

The only settlements in Makurdi that were well laid out with controlled developments are WADATA, TOWN, QUARF QUARTERS, LOBI QUARTERS, HIGH LEVEL, WURUKUN, NORTH BANK, JUDGES QUARTERS. Aside Judges Quarters, which is a bit more recent, the others are all very old settlements with some having very poorly build houses and some like Wadata even considered to be a slum. Yet they are all well planned with very good access roads (save for maybe recent illegal erection of building following inviting signal of impunity). In these old settlements, houses were built on straight lines with precision allowing spaces for road, water channel, and sanitary lines in some places.

Those houses in the old settlements above were built when technology/knowledge had not advanced to what we have today. With all the present modern technology and increased knowledge, the relevant agencies cannot achieve or surpass what was achieved in the olden days in terms of controlled development of settlements vis-aviz observance of ACCESS ROADS AND WATER CHANNELS. What a shame! We now have better buildings/modern houses better than those in the older settlements but most of these new and modern houses have no access roads to them and in some areas, inhabitants are also battling with flood during rainy season because access roads and water channels have all been compromised with the relevant agencies watching.

Can we say the relevant agencies are not aware when buildings are erected? NO they always are. Proof is: the relevant agency marks most of these buildings at point of construction, asking the builders to stop work. This happens no matter where the building is. No matter how hidden the building is, it does not escape their watchful eyes. The marking could be because the houses in question secured no approval in the first place. The issues are later resolved, payments made and the construction continues. Whether the relevant agency while discharging its duty has the PLAN of such affected area(s) is another interesting question. In some cases, an obvious access road is fenced by untouchable figures and a whole settlement is locked up.


Part of what contribute to these problems are failure of relevant government agencies/ministry to open up the access roads in these settlements at the right time as well as abandonment of awarded contracts to build drainage on some identified water channels aimed at controlling flood.

In my view, the anomaly of compromise of access roads and water channels is a reflection of the corruption and impunity bedeviling Nigeria, where it appears systems don't work despite being in existence with all resources available (including supposedly well trained human resources). A failed state or failing state is not only one which is overtaken by arm insurrection but also one where systems don’t work.

Ekiseme:
Sharap there, don't attack the messenger

Deal with the message.

I don't think some people have moral right/standing to opine on some national issues as this. People who instituted corruption and impunity, personalized key juicy agencies of govt, technically put anti graft agencies and office of the auditor general to sleep and went on free for all and easy looting voyage of our treasury.

Well I don't blame them but us the youth who yet don't have discerning hearts to identify our common enemies. We still do blind follower-ship and sycophancy because of peanuts they give us despite the huge rape. They are destroying your future and that of your unborn children but all you do is to sing their praises. We are penny wise and pound foolish. What do you think? A man comes always to sell your assets. He sells one quarter of them for N5 million and gives you N1000. You are excited and shower praise on him and ready to defend him anywhere. He comes always to do the same. Is it when the assets are exhausted that your EYES will open?

Nigeria once lost sanity. Now that sanity is beginning to return, with things/agencies working as they should, the people who hitherto held the country and its resources to siege for their own benefit/interest are not happy. They are NOW fighting back- corruption fighting back. That is not the annoying/sad thing. It is that they have recruited us the youth to help them fight their own battle. And we (foolish or unsuspecting) youth are doing it.

Have you ever paused to ask yourself? These people who run their mouths. Have they ever raised their voice against their own people/party men who wrought evil on this country? No. Are you and they not aware of the many exposed monumental thievery/looting their men/women were involved in? It is because they see nothing wrong with that. That old world order is what they are fighting to return us back to. And they are glad they have us as willing tools to assist them(wherein we are quick to unjustly criticize the president/govt in defence of these evil men). We certainly don't know what is good for us and the evil men are sure taking undue advantage of that.

Aside the man Buhari, who would have had the will to engage corruption/impunity, which is the undoing of Nigeria? An era where not even military generals (serving and retired) were spared. Where even a sitting senate president could be tried. Where the seeming untouchables are now touchable. Where the rich and the poor now fear the law and the law now applies to all.

The evil men are so obsessed with the health of the president and his absence. Not because they care. Question is: is the government not running smoothly? What is their problem? Their excess worries just show that they like Nigeria and Nigerians more than they like themselves - WHICH IS NOT TRUE. What I actually expected of them who have destroyed this country is to bury their faces in shame and hold their peace while Nigeria struggles to get out of the woods they led her to. But because we as a nation are already robbed of all known/good values, even a wrong doer/sinner is bolder than the righteous to always speak first in public on any issue of morality anywhere and anytime. How can someone who has lost his mind be ashamed of his past bad deeds? Of course not when he even has blind willing youths that will always rise to his defence/support.

May God open our eyes to know our common enemies.

I don't think some people have moral right/standing to opine on some national issues as this. People who instituted corruption and impunity, personalized key juicy agencies of govt, technically put anti graft agencies and office of the auditor general to sleep and went on free for all and easy looting voyage of our treasury.

Well I don't blame them but us the youth who yet don't have discerning hearts to identify our common enemies. We still do blind follower-ship and sycophancy because of peanuts they give us despite the huge rape. They are destroying your future and that of your unborn children but all you do is to sing their praises. We are penny wise and pound foolish. What do you think? A man comes always to sell your assets. He sells one quarter of them for N5 million and gives you N1000. You are excited and shower praise on him and ready to defend him anywhere. He comes always to do the same. Is it when the assets are exhausted that your EYES will open?

Nigeria once lost sanity. Now that sanity is beginning to return, with things/agencies working as they should, the people who hitherto held the country and its resources to siege for their own benefit/interest are not happy. They are NOW fighting back- corruption fighting back. That is not the annoying/sad thing. It is that they have recruited us the youth to help them fight their own battle. And we (foolish or unsuspecting) youth are doing it.

Have you ever paused to ask yourself? These people who run their mouths. Have they ever raised their voice against their own people/party men who wrought evil on this country? No. Are you and they not aware of the many exposed monumental thievery/looting their men/women were involved in? It is because they see nothing wrong with that. That old world order is what they are fighting to return us back to. And they are glad they have us as willing tools to assist them(wherein we are quick to unjustly criticize the president/govt in defence of these evil men). We certainly don't know what is good for us and the evil men are sure taking undue advantage of that.

Aside the man Buhari, who would have had the will to engage corruption/impunity, which is the undoing of Nigeria? An era where not even military generals (serving and retired) were spared. Where even a sitting senate president could be tried. Where the seeming untouchables are now touchable. Where the rich and the poor now fear the law and the law now applies to all.

The evil men are so obsessed with the health of the president and his absence. Not because they care. Question is: is the government not running smoothly? What is their problem? Their excess worries just show that they like Nigeria and Nigerians more than they like themselves - WHICH IS NOT TRUE. What I actually expected of them who have destroyed this country is to bury their faces in shame and hold their peace while Nigeria struggles to get out of the woods they led her to. But because we as a nation are already robbed of all known/good values, even a wrong doer/sinner is bolder than the righteous to always speak first in public on any issue of morality anywhere and anytime. How can someone who has lost his mind be ashamed of his past bad deeds? Of course not when he even has blind willing youths that will always rise to his defence/support.

May God open our eyes to know our common enemies.

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"...Other areas which the PDP leaders harped include discipline and impunity, two areas which pundits said affected the party in 2015 when many of its vibrant followers were frustrated...."

It is good if they have now agreed/realized that corruption and impunity are their greatest undoing. So if they are talking of uprooting moles planted in the party, they should do same to the unrepentant corrupt/corruptible.

They can only be great again if they handle this and also lean to be frank with one another (objective) rather than sycophancy/blind loyalty to their superiors/principals even when their superiors are obviously going astray

aplus2016:


sorry pls:
been = being

who on earth before now could have done what buhari is doing now? a govt where corrupt serving and retired military generals, hitherto untouchable thieves/looters our treasury under the guise of leaders etc are being tried in court?

aplus2016:
hon dogara, you people in the legislature(lower and upper house) are the ones who don't want to tackle corruption at all- not even to the root yet.

only effective and realistic laws can tackle corruption to the root as you have said. but where the laws with penalties such as death sentence are not forth coming from you, not just that- plus you the legislature are trying to Whittle down existing anti corruption laws (as seen with code of conduct amendments, attempted passage of amnesty bill for looters etc).

so should the executive begin to make laws brfore we will know and say corruption is now been fought to the root?

truth be told, we lack sincerity, patriotism, objectivity and above all morality generally in this country.

who on earth before now could have done what buhari is doing now? a govt where corrupt serving and retired military generals, hitherto untouchable thieves/looters our treasury under the guise of leaders etc?

do you realize that all problems nigeria/nigerians of many million people are facing today are the handiwork of only a few (maybe not more than 10,000 evil/wicked and selfish people?) who have consistently held this country hostage, milking it dry? the worse problem is that we the unsuspecting youth who appear to be blindfolded don't yet know our common enemies. we sing the praises of those out to destroy us but insult/criticize the one who has come to save us and our patrimony from our traducers.

am now beginning to believe that politics in the nigerian context is more like organized crime

been = being

hon dogara, you people in the legislature(lower and upper house) are the ones who don't want to tackle corruption at all- not even to the root yet.

only effective and realistic laws can tackle corruption to the root as you have said. but where the laws with penalties such as death sentence are not forth coming from you, not just that- plus you the legislature are trying to Whittle down existing anti corruption laws (as seen with code of conduct amendments, attempted passage of amnesty bill for looters etc).

so should the executive begin to make laws brfore we will know and say corruption is now been fought to the root?

truth be told, we lack sincerity, patriotism, objectivity and above all morality generally in this country.

who on earth before now could have done what buhari is doing now? a govt where corrupt serving and retired military generals, hitherto untouchable thieves/looters our treasury under the guise of leaders etc?

do you realize that all problems nigeria/nigerians of many million people are facing today are the handiwork of only a few (maybe not more than 10,000 evil/wicked and selfish people?) who have consistently held this country hostage, milking it dry? the worse problem is that we the unsuspecting youth who appear to be blindfolded don't yet know our common enemies. we sing the praises of those out to destroy us but insult/criticize the one who has come to save us and our patrimony from our traducers.

am now beginning to believe that politics in the nigerian context is more like organized crime

ofuonyebi:
Why would they not support such a Law...

Have we suddenly forgotten what OBJ said, the NASS is 6 & 7 with Corruption//

If na lie OBJ talk, why the Nigerian NASS no fit pass any Law for life jail or death aentence
for Looters like it is done in Pakistan, China and other reliable Nat'L Assemblies of other Nation

The guilty and corrupt are always afraid of MAGU!!

U are right. We will only be wailing until we know to identify our common enemies and do the needful. When the then British Prime Minister said Nigeria was fantastically corrupt, our leaders and youths condemned his honest statement. President Buhari accepted that we were truly corrupt. He attracted worse condemnation/criticism for accepting the verdict.

The people that did the condemnation are mostly our youths who sing the praises of our looters. Our looters are their heroes/idols. These youths who are enticed by peanuts from these looters are still sleeping, yet to know their common enemies. They are yet to know that these are the people who have subverted the system in their own interest- the reason why all the economic woes exist/persist including unemployment. Keep praising and defending them. Poor thieves are being thrown into prisons daily for stealing goats, chicken, yams, handsets etc but those who have stolen billions of dollars (which are the reasons the poor ones are stealing) cannot be tried. No thanks to the judiciary(senior advocates shielding them from trial, bought juidges giving compromised judgements etc).

rattyo3:
I did the NPower registration on my phone and when the reference number page pop up, I made a screenshot of the page.

To my utmost surprise the screenshot was not save as my memory card was faulty. I scrolled down my gallery only to see the screenshot unable to display.

I've kept it to myself since, cos I don't know how to explain why I don't pick a pen and write it down.

I hope my registration is not a waste.

If you forgot to write down or print your Npower reference number, tthese steps could help:
1. if you have not shut down but still on the browser, keep pressing/clicking back button and forward button on that very tab while u watch what it displays until it shows. i.e be going back and forth.

2. if u have shut down, go to the browser menu and locate history. select that particular tab of the Npower. When it opens and does not display the ref no, apply step 1 above.

If you forgot to write down or print you Npower reference number, tthese steps could help:
1. if you have not shut down but still on the browser, keep pressing/clicking back button and forward button on that very tab while u watch what it displays until it shows. i.e be going back and forth.

2. if u have shut down, go to the browser menu and locate history. select that particular tab of the Npower. When it opens and does not display the ref no, apply step 1 above.

It is a shame to our country that we have pple like this general in such an office. Gradually, these revelations are betraying your nothern hidden agenda. You have shown that you represent the interest of a section and not all Nigerians.

People, u can now guess what happens every time the army is sent to quell unrest in any part of the country. Can somebody ask this general where he was when the Agatu pple of Benue and others in other ethnic groups in different parts were massacred by fulanis? Or those lives were those of chickens so not as important as the lives of the fulanis?

Scrapping of Management Sciences in Federal Universities of Agriculture Across The Country Not Ideal - by Albert Ijika


I thought it wise to lend my voice as a patriotic Nigerian. More so as the matter is more sensitive than most people think.

This is in the hope that this will get the attention of the Ministries of Education and that of Agriculture and Rural Development.

I believe that people disagree to agree. When we are humble, with teachable heart, to listen to one another, we come out of any misunderstanding stronger and better informed with a better and collective view point to rest the matter in question. This happens when we exercise restraint /patience and agree to listen to one another, even to the foolish or seemingly foolish ones. Misunderstanding sometimes is simply seeing one thing persistently from different perspectives/angles by different persons. Learning to view the contentious subject matter through the other opponent’s eye glasses helps to resolve the matter quickly.

The decision to scrap Management Sciences from Universities of Agriculture nationwide, in all honesty/intent, was borne out of the zeal by the current handlers/policy makers to put the nation back on track, in tandem with President Buhari’s determination. If we are objective and honest enough, we should admit that Nigeria has suffered misrule by successive governments, a result of which many things, if not all, are in shambles. This incongruity, festered by greed, corruption and impunity compromised the system and robbed us of all know “values” to a point that nothing seems to work anymore and brought us as a people to where we no longer distaste wrong doings but see them as a way of life.

In my opinion, a failed state is not only that which is overwhelmed with insurrection, rebellion or that whose polity or economy is totally collapsed. But that also where systems (including agencies, laws, policies/programs of government etc), are importunately, not working well. We are currently in a dicey situation and understandably, well meaning and patriotic leaders should be seen to be making frantic efforts to normalize things in their areas of jurisdiction/purview. That, to my understanding, informed the decision by the federal government to call to order specialized universities (universities of agriculture, technology etc.), resulting in scrapping of Management Sciences from Universities of Agriculture across the nation, perhaps with an intention to making the institution specialized and concentrated on their core mandate.

A similar action was seen when the Ministry of Education took a bold step to cancel Post UTME, which put an additional hurdle on the way of aspiring university candidates and particularly subjected the poor to additional financial burden. To be objective, that is the way to go. Rather than creating parallel structures/processes to solve problems in others thereby duplicating functions and subjecting people to untold hardship, it is better to solve the problems identified in the existing faulty structure/process/system. And I recall the minister did say that if the universities had issues with JAMB, they should come forward with it. This is commendable as it allows for sanity. Besides, I believe no one will consider as a true coach any one that merely assembles only the best footballers. At best, he is only an instructor. One who recruits/assembles people with willingness and ability to play and grooms them into good players, is in my opinion, the true coach. If post UTME were to continue with all the universities jostling to admit only the best secondary school graduates, what would happen to the others who for one reason or the other could fail to scale through the post UTME but meet minimum requisite qualifications and have potentials to be developed by university education? I have seen secondary school students with poor academic performance who later became epitome of genius after their university education. I have also seen university students that graduated with not too good results but at masters level became epitome of genius. If the youths are unduly denied education, wont they later in life constitute social problems to the society? Or does denying them access to university/education (considering them as misfit) exile them from planet earth?

On the case of the specialized universities, while the recent order to the universities to discontinue courses of management science discipline may be seen as truly right, given the background of our compromised system, I opine that it may not be a desired /ideal step to take in our current situation, particularly as it relates to universities of agriculture. A holistic and futuristic view as well as detailed analysis should be considered in the interest of the nation’s economy, which comprises of many systems/components that are interrelated. Efforts some times to fix problems in a sector (managing some macro economic variables) could throw up other problems in other sectors.

The reasons why the decision to scrap management sciences may not be desirable /ideal in our current situation are:

1. It tantamount throwing away a veritable tool for success. The Ministry of Agriculture, if analogically seen as a nation going for an all important battle for survival, then Management Science can be seen as an arsenal in her war chest. The ministry needs foot soldiers to provide the necessary drive.
These universities provide the opportunity to deliberately engage relevant foot soldiers and leverage their efforts in the ministry’s quest to reposition agricultural sector for attainment of desired goals. This task of repositioning the agric sector is beyond the core participants. Note that we are trying to evolve from primitive and subsistence agriculture to AGRIBUSINESS. This is where management science comes in to fill the business gap. All these skills/disciplines (management, accounting, marketing, banking/finance and entrepreneurship) should be specially tailored to agriculture and brought to bear on this all important reform. All that is needed is to tweak/modify their syllabuses to become agric inclined/focused. In which case, their texts (study materials) etc will be agric oriented, using agric produces/products as examples and their final year projects will be limited to agriculture. The syllabuses should be practically oriented and detailed enough to cover all management, accounting, financing, marketing of agric produces/products up to import/export level. This is aimed at having students/graduates who agriculture will be their preoccupation/contemplation and occupation. It is a wonderful way of getting ready skilled manpower involved to improve our agriculture in areas of managing agribusiness, marketing, accounting for produces/products, financing agric projects as well as having entrepreneurs in agriculture. There is every need to increase productivity, encourage innovation, create value and ignite a sequence of economic activities in the sector.

We need calm down, ignore rule of thumbs, look at the bigger picture, shift from “inside the box thinking” to “outside the box thinking,” engage relevant stakeholders (including the academia, publishers etc) and brainstorm on the workability and implementation of this. The success of National Open University and part time programs of some university shows that provision of the needed study materials based on the suggested modification to syllabus won’t be insurmountable.


While the action of some of the affected institutions to change the nomenclature of some of the courses may be seen as an effort to justify their offering, and which may also be laughable, it is instructive that a closer look reveals a disguised blessing and game changer for the agric sector. It appears to be a divine arrangement. If the disciplines are oriented towards agric, then they can rightly be called agric management, agric accounting, agric marketing, agric banking/finance and agric entrepreneurship.
If we have agric econs, why not these? It does not matter if we are the first to do this. We must not wait for others to set the pace before we follow considering the utmost importance of the agric sector and the fact that the disciplines are veritable tools.

2. It will further reduce/delay access to university education in a country with volatile population where secondary schools churn out overwhelming number of graduates each year. There is already need to increase number of higher institutions to cater for the ever growing population. Reducing the aggregate students enrollment capacity of the higher institutions by this action will no doubt aggravate the problem of denial of timely access to tertiary education for some and even permanent denial for others, especially the poor and those in the rural areas. This is a foundation for social malaise/crime. If we invest well in social security, there may be no need to invest much in armed security.

Already, economic factors and others hinder early access/completion of higher education (for those who can afford it). This scrapping action will only worsen that. Sadly, Nigeria practices age discrimination in employment. Worst still, the Federal Government has not only joined the private sector in this practice but has extended it beyond conventional employment to her intervention programs such as Npower, BOI Youth Entrepreneurship Support (YES) program etc. when it is very obvious that many unemployed youths far above 35 years of age are still unemployed, owing to maladministration of successive governments among other factors. A lot still needs to be done to avert any likely (ticking) time bomb as it relates to youth unemployment, frustration, disenchantment etc. We may be inadvertently/unconsciously hatching an army of disgruntled youths who may in due time vent their anger/frustration by hitting back at the system that failed them, ostensibly seeing it as the source of their travail.

Paradoxically, the rural areas that constitute the largest host to our agricultural activities are gradually and steadily turning into dens of criminals (with heavy and sophisticated arms build-up) perpetrating violent/heinous crimes. This is of great concern. It could be linked to lack of access to higher education. An empirical study would most likely establish a correlation between crime and level of education. You may want to know for instance: of the total students graduated by secondary schools in Nigeria each year, what percentage gets admission for higher studies immediately? Of the ones that get admission immediately, what percentage is accounted for by those from rural areas, urban areas? Also what percentage is accounted for by those from public schools? And so on. Such statistics if had will allow for better diagnosis and planning by the education ministry.

Some other posers: Are the public schools and rural schools most especially given the required education and basic facilities? If not it will be unfair to demand from them what they have not received. Why do we, for example, have to wait till at final exams (UTME/SSCE) before we marshal resources/security to invigilate? Do we also, during learning, marshal relevant resources to ensure they get the required facilities and learning? Problems should be tackled to their roots rather than “pruning the branches. “

3. Accommodating/housing other disciplines under existing higher institutions is easier and cheaper than building new fully fledged schools, especially with the current economic realities. Most, if not all Nigerian universities, indeed have vast lands lying idle and capable of accommodating more colleges/faculties. If the different colleges/faculties are housed in separate blocks, have their different faculty staff (both academic and non academic), have their separate classes and halls etc then it is worth it. Since the core agric colleges/faculties do not share same lecturers, classes etc with the management disciplines, the different colleges/disciplines can stay focused on their different objectives which aim towards achieving some overall goals without distraction/interference. Competition for financial resources by the different colleges also won’t be a challenge as funds can be tied to specific/priority projects where need be. The management and core agric disciplines co-habiting even makes easy sharing of research findings/experiences by the agric research sections. This keeps the management disciplines abreast of developments for possible inclusion in their leanings to equip them to better drive agribusiness.

4. The end justifies the means. Controversy aside, the incorporated management colleges in agric universities are truly offering quality education to our people. It is not a sham. Why don’t we improve and take advantage of it? It is only a matter of legislation. The legislative arm can amend the enabling laws setting up the affected institutions to suit our situation. Our laws are being amended every now and then in different areas to suit changing times/ situations. Same can apply here. We should not throw out the baby with the bathwater.


5. Long term sustainability of the policy should be considered. Times are constantly changing. We live in a dynamic world and necessity will always dictate course of action. Besides, Nigeria is well known for policy summersault. It will not make good/economic sense if we change the status quo only to return back to it later when we realize the need for that. A lot of resources (including time and money) will have been lost and a lot of people will have suffered.

There was a time in our history when we shut our business space to foreigners with our indigenization policy, denying them ownership of businesses/investment holdings in Nigeria. But today, we are the same people going all out to entreat them to come back and invest in our country. Let us consider the long run possibilities/necessities as well as cost and benefits. Let us also consider what is appropriate for our situation - what suits us.

See also the case of banking reform in 2004 that resulted in mergers and acquisitions, making many banks to lose their identity to fuse with others. Recall also that when NITEL exclusively provided telephone services in Nigeria, users were restrained from commercializing their lines and it was a running battle between the government and individuals who dared to use their lines to offer public telephone services. Then, nobody thought that public telephone services would ever be allowed on our streets. But it came to pass with the same land lines used by individuals for same. Later, public phone booths were provided by NITEL and thereafter, GSM lines used by individuals for public telephone services.

Instances of policy summersault abound. A few include change of our educational system, reforms in the agric sector etc. with a most recent one being the NIGERIA AGRICULTURAL PAYMENT INITIATIVE (NAPI), which was jettisoned shortly after implementation. Sadly enough, it was a wonderful technological initiative that would have put paid to many challenges/bottlenecks, tendencies and enhanced transparency/probity, convenience, efficiency/effectiveness as well as catalyzed agribusiness and facilitated transactions in agribusiness. Were it to be in place, the untold hardship and costs suffered by Benue rural farmers in unending trips to the state capital to process their agric loans under the CBN Anchor Borrowers Scheme (which most of them never got in the end), would have been avoided. A case in point (still on CBN Anchor Borrowers Scheme) is Bayelsa State, where the loan program is currently on going. It is already being greeted with cries of alleged cases of fraud, extortion of farmers and the listing of ghost beneficiaries. Most of the loan applicants are worried that the scheme is being hijacked by people it is not meant for with cooperative societies also extorting money from the farmers.

6. It will add to the unemployment problem of Nigeria. Scrapping management sciences implies that all the affected staff may be laid off. Even if some arrangements are made to redeploy them, the hitherto permanent job window (that would continuously have been available for different people at different times) the affected colleges/faculties provide will be no more. Consider the number of staff. Let’s make believe that each of the staff provides for at least 4 dependants. Imagine the effect. That will be a negative impact on the economy. UNEMPLOYMENT RATE is one of the indicators used in gauging/feeling the pulse of any economy to know whether the economy is healthy or not. That shows how consequential employment status of a country is to the entire economy. Other macro economic variables being:
• foreign balance of payments
• inflation rate
• money supply
• balance of trade etc.

It is instructive to note that the economy (i.e. macro) though seen as one, has different components having interrelationships. For this reason efforts to fix some economic ills on one side could trigger or throw up some other problems in other areas.
It is the reason why to effectively macro-manage the economy, a good study and analysis are necessary to identify and understand the major variables responsible for the current macro-economic situation as well as likely effects of the intended policy action (s). This allows for deployment of a mixture of policy most suitable for curing whatever economy ills there are, while at same time avoiding any negative effect/backlash on the economy.
While on the drawing board to reposition the agricultural sector, Management Sciences should be remoulded to fit into the design.

Source:
www.opinionnigeria.com/scrapping-of-management-sciences-in-federal-universities-of-agriculture-across-the-country-not-ideal-by-albert-ijika/#sthash.GfWJmadu.dpbshttp://www.opinionnigeria.com/scrapping-of-management-sciences-in-federal-universities-of-agriculture-across-the-country-not-ideal-by-albert-ijika/#sthash.GfWJmadu.dpbs

Scrapping of Management Sciences in Federal Universities of Agriculture Across The Country Not Ideal - By Albert Ijika


I thought it wise to lend my voice as a patriotic Nigerian. More so as the matter is more sensitive than most people think.
This is in the hope that this will get the attention of the Ministries of Education and that of Agriculture and Rural Development.
I believe that people disagree to agree. When we are humble, with teachable heart, to listen to one another, we come out of any misunderstanding stronger and better informed with a better and collective view point to rest the matter in question. This happens when we exercise restraint /patience and agree to listen to one another, even to the foolish or seemingly foolish ones. Misunderstanding sometimes is simply seeing one thing persistently from different perspectives/angles by different persons. Learning to view the contentious subject matter through the other opponent’s eye glasses helps to resolve the matter quickly.
The decision to scrap Management Sciences from Universities of Agriculture nationwide, in all honesty/intent, was borne out of the zeal by the current handlers/policy makers to put the nation back on track, in tandem with President Buhari’s determination. If we are objective and honest enough, we should admit that Nigeria has suffered misrule by successive governments, a result of which many things, if not all, are in shambles. This incongruity, festered by greed, corruption and impunity compromised the system and robbed us of all know “values” to a point that nothing seems to work anymore and brought us as a people to where we no longer distaste wrong doings but see them as a way of life.
In my opinion, a failed state is not only that which is overwhelmed with insurrection, rebellion or that whose polity or economy is totally collapsed. But that also where systems (including agencies, laws, policies/programs of government etc), are importunately, not working well. We are currently in a dicey situation and understandably, well meaning and patriotic leaders should be seen to be making frantic efforts to normalize things in their areas of jurisdiction/purview. That, to my understanding, informed the decision by the federal government to call to order specialized universities (universities of agriculture, technology etc.), resulting in scrapping of Management Sciences from Universities of Agriculture across the nation, perhaps with an intention to making the institution specialized and concentrated on their core mandate.
A similar action was seen when the Ministry of Education took a bold step to cancel Post UTME, which put an additional hurdle on the way of aspiring university candidates and particularly subjected the poor to additional financial burden. To be objective, that is the way to go. Rather than creating parallel structures/processes to solve problems in others thereby duplicating functions and subjecting people to untold hardship, it is better to solve the problems identified in the existing faulty structure/process/system. And I recall the minister did say that if the universities had issues with JAMB, they should come forward with it. This is commendable as it allows for sanity. Besides, I believe no one will consider as a true coach any one that merely assembles only the best footballers. At best, he is only an instructor. One who recruits/assembles people with willingness and ability to play and grooms them into good players, is in my opinion, the true coach. If post UTME were to continue with all the universities jostling to admit only the best secondary school graduates, what would happen to the others who for one reason or the other could fail to scale through the post UTME but meet minimum requisite qualifications and have potentials to be developed by university education? I have seen secondary school students with poor academic performance who later became epitome of genius after their university education. I have also seen university students that graduated with not too good results but at masters level became epitome of genius. If the youths are unduly denied education, wont they later in life constitute social problems to the society? Or does denying them access to university/education (considering them as misfit) exile them from planet earth?
On the case of the specialized universities, while the recent order to the universities to discontinue courses of management science discipline may be seen as truly right, given the background of our compromised system, I opine that it may not be a desired /ideal step to take in our current situation, particularly as it relates to universities of agriculture. A holistic and futuristic view as well as detailed analysis should be considered in the interest of the nation’s economy, which comprises of many systems/components that are interrelated. Efforts some times to fix problems in a sector (managing some macro economic variables) could throw up other problems in other sectors.
The reasons why the decision to scrap management sciences may not be desirable /ideal in our current situation are:
1. It tantamount throwing away a veritable tool for success. The Ministry of Agriculture, if analogically seen as a nation going for an all important battle for survival, then Management Science can be seen as an arsenal in her war chest. The ministry needs foot soldiers to provide the necessary drive. These universities provide the opportunity to deliberately engage relevant foot soldiers and leverage their efforts in the ministry’s quest to reposition agricultural sector for attainment of desired goals. This task of repositioning the agric sector is beyond the core participants. Note that we are trying to evolve from primitive and subsistence agriculture to AGRIBUSINESS. This is where management science comes in to fill the business gap. All these skills/disciplines (management, accounting, marketing, banking/finance and entrepreneurship) should be specially tailored to agriculture and brought to bear on this all important reform. All that is needed is to tweak/modify their syllabuses to become agric inclined/focused. In which case, their texts (study materials) etc will be agric oriented, using agric produces/products as examples and their final year projects will be limited to agriculture. The syllabuses should be practically oriented and detailed enough to cover all management, accounting, financing, marketing of agric produces/products up to import/export level. This is aimed at having students/graduates who agriculture will be their preoccupation/contemplation and occupation. It is a wonderful way of getting ready skilled manpower involved to improve our agriculture in areas of managing agribusiness, marketing, accounting for produces/products, financing agric projects as well as having entrepreneurs in agriculture. There is every need to increase productivity, encourage innovation, create value and ignite a sequence of economic activities in the sector.

We need calm down, ignore rule of thumbs, look at the bigger picture, shift from “inside the box thinking” to “outside the box thinking,” engage relevant stakeholders (including the academia, publishers etc) and brainstorm on the workability and implementation of this. The success of National Open University and part time programs of some university shows that provision of the needed study materials based on the suggested modification to syllabus won’t be insurmountable.

While the action of some of the affected institutions to change the nomenclature of some of the courses may be seen as an effort to justify their offering, and which may also be laughable, it is instructive that a closer look reveals a disguised blessing and game changer for the agric sector. It appears to be a divine arrangement. If the disciplines are oriented towards agric, then they can rightly be called agric management, agric accounting, agric marketing, agric banking/finance and agric entrepreneurship.
If we have agric econs, why not these? It does not matter if we are the first to do this. We must not wait for others to set the pace before we follow considering the utmost importance of the agric sector and the fact that the disciplines are veritable tools.

2. It will further reduce/delay access to university education in a country with volatile population where secondary schools churn out overwhelming number of graduates each year. There is already need to increase number of higher institutions to cater for the ever growing population. Reducing the aggregate students enrollment capacity of the higher institutions by this action will no doubt aggravate the problem of denial of timely access to tertiary education for some and even permanent denial for others, especially the poor and those in the rural areas. This is a foundation for social malaise/crime. If we invest well in social security, there may be no need to invest much in armed security.

Already, economic factors and others hinder early access/completion of higher education (for those who can afford it). This scrapping action will only worsen that. Sadly, Nigeria practices age discrimination in employment. Worst still, the Federal Government has not only joined the private sector in this practice but has extended it beyond conventional employment to her intervention programs such as Npower, BOI Youth Entrepreneurship Support (YES) program etc. when it is very obvious that many unemployed youths far above 35 years of age are still unemployed, owing to maladministration of successive governments among other factors. A lot still needs to be done to avert any likely (ticking) time bomb as it relates to youth unemployment, frustration, disenchantment etc. We may be inadvertently/unconsciously hatching an army of disgruntled youths who may in due time vent their anger/frustration by hitting back at the system that failed them, ostensibly seeing it as the source of their travail.

Paradoxically, the rural areas that constitute the largest host to our agricultural activities are gradually and steadily turning into dens of criminals (with heavy and sophisticated arms build-up) perpetrating violent/heinous crimes. This is of great concern. It could be linked to lack of access to higher education. An empirical study would most likely establish a correlation between crime and level of education. You may want to know for instance: of the total students graduated by secondary schools in Nigeria each year, what percentage gets admission for higher studies immediately? Of the ones that get admission immediately, what percentage is accounted for by those from rural areas, urban areas? Also what percentage is accounted for by those from public schools? And so on. Such statistics if had will allow for better diagnosis and planning by the education ministry.

Some other posers: Are the public schools and rural schools most especially given the required education and basic facilities? If not it will be unfair to demand from them what they have not received. Why do we, for example, have to wait till at final exams (UTME/SSCE) before we marshal resources/security to invigilate? Do we also, during learning, marshal relevant resources to ensure they get the required facilities and learning? Problems should be tackled to their roots rather than “pruning the branches. “

3. Accommodating/housing other disciplines under existing higher institutions is easier and cheaper than building new fully fledged schools, especially with the current economic realities. Most, if not all Nigerian universities, indeed have vast lands lying idle and capable of accommodating more colleges/faculties. If the different colleges/faculties are housed in separate blocks, have their different faculty staff (both academic and non academic), have their separate classes and halls etc then it is worth it. Since the core agric colleges/faculties do not share same lecturers, classes etc with the management disciplines, the different colleges/disciplines can stay focused on their different objectives which aim towards achieving some overall goals without distraction/interference. Competition for financial resources by the different colleges also won’t be a challenge as funds can be tied to specific/priority projects where need be. The management and core agric disciplines co-habiting even makes easy sharing of research findings/experiences by the agric research sections. This keeps the management disciplines abreast of developments for possible inclusion in their leanings to equip them to better drive agribusiness.

4. The end justifies the means. Controversy aside, the incorporated management colleges in agric universities are truly offering quality education to our people. It is not a sham. Why don’t we improve and take advantage of it? It is only a matter of legislation. The legislative arm can amend the enabling laws setting up the affected institutions to suit our situation. Our laws are being amended every now and then in different areas to suit changing times/ situations. Same can apply here. We should not throw out the baby with the bathwater.


5. Long term sustainability of the policy should be considered. Times are constantly changing. We live in a dynamic world and necessity will always dictate course of action. Besides, Nigeria is well known for policy summersault. It will not make good/economic sense if we change the status quo only to return back to it later when we realize the need for that. A lot of resources (including time and money) will have been lost and a lot of people will have suffered.

There was a time in our history when we shut our business space to foreigners with our indigenization policy, denying them ownership of businesses/investment holdings in Nigeria. But today, we are the same people going all out to entreat them to come back and invest in our country. Let us consider the long run possibilities/necessities as well as cost and benefits. Let us also consider what is appropriate for our situation - what suits us.

See also the case of banking reform in 2004 that resulted in mergers and acquisitions, making many banks to lose their identity to fuse with others. Recall also that when NITEL exclusively provided telephone services in Nigeria, users were restrained from commercializing their lines and it was a running battle between the government and individuals who dared to use their lines to offer public telephone services. Then, nobody thought that public telephone services would ever be allowed on our streets. But it came to pass with the same land lines used by individuals for same. Later, public phone booths were provided by NITEL and thereafter, GSM lines used by individuals for public telephone services.

Instances of policy summersault abound. A few include change of our educational system, reforms in the agric sector etc. with a most recent one being the NIGERIA AGRICULTURAL PAYMENT INITIATIVE (NAPI), which was jettisoned shortly after implementation. Sadly enough, it was a wonderful technological initiative that would have put paid to many challenges/bottlenecks, tendencies and enhanced transparency/probity, convenience, efficiency/effectiveness as well as catalyzed agribusiness and facilitated transactions in agribusiness. Were it to be in place, the untold hardship and costs suffered by Benue rural farmers in unending trips to the state capital to process their agric loans under the CBN Anchor Borrowers Scheme (which most of them never got in the end), would have been avoided. A case in point (still on CBN Anchor Borrowers Scheme) is Bayelsa State, where the loan program is currently on going. It is already being greeted with cries of alleged cases of fraud, extortion of farmers and the listing of ghost beneficiaries. Most of the loan applicants are worried that the scheme is being hijacked by people it is not meant for with cooperative societies also extorting money from the farmers.

6. It will add to the unemployment problem of Nigeria. Scrapping management sciences implies that all the affected staff may be laid off. Even if some arrangements are made to redeploy them, the hitherto permanent job window (that would continuously have been available for different people at different times) the affected colleges/faculties provide will be no more. Consider the number of staff. Let’s make believe that each of the staff provides for at least 4 dependants. Imagine the effect. That will be a negative impact on the economy. UNEMPLOYMENT RATE is one of the indicators used in gauging/feeling the pulse of any economy to know whether the economy is healthy or not. That shows how consequential employment status of a country is to the entire economy. Other macro economic variables being:
• foreign balance of payments
• inflation rate
• money supply
• balance of trade etc.

It is instructive to note that the economy (i.e. macro) though seen as one, has different components having interrelationships. For this reason efforts to fix some economic ills on one side could trigger or throw up some other problems in other areas.
It is the reason why to effectively macro-manage the economy, a good study and analysis are necessary to identify and understand the major variables responsible for the current macro-economic situation as well as likely effects of the intended policy action (s). This allows for deployment of a mixture of policy most suitable for curing whatever economy ills there are, while at same time avoiding any negative effect/backlash on the economy.
While on the drawing board to reposition the agricultural sector, Management Sciences should be remoulded to fit into the design.

Source:
www.opinionnigeria.com/scrapping-of-management-sciences-in-federal-universities-of-agriculture-across-the-country-not-ideal-by-albert-ijika/#sthash.GfWJmadu.dpbshttp://www.opinionnigeria.com/scrapping-of-management-sciences-in-federal-universities-of-agriculture-across-the-country-not-ideal-by-albert-ijika/#sthash.GfWJmadu.dpbs

Investment in social security should be taken seriously to check all these social malaise.

Root cause is misrule of our country

May God touch their hearts to do right and implement his will for his people.

This is because they are the problem and the solution of Nigeria. The political class and their decisions/policies whether we like it or not control all other sectors and every other thing in the country

Wicked generation with perverted hearts. No more sanctity as it relates to human life.

As for taking him to TB, the security operatives won't be obliged as it is not part of the procedures set out by the extant/relevant laws in prosecuting cases.

And when you talk forgiving him and saving his life, it appears his life is much more important than lives he has wasted

As for taking him to TB, the security operatives won't obliged as it is not part of the procedures set out by the extant/relevant laws in prosecuting cases.

And when you talk forgiving him and saving his life, it appears his life is much more important than lives he has wasted

Scrapping of Management Sciences in Federal Universities of Agriculture Across The Country Not Ideal -By Albert Ijika

I thought it wise to lend my voice as a patriotic Nigerian. More so as the matter is more sensitive than most people think.
This is in the hope that this will get the attention of the Ministries of Education and that of Agriculture and Rural Development.

I believe that people disagree to agree. When we are humble, with teachable heart, to listen to one another, we come out of any misunderstanding stronger and better informed with a better and collective view point to rest the matter in question. This happens when we exercise restraint /patience and agree to listen to one another, even to the foolish or seemingly foolish ones. Misunderstanding sometimes is simply seeing one thing persistently from different perspectives/angles by different persons. Learning to view the contentious subject matter through the other opponent’s eye glasses helps to resolve the matter quickly.

The decision to scrap Management Sciences from Universities of Agriculture nationwide, in all honesty/intent, was borne out of the zeal by the current handlers/policy makers to put the nation back on track, in tandem with President Buhari’s determination. If we are objective and honest enough, we should admit that Nigeria has suffered misrule by successive governments, a result of which many things, if not all, are in shambles. This incongruity, festered by greed, corruption and impunity compromised the system and robbed us of all know “values” to a point that nothing seems to work anymore and brought us as a people to where we no longer distaste wrong doings but see them as a way of life.

In my opinion, a failed state is not only that which is overwhelmed with insurrection, rebellion or that whose polity or economy is totally collapsed. But that also where systems (including agencies, laws, policies/programs of government etc), are importunately, not working well. We are currently in a dicey situation and understandably, well meaning and patriotic leaders should be seen to be making frantic efforts to normalize things in their areas of jurisdiction/purview. That, to my understanding, informed the decision by the federal government to call to order specialized universities (universities of agriculture, technology etc.), resulting in scrapping of Management Sciences from Universities of Agriculture across the nation, perhaps with an intention to making the institution specialized and concentrated on their core mandate.

A similar action was seen when the Ministry of Education took a bold step to cancel Post UTME, which put an additional hurdle on the way of aspiring university candidates and particularly subjected the poor to additional financial burden. To be objective, that is the way to go. Rather than creating parallel structures/processes to solve problems in others thereby duplicating functions and subjecting people to untold hardship, it is better to solve the problems identified in the existing faulty structure/process/system. And I recall the minister did say that if the universities had issues with JAMB, they should come forward with it. This is commendable as it allows for sanity. Besides, I believe no one will consider as a true coach any one that merely assembles only the best footballers. At best, he is only an instructor. One who recruits/assembles people with willingness and ability to play and grooms them into good players, is in my opinion, the true coach. If post UTME were to continue with all the universities jostling to admit only the best secondary school graduates, what would happen to the others who for one reason or the other could fail to scale through the post UTME but meet minimum requisite qualifications and have potentials to be developed by university education? I have seen secondary school students with poor academic performance who later became epitome of genius after their university education. I have also seen university students that graduated with not too good results but at masters level became epitome of genius. If the youths are unduly denied education, wont they later in life constitute social problems to the society? Or does denying them access to university/education (considering them as misfit) exile them from planet earth?

On the case of the specialized universities, while the recent order to the universities to discontinue courses of management science discipline may be seen as truly right, given the background of our compromised system, I opine that it may not be a desired /ideal step to take in our current situation, particularly as it relates to universities of agriculture. A holistic and futuristic view as well as detailed analysis should be considered in the interest of the nation’s economy, which comprises of many systems/components that are interrelated. Efforts some times to fix problems in a sector (managing some macro economic variables) could throw up other problems in other sectors.

The reasons why the decision to scrap management sciences may not be desirable /ideal in our current situation are:

1. It tantamount throwing away a veritable tool for success. The Ministry of Agriculture, if analogically seen as a nation going for an all important battle for survival, then Management Science can be seen as an arsenal in her war chest. The ministry needs foot soldiers to provide the necessary drive. These universities provide the opportunity to deliberately engage relevant foot soldiers and leverage their efforts in the ministry’s quest to reposition agricultural sector for attainment of desired goals. This task of repositioning the agric sector is beyond the core participants. Note that we are trying to evolve from primitive and subsistence agriculture to agribusiness. This is where management science comes in to fill the business gap. All these skills/disciplines (management, accounting, marketing, banking/finance and entrepreneurship) should be specially tailored to agriculture and brought to bear on this all important reform. All that is needed is to tweak/modify their syllabuses to become agric inclined/focused. In which case, their texts (study materials) etc will be agric oriented, using agric produces/products as examples and their final year projects will be limited to agriculture. The syllabuses should be practically oriented and detailed enough to cover all management, accounting, financing, marketing of agric produces/products up to import/export level. This is aimed at having students/graduates who agriculture will be their preoccupation/contemplation and occupation. It is a wonderful way of getting ready skilled manpower involved to improve our agriculture in areas of managing agribusiness, marketing, accounting for produces/products, financing agric projects as well as having entrepreneurs in agriculture. There is every need to increase productivity, encourage innovation, create value and ignite a sequence of economic activities in the sector.
We need calm down, ignore rule of thumbs, look at the bigger picture, shift from “inside the box thinking” to “outside the box thinking,” engage relevant stakeholders (including the academia, publishers etc) and brainstorm on the workability and implementation of this. The success of National Open University and part time programs of some university shows that provision of the needed study materials based on the suggested modification to syllabus won’t be insurmountable.

2. While the action of some of the affected institutions to change the nomenclature of some of the courses may be seen as an effort to justify their offering, and which may also be laughable, it is instructive that a closer look reveals a disguised blessing and game changer for the agric sector. It appears to be a divine arrangement. If the disciplines are oriented towards agric, then they can rightly be called agric management, agric accounting, agric marketing, agric banking/finance and agric entrepreneurship.

If we have agric econs, why not these? It does not matter if we are the first to do this. We must not wait for others to set the pace before we follow considering the utmost importance of the agric sector and the fact that the disciplines are veritable tools.

3. It will further reduce/delay access to university education in a country with volatile population where secondary schools churn out overwhelming number of graduates each year. There is already need to increase number of higher institutions to cater for the ever growing population. Reducing the aggregate students enrollment capacity of the higher institutions by this action will no doubt aggravate the problem of denial of timely access to tertiary education for some and even permanent denial for others, especially the poor and those in the rural areas. This is a foundation for social malaise/crime. If we invest well in social security, there may be no need to invest much in armed security.
Already, economic factors and others hinder early access/completion of higher education (for those who can afford it). This scrapping action will only worsen that. Sadly, Nigeria practices age discrimination in employment. Worst still, the Federal Government has not only joined the private sector in this practice but has extended it beyond conventional employment to her intervention programs such as Npower, BOI Youth Entrepreneurship Support (YES) program etc. when it is very obvious that many unemployed youths far above 35 years of age are still unemployed, owing to maladministration of successive governments among other factors. A lot still needs to be done to avert any likely (ticking) time bomb as it relates to youth unemployment, frustration, disenchantment etc. We may be inadvertently/unconsciously hatching an army of disgruntled youths who may in due time vent their anger/frustration by hitting back at the system that failed them, ostensibly seeing it as the source of their travail.

Paradoxically, the rural areas that constitute the largest host to our agricultural activities are gradually and steadily turning into dens of criminals (with heavy and sophisticated arms build-up) perpetrating violent/heinous crimes. This is of great concern. It could be linked to lack of access to higher education. An empirical study would most likely establish a correlation between crime and level of education. You may want to know for instance: of the total students graduated by secondary schools in Nigeria each year, what percentage gets admission for higher studies immediately? Of the ones that get admission immediately, what percentage is accounted for by those from rural areas, urban areas? Also what percentage is accounted for by those from public schools? And so on. Such statistics if had will allow for better diagnosis and planning by the education ministry.

Some other posers: Are the public schools and rural schools most especially given the required education and basic facilities? If not it will be unfair to demand from them what they have not received. Why do we, for example, have to wait till at final exams (UTME/SSCE) before we marshal resources/security to invigilate? Do we also, during learning, marshal relevant resources to ensure they get the required facilities and learning? Problems should be tackled to their roots rather than “pruning the branches. “

4. Accommodating/housing other disciplines under existing higher institutions is easier and cheaper than building new fully fledged schools, especially with the current economic realities. Most, if not all Nigerian universities, indeed have vast lands lying idle and capable of accommodating more colleges/faculties. If the different colleges/faculties are housed in separate blocks, have their different faculty staff (both academic and non academic), have their separate classes and halls etc then it is worth it. Since the core agric colleges/faculties do not share same lecturers, classes etc with the management disciplines, the different colleges/disciplines can stay focused on their different objectives which aim towards achieving some overall goals without distraction/interference. Competition for financial resources by the different colleges also won’t be a challenge as funds can be tied to specific/priority projects where need be. The management and core agric disciplines co-habiting even makes easy sharing of research findings/experiences by the agric research sections. This keeps the management disciplines abreast of developments for possible inclusion in their leanings to equip them to better drive agribusiness.

5. The end justifies the means. Controversy aside, the incorporated management colleges in agric universities are truly offering quality education to our people. It is not a sham. Why don’t we improve and take advantage of it? It is only a matter of legislation. The legislative arm can amend the enabling laws setting up the affected institutions to suit our situation. Our laws are being amended every now and then in different areas to suit changing times/ situations. Same can apply here. We should not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Long term sustainability of the policy should be considered. Times are constantly changing. We live in a dynamic world and necessity will always dictate course of action. Besides, Nigeria is well known for policy summersault. It will not make good/economic sense if we change the status quo only to return back to it later when we realize the need for that. A lot of resources (including time and money) will have been lost and a lot of people will have suffered.
There was a time in our history when we shut our business space to foreigners with our indigenization policy, denying them ownership of businesses/investment holdings in Nigeria. But today, we are the same people going all out to entreat them to come back and invest in our country. Let us consider the long run possibilities/necessities as well as cost and benefits. Let us also consider what is appropriate for our situation – what suits us.

See also the case of banking reform in 2004 that resulted in mergers and acquisitions, making many banks to lose their identity to fuse with others. Recall also that when NITEL exclusively provided telephone services in Nigeria, users were restrained from commercializing their lines and it was a running battle between the government and individuals who dared to use their lines to offer public telephone services. Then, nobody thought that public telephone services would ever be allowed on our streets. But it came to pass with the same land lines used by individuals for same. Later, public phone booths were provided by NITEL and thereafter, GSM lines used by individuals for public telephone services.

Instances of policy summersault abound. A few include change of our educational system, reforms in the agric sector etc. with a most recent one being the NIGERIA AGRICULTURAL PAYMENT INITIATIVE (NAPI), which was jettisoned shortly after implementation. Sadly enough, it was a wonderful technological initiative that would have put paid to many challenges/bottlenecks, tendencies and enhanced transparency/probity, convenience, efficiency/effectiveness as well as catalyzed agribusiness and facilitated transactions in agribusiness. Were it to be in place, the untold hardship and costs suffered by Benue rural farmers in unending trips to the state capital to process their agric loans under the CBN Anchor Borrowers Scheme (which most of them never got in the end), would have been avoided. A case in point (still on CBN Anchor Borrowers Scheme) is Bayelsa State, where the loan program is currently on going. It is already being greeted with cries of alleged cases of fraud, extortion of farmers and the listing of ghost beneficiaries. Most of the loan applicants are worried that the scheme is being hijacked by people it is not meant for with cooperative societies also extorting money from the farmers.

6. It will add to the unemployment problem of Nigeria. Scrapping management sciences implies that all the affected staff may be laid off. Even if some arrangements are made to redeploy them, the hitherto permanent job window (that would continuously have been available for different people at different times) the affected colleges/faculties provide will be no more. Consider the number of staff. Let’s make believe that each of the staff provides for at least 4 dependants. Imagine the effect. That will be a negative impact on the economy. Unemployment rate is one of the indicators used in gauging/feeling the pulse of any economy to know whether the economy is healthy or not. That shows how consequential employment status of a country is to the entire economy. Other macro economic variables being:
foreign balance of payments
inflation rate
money supply
balance of trade etc.
It is instructive to note that the economy (i.e. macro) though seen as one, has different components having interrelationships. For this reason efforts to fix some economic ills on one side could trigger or throw up some other problems in other areas.

It is the reason why to effectively macro-manage the economy, a good study and analysis are necessary to identify and understand the major variables responsible for the current macro-economic situation as well as likely effects of the intended policy action (s). This allows for deployment of a mixture of policy most suitable for curing whatever economy ills there are, while at same time avoiding any negative effect/backlash on the economy.

While on the drawing board to reposition the agricultural sector, Management Sciences should be remoulded to fit into the design.

Source: http://www.opinionnigeria.com/scrapping-of-management-sciences-in-federal-universities-of-agriculture-across-the-country-not-ideal-by-albert-ijika/#sthash.GfWJmadu.dpbs

Scrapping of Management Sciences in Federal Universities of Agriculture Across The Country Not Ideal -By Albert Ijika

I thought it wise to lend my voice as a patriotic Nigerian. More so as the matter is more sensitive than most people think.
This is in the hope that this will get the attention of the Ministries of Education and that of Agriculture and Rural Development.

I believe that people disagree to agree. When we are humble, with teachable heart, to listen to one another, we come out of any misunderstanding stronger and better informed with a better and collective view point to rest the matter in question. This happens when we exercise restraint /patience and agree to listen to one another, even to the foolish or seemingly foolish ones. Misunderstanding sometimes is simply seeing one thing persistently from different perspectives/angles by different persons. Learning to view the contentious subject matter through the other opponent’s eye glasses helps to resolve the matter quickly.

The decision to scrap Management Sciences from Universities of Agriculture nationwide, in all honesty/intent, was borne out of the zeal by the current handlers/policy makers to put the nation back on track, in tandem with President Buhari’s determination. If we are objective and honest enough, we should admit that Nigeria has suffered misrule by successive governments, a result of which many things, if not all, are in shambles. This incongruity, festered by greed, corruption and impunity compromised the system and robbed us of all know “values” to a point that nothing seems to work anymore and brought us as a people to where we no longer distaste wrong doings but see them as a way of life.

In my opinion, a failed state is not only that which is overwhelmed with insurrection, rebellion or that whose polity or economy is totally collapsed. But that also where systems (including agencies, laws, policies/programs of government etc), are importunately, not working well. We are currently in a dicey situation and understandably, well meaning and patriotic leaders should be seen to be making frantic efforts to normalize things in their areas of jurisdiction/purview. That, to my understanding, informed the decision by the federal government to call to order specialized universities (universities of agriculture, technology etc.), resulting in scrapping of Management Sciences from Universities of Agriculture across the nation, perhaps with an intention to making the institution specialized and concentrated on their core mandate.

A similar action was seen when the Ministry of Education took a bold step to cancel Post UTME, which put an additional hurdle on the way of aspiring university candidates and particularly subjected the poor to additional financial burden. To be objective, that is the way to go. Rather than creating parallel structures/processes to solve problems in others thereby duplicating functions and subjecting people to untold hardship, it is better to solve the problems identified in the existing faulty structure/process/system. And I recall the minister did say that if the universities had issues with JAMB, they should come forward with it. This is commendable as it allows for sanity. Besides, I believe no one will consider as a true coach any one that merely assembles only the best footballers. At best, he is only an instructor. One who recruits/assembles people with willingness and ability to play and grooms them into good players, is in my opinion, the true coach. If post UTME were to continue with all the universities jostling to admit only the best secondary school graduates, what would happen to the others who for one reason or the other could fail to scale through the post UTME but meet minimum requisite qualifications and have potentials to be developed by university education? I have seen secondary school students with poor academic performance who later became epitome of genius after their university education. I have also seen university students that graduated with not too good results but at masters level became epitome of genius. If the youths are unduly denied education, wont they later in life constitute social problems to the society? Or does denying them access to university/education (considering them as misfit) exile them from planet earth?

On the case of the specialized universities, while the recent order to the universities to discontinue courses of management science discipline may be seen as truly right, given the background of our compromised system, I opine that it may not be a desired /ideal step to take in our current situation, particularly as it relates to universities of agriculture. A holistic and futuristic view as well as detailed analysis should be considered in the interest of the nation’s economy, which comprises of many systems/components that are interrelated. Efforts some times to fix problems in a sector (managing some macro economic variables) could throw up other problems in other sectors.

The reasons why the decision to scrap management sciences may not be desirable /ideal in our current situation are:

1. It tantamount throwing away a veritable tool for success. The Ministry of Agriculture, if analogically seen as a nation going for an all important battle for survival, then Management Science can be seen as an arsenal in her war chest. The ministry needs foot soldiers to provide the necessary drive. These universities provide the opportunity to deliberately engage relevant foot soldiers and leverage their efforts in the ministry’s quest to reposition agricultural sector for attainment of desired goals. This task of repositioning the agric sector is beyond the core participants. Note that we are trying to evolve from primitive and subsistence agriculture to agribusiness. This is where management science comes in to fill the business gap. All these skills/disciplines (management, accounting, marketing, banking/finance and entrepreneurship) should be specially tailored to agriculture and brought to bear on this all important reform. All that is needed is to tweak/modify their syllabuses to become agric inclined/focused. In which case, their texts (study materials) etc will be agric oriented, using agric produces/products as examples and their final year projects will be limited to agriculture. The syllabuses should be practically oriented and detailed enough to cover all management, accounting, financing, marketing of agric produces/products up to import/export level. This is aimed at having students/graduates who agriculture will be their preoccupation/contemplation and occupation. It is a wonderful way of getting ready skilled manpower involved to improve our agriculture in areas of managing agribusiness, marketing, accounting for produces/products, financing agric projects as well as having entrepreneurs in agriculture. There is every need to increase productivity, encourage innovation, create value and ignite a sequence of economic activities in the sector.
We need calm down, ignore rule of thumbs, look at the bigger picture, shift from “inside the box thinking” to “outside the box thinking,” engage relevant stakeholders (including the academia, publishers etc) and brainstorm on the workability and implementation of this. The success of National Open University and part time programs of some university shows that provision of the needed study materials based on the suggested modification to syllabus won’t be insurmountable.

While the action of some of the affected institutions to change the nomenclature of some of the courses may be seen as an effort to justify their offering, and which may also be laughable, it is instructive that a closer look reveals a disguised blessing and game changer for the agric sector. It appears to be a divine arrangement. If the disciplines are oriented towards agric, then they can rightly be called agric management, agric accounting, agric marketing, agric banking/finance and agric entrepreneurship.

If we have agric econs, why not these? It does not matter if we are the first to do this. We must not wait for others to set the pace before we follow considering the utmost importance of the agric sector and the fact that the disciplines are veritable tools.

2. It will further reduce/delay access to university education in a country with volatile population where secondary schools churn out overwhelming number of graduates each year. There is already need to increase number of higher institutions to cater for the ever growing population. Reducing the aggregate students enrollment capacity of the higher institutions by this action will no doubt aggravate the problem of denial of timely access to tertiary education for some and even permanent denial for others, especially the poor and those in the rural areas. This is a foundation for social malaise/crime. If we invest well in social security, there may be no need to invest much in armed security.
Already, economic factors and others hinder early access/completion of higher education (for those who can afford it). This scrapping action will only worsen that. Sadly, Nigeria practices age discrimination in employment. Worst still, the Federal Government has not only joined the private sector in this practice but has extended it beyond conventional employment to her intervention programs such as Npower, BOI Youth Entrepreneurship Support (YES) program etc. when it is very obvious that many unemployed youths far above 35 years of age are still unemployed, owing to maladministration of successive governments among other factors. A lot still needs to be done to avert any likely (ticking) time bomb as it relates to youth unemployment, frustration, disenchantment etc. We may be inadvertently/unconsciously hatching an army of disgruntled youths who may in due time vent their anger/frustration by hitting back at the system that failed them, ostensibly seeing it as the source of their travail.

Paradoxically, the rural areas that constitute the largest host to our agricultural activities are gradually and steadily turning into dens of criminals (with heavy and sophisticated arms build-up) perpetrating violent/heinous crimes. This is of great concern. It could be linked to lack of access to higher education. An empirical study would most likely establish a correlation between crime and level of education. You may want to know for instance: of the total students graduated by secondary schools in Nigeria each year, what percentage gets admission for higher studies immediately? Of the ones that get admission immediately, what percentage is accounted for by those from rural areas, urban areas? Also what percentage is accounted for by those from public schools? And so on. Such statistics if had will allow for better diagnosis and planning by the education ministry.

Some other posers: Are the public schools and rural schools most especially given the required education and basic facilities? If not it will be unfair to demand from them what they have not received. Why do we, for example, have to wait till at final exams (UTME/SSCE) before we marshal resources/security to invigilate? Do we also, during learning, marshal relevant resources to ensure they get the required facilities and learning? Problems should be tackled to their roots rather than “pruning the branches. “

3. Accommodating/housing other disciplines under existing higher institutions is easier and cheaper than building new fully fledged schools, especially with the current economic realities. Most, if not all Nigerian universities, indeed have vast lands lying idle and capable of accommodating more colleges/faculties. If the different colleges/faculties are housed in separate blocks, have their different faculty staff (both academic and non academic), have their separate classes and halls etc then it is worth it. Since the core agric colleges/faculties do not share same lecturers, classes etc with the management disciplines, the different colleges/disciplines can stay focused on their different objectives which aim towards achieving some overall goals without distraction/interference. Competition for financial resources by the different colleges also won’t be a challenge as funds can be tied to specific/priority projects where need be. The management and core agric disciplines co-habiting even makes easy sharing of research findings/experiences by the agric research sections. This keeps the management disciplines abreast of developments for possible inclusion in their leanings to equip them to better drive agribusiness.

4. The end justifies the means. Controversy aside, the incorporated management colleges in agric universities are truly offering quality education to our people. It is not a sham. Why don’t we improve and take advantage of it? It is only a matter of legislation. The legislative arm can amend the enabling laws setting up the affected institutions to suit our situation. Our laws are being amended every now and then in different areas to suit changing times/ situations. Same can apply here. We should not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

5. Long term sustainability of the policy should be considered. Times are constantly changing. We live in a dynamic world and necessity will always dictate course of action. Besides, Nigeria is well known for policy summersault. It will not make good/economic sense if we change the status quo only to return back to it later when we realize the need for that. A lot of resources (including time and money) will have been lost and a lot of people will have suffered.
There was a time in our history when we shut our business space to foreigners with our indigenization policy, denying them ownership of businesses/investment holdings in Nigeria. But today, we are the same people going all out to entreat them to come back and invest in our country. Let us consider the long run possibilities/necessities as well as cost and benefits. Let us also consider what is appropriate for our situation – what suits us.

See also the case of banking reform in 2004 that resulted in mergers and acquisitions, making many banks to lose their identity to fuse with others. Recall also that when NITEL exclusively provided telephone services in Nigeria, users were restrained from commercializing their lines and it was a running battle between the government and individuals who dared to use their lines to offer public telephone services. Then, nobody thought that public telephone services would ever be allowed on our streets. But it came to pass with the same land lines used by individuals for same. Later, public phone booths were provided by NITEL and thereafter, GSM lines used by individuals for public telephone services.

Instances of policy summersault abound. A few include change of our educational system, reforms in the agric sector etc. with a most recent one being the NIGERIA AGRICULTURAL PAYMENT INITIATIVE (NAPI), which was jettisoned shortly after implementation. Sadly enough, it was a wonderful technological initiative that would have put paid to many challenges/bottlenecks, tendencies and enhanced transparency/probity, convenience, efficiency/effectiveness as well as catalyzed agribusiness and facilitated transactions in agribusiness. Were it to be in place, the untold hardship and costs suffered by Benue rural farmers in unending trips to the state capital to process their agric loans under the CBN Anchor Borrowers Scheme (which most of them never got in the end), would have been avoided. A case in point (still on CBN Anchor Borrowers Scheme) is Bayelsa State, where the loan program is currently on going. It is already being greeted with cries of alleged cases of fraud, extortion of farmers and the listing of ghost beneficiaries. Most of the loan applicants are worried that the scheme is being hijacked by people it is not meant for with cooperative societies also extorting money from the farmers.

6. It will add to the unemployment problem of Nigeria. Scrapping management sciences implies that all the affected staff may be laid off. Even if some arrangements are made to redeploy them, the hitherto permanent job window (that would continuously have been available for different people at different times) the affected colleges/faculties provide will be no more. Consider the number of staff. Let’s make believe that each of the staff provides for at least 4 dependants. Imagine the effect. That will be a negative impact on the economy. Unemployment rate is one of the indicators used in gauging/feeling the pulse of any economy to know whether the economy is healthy or not. That shows how consequential employment status of a country is to the entire economy. Other macro economic variables being:
foreign balance of payments
inflation rate
money supply
balance of trade etc.
It is instructive to note that the economy (i.e. macro) though seen as one, has different components having interrelationships. For this reason efforts to fix some economic ills on one side could trigger or throw up some other problems in other areas.

It is the reason why to effectively macro-manage the economy, a good study and analysis are necessary to identify and understand the major variables responsible for the current macro-economic situation as well as likely effects of the intended policy action (s). This allows for deployment of a mixture of policy most suitable for curing whatever economy ills there are, while at same time avoiding any negative effect/backlash on the economy.

While on the drawing board to reposition the agricultural sector, Management Sciences should be remoulded to fit into the design.

Source: http://www.opinionnigeria.com/scrapping-of-management-sciences-in-federal-universities-of-agriculture-across-the-country-not-ideal-by-albert-ijika/#sthash.GfWJmadu.dpbs

D problem is from CBN not d banks. This is irony of duty.

They are considering d cost of minting visa viz d value of the currencies (cost-benefit factor).

Money, as long as it is genuine, is supposed not to be rejected in transactions no matter how mutilated.This is because it is just a proxy. It is only representing a number(its nominal value). The import of this is that u don't derive d value directly from d currency/coin but you
exchange it for a thing of value dt corresponds with d value of d currency. E.g if u receive N200 mutilated note, u are not going to eat up/consume d note. It is not the product/service u have exchanged it for. It is when u need a service/good dt u then exchange it for that service/good. Itt is dt service/good that is consumable.

In d far northern Nigeria, people there appear to understand this as money, no matter how mutilated, is not rejected there. I think we should learn from this.

the CBN and d banks should encourage this by doing the needful.

They may have a thousand reason why they (banks) reject mutilated notes. But considering the intrerestof the economy, such reasons can't stand up anywhere.

Similar harmful policies largely contributed to non use of coins today,despite still being legal tender in the country. Corrupt leaders in time past pushed for introduction of higher denominations of currency just for selfish interests including facilitating easy looting of public funds. Use of higher currencies by Nigerians naturally relegated lower ones to the background in the first instance. Then unpopular policies further led to total non use of coins. This non use of coins, which are more durable than notes has contributed to the problem of notes mutilation.

It is unfortunate. Evidently, that soldier is one of the animals in human clothing.

Pls learn to play safe as there has always been grave injustice and oppression in this country. And never argue with the man with/behind the gun.

The Truth About GEJ’s Electoral Defeat

A retort to words attributed to Former President Goodluck Jonathan in a new book, “Against the Run of Play” by Olusegun Adeniyi wherein he accused former world leaders (Barack Obama of the United States, Britain’s David Cameron, French president, Francois Hollande) as well as Attahiru Jega, the former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, his own former party chairman, Adamu Mu’azu, the press and civil society for being behind his failure in the last general elections.

It is unfortunate that GEJ is coming up with such accusations. At best, it is an insult on the intelligence/sensibility of the generality of moral Nigerians. Moral Nigerians only because I know there are many bereft of moral values who always stand for/defend the wrong things and the wrong people.

GEJ earned the respect of almost all because of the manner he conceded defeat. We considered him a hero of democracy for that action and turned blind eye to the flaws of his government. I will quickly add that GEJ as a person is a very nice man with good heart. He had good intentions for Nigeria but he was not in control or in charge even while acting as the commander in chief. So whatever good intentions/plans there were, they were choked. That was a major part of his problem and problem of Nigeria under his watch.

That being said, I make bold to say that PDP as a party which goes about accusing one another, apportioning blames and accusing foreign bodies/nations/foreign nationals for their failure in the last general election does not yet know their problem. It is either they are not knowledgeable enough to diagnose their problem or they are shying away from the truth of it. Obviously, the latter is the case. And it will do them good for someone to tell them.

DIAGNOSIS: The culture/tradition of the party is CORRUPTION AND IMPUNITY. This underlies all the symptoms of bad governance witnessed under GEJ and whose adverse effects have spilled over to the present day and presenting in different forms, including economic hardship.

Every other thing (atrocities, misdeeds, election rigging, insecurity, maladministration, compromised judiciary/injustice, oppression, etc) are all offshoots of this culture/tradition. It is this same culture that is haunting them now (their current debacle) that they can’t have a united party to date. Am referring to the willful removal of their dully elected national party c/man by those who can do and undo without recourse to due process and morality. I know that many (the apostles/advocates of corruption/impunity) can be quick to offer legal justification for many misdeeds. But be informed that legality is not morality. You can check d history/antecedent of d party in this regard (willful removal of duly elected or appointed officers). Only that this time, they met a brick wall.

That the culture/tradition continues till date shows they have not yet learnt/realized their problem or have but are unwilling to change it. Whichever the case, it shows that the solution to their problem is not yet in sight. Note that it is not about GEJ only but d party- it’s culture. The question then is what do they have to offer the people of Nigeria should they come back to power? Will they not take us back into corruption/impunity? A statement was credited to them in one of their gatherings when they said people were suffering under the "change" of Buhari's government and therefore, they (pdp) would have to change the "change". So I ask: change it back to corruption/impunity? What will they have to offer Nigerians now as they are striving to come back to power when the culture is still same?

Truth be told. But for this culture of pdp, they would have given one of the best governance in Nigeria ever. They had great programs and experts but all got choked by weeds/web of their culture. But for this culture/tradition, I bet that pdp would have been favoured and continued to rule this country to infinity as God permitted.

So I rest my case by saying that neither GEJ nor any member of the party should blame one another nor other nations/foreign nationals/groups etc for pdp’s failure. Blame d culture/tradition of your party. The culture that trickles down from the national to the ward level. The culture which also makes it forbidden for a subordinate to criticize or differ on an issue or advise a superior/his principal against wrong doings/decisions/policies since such actions attract severe sanctions. Only praise singing/sycophancy is permitted within the rank and file/hierarchy of the party.

Please help pass the info to GEJ and his party men/women that Nigerians voted him/them out because of their culture/tradition. If they are in doubt, they should conduct a survey. That will convince them. They need not look elsewhere for the reason for their fall.

The Truth About GEJ’s Electoral Defeat
A retort to words attributed to Former President Goodluck Jonathan in a new book, “Against the Run of Play” by Olusegun Adeniyi wherein he accused former world leaders (Barack Obama of the United States, Britain’s David Cameron, French president, Francois Hollande) as well as Attahiru Jega, the former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, his own former party chairman, Adamu Mu’azu, the press and civil society for being behind his failure in the last general elections.

It is unfortunate that GEJ is coming up with such accusations. At best, it is an insult on the intelligence/sensibility of the generality of moral Nigerians. Moral Nigerians only because I know there are many bereft of moral values who always stand for/defend the wrong things and the wrong people.

GEJ earned the respect of almost all because of the manner he conceded defeat. We considered him a hero of democracy for that action and turned blind eye to the flaws of his government. I will quickly add that GEJ as a person is a very nice man with good heart. He had good intentions for Nigeria but he was not in control or in charge even while acting as the commander in chief. So whatever good intentions/plans there were, they were choked. That was a major part of his problem and problem of Nigeria under his watch.

That being said, I make bold to say that PDP as a party which goes about accusing one another, apportioning blames and accusing foreign bodies/nations/foreign nationals for their failure in the last general election does not yet know their problem. It is either they are not knowledgeable enough to diagnose their problem or they are shying away from the truth of it. Obviously, the latter is the case. And it will do them good for someone to tell them.

DIAGNOSIS: The culture/tradition of the party is CORRUPTION AND IMPUNITY. This underlies all the symptoms of bad governance witnessed under GEJ and whose adverse effects have spilled over to the present day and presenting in different forms, including economic hardship.

Every other thing (atrocities, misdeeds, election rigging, insecurity, maladministration, compromised judiciary/injustice, oppression, etc) are all offshoots of this culture/tradition. It is this same culture that is haunting them now (their current debacle) that they can’t have a united party to date. Am referring to the willful removal of their dully elected national party c/man by those who can do and undo without recourse to due process and morality. I know that many (the apostles/advocates of corruption/impunity) can be quick to offer legal justification for many misdeeds. But be informed that legality is not morality. You can check d history/antecedent of d party in this regard (willful removal of duly elected or appointed officers). Only that this time, they met a brick wall.

That the culture/tradition continues till date shows they have not yet learnt/realized their problem or have but are unwilling to change it. Whichever the case, it shows that the solution to their problem is not yet in sight. The question then is what do they have to offer the people of Nigeria should they come back to power? Will they not take us back into corruption/impunity? A statement was credited to them in one of their gatherings when they said people were suffering under the "change" of Buhari's government and therefore, they (pdp) would have to change the "change". So I ask: change it back to corruption/impunity? What will they have to offer Nigerians now as they are striving to come back to power when the culture is still same?

Truth be told. But for this culture of pdp, they would have given one of the best governance in Nigeria ever. They had great programs and experts but all got choked by weeds/web of their culture. But for this culture/tradition, I bet that pdp would have been favoured and continued to rule this country to infinity as God permitted.

So I rest my case by saying that neither GEJ nor any member of the party should blame one another nor other nations/foreign nationals/groups etc for pdp’s failure. Blame d culture/tradition of your party. The culture that trickles down from the national to the ward level. The culture which also makes it forbidden for a subordinate to criticize or differ on an issue or advise a superior/his principal against wrong doings/decisions/policies since such actions attract severe sanctions. Only praise singing/sycophancy is permitted within the rank and file/hierarchy of the party.

Please help pass the info to GEJ and his party men/women that Nigerians voted him/them out because of their culture/tradition. If they are in doubt, they should conduct a survey. That will convince them. They need not look elsewhere for the reason for their fall.

A retort to words attributed to Former President Goodluck Jonathan in a new book, “Against the Run of Play” by Olusegun Adeniyi wherein he accused former world leaders (Barack Obama of the United States, Britain’s David Cameron, French president, Francois Hollande) as well as Attahiru Jega, the former Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, his own former party chairman, Adamu Mu’azu, the press and civil society for being behind his failure in the last general elections.

It is unfortunate that GEJ is coming up with such accusations. At best, it is an insult on d intelligence/sensibility of the generality of moral Nigerians. Moral Nigerians only because I know there are many bereft of moral values who always stand for/defend the wrong things and the wrong people.

GEJ earned the respect of almost all because of the manner he conceded defeat. We considered him a hero of democracy for that action and turned blind eye to the flaws of his government. I will quickly add that GEJ as a person is a very nice man with good heart. He had good intentions for Nigeria but he was not in control or in charge even while acting as the commander in chief. So whatever good intentions/plans there were, they were choked. That was a major part of his problem and problem of Nigeria under his watch.

That being said, I make bold to say that PDP as a party which goes about accusing one another, apportioning blames and accusing foreign bodies/nations/nationals for their failure in the last general election does not yet know their problem. It is either they are not knowledgeable enough to diagnose their problem or they are shying away from the truth of it. Obviously, the latter is the case. And it will do them good for someone to tell them.

DIAGNOSIS: The culture/tradition of the party is CORRUPTION AND IMPUNITY. This underlies all the symptoms of bad governance witnessed under GEJ and whose adverse effects have spilled over to the present day and presenting in different forms, including economic hardship.

Every other thing (atrocities, misdeeds, election rigging, insecurity, maladministration, compromised judiciary/injustice, oppression, etc) are all offshoots of this culture/tradition. It is this same culture that is haunting them now that they can’t have a united party to date. Am referring to the willful removal of their dully elected national party c/man by those who can do and undo without recourse to due process and morality. I know that many (the apostles/advocates of corruption/impunity) can be quick to offer legal justification for many misdeeds. But be informed that legality is not morality. You can check d history/antecedent of d party in this regard (willful removal of duly elected or appointed officers). Only that this time, they met a brick wall.

That the culture/tradition continues till date shows they have not yet learnt/realized their problem or have but are unwilling to change it. Whichever the case, it shows that the solution to their problem is not yet in sight. The question then is what do they have to offer the people of Nigeria should they come back to power? Will they not take us back into corruption/impunity? A statement was credited to them in one of their gatherings when they said people are suffering under the "change" of Buhari's government and therefore, they (pdp) would change the "change". So I ask: change it back to corruption/impunity? What will they have to offer Nigerians now as they are striving to come back to power when the culture is still same?

Truth be told. But for this culture of pdp, they would have given one of the best governance in Nigeria ever. They had great programs and experts but all choked by weeds/web of their culture. But for this culture/tradition, I bet that pdp would have continued to rule this country to infinity as God permitted.

So I rest my case by saying that neither GEJ nor any member of the party should blame one another nor other nations/nationals/groups etc for pdp’s failure. Blame d culture/tradition of your party. The culture that trickles down from the national to the ward level. The culture which also makes it forbidden for a subordinate to criticize or differ on an issue or advise a superior against wrong doings/decisions/policies since such actions attract sanctions. Only praise singing/sycophancy is permitted within the rank and file/hierarchy of the party.

Please help pass the info to GEJ and his party men that Nigerians voted him/them out because of their culture/tradition. If they are in doubt, they should conduct a survey. That will convince them they need not look elsewhere for the reason for their fall.

It is unfortunate that GEJ is coming up with such accusation. At best, it is an insult on d intelligence/sensibility of d generality of moral Nigerians.

GEJ earned d respect of almost all because of d manner he conceded defeat. We considered him a hero of democracy for dt n turned blind eye to d flaws of his govt. Will quickly add dt GEJ as a person is a very nice man with good heart. He had good intentions for Nigeria but he was not in control or in charge even while d commander in chief. so whatever good intentions/plans were choked. Dt was a major part of his problem n problem of Nigeria under his watch.

That being said, I make bold to say dt PDP as a party which goes about accusing one another, apportioning blames and accusing foreign bodies/nations for their failure in the last general election does not yet know their problem. It is either they are not knowledgeable enough to diagnose their problem or they are shying away from d truth of it. Obviously, d latter is d case. And it will do them good to tell them.

DIAGNOSIS: D culture/tradition of pdp is CORRUPTION AND IMPUNITY. This underlies all the symptoms of bad governance witnessed under GEJ and whose adverse effects have spilled over to d present day presenting in form of economic hardship etc.

Every other thing (atrocities, misdeeds,election rigging, insecurity, maladministration, compromised judiciary/injustice, oppression, etc) are all offshoots of this culture/tradition. It is dis same culture dt is haunting them now that they cant have a united party to date- am referring to willful removal of their duely elected national party c/man by those who can do and undo without recourse to due process n morality. U can check d history/antededent of d party in this regard. Only dis time, they met a brick wll.

That d culture/tradition continues till date shows they have not yet realized their problem or have but are unwilling to change it. Which ever d case, it shows dt d solution to their problem is not yet in sight. The question then is what do they have to offer d pple shud they come back to power? Will they not take us back into corruption/impunity? A statement was credited to them in one of their gatherings when dey said pple are sufferring under the "change" of Buhari's govt that they (pdp) would change the "change". So I ask: change it back to corruption/impunity? What will they have to offer Nigerians now as they are striving to come back to power when d culture is still same?

Truth be told. But for this culture of pdp, they would have given one of d best governance in Nigeria ever. They had great programs and experts but all choked by weeds of their culture. But for this culture, I bet that pdp would have continue to rule this country to infinity if God permitted.

So I rest my case by saying dt neither GEJ nor any member of d party shud blame one another nor Obama/US etc for pdp failure. Blame d culture/tradition of ur party. Dt culture dt trickles down from d national down to d ward level. D culture also makes it forbidden for a subject to differ on or advise a superior against wrong doing/decision/policy as such will attract sanction. Only praises/Sycophancy is permitted.

Help me pass d info to GEJ and his party mem dt Nigerians voted him out because of their culture/tradition. If u take a survey, u will be convinced dt is d reason.

AGE DISCRIMINATION BY EMPLOYERS IN THE JOB MARKET

[b]Age (i.e advanced age) is known or supposed to be a blessing. But the unemployment challenge in Nigeria now makes it to be perceived as a curse.

It is high time attention was given to this perceived social injustice/oppression- an anomaly called “AGE DISCRIMINATION” by employers in the job market. A practice where youth in an age range are considered unemployable on the ground of age, despite still being able and willing to work, compounds the unemployment challenges and social ills of the nation.
A close attention should be paid to it by the federal law makers and Ministry of Labour and Productivity with the aim of reversing the trend. This will portend well for our society as social ills to a large extent are, no doubt, linked to unemployment. It is a common thing for everyone to always call for peace. But unfortunately, no one or not many ever call for fairness and justice. Peace is not attainable without fairness and justice.

The practice of such age discrimination would have been practicable and appropriate without any backlash in a society where the system works well - a society where social policies/programs exist to take care of all vulnerable or less privileged class. Such policies are only being put in place now but to the exclusion of unemployed youth in age range 35-45, who have suffered unemployment the most and longest.
The age discrimination in Nigeria is now assuming an alarming dimension, with employers setting ridiculously low maximum age limit as 22, 25 etc for recruitment. The matter is made worse, with the federal government(public sector) also toeing the same direction.
The doors of the present administration, it appears, are shut against unemployed youth in the age range of 35-45. By implication, the poor and the “not too powerfully connected” are the target.
[/b]
Age discrimination is a current trend that has continued unabated in the Nigeria job market. Not only has the Nigerian government remained silent over it but has also joined the private sector in perpetrating the same act, which is grossly unfair to youth in the age bracket (30-45 or 35-45) as the case may be. Not even the voices of the rights advocates have been heard on this. It thus appears to be a conspiracy of silence.

Such age discrimination would only be ideal in a society where systems work. Society where there are deliberate social policies/programs to cater for the vulnerable at different points, ensuring for instance that children start their education when they should and transit from one level of education to another in smooth succession without loss of time say on account of poverty etc.

The age discrimination has assumed a frightening twist by reason of its extension to areas other than employment for paid jobs as seen in the age range/limit stipulated by the federal government in the following ongoing programmes:
1. Npower by Federal Ministry of Labour and Productivity aimed at equipping unemployed youth with skills, among others, to make them employable or do business on their own. Allowable age limit is 18-35.
But technically, the limit is 18-34 as those already aged 35 (i.e. born in 1980) cannot apply, as 1980 is not included in the birth date calendar on the online application form.
2. Youth Entrepreneurship Support (YES) Programme by Bank of Industry aimed at training and providing interest low funding for entrepreneurs. Set age limit is 18-35.

These lofty programmes are seen as intervention in the chronic unemployment challenge of the nation by the present government.
Recall that the unemployment crisis long predates the current administration. Recall also that at certain point in our history, EMBARGO was placed on employment for a long period by successive governments without any social policies in place. Some of these affected youth at that time just concluded their secondary education and needed job (either because they no longer wanted to further their education due to lack of sponsorship or wanted to work for some years and save for higher education). But the jobs were not there- no thanks to embargo and “Nigerian factor” in recruitment in the years that followed employment embargo.

Now that help has come, courtesy of President Mohammed Buhari, the unemployed youth in the age range 35-45 have been alienated. With the doors being shut against these youth, it is a subtle way to tell them “GO AND DIE” or “YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN.” If all the social and economic programs so far introduced by the current administration do not take these unemployed youth into cognizance, are they to expect another program that will specifically target them? Or are they to await help from a government other than the President Buhari government?
All Nigerians are guilty of conspiracy of silence over the injustice and unfair treatment mated out to this class of Nigerian youth as it relates to age discrimination. Not even the legislators (state and federal who are supposedly the people’s representatives) have thought it a matter of national interest because they are comfortable and perhaps, their relations are not affected. Not even the voices of the rights groups have been heard on this.

Everyone is always quick to call for and want to enjoy peace but nobody or not many ever call for justice and fairness. We don’t seem to realize that justice and fairness are prerequisites for peace. How does it sound for a nation to perpetually neglect her own citizens, who became caught in the web/trap of irrational age policies by no fault of theirs? Irrational because the said youth still fall within the working age which terminates at age 60 or 65.Or is it that the nation has conducted a survey and discovered that all youths in this age range are dully employed or engaged in one trade or the other? Indeed, the system has been grossly unfair to them. Ironically, the operators of the system time back benefited immensely from same system with free government sponsorship in education (even oversea) and timely employment etc.

The same people who benefited from free government education, easy and prompt employment and job placement have perverted the same system perpetually. It is to be pointed out that the victims of this age discrimination are largely the poor, who for obvious reasons, such as financial incapacity, were ( and still may be) unable to smoothly transit from one level of education to another on schedule, and where they needed job to work for some time and save money to continue their education, embargo on employment persisted, or where there were jobs, had no money to buy employment nor strong connection to people in power to gain favour in employment etc. The category of people affected (the victims)explains the reason for the impunity and conspiracy of silence.

In absence of necessary social security/policies over the years, it is certain that largely, only the children of the rich in the affected age range could have completed their education on time to beat the so called acceptable/employable age. With the age limit getting even more ridiculously low (as seen in the recent 2016 EFCC recruitment), the gap between the rich and poor will keep widening, as completing education on schedule is largely a function of finance among others.

Social security programmes (such as the N5000 allowances to the very poor) and other intervention policies cutting across different strata of the society are now, for the first time in the history of Nigeria, being implemented by the President Buhari government. But unfortunately, the class of the youth that has borne the brunt of the rot of the Nigerian system the most (especially as it relates to unemployment) in the hands of successive governments has been neglected, invalidated, locked out and left to their fate.
Is this a mere oversight? Perpetual oversight? Is this not height of insensitivity by those who are very comfortable and completely detached from the realities/feelings of the common people of our society?

it is pursuit of nefarius agenda to sanitise nigeria 4rm d mess brought upon it by d kleptomaniac politicians, d corrupt pple who hav plundered our common wealth, who have introduced corruption/impunity that have causesd erosion of our cherished values such that corruption is no longer detested. but it is not nefarious agenda to gang up n loot our common wealth

It is regrettable that those who sacrifice to safeguard others lives and property be paid back in this way. May their souls rest in peace.

With benefit of hindsight, I think there might be more to the murder/robbery incidence. My sincere suggestion on way out or around this frequent clashes should be for the Okpokwu Local Govt to convene a meeting of all the districts of the local govt on the need to for peace among other things such as reviewing the Vigilante Service's activities, composition etc.

From my little findings (which may be wrong or partly wrong):
1. Other districts of the LGA (or specific districts) are perceived/stereotyped to be criminals by the Vigilante/Okoga people and are always maltreated by the vigilante operatives even while going about their normal legitimate activities.
2. The above stereotype holds without consideration of bad elements also of Okpoga extraction in Okpoga.
3. The vigilante composition appears to be limited to only indigenes of Okpoga to the exclusion of other districts.
4. It appears that the political class(largely of Okpoga extraction) sees Okpoga, which is the Head Quarters of Okpokwu LGA, as only belonging to Okpoga people to the exclusion of other indigenes of other districts of Okpokwu LGA and the vigilante is set up to protect only Okpoga and her people but not other parts of the LGA.

If the above points are true, efforts should be made to resolve the issues and the entire LGA people made to see the need for peace and security. At such point, all the different districts of the LGA should see the need to protect the entire LGA and not just Okpoga. Contribution by all districs to the membership of the vigilante service will then made the vigilante acceptable to all and they will operate in all parts of the LGA.

To be involved by the different districts/clan heads are the identifiable bad elements in the different communities to make this a success.

Giving the youth a source of livelihood will also help a great deal. The current soft agric loans, being advanced by the CBN for rice/soya bean, aimed at diversification, would have helped a great deal to greatly engage the youth. But unfortunately. many of them who applied for the loan from the LGA have backed out following the crisis that greeted the project as it relates to the pulling out of some of the participating banks(Skye Bank and FCMB where thousands of farmers had already applied for the loan. This left many farmers and cooperative who had completed their applications stranded.

The decision of the affected farmers to back out/discontinue followed instruction from the govt that they should go and open accounts afresh in another bank (Keystone bank) using N2000 and N10,000 for individuals and cooperatives respectively. Their reason not to go back to it is that the difficulties involved in opening account and the costs involved (transport to township plus account opening balance) coupled with the fact they now have misgivings about the project(due to the change of bank crisis) seeing it as one of the insincere loan projects of the past administration they suffered for to apply for but nothing ever came out of it. Many of them, losing confidence, vowed never to participate in any such govt programs again.