₦airaland Forum

Link to Itse Sagay being OK with the change and its legality?

The title of the article is misleading.

“The powers vested in President Jonathan under Section 16 of the University of Lagos Act are not wide enough to support the decision of the Federal Government to change the name of the University of Lagos to Moshood Abiola University, Lagos.”

Simple. End of story.

Python tutorial on regex:

http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python-class/regular-expressions.html

I am not interested in anyone agreeing with me. I've laid out my position, and thus far have seen no logical arguments against it.

Whether anyone agrees with me or not is irrelevant, so long as my reasoning is sound.

Eh...you need to reread the post if you think the point of it was "America is perfect."

And certainly there are more damning counter-examples of such a hypothesis than the one you chose...

shymmex: Didn't Obama go to war in Libya without the approval of the Senate?

So Obama's very likely illegal action is what you are applauding, praising, and think should be copied elsewhere?

This seems pretty relevant: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2970608/what-are-named-tuples-in-python

The last 2-3 years of closely following politics in Nigeria has made me appreciate more the way things work in the rest of the world.

So many things I take for granted I clearly have not appreciated enough.

Imagine if in my home state of Maryland, the Governor of Maryland had decided to rename UMD the University of Fuckistan.

And then someone had given some mumu reasoning like, "Oh, well UMD is the property of the government, Governor O'Malley owns UMD, he can build or destroy it as he pleases. See this list of universities that have been renamed before."

Many years ago, I thought that the problem with Nigeria was the government, not the people.

But can a weed grow without soil, light, and water? No.

Nigerians and their crude, "might makes right" mentality are the problem with Nigeria. Terrible leadership does not happen in a vacuum.

coogar: parent/child? then education should be free if it's parent-child.
it's a landlord/property relationship. the students are tenants.
the authorities @ unilag are the caretaker and jonathan goodluck is the supreme landlord.

What on earth are you talking about.

Nothing is free on this planet, somebody pays for it

GEJ is not the supreme landlord of anything. He is simply one member of the executive branch of the FG

Remii: http://www.google.com/search?q=universities+that+has+changed+names&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&client=safari. Please check that link you will see that many universities around the world had got their names changed before MAU

Which kyn reasoning be dis

Obviously many universities will have changed their names before. But the question is, was this something done internally with the approval of the university trustees, administration, etc, or imposed from the outside?

coogar: cos they own it.
why didn't jonathan rename covenant university or bowen university? they dare not!
but unilag is their own. they can destroy and rebuild it. it's none of anyone's business.

I don't agree. The relationship is not human being/book or other inanimate object.

But parent/child.

Unilag is an institution, entity of its own.

Too many years of military rule have spoiled the brains of a generation of Nigerians.

OK, let's say that the FG "owns" Unilag (though arguably the relationship is more custodianship [like parent/child] rather than ownership [human being/book, chair, house]).

Does it follow that GEJ "owns" Unilag?

Is GEJ the FG?

He is but the head of one branch of the FG (the executive branch).

Given that Unilag was established by the legislature......

Lol.

It is more the business of students, lecturers, administration and alums than that of the FG.

After all, they have far more vested interest in the well-being of their alma mater (it seems literally "nourishing mother" in Latin) than someone like GEJ, who is simply playing politics.

GEJ and the FG on the other hand...they might rename UNILAG University of Toilet or Feces University if it suits their political purposes.

Katz. Who renamed the U of C business school? Was it not the business school's administration/trustees? Typically trustee groups include at least one member of the alums who acts as their representative.

It seems pretty implausible to me that any school in the US would be renamed without the input of both the students and especially the alums..

Common sense. Such a rare thing at times among people. But clearly Soyinka has it.

jQuery mobile might be an option.

I have no problems setting up a separate m.whatever.com subdomain.

OAM4J: I would have proposed the states be merged and reduced to 6, then create more LGA and empower the LGA more.

+1

Katsumoto: I asked myself a question one day, 'do I want $1 out of $100 ($100 is for everyone) or do I want $5 out of $250. Of course I choose $5 even if a smart guy gets to take the additional $150; even better if I am that smart guy.

This is the heart of the matter. Should I prefer:

A) for the pie (or national cake) to be smaller, but evenly divided?
B) Or for it to be large, and less equally shared? Shared more on talent, merit, hard work, etc?

Extreme socialism and excessive redistribution basically kills any incentive to work hard or excel, since the effective "payoff" is so much less.

Heh. And I thought the peak 35% (or is it 30%?) tax the rich in the US pay was bad.

50%?

God forbid bad thing.

Babzilla: We blacks just kill over silly insignificant things: one acre of land, somebody does not worship the same God as U do, somebody is richer than U ... etc. God help us all

White people do the same thing. No real reason to racialize this, or turn it into something else.

How can you pay honor to someone by giving them a hand-me-down anyways.

So for my father's birthday, I should recycle the cologne my girlfriend gave me which I didn't want and give this to him?

What sort of back-handed "honor" is this.

Why not immortalize him by building something from scratch?

Naming a day for him?

Naming one of these 9 new federal universities w/o any histories (including the one in Ekiti State) after him?

lordZOUGA: creating APIs for nairaland will be cool tho

This would have been pretty cool.

Much cooler than any of the items on this list (most of which already exist, actually).

Eziachi: No he was saying that more than 50 years history/brand name UNILAG doesn't deserved to be taken away and given to some one else. Assuming that Abiola is an Alumni of UNILAG, and your where ask where he graduated by a foreigner? What will say?
Moshood Abiola graduated from Moshood Abiola University -How does that sound to you?

When will you guys get it? This is not about Abiola, but the fact that the brand name UNILAG is bigger and well known worldwide than Abiola himself as a person and Abiola being and intelligent man am sure will agree if he is alive today.
There should be a constitutional law governing an arbitral renaming of public institution after individuals.

+100

You have muddled the issue slightly regarding this Ife situation.

It should be clear that it does not count as a precedent, for obvious reasons. Unless one also considers summary executions during a military regime precedent for the same happening during a democratic one.

So most people, after some reflection should agree that it isn't a precedent.

Then you've brought up this separate point..."do his actions actually violate any laws?"

Which I have answered above.

I just want to make this distinction very clear.

loma: So what is the point of the Harvard comparison? That the brand is so established it cannot be changed? While I understand the sentiments against changing it, I still do not agree with the comparison.

The point is that in its 50 year history, the University of Lagos has built itself up as a brand and as an institution. A "creature" of its own, so to speak. An old one, for that matter.

Thus, it is disrespectful to both the institution and those connected to it to wipe away/diminish its identity for mere political reasons.

That is the relevance of the Harvard comparison, not public/private...

Also, yes, a millitary regime is different from a democratic government, but then you have to show that GEJ broke laws (or failed to follow due process) in changing the name, and take him to court for that, not by 'mauling' innocent citizens..

Indeed. It is necessary to show that GEJ broke laws. But obviously he didn't follow due process, since none of the students or alumni were consulted. Presumably there is no one more interested in protecting the prestige and influence of a university than its alums and students..

Who, pray tell, is mauling innocent citizens?

Note that my write-up is not on whether he should have done it or not ( i am against naming universities after individuals apart from where they are private institutions named after their founders like Harvard is, and i also see it as an act of an unserious government). All I am saying is, apart from the name, what does Unilag stand for? What defines the institution? What is your brand?

That doesn't seem particularly relevant to me. Unilag doesn't have to tell you what its brand is or what defines it before it gains the right to keep its identity. Any more than a 50 year old man has to tell you his life history and what he does for a living before we agree that you are not entitled to change his name w/o asking him..

loma: I have seen some laughable tweets comparing GEJ’s act to Obama changing Harvard’s name in a State of the Union Address. But that misses the point. Harvard is a private institution; The University of Lagos is 90% federally funded and exists by Federal charter.

This misses the point of the Harvard comparison.

There is also a precedent in the case of the University of Ife. In May 1987, the Federal Military Government changed the name of the university to honour the highly revered sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Reactions to the name-change were very similar to what is happening now in Unilag’s case.

What happened by military fiat is not justification for what happens during a democratic regime.

[quote author=ndu_chucks]I need to find out what part of Ekiti ekt_bear comes from ASAP. Armed with that information, I'd lobby very hard to include that region in new Okun State (Ekiti, Ondo, Kwara, Kogi) which will be in the North Central zone. Can you imagine ekt_bear becoming a Northerner? That would be poetic justice. So ekt_bear, what's the name of your hometown if fear no catch you? LWKMD [/quote]Heh. Whether zoned to the north or not, a bear remains a bear.

Besides, perhaps it will be easier to destroy the north from within.

Here is a Ruby implementation of this nl2br() function that takes care of those additional cases.

http://pastebin.com/R7XFpn6Z

Shouldn't be hard for you to port to Python. Key detail is this negative lookbehind/lookahead regular expression.

I tried it out on the examples in the PHP nl2br() documentation, seems to pass those.

However, it will fail if it has something like "\n\r\n."

I'm actually not sure how you want the behavior to be defined in that case.

Looks like you are already handling the '\n' case in your code?

if is_xhtml:
return string.replace('\n','<br />\n')
else :
return string.replace('\n','<br>\n')

Or do you want something that behaves exactly like the PHP function (also handling '\r\n', etc)?

Heh, evidently it is in Baltimore this year?

Not too far from where I grew up.

Maybe I should buy a ticket. I'll be in town around then anyways for some other stuff.

kingoflag: hehehe this old man is gonna be hounding them 16yr old Naija gals at the Nigerian Reunion in a few weeks. :/

Which old man? Me? I'm not even 27 lol...still a young cat for some time yet.

Nigerian reunion? Wasn't even aware that it was happening soon.

The only people I hound btw are my family members (siblings, cousins, etc) and people I deeply care about or ask me to help them out.

It isn't my place to tell people what to do with their lives