By Polycarp Onwubiko
In
actual fact, I don't think that the erudite Prof has any sympathy especially my
humble self over his extreme exasperation and frustration because these assumed
sufficiently enlightened elite know the roots or can I say: "the fundamentals" of the pervasive
and intractable socioeconomic and political challenges that have wrestled
governance in Nigeria.
Instead
of these enlightened crop of Nigerians in the institutions of higher learning
joining hands with the elites in the Middle Belt ethnic nationalities and those
of the southern part of the country to compel President Tinubu to take
immediate steps to convoke a Constituent Assembly of selected representatives
of ethnic nationalities to brainstorm on how to reinvent the principles of a
federal system of government (People's Constitution) as obtained in the First
Republic, backed with the Independence Constitution which was later renamed the
Republican Constitution,
They
naively and foolishly look up to the "Emilokan presidency," hoping
that Tinubu would perform magic with the fraudulent and fundamentally flawed
Federal-Unitary contraption backed by the military-decreed fraudulent 1999
Constitution.
In sane
and sanitized Federations the world over, higher education is within the
constitutional jurisdiction of sub national governments. In other words, Central
or Federal Government in a Federation, do not run institutions of higher
education. How stupid the federal government of Nigeria running secondary
schools and established UBEC to dip its ubiquitous hand in running primary
school! What on earth is these silly practice obtained? This is done in Nigeria
because the purported owners of Nigeria+Fulani Feudal Oligarchy and Northern
Political Emirate Establishment “want to be controlling virtually every sector
ostensibly for the dream Islamization agenda.
If
these university teachers could have reasoned properly, it would have dawned on
them that it is a well-nigh impossibility for the federal government to
adequately fund tertiary institutions. This is absolutely impossible. Nigeria
being made up of many ethnic nationalities, have variegated value system. What
the supposed "core North" want in sectors like education, health,
agriculture, etc. is a far cry from what people from the Southeast Geopolitical
zone want.
While
the former delights in the showcasing of primitive cultural displays and
religious pilgrimages, the later values education and human capacity building
and ambition to be at par with the developed and civilized countries of the
world to transform the living standard of their people.
The former delights in social stratification:
the master-servant where the children of the rich attend school to acquire
western education while the poor become cattle drivers living like wild animals
in the forest and jungles in the name of "rich Fulani culture of roaming
the forest and jungles throughout West Africa to graze cattle. The fact is that
the 1914 so-called "Amalgamation of the southern and northern
protectorates" was a CURSE to the southern part of the country who would
have joined the civilized countries of the world.
Until
the Federation is restructured for the six geopolitical zones as the new
Federating Units to be called "Regional approach" that will explore
and exploit the natural and mineral resources within their jurisdiction to
create massive employments, wealth high standard of living, the university
teachers should expect more woes and gnashing of teeth waiting for the federal
government to "adequately fund the institutions of higher learning";
it is a pipedream meant to be unrealized.
Polycarp
Onwubiko, media commentator write from Awka, Anambra State.
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