Requesting Governing Councils for our Universities.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

Guess it is appropriate to bring to the notice of Nigerians at home and abroad-if they don’t already know- that our Universities have remained without Governing Councils since Yar’adua dissolved the existing ones shortly after taking over power in 2007.

For a government that has been described as “go slow”, that has been in the process of carrying out a cabinet re-jig since May, that has re-scheduled the presentation of Budget 2009 on two occasions now not minding that we are barely a month to the end of the year, and which signed Budget 2008 into law   over ten months into the year, this is not entirely surprising. It is however high time, we told them, we have had enough of their poverty of will and idea.

It is one thing to be inefficient and another thing to be a hypocrite. I think this government is both and in the most annoying of ways seems to take pride in it. From the date of its inauguration, we began to be fed with the gospel of “rule of law” which presupposed that all actions of Government including the operations of her institutions shall be carried out with strict obedience to all prescribed laws governing such an institution and with total recourse to due process. Beyond the pages of Mr. Presidents speeches or put more appropriately, the figments of the thoughts of his speech writers, nothing worthy of note has happened to give credence to the lofty goal.

For example, what justification visa vise the rule of law noise does the government have for its failure to reconstitute the Governing Councils of our ailing Universities till date? Does the law not provide for the existence of Governing Councils to supervise the operations of Universities? Or have Yar’adua and his lieutenants simply forgotten their responsibilities or is it that in the scheme of things, our universities are not considered important and thus simply not worthy of attracting Mr. Presidents attention?

I can take it if it were just an act of omission in which case we would have simply added it to the long list of brazen cases of inefficiency this administration is now notorious for, but to fail so woefully at such an important and simple task which is provided for by law and still daily foul the airwaves and the pages of our dailies with talks of “rule of law” is not just inefficiency, it is hypocrisy and that is what this Government is.

It is common knowledge that Governing Councils are germane to the proper and efficient running of Universities. It is bad enough to note that our universities (even as Yar’adua himself noted recently during the University of Ibadan anniversary) are far from being decent institutions of learning and are trailing behind in the roll call of their pairs world over due to years of mismanagement, neglect and policy failure. To leave the management of these universities entirely to the discretion of our often directionless, power drunk and crisis loving Vice chancellors is to be literarily condemning them to final balkanization and collapse.

In case he is not yet aware, I wish to take up the task of informing Mr. President that the continued absence of Governing Councils has led to a situation on our universities where such very sensitive issues such as financial accountability, Career progression and promotion as well as issues of discipline have been greatly abused and in case he equally can not deduce from the above, let me also add that the current situation gives room for all sorts of crises in the ivory towers, a situation I don’t want to believe is part of his eight sleeping agenda.

I am not long out of the University and so I think I am in a good position to appropriately capture in words the level of decay the system is suffering from much of which is a direct product of failed leadership which brews such other sundry issues as Union unrest, rivalry, allegations and counter allegations, students unrest, infrastructure decay, and so on which culminates in leaving the universities on their kneels.

Absence of Governing Councils I must state here is by no means the only problem of our Universities, indeed, it is not even the most important, but its absence leaves a vacuum that prevents the proper balancing of the leadership structure of varsities and an abuse of the law which provides for their existence with clearly spelt out responsibilities.

I am aware that appointments to Governing Councils just like appointments into Boards of government agencies are a means of political settlement. I wish to therefore before hand, beg Mr. President- just in case he takes heed to my plea and decides to do his long neglected job- to save us the trauma of having contract seeking, semi literate, re-cycled politicians as members of University boards. It’s been the practice, and needless to state that it failed us. It wouldn’t be an entirely bad idea if we tried other options this time. By this I mean, assembling morally upright, experienced and intellectually sound Nigerians not anything like the ministerial list he just sent to the senate.

Rule of Law, if I get Mr President right suggests that, things should be done the way the law has said they should be done. If I got that right, then this request should not be too much for Mr President. On behalf of the Nigerian academia, students and concerned citizens (which I belong to) please, reconstitute Governing Councils for our Universities. It is rule of law.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

nzeifedigbo@yahoo.com 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE HEADLESS CHICKEN

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

I thought I had read “The Land is Green” title of TY Bello’s hit tract off the sticker on the rear bumper of the car ahead of us, but on a second look, I discovered it was “The Land is Good”. The sticker was a combination of green and white with the sketch of the Nigerian map in the middle. For a while, I wondered who the origin of this fallacy was. Memoirs of the attempt of one of our former ministers of information to burnish with a single stroke the horrible image we had willfully accumulated for our self over the years through a now rested image laundering rubbish-The heart of Africa Project-came flooding back. Whose opinion for Gods sake was it that this land was good?

I was certain that even the owner of the car with the sticker wasn’t convinced about the message on it. He had been trying unsuccessfully to get in front of a smoking Julius Berger truck on the now legendary traffic jam on the Kubwa Abuja express way. A commotion I think the Guinness Book of World Records should begin to take interest in. We were all stuck in the abysmal milieu. It was a morning and evening routine. My head ached, my legs felt hot inside my shoes and all around me were sighs and hisses from equally frustrated fellow commuters.  Civil servants returning home after a tiring day at work subjected to the harrowing experience of dragging on endlessly in a sea of cars. Did they say this land was good?

What is good about a country where naval ratings beat up defenseless ladies and strip them naked on the streets? Absolutely nothing. The day before, Sunday 16^th November, I had digested the day’s edition of The Guardian News paper. If the man with the sticker had done same, I guessed he would have pulled off the sticker in protest. That would have been the least he would have done, except perhaps he was an embodiment of the fallacy the sticker sort to spread.

From Helen Ukpabio’s seeming obsession for infant witches highlighted on page 87 by Waffarian in “This My Country”, to Tolu Ogunlusi’s “We Must Set Forth At Midnight” in page 40, no doubt was left in my mind about this country being a very sick one. Then there was Reuben Abati’s paraphrasing of excerpts from Richard Dowden’s Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles sixteenth chapter which happened to be on Nigeria. There I read amongst other things, that diplomats consider being posted to this land as punishment. What could be worse that this? The writer said we-Nigeria-were a failed state that works. I dare to ask like Abati did, “uhmn, does this country really work?”

Perhaps the most explicit verdict came in page 26. The ageless one, Wole Soyinka, had undertaken to register his thought on the recent declaration of Adams Oshiomole as the authentic and duly elected governor of Edo state by the Appeal Court, in his piece “From Sodom To Adam”. Kongi in his characteristic way of saying it as it is likened Nigeria to the sightless thrashings of a beheaded chicken, colliding with one obstacle after another until its final expiration.

Earlier that day, I have received a notification on facebook of my being tagged to a story by Sahara Reporters on the arrest in London of the brother to the Nigeria Minister of Justice Michael Aondooaka on some corruption related offences. What could have been more nauseating? There had always been this big question mark on the person of Mr. Minister of Justice since his appointment. First he declared a battle with erstwhile helmsman of the EFCC (now embattled) Nuhu Ribadu on who had the powers to prosecute suspected corrupt persons. His role in the appointment of new EFCC boss Farida Waziri has remained a subject held in suspect and recently, he was accused of going into some kind of unholy relationship with Billionaire business man Jimoh Ibrahim which saw to the stopping of the latter’s litigation for corrupt dealings. Now this and you tell me this land is good?

Days after, we were to read of the life sentencing of five military men. People, who were trained and had sworn to defend their nation, were involved in selling weapons to persons who threatened the security of the nation and indeed of their own comrades drafted to the JTF-the internal peace keeping body. Such are only possible in a land as “good” as ours.

Just then, I noticed that an impatient siren blaring police van (not even a convoy, just a pick up van) which had speed down dangerously against traffic on the other lane of the expressway had created a new lane of vehicles on that lane-driving against traffic.  What do you call it, when those to enforce the law, creates an atmosphere for and actually encourages the breakage of the law?

As the bus I was in continued to inch forward at the rate of one meter every ten minutes, my lungs filling up with the dust in the air in the go slow, all I could see were images of a chicken thrashing endlessly after its head had been cut off. Wole Soyinka couldn’t have been more right. That was Nigeria and please to put the records straight, this land-as presently functioning-is to say the least, not good at all.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

                                                                                                                        

 

OF UNCLES AND OUR TEENAGE DAUGHTERS

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

Now, this is a very serious issue. It might not be able to compete favourably with articles on Obama or Oshiomole –which are the popular topics of late-as a banner headline, but it is none the less an issue that should provoke a great deal of thought and concern especially among parents and those who hope to become parents in the near future.

There is often this secret, unhealthy and potentially dangerous relationship that exists between teenage girls and their uncles. Uncles here does not necessarily mean just the brother to their father or mother, but includes senior cousins, home lesson teachers, school teachers, swimming instructors, drivers, neighbours, security men etcetera. 

This questionable relationship which often goes unnoticed because they are considered purely plutonic and because most parents who are too busy pursuing their career and only too happy to push off their children by default to these other adults around, has the potential of destroying the sanity and emotions of teenage children for life.

Life for many teenagers is a painful tug of war filled with mixed messages and conflicting demands from parents, teachers, friends, family and oneself. Growing up—negotiating a path between independence and reliance on others—is a tough business and the tendency of older men hiding under the toga of being “Uncles” to emotionally exploit and sexually abuse these extremely gullible youngsters summarizes the issue under discuss here.

The period of Adolescence is filled with intellectual and emotional changes in addition to other major biological and physical changes. It is a time of discovery of self and one’s relationship to the world around himself or herself. Female teenagers- who develop faster biologically- are often at the greatest risk here. The sprouting breasts soon begins to make the “uncle” hard in between his legs which sees a once loving and caring uncle gradually turning into a secret lover.

The issue is made worse by the fact that these male individuals are persons the girls have known and trusted since childhood, people who buy them sweet and chocolate and take them to Mr Biggs on their birthday. People who bathed them when they were much younger and helped them get their home work right. Persons they confined in and have received advices from. When these favourite persons begin to pull up their skirts or fumble with their little mounds, the female teenager is often at a loss as to how to handle it.

There is a tendency to see it as being right because it was an uncle that was doing it and of course, the irresponsible uncle makes the youngster believe it was only the right thing to do. How do you begin to question the actions of someone who had told you what to do all your life? On the other hand, even when she doesn’t feel comfortable with what is happening, she is scared of letting any one know about it either because, she in her innocence does not want to get the uncle into trouble, or because she had been threatened not to ever say a word to anyone.

This way, the unhealthy relationship continues right under the nose of the parents.

The news papers are often awash with stories of minors (some not yet five) who were abused by trusted neighbours and senior male companies. We hear about their being arrested by the police. Whether they are ever charged or even released as soon as the initial heat generated by the revelation cools down, the impact on the victims is a life long one and has the potential of damaging their love and sex life permanently.

I am neither a parent nor a victim. I am not even female, but I have course to discuss this following the revelations I got from a close female friend who opened her heart to me recently. Graciously, she had permitted me to write this piece, and I hope it even in the remotest of ways gets to help some one out there.

My friend, on a rather funny note you will say, is scared of being with a man. This is a lady of twenty five, an embodiment of facial and bodily beauty with a good university degree. The mere thought of being kissed sends jitters down her spine and could actually make get suddenly harsh and moody. This is not because she doesn’t have the right hormones flowing in her, but because, once when she was just twelve, an uncle-her mum’s brother who was a regular visitor-, some one who had changed her nappies years before, had seized her in the room, when no body was around and in the pretext of teaching her how to kiss giving her, in her exact words, “the kiss of her life”.

And of course it started from more healthy lines like “you are now such a big girl”, to less healthy ones like “I know you now have a boy friend” and to obscene ones like “ Have you kissed before?, a big girl like you should know how to kiss”. After that experience which nearly gave her blisters on her lips, my fiends developed an apathy for kissing as an act and was responsible for her increasingly worrying inability to keep a steady relationship at an age when most of her friends were attending antenatal clinics.

As funny as the story might sound, it is real and so many people are suffering like her in our society though not too many might be bold enough to admit or talk about it. While such persons now depend on counseling and prayers for help, it is important we help others avoid such a fate. About a hundred percent of the responsibility lies squarely on the shoulder of parents.

I am not yet a parent and might not qualify to tell parents how to be parents. However, I believe I can remind them of their responsibility to their children as parents. It is morally wrong and I dare say criminal for you to have a child and hand same over to a stranger to raise for you right in your house perhaps because you are so busy trying to get to the peak of your career. Your children deserve your presence and constant monitoring. This does not suggest that your house should have great semblance with kirikiri prison where no body is free, but that you can account for your children at all times. When due to your absence, you let your children create parents out of your gardener or security man or even your blood brother; you should also be ready to accept what ever kind of teaching they get from these pseudo parents.

Parents whose daughters suffer emotional or psychological problems due to stomach churning episodes with uncles when they were teens especially when such arose due to the carelessness of the parents are not fit to be parents in the first place and shall have many questions to answer before He who placed those children in their care.

As for those men who can not control the surge of testosterone in their veins such that they take leave of their senses and begin to defile their nieces or teenage girls put under their care, I hardly have words to describe you. Note however the saying that what comes around, goes around. Your own daughters might suffer same or even worse from some one else. Sincerely, such men should best be found in the zoo and not wondering among civilized people.

Do some thing about teenage sexual abuse today. Spread the word and be a better parent.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

nzeifedigbo@yahoo.com

IT’S MY BIRTH DAY

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo

Its 11^th November again, the date of my birth. Twenty four years ago, the silence of a hospital labour room was broken by the cry of a new born baby. The baby was a boy and I was he.

It’s interesting how the infant has transformed from a thumb sucking toddler to a struggling young man with a degree and a life to look up to. When my mum called me earlier today, she teased that her little boy was now old enough to be a father. Beyond the tease is a silent message…hey, it’s about time.

There have been a lot of calls and text messages from family, friends, foes and even people I thought I had totally lost contact with. Right now, I fear for the memory of my handset. Many more are sure to come, all bearing nice wishes, commendations and prophesies of success ahead for me.

Life has been a mixture of pleasure and struggles. Every second of the day, the struggle assumes a new dimension. Growing up, I have seen my country go from a dictatorial enclave to a current pseudo democracy. We have gone from one major Tv station to so many plus blogs and private magazines. Now I am on National Service and the next challenge is how to get a job after service in this country I am so passionate about.

11^th November is the anniversary of the end of the First World War in 1918, which is perhaps the most remarkable item in the history books for this day, but today has something else interesting in the line up…the Appeal Court ruling on the 2007 Gubernatorial Election dispute between Adams Oshiomole and Prof Osunbor. The out come of the ruling, depending on which way it goes has the propensity of causing literarily, a thirds world war.

Without apologies, I wish Oshiomole wins the case. By every right, he won the 2007 polls as far as I am concerned and as agreed by the lower tribunal. No one trusts the Court of Appeal especially when led by the Court of Appeal President and very many (including me) do not expect the verdict today to go Oshiomoles way.

First of all, it took ages for the panel to be constituted and when it was finally constituted after seven months or so, the more you look, the less you see fashion of the hearings leaves much to be desired.  The appeal court rulings on elections matters has remained purely controversial and basically pro PDP even when there are glaring evidence, obvious enough to be discerned even by the blind, in the contrary and ones fears about today’s ruling is to say the least, most justified.

The out come of today’s ruling will surely dictate what my mood will be like at the end of the day. But one thing I won’t let it do is to impinge on my love for this country and my resolve to work assiduously to be part of the generation of Nigerians who will lead her out of the woods.

Guess its apt to cease this opportunity to thank all those who have played various roles in molding me up to this day. My parents, my three sisters, cousins, friends and critics. Without you, there will be no me.

It’s my birthday, It’s a day to be happy and I shall not let nothing take that away from me.

Sylva Nze Ifedigbo