The fact that activities at federal universities all over the country had been grounded for over a month due to a strike action by the Academic Staff of Nigerian Universities (ASUU) makes this sad reality even more jarring. ASUU has gained notoriety over the years for elongating the years of study of many students of government owned universities through its endless industrial actions. The association claims it is fighting to for increased funding for universities and better conditions of service. In many ways, the fight is more of the latter than the former. One of the demands for which they are currently on strike is for an extension of the retirement age of academic staff from 65 years to 70.

In response to this demand, the Nigeria Senate last week passed a bill amending the retirement age as demanded. The bill states in part that “The compulsory retiring age of academics in the professional cadre in the universities shall be 70 years. The law requiring a person to retire from the public service after serving 35 years shall not apply to academic staff of tertiary institutions”.

While thousands of anxious students and their parents wait to see if the new law is enough to get the lecturers to return to class, I find it apt to share some thought on the new law and what impacts (or not) this will have on the standards of education in our nations tertiary institutions.

While it is not in question that mentally and physically sound professors can still be productive and very beneficial to the system at 70 and beyond, there remains an incontrovertible fact that once academics in Nigeria attain the exulted position of a professor, they relapse into declining productivity. I have not read the full details of the new law but I would hope that the lawmakers had the sense to include a clause that attaches the enjoyment of the longer period of service to measurable productivity, research advancement and successful supervision of postgraduate supervision.

Being someone who passed through this system as a student, I am well aware of the politics, rivalry and bickering that associates the award of professorship. The quest to attain the position and enjoy the pecks thereof has led to a situation where staff members go to every length (even circumventing ethics and acceptable decent principles) to publish and accumulate academic papers – some of which contribute nothing whatsoever to existing knowledge – while constituting themselves into factions all of which does not necessarily have any positive impact on their students.

With standards declining on a daily basis and with this new law in place, one can only expect that it would now be an even fiercer fight to finish in the race to become a professor going forward.

More so, some commentators have argued that the only reason why professors wish to stay longer in the schools is simply to have more years to sell their poorly authored reading materials and coerce more female students into bed with them. This group argues that currently the professors were not adding so much value as some of them still exist in the past, teaching outdated ideas to 21st century students and thus there was no need to keep them on beyond 65 by law.

Increased years of service do not translate into extended period of productivity. It is important therefore that while we continue to demand for increased funding of education by government, its regulators such as the NUC must come up with precise criteria for measuring performance among academics as well as the triggers for the reward process.  Academics should and must focus on teaching and research and make the best of their productive years contributing to knowledge and advancing their fields of learning. This is the only way we can get to change the sorry state of education in the country.

Published in Daily Times Nigeria Jan 24, 2012

This is novel and sounds like fun. Something to really push the lukewarm readers around and for those who think they read, something to test how good they are. Accidentally, this fits just right with my reading plans for the year. But there is more, this will make me seek out and read great books from other parts of Africa this year. So i am signing up and inviting you to do as well.

Click Here for details

Good luck.

As his first child, you would have thought that I would have been pampered. Not in the world. Daddy was always firm and strict. As a teacher, to whose care other parents had entrusted their children, there was no way his own child would be undisciplined. He taught me the enduring lessons of hard work and sincerity, of humility and dedication. He introduced me to God and told me how it was important to love and treat every other person with fairness and equity. I have seen him sacrifice a lot for me and my siblings to live a better life than he did.  He had other career dreams for me but has nonetheless shown his support for my writing and other varying interests. Above all, he is a loving husband to my Mum and a most carrying father to his 4 children and an endless list of nieces, nephews, cousins, former students and proteges. I am so proud to share his name.

No birthday cards, wishes, greetings or messages can express in words the amount of love and respect I have for you Dad. There are some memories in life that remain for a short time while others stick with you forever. I cherish all the times I’ve spent with you and they are going to remain sweet memories for the rest of my life.

Here’s my humble attempt at giving you a very warm greeting on this special day. Happy Birthday, dear dad. May this be the beginning of yet another wonderful year in your life. I love you and will always work to make you proud!

Your Son,

Nnagozie Chikwenze Sylva.

Welcome to the New Year. Wait a minute, that’s stale right? I really must be running behind time. I really should turn my calendar and reset my wrist watch. I am still working on a project that should have been finished many months ago. Ah, truth be told, I am yet to start it. Been thinking and planning it in my head but isn’t there always just too many things begging for attention? Oh I had plans for January 2012, what were they again? Oops the red light on my blackberry is blinking again, I am sorry I need to respond to that.

Never managed to take that bold step last year, you know, that one that requires my kneeling on one knee and looking up to her with flirty eyes, my lips asking questions, the answer of which I am sure of. Don’t blame me, the times were simply not right. Ah these dents on my car, the one caused by the lunatic danfo driver with marks on both sides of his face like evidence of a brawl with a tiger. I really never made it to the panel beater to beat it out, I should make out time to do that. I dread checking my e-mails these days, the guilt that unfulfilled email request gives me is overwhelming. I think I should create a new account.

I would have to pass this publishing opportunity. Ah, If only I concentrated on writing that novel. Well wasn’t my fault. 2011 saw many great movies in the Cinema and you know I needed to update the part of my memory where I record movies seen. May be I shouldn’t have created that twitter account, sigh! See now, that’s the first place I go to when I wake up. Don’t ask me if I still pray at dawn. Don’t blame me, blame all those interesting gossip I am too weak to ignore.

My pay slip is a joke. Frankly, if I show it to you, you will jump off the third mainland with laughter. And those employers of mine assured me of a raise last year. I waited confidently. So I emptied my savings. Now…sigh! I am punching my calculator and scratching my head, what if I had invested it? And there was this fantastic opportunity I passed. It wasn’t altogether a wow opportunity if you know what I mean, so I ignored it. I am pessimistic like that sometimes. But ah, I drove past that shop the other day, see how they’ve expanded. Gosh, I nearly ran into a car looking and biting my fingers.

You must think me a failure right? Well I am not alone in all this. Imagine the Super Eagles, I even fared better than them. Failure in multiples. That reminds me, next month the African Cup of Nations begins. I am still to repair my DSTV dish o. Some nasty wind last year blew away a part of it. Just never found the time to replace it. Wait a minute, did I say next month? Oh my, I really must turn my calendar and reset my watch. It’s January 2012 already, the Nations Cup begins this month. I wonder where time is always running to. I want to speak to whoever is in charge of time, a very simple appeal really; can you place time in slow motion mode please? Just for a month so I can catch up.

What have I been going on about you must be wondering. It’s very simply; Ask her out. Book that flight. Take that course. Apply for that job. Write the damn book. Get your funding. Make up with your Dad. Resume your exercise routine. Launch that startup. Take that risk. Your tithe doesn’t work magic, forget that your pastor says it does. You need to get off your ass and do the thing that needs doing. Today not tomorrow. If it fails, it fails. If it works, it works. For like Steve Jobs once said “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life”  Are you still thinking? Hey, it’s the second week already, fifty weeks left.

Picture credit http://cool-collections-cool.blogspot.com/2011/11/huge-collection-of-new-year-2012.html

Below is the review of the blog in 2011 prepared by the great guys at wordpress!

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 12,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

An Igbo adage loosely translated to English says that once the hired hand contracted to cut down palm oil fruit heads from the oil palm tree is tired, he suddenly becomes very concerned about the chicks picking at the heads already on the ground.

A world of meaning is lost in this translation; but it is just apt in describing the efforts of our political leaders to leave off confronting the meat of the matter at hand and instead blame their inability to fulfill the tenants of their office on ‘political detractors’ (real or imagined).

The blame game, with its finger-pointing and mutual buck-passing, is a familiar feature of politics and organisational life; and blame avoidance pervades government and public organisations at every level.  In Nigeria today, political and bureaucratic blame games are simply the other of the day. It is a sorry situation that finds root in our tendency to, under the guidance of one traditional witch doctor or a ‘man of God’, quickly blame a neighbour or a relative for any of our misfortunes in life, from the absurd to the downright ridiculous.

So when some video appeared online of five men raping a helpless girl and the available evidence pointed to ABSU as the theatre of that absurdity, the Abia State Government made a quick dash to the defense, insisting that the said rape did not happen in the state and blaming the orchestration of the incidence online on political detractors. Instead of condemning the act, investigating it on its merit, helping the effort to unmask the perpetrators of the crime and showing himself as a responsible leader, Governor Theodore Orji chose to look for enemies to blame in what has remained a most illogical comment.

Enter Governor Babatunde Fashola of Lagos who until recently was perhaps the most loved governor in the country until his recent string of unpopular actions; top among which includes the astronomical increase in the fees to be paid by students of the state owned university, LASU and the mismanagement of the Lekki toll collection issue. Last Saturday, residents of Lekki who are affected by the issues surrounding the toll collection by the LCC on the Lekki Expressway came out in a peaceful protest.

The protesters were attacked and assaulted by both police and thugs, who beat them up and damaged gadgets used by the media. Many of the protesters were even arrested. It was so laughable and completely unbelievable to hear the state government blame the incidence on political detractors in a desperate effort to shift the discussion away from the shameful actions it superintended.

One wonders, in both incidences above, what would have informed the involvement of the said political enemies in the matter, how within the realms of logic the so called political enemies could have pulled off such feats, and how their carrying out such actions would have helped them score any political points against the state government in the first place.

When I listen to such childish and banal excuses from government officials, I feel the urge to tell the person to shut up. We are certainly not illiterates, nor are we fools as their lame talk suggests. We keep seeking for the source of our problems in the wrong places, instead of owning up to the realities of our inadequacies and taking responsibilities for them.

We must remember the famous line from Walk Kelly’s 1972 Pogo Comic: We have met the enemy and he is us. Until we accept responsibility and take action, no authentic progress is possible in this country.

DailyTimes 31st December 2011

Photo credit http://bytesdaily.blogspot.com/2011/04/quote-walt-kelly.html

I belong to a generation that is today referred to as the Facebook/Twitter/Youtube generation; the ‘jet age’ by some others. A generation that grew up during what has been referred to as the “acronym years,” the years when our dear country Nigeria took the spiraling turns that has left her almost a pariah nation today.

It does sound like we had the ill-luck of growing up in a gloomy period. Perhaps so, but no matter how hard I try, nothing can take away the fact that we had the very happiest of childhoods and memories of it today – each time we cramp them up into text messages or posts that go viral on social media- reminds us of a time once cherished, a peace so desirable, an experience every child deserves. An experience that now seems lost.

Yes, it was the time when the television (usually NTA) began at 4.00pm with the national anthem. It was the time of Captain Planet, of Super Ted and of Voltron.

Fond nostalgic memories no doubt but above all these, one factor that was responsible for the happiness we enjoyed as children was the fact that back them we still had family. We still had parents who had time for us. Parents who asked us about our assignments and helped us get our notes right. Parents that sang us to sleep, read us bed time stories and shared our childhood fantasies.  Back then, we still ate meals together as a family. We still watched television together as a family.

But our parents could also be hard on us with the way they spelt out instructions and punished malfeasance. Going to school and coming top of the pack was our job. We had had better excel. There was no option to discipline. And even though we always got spanked for wrong doing, we never ceased to feel the love of our parents in huge measure. That made our childhood different.

Those simple, but deep experiences of our childhood are who we are and have contributed in shaping the course of our lives today. Truth is, not all of us share the same happy memories and it is not so difficult to tell when we encounter such people. Child psychologists state that children with unhappy childhoods are more likely to grow up into anti-social adults, violent partners and persons with imbalanced emotions. It therefore goes without saying that not only does every child deserve a happy childhood, we all share the responsibility of giving this to them.

Today, pause and access yourself, are you contributing in any way to taking away any child’s happiness? Are your daily activities directly or indirectly robbing any child of happiness? Are you too busy chasing money and career that you have forgotten that your children need more than DSTV and the Internet to be truly happy? Do you abuse or molest any child? Do you take advantage of children put in your care? Do you divert funds meant for child care projects? Do you know people who do and you keep quiet?

The disturbing fact is that the happiness that swelled the childhood experience of my generation is conspicuously lacking today. The Nigerian child of today endures the challenges of a family system gone awry, a society that is eager to exploit a child and a government whose care doesn’t seem to go beyond electioneering campaign slogans.  I fear therefore that we are raising a generation that is as much a threat to itself as it is to us. The evidence already abound. The world certainly cannot survive their enormity.

Every child deserves to be happy and we are called upon to be vanguards of this call today.

This post is part of a series inspired by the Prevent Abuse of Children Today (PACT) campaign, hosted by Stepping Stones Nigeria.  Please add your name to the PACT petition to prevent abuse of innocent children in the Niger Delta and visit the site to find out more on the website.

Published in Daily Times Nigeria

This December, I share with you, 3 of my creative efforts that have been published in various online journals this Month. I hope you enjoy and share them as my little gift to you.

A review of The Pulse, a book by Ferdinand Adimefe published in issue #8 of Sentinel Nigeria Magazine.

http://sentinelnigeria.org/online/issue-8-november-2011-january-2012/essays-reviews/a-review-of-pulse/

The Check Point, a short Story in the December 2011 issue of the Cyclamens and Swords Publishing Newsletter.

http://www.cyclamensandswords.com/dec_2011_nze_sylva_ifedigbo.php

Guest of the SSS, a short story in the Winter 2011 issue of The Fears of Monkeys Magazine

http://twinenterprises.com/the_fear_of_monkeys/issue_eleven/guest_of_the_sss.htm

May this season bring us enough joy to enter the new year with optimism. And may we continue to tell our stories for the world to read.

Photo credit: http://wiredprworks.com/pr/sharing-stories-book-group-suggestions/#

Nigeria must be one large stony field; and our government is made up of a collection of career stone pickers who are specialists in picking and upturning stones for the purpose of finding what is hidden beneath them.

Or, how else can one explain the “No stone shall be left unturned” remark – that long over flogged threat line we always hear in press statements from the presidency and other government agencies, each time something new goes wrong or an old one repeats itself? It is a promise of action that is never fulfilled, an idiom that has lost all its meaning under the weight of unimpressive leadership and collective hopelessness in the country.

How do we turn up the stones? After the absurdity occurs and we have made the customary threat, we set up a committee and open a new file in the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation.  Members are appointed. An elaborate committee inauguration is organised. It is shown on national television. The head of the committee reiterates the determination of his team to walk the whole rocky field and ensure that when they are done, the stones will feel that something like a tsunami had just gone through them.  We clap. Cameras click away. Hands shake. The occasion ends.

A month, two, or a year later, depending on the terms of reference of the committee, a bulky report is submitted. By then, the file opened somewhere at the SGF’s office is already also bulky. The committee makes requests for expenses; they are approved. The committee members have in their wisdom sought the help of others in the stone turning exercise. Plenty aides and assistants were engaged.  The report is received and yet another promise of leaving no stone unturned in implementing the recommendations made. Cameras click away. Hands shake. The occasion ends. The problem continues.

When shall we stop this turning and turning in the widening gyre (apologies to W.B Yeats) approach to solving problems? When shall we begin to convert all the threats and energy into concrete plans and precise action? Pile and piles of well bound paper, containing tones and tones of ideas left gathering dust somewhere in our unturned stones archives, dead to us and to our problems, yet the sloganeering continues.

No stone shall be left unturned yet the many murder cases are still unresolved. No stone shall be left unturned, yet the armed robbers are never caught and like invisibles, continue to do their thing in broad day light and go away free. No stone shall be left unturned yet people are kidnapped and some released but we don’t see the hostage taker no does their activities stop. No stone will be left unturned yet monies disappear and continue to disappear from the public coffers and we treat it as one of those things, one of those brazen absurdities that have become normalcy.

And has become popular of late, no stone will be left unturned but Boko Haram continues to make successful heists on human lives in our Northern cities.  It becomes imperative to ask, how many more stones before we begin to get it right?

In my thinking, there are now no stones left in our stone field. All the stones have been turned at one point or the other and all their rough edges have become fine from excessive handling. They have become polished out from the years of talk and no action.

Our leaders should know that time and patience is running out and this stone turning story now sounds like a broken record on repeat.

Published in DailyTimes 08/12/2011

Photo credit: http://summitstonesadventuremusings.blogspot.com/2010/01/no-stone-unturned.html