14092022

16 — Vanguard, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2022
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The Queen’s Britain stole our future
QUEEN Elizabeth II’s exit from the mortal
plane was bound to excite extreme
sentiments because she personified the good,
bad and ugly of our history. She was historically
and politically our “mother”, who wore the
British crown with such charm, charisma, grace
and majesty that truly inspired.
How much of the British legacies in Nigeria
can we attribute to (or blame on) the late Queen?
Or, how many of the British legacies can
we not attribute to, or blame on, her? Though
a ceremonial, constitutional monarch, the
Queen retained the post of Commander-in-Chief
of the British forces with the power to declare
war as she did over the Falklands in 1982.
Every new Prime Minister still went to her to
collect the instrument of power. No major
decision was taken without consulting with her.
She remained the Head of State of 14
independent countries and leader of the 54-
member Commonwealth consisting of over 2.5
billion people; a third of the world’s population.
In her 70 years on the throne, Queen Elizabeth
was forced by circumstances beyond her control
to superintend over the dissolution of the British
Empire through the granting of independence
to the former colonies. The manner in which
Nigeria’s independence was packaged is
responsible for the crises we are still
experiencing. Any building with a faulty
foundation will collapse sooner or later. But the
kind of foundation that Britain laid for Nigeria
was such that it would neither stand nor fall.
Britain opted for this kind of foundation so that,
in cahoots with some anointed local agents, it
would continue to manipulate and exploit the
system long after independence.
In 1914, Frederick Lugard amalgamated
Nigeria in a manner of mixing water and oil.
Water and oil can be in the same bowl but they
will never mix. The Northern Protectorate (the
Sokoto Caliphate, which was already an Islamic
Republic) was saddled upon the Southern
Protectorate ruled by indigenous kings whose
people were rapidly embracing the Christian
faith and Western outlook.
Nigeria should have been three countries or
at least, a confederation of three or more
autonomous regions with the free option by any
of its constituents to quit the union. But, due to
British interests, the North was saddled on the
South; a neo-imperialist arrangement that
remains till today.
The Queen herself supervised the final
packaging of Nigeria for independence that
doomed her permanently. The first was the
lopsided manner in which the electoral
constituencies were shared between the North
and South just before the pre-independence
regional and federal elections between 1958 and
1959. Though the population of the South was
more than that of the North, the North was given
more electoral constituencies.
The North, with its huge landmass was made
one region, while the South, which was roughly
one-third its size, was split into two regions. The
geopolitical advantages were massively stacked
in favour of the North. Also, the military
advantages were in the North’s favour both in
terms of institutional locations and personnel
recruitment. The North was placed in a position
to dominate, whether under democratic or
military rule, with Britain always behind it
against the South.
There is this allegation of a British secret pact
with the Sokoto Caliphate which is not part of
Nigeria’s official history. According to this
notion, the British authorities, after a mock
Nigeria is set up to enable the
North exploit the South while
maintaining the negotiated
privileges of Britain; Queen
Elizabeth’s British configuration
of Nigeria is such that you need
Northern approval before you
can change anything
military exercise in a secret location in Sokoto,
handed Nigeria over to the Sultan and the
Northern People’s Congress, NPC, leaders. If
you hear some Fulani ethnic irredentists
boasting that Nigeria “belongs” to them, it is
probably an offshoot of this alleged exercise.
We can also see it in their leaders’ pattern of
handling the South like their colony.
It is evident in the parasitic tendency of
Northerners. They take over commanding
sectors of the economy exploitatively and
consumptively, not productively. These include
the Military, Police, Customs, the Ports Authority,
the oil sector, the Federal Capital Territory
(Abuja), Immigration, the Judiciary, and
others. Nigeria is set up to enable the North
exploit the South while maintaining the
negotiated privileges of Britain.
Queen Elizabeth’s British configuration of
Nigeria is such that you need Northern approval
before you can change anything. Before the
North gives its approval, it must listen to Britain
first. This is why all coups planned by
Southerners and Middle Belt officers failed with
mass executions, while Northern coups were
mostly bloodless “palace” coups. This was why
Biafra failed to secede, and anything “Biafra” is
addressed with military nihilism.
This is why “restructuring” has failed after
over 50 years of agitation by Southern politicians
and pro-democracy activists. This is why the
Constitution cannot be amended to correct
imbalances and promote equity. This is why
peaceful change is impossible in Nigeria and
development is retarded. And this is why the
country is bleeding from all pores and the system
is imploding.
Even those who thought the system the British
left behind benefited them are worse off in every
item of the human development index. They are
fleeing their region in their thousands everyday
to shelter in the same South they have dominated
like internal colonialists.
Sometimes people ask the question: why
continue to blame Britain for our woes after
over 60 years of independence? We have just
painted a picture. So, it is not as if people have
not tried to peacefully or violently to correct
Britain’s deliberate act of rigging Nigeria
against Nigerians for their own benefit.
Today, when our leaders are sick (which is most
of the time) they run to Britain. When they want
to educate their children, they send them to
Britain or America. When they steal our money,
they hide it in British banks. And when we chase
after them, they run to Britain. Would these be
the case if Nigeria were normal?
Queen Elizabeth’s Britain stole the future of
Nigeria!
ASUU strike: Bringing back the ‘universe in the university’
By NICHOLAS
EBEHIKHALU
THAT universality in the university is
not a morphological coincidence,
not a nomenclatural ornamentation or a
terminological embellishment. It was
carefully conceived with an in-depth
morphology. The universe is the vivacity
or the soul of the university without which
the university becomes lifeless. This is why
Professor Niyi Osundare in his valedictory
lecture, July 26, 2005, stated that “the‘Uni’
in the university is a oneness, derived from
a whole, a macrocosm condensed into
microcosm”. University is a
conglomeration of academics and
scholars in the universe for the perpetual
process of experimentation and discovery.
University is an ivory tower or academia
with the overriding goal of generating,
propagating and disseminating
knowledge. In the antiquity and/or the
medieval ages, university was known as
studia generalia, meaning that universities
were generally recognised as places of
studies opened to scholars from all parts of
the world. The universe in the university
resides in its ability to globalise the local
and localize the globe. In the university,
universalisation and mondialisation have
been jealously guarded and robustly
empowered over the ages.
Once upon a time in this country, our
universities flourished as homes for high
quality university education. The
universities were comparable with some
of the best universities in Europe and
America. Students came to study in
Nigerian universities from all parts of the
world. Many of the lecturers in the
universities were expatriates and they were
very happy living and working in our
universities with their families. The
universities were dignified and dignifying.
Basic physical facilities such as lecture
theatres/auditoria, laboratories, studios/
workshops, libraries, and staff offices were
in the state of international best practices.
Students were living in good condition in
their hostels and were studying in conducive
environments. There were no inadequacy
of lecturers in the system, students - lecturer
contacts were frequent and effective.
Lecturers were well paid, well housed,
assured of decent pension plan, lecturers
were wonderful role models and accorded
with due respect in the society. Universities
in Nigeria were the Jerusalem and Mecca
for scholars from many parts of the world.
These good old days of the universities in
Nigeria existed because the ‘universe’ was
clearly visible and conspicuous in the
Nigerian university system. It was a time
when the existing universities were
acclaimed internationally in some specific
disciplines and specialties, for instance,
University of Ibadan’s physicists and
chemists were ranked amongst the best in
the world.
Today, the story is different, lamentable,
pathetic and abysmal because something
has happened to the ‘universe’ in the
universities in Nigeria. The ‘universe’ has
dropped out from the university system. It
has taken its flight. The universe is
conspicuously absent and seems to be on
permanent vacation which vividly shows
that a lot of things have changed gravely in
the universities to a phenomenal decay.
Our universities have become completely
localised. In a whole university you can
hardly find a foreign lecturer or student.
They are no longer attracted to Nigeria
universities because the universities are
pitifully and disgracefully bad and are not
in any way economically attractive. In the
1960s and 70s the salary of a lecturer was
comparable to anywhere in the world.
Nigerian universities had lecturers from
different parts of the world because the
salary and welfare were very competitive.
But today the salary is not even up to onetenth
of what lecturers are earning around
the world and even some African
countries; hence no lecturer from any part
of the world is attracted to work in any of
our universities. Nigeria must take notice
that no meaningful development can be
achieved in a country where government
fails to put issues concerning the university
education in the front-burner for global
reckoning and competitiveness.
We should be honest enough to admit
that something, indeed, has happened to
the ‘universe’ in the university system. How
long do we have to continuously pretend
like the proverbial ostrich that buries its
head in the sand thinking that its backside
is not seen, over the crummy condition of
our universities? Universities where the
lecture theatres/auditoria, laboratories,
studios/workshops, libraries, staff offices
and other facilities for teaching and
learning are far short of the international
best practices and even Nigeria national
minimum standards; universities where
the physical facilities are overcrowded
No meaningful
development can be
achieved in a country
where government fails
to put issues concerning
university education in
the front-burner for
global reckoning and
competitiveness
poorly furnished and with non-functional
facilities, dilapidated structures and poorly
ventilated; Universities that are mostly
lacking in basic facilities like magnetic
boards, public address systems, projectors,
et cetera; Universities where the staff offices
are inadequate in number and space, the
offices overcrowded to the extent that they
have become like staff rooms in the
secondary schools with two to three
senior lecturers sharing an office space. I
always find it very lachrymose informing
or describing the abysmal crummy
conditions under which lecturers manage
the scholarships of students in our
universities. Almost all the laboratories lack
basic equipment, basic consumables
(chemicals and reagents), electricity and
water supply. There are instances in which
water from buckets and kerosene cooking
stoves improvise for tap water and gas
burners. Students use kerosene stoves
instead of Bunsen burners to conduct
experiments in the laboratories.
Specimens are being kept in water bottles
instead of the appropriate places where
such specimens should be kept. Lecturers
have generators in their offices to be able
to work. Some departments have two or
three generators to be able to work. The
conventional and e-libraries are poorly
furnished, in dilapidated structures and
mostly inadequate in space and number.
There are poor deployments of ICT. The
hostel accommodations in the universities
are grossly inadequate and unfit for
human habitation. Students live twelve (12)
to eighteen (18) in a room like piggery.
They have what they call ‘short put’, where
they excrete in polythene bags and throw
them through the windows into the fields
because there are no toilets. You find faeces
sometimes in the classrooms because
students have no place to use.
We are never short of reasons for this
abysmal, dismal and phenomenal decay
in the Nigerian universities. Our
universities have been disendowed with
universe because successive governments
in Nigeria have neglected the universities
over the years through drastic shortfall in
government funding. Between 2016 to
2021, Nigeria budgeted only N3.6 trillion
(about 6.5%) for education out of the
whopping and humongous sum of N55.3
trillion total budget, this happening in the
21st century where countries, all over the
world are budgeting 26% UNESCO
recommendation for any country’s budget
for education. In 2016, out of the total
budget of N6.06 trillion, only the sum of
N369.6 billion or 6.7% of the budget was
allocated to public education. In 2017,
N550 billion or 7.38% was allocated to
education out of N7.29 trillion budgets. In
2018, N605.8billion or 7.04% was given
to education out of N9.2 trillion budget. In
2019, N620billion or 7.05% was allocated
to education out of the budget of
N8.92trillion, while in 2020, education got
N671.07 billion or 6.7% out of N10.33
trillion budget. In 2021, only N742.5 billion
or 5.6% was allocated to education out of
budget of N13.6 trillion. On the other
hand, according to the report of World
Bank, Ghana allocated 23.81% of its
national budget to education in 2015,
22.09% in 2016, 20.1% in 2017 and 18.6%
in 2018. In this year’s budget, Federal
Government of Nigeria allocated the sum
of N355.47 to the 44 federal universities in
the country from the total budget of
N875.93billion given to education sector.
According to the document by the Civic
Organisation, out of the N355.47 billion
allocated to the federal universities, N326.9
billion would go for recurrent expenditure
comprising of N320.7 billion for personal
cost and N6.2 billion for overhead cost.
Only N25.5 billion is slated for capital
projects in the universities.
No nation can develop beyond its
educational standard. That explains where
we are as a country in the comity of nations.
ASUU must continue to struggle for the
soul of Nigerian university education, for
the universities to survive and for the
universe to be brought back to the university
system. It has been said that when you want
to destroy a country, just destroy its university
educational system. At the entrance gate
of a university in South Africa, there is a
message: “Destroying a nation does not
require the use of atomic bombs or the use
of long range missiles… it only requires
lowering the quality of its education.” The
patients die in the hands of doctors and
nurses from such education; justice is lost
at the hands of judges and lawyers of such
education; buildings, roads and bridges
collapse at the hands of engineers from
such education; humanity dies at the hands
of religious scholars from such education;
and moneys are lost at the hands of
accountants from such education.
Continues online:
www.vanguardngr.com
•Dr. Ebehikhalu, Associate
Professor of Urban and Regional
Planning, University of Abuja,
wrote
via:
nicholas.ebehikhalu@uniabuja.edu.ng,