by SEUN LAWAL
As a Nigerian, I have found myself amazed by the
sheer hypocrisy of the Jonathan-led administration
with regard to the particular aspect of directly
impacting the lives of the citizens through poverty
alleviation policies and combating the seemingly
implacable scourge of corruption. Nigerians have had
to settle to the fate imposed upon them by the sheer
inadequacy unapologetically displayed by the
administration.
It is no longer shocking to hear of the disappearance
of billions of dollars from public funds supposedly held
in trust by the government on behalf of the people.
Government officials plunder the national treasury
without any fear of consequences to advance an
ostentatious and obscene lifestyle. Then the elections
draw near and, suddenly, the President remembers to
conquer corruption in four years using modern
technology. Was technology non-existent in the last
six years of the present administration? It does not
matter that the President has spent six years in office
and the avant-garde discovery of technology as a very
ingenious solution to the menace of corruption is to be
placed in the same league as Columbus’ discovery of
the Americas in the 14th Century. That is how creative
and innovative the President is. He should undoubtedly
take the credit for this unprecedented finding.
While the plundering goes on, the President looks the
other way. He sees nothing morally wrong in granting
state pardon to a convicted felon who was indicted for
brazen acts of stealing of public funds and
perpetration of other acts of corruption. A senatorial
slot in the Federal Legislature is certainly a worthy
reward for the commission of felonious activities. Mr.
President (if we are to borrow his unconventional
reference to himself in the third person) is comfortable
with letting members of his cabinet who were alleged
to have sustainably furthered brazen acts of corruption
off the hook. Allison-Madueke and Stella Odua’s
activities instantly come to mind. To the President, it
is crucial to clear his people’s ignorance by
unilaterally redefining, without recourse to legal and
moral persuasions, what constitutes corruption and
stealing and drawing the line of distinction which
curiously exists between the two crimes; only in the
President’s lexicon, none of the acts is worthy of any
penal sanctions. Nigerians are just too ignorant to see
it. After all, the fund Nwobodo was said to have stolen
was significantly lower than the price of a Peugeot
automobile. So, why should he be sent to jail at all?
Why, indeed, must any person for that matter be sent
to jail for corruption? That is how fertile the
President’s mind is.
Nigerians still reel from the shock of the commando-
style capture of the over 200 girls from their school in
Chibok, and are yet even more jolted by the
government’s unconcerned reaction to this tragedy of
epic proportions. The subsequent indoctrination of
these victims to carry out terrorist activities of their
own is some sort of collateral damage which, frankly,
does not come on the President’s list of priorities. On
an almost daily basis, we deal with the visual and
mental throes of the savagely brutalized and slain
bodies of our compatriots by reason of the lethal
impact of the Boko Haram sect whose activities have
claimed tens of thousands of innocent lives. Yet, the
President is unmoved by the sufferings of the very
people who gave him their mandate by voting for him
in the 2011 elections. Terrorism is a global
phenomenon and Nigerians must have their fair share
of the torture and curse of the plague. The agony
becomes easy to bear once the victims remember the
terror attacks in Rwanda, Syria, and Iraq. A quick
listen to the President’s 2013 interview with CNN’s
Amanpour contains the rudiments of this novel theory.
That is how calculated the President’s mind works.
Starting from the President, this administration is
made up of mostly coarse individuals—coarse not only
in manners and method, but in their sensitivities.
These are individuals for whom brute avarice was not
a last resort but a first, for whom pure self-interest is
the product, not of a distressed philosophy, but of
undisguised greed. These are people who have no
business in national service because, effectively, they
have diminished its principled and upstanding
credibility by their very existence in government. They
possess no real technical and intellectual qualities that
can be exploited for governance; any little skill they
have has been neutralized by a lack of any real
conscience, an abject failure to understand the
legitimate yearnings of the people.
So, where do we go from here? First, with the recent
political activities in the country particularly by reason
of the upcoming February 14 Presidential elections,
there is ample reason to believe that Nigerians have
seen through the shenanigans of this administration.
Those not in government are the most hit by the
government’s ineptitude and they suffer most from its
shabby economic policies that have done little or
nothing in transforming their lives. We are in the
moment of truth. We are no longer playing Who Wants
to Be a Millionaire. Now, we are playing Truth or
Consequences, the political reality of voting the right
individuals into government and the repercussions of
failing to do so.
And then, the Buhari/Osinbajo ticket comes in. The
excitement in the polity by the emergence of these two
right-minded, ethical, and incorruptible individuals as
the sorely needed change-brokers is almost palpable.
They have held themselves out as the paradigm of
virtuosity and good governance. They have created a
distinct and focused political identity different from the
ruling party’s. This is a huge political evolution for the
country, and the size of the hugeness is very large.
The electrifying significance of their candidacy has
been caught on by those who believe that it is time for
a fresh change, not the kind of unfulfilled change that
was promised in 2011, the change that is yet to come
after six years of untold economic and moral descent
into the abyss of executive ignominy.
General Buhari and Professor Osinbajo, S.A.N., need no
further validation. They are men tested and found
worthy of the people’s mandate. They are top-drawer
men. Buhari brooks no tolerance for indiscipline and
acts of sleaze, a quality sorely missing in the present
administration. Try as they may to smear his
reputation, Buhari is the picture child of military
professionalism, comportment, and authority. His
running mate, Professor Osinbajo is as smart as a
whip, adaptable, levelheaded and the best intellectual
marksman amongst his peers. He has demonstrated–
whether as a teacher of Law, or as an advocate in the
Courts of Law, or as the Attorney-General of the
centre of commerce and excellence, or as a
humanitarian and philanthropist, or as a Pastor, or as
a one-man roving ambassador, or as a peacemaker—
that his abilities live up to his reputation. I say this
because I have firsthand knowledge of him. Even the
most conspiracy minded skeptics have had to admit
that here is a man of brilliant intellectuality and proven
competence and integrity, a man with a near insatiable
thirst for justice. Have not these traits shown through
on the APC’s campaign trail? We have seen a man
with passion, eloquence, a sense of urgency:
articulating his visions for our country. In spite of his
soft-spoken and courteous demeanour, the forceful
nature of his leadership is easily recognizable. Buhari
and Osinbajo are two individuals who can carry out
some deep presidential-level policy re-evaluation of
Nigeria. They deserve a chance to show us what they
can do.
As they are wont to do, the ruling party embarks on a
campaign of calumny instead of focusing on the issues
that directly affect every citizen. They throw in a lot of
sludge hoping that some would stick. To them, the
person who can manage the affairs of government is
one who can summarily recite his mobile phone
number. There is absolutely no dramatic content and
human interest slant to their position. Their
protestations provide little reassurance to the masses
of Nigerians who have suffered long enough under the
burdens of a wicked government and who hope only to
see a better day. The electorate has now been able to
distinguish between low-hanging fruit and poisoned
bait because they can now discern the shallow quality
of the present administration’s political glossary. For
the initially unconvinced, skepticism melted as
examples of Buhari’s and Osinbajo’s examples of
integrity, competence, and forthrightness multiplied.
We are standing at the shore of history. It is important
that we confine the last six years of our experience as
a nation to the scrap heap of history. The ruling
party’s game is up. It is time to open a new page and
start afresh. It is time to stem the tide of ineptitude
and make a better life for ourselves and our children
and our children’s children. We are accustomed to
suffering, but we are not reconciled to it. It is time to
end the suffering altogether. Nigerians are a people
who need to know that their leaders have physical
courage, intestinal as well as intellectual fortitude to
chart the sails of governance to the greatest good for
all.
Jonathan is out of his depth. He is not on the same
page with Nigerians because we are not reading the
same book. There is no point pretending otherwise. It
is clear for all to see. Societal recriminations have
followed almost every government policies of the last
six years because those in leadership are devoid of
self-insight. It is a government of movement without
thought, of action without reflection. It is only when
this government is pushed out and replaced by the
Buhari/Osinbajo administration that Nigerians can truly
experience that lighter-than-fresh air feeling of political
and economic freedom which has eluded them for an
extended period of time.
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1. He has chosen to fight corruption with good strategies and
diligence, not brute force.
2. He will not abuse his powers in order to appear tough on corruption. He believes that following due process while fighting corruption strengthens our institutions
3. He granted the EFCC independence from the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, so it can pursue corruption in the public sector without interference.
4. With smart policies, he has decimated almost 4 decades of fertilizer subsidy fraud, saving N50bn in a single year.
5. He revived the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) to eliminate a major avenue of corruption in the public sector. This has resulted in the elimination of 50,000 ghost workers and N139bn in savings
6. Project Aquila, implemented under President Jonathan, has helped reduced up to 20 million liters a day in PMS subsidy fraud by using technology to track the movement of petroleum products around Nigeria
7. He approved the compulsory retirement of a judge that dismissed a grievous corruption case against a Bank CEO before taking the defendant’s plea
8. He approved the sack of a judge that upheld the results of a fraudulent election in Osun State even though the Judge’s decision had benefitted his own party, PDP.
9. He approved the suspension of a judge that had sentenced a man, convicted of stealing pension funds, to a paltry fine instead of prison.
10. He doesn’t like to make a big show of it, because there is a lot more work to be done, but he is winning the war on corruption.
Source-FawardNigerai
Comment
by Bruce Bennett
Have you ever tried to describe someone without using common labels? In the course of normal conversation I find labels to be a common part of my speech. This observation is more apparent in monitoring blogs and responses or just watching a CNN news program.
People are conservatives, liberals, Democrats, Republicans, Americans, foreigners. Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Christians, poor, rich, employed and un-employed among a myriad of other descriptions. What makes us so dependent on labeling?
One opinion is that it helps us put everyone in a box and stack the boxes neatly for our own mental inventory. If labeling helps build a strong base for our own beliefs system, then labels themselves are the index cards of our classification of social order.
This week we have another terrible reminder of how labeling people can bring death and sorrow. France mourns the deaths of a number of people who saw their duty as nothing more than to satirize a particular founder of a religious sect. The response was immediate and disastrous. People do not like to be labeled and its getting more dangerous to make fun of particular sects and radical groups.
When we stop thinking about people as being a particular thing then I believe we open up a new world of tremendous opportunity. Is this a conversation you might overhear? "What kind of person do you think you'd like to hire for the job?" "I'd like a person who is bold, adventuresome, a self-starter, independent, honest, forthright, and faithful." "Are you going to hire a minority?" "Of course, I need to fill my quota of labels."
Vietnamese people moved in across the street from me. Sometimes I go over to the square for Chinese food. My friends are a little too liberal for me. They like to talk about the President as though he's done anything good. That's because I think they're Democrats. Not only Democrats, but Catholics.
You see. It's not a new world order, just order. Its always been and in the past existed in a much more malicious format than today. I have a friend who manages the local Burger King. Last month he lost his mother. She lived in Paris and he could not go to the funeral. When he spoke to me about it I became emotional inside for the sake of this genuine person.
When you read that paragraph, you wanted to know more didn't you? To have it truly make sense, I should have described his ethnic or cultural background. In that way, he would fit in one of those boxes. When I talk about him with people I often describe him in a certain way. Every time I do I wonder why that description matters.
How can we inventory people without labeling them? Its impossible. If our society decided tomorrow that people were the same how would something like Ferguson ever happen? We pretend not to be different, but when lines are drawn we step to the side where we are labeled.
At the end of the day I can't see things ever changing. This week I watched the movies Crash and Bulworth once more. I like these movies because they peel aside the defenses and tell the truth. One day, I hope to wake up and find that we all are living together in peace. Till then, good night all my Republican, conservative, white, middle-class, friends.
Bruce Bennett can be reached at click or by e-mailing bbennett@scott-clark.com.
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In continuation of President Goodluck Jonathan's efforts to make quality education accessible to all Nigerians, the Federal Government announced plans to establish Polytechnics and Colleges of Education in states where there are no such institutions. Minister of Education Ibrahim Shekarau disclosed this at an interactive session with
journalists in Kano.
He said in the light of the objectives, the present administration established 12 new universities, four polytechnics and three colleges of education across the country. “Mr President has two main focuses on education sector, to increase access and improve the quality of education at all levels,’’ the minister said.
As part of the effort to give the youth the opportunity to access education, the government established 127 Tsangaya primary schools in the northern part of the country. 49 female boarding secondary schools were also established to boost the girl-child education in the country. Shekarau noted the establishment of these institutions had greatly
increased the number of students currently undergoing various programmes in different tertiary institutions across the country.
President Jonathan has received credit for making sure all
states of the federation now have at least one federal
university each, helping move Nigeria forward.
SEOUL — Clasping his headphones and closing his
eyes as he sang into the studio microphone while
performing a peppy duet with one of South Korea’s
hottest actresses, spiky-haired Cha Kil-yong looked
every bit the K-pop star.
But Cha is not a singer or actor. No, he’s a unique
kind of South Korean celebrity: a teaching star.
And the song he was singing with Clara, a Korean
mega celebrity, in a music video that wouldn’t be
out of place on MTV? It was called “SAT jackpot!”
In this education-obsessed country, Cha is a top-
ranked math teacher. But he doesn’t teach in a
school. He runs an online “hagwon” — or cram
school — called SevenEdu that focuses entirely on
preparing students to take the college entrance
exam in mathematics.
Here, teaching pays: Cha said he earned a cool $8
million last year.
“I’m madly in love with math,” said Cha, looking
the height of trendiness in his crimson shirt and
pants and tweed jacket, in his office in Gangnam —
a wealthy part of Seoul famous for its conspicuous
consumption and featured in the song “Gangnam
Style.”
It’s hard to exaggerate the premium South Korea
places on education. This is a society in which you
have to get into the right kindergarten, so that you
can get into the right elementary school, then into
the right middle school and high school, and finally
into the right college. Which, of course, gets you
the right job and scores you the right spouse.
There’s even a phrase to describe the Korean
version of a helicopter mother: “chima baram” —
literally “skirt wind,” to describe the swish as a
mother rushes into the classroom to demand a
front-row seat for her child or to question grades.
Many Korean families split and live on opposite
sides of the world in pursuit of a better education:
The mother and children live in the United States
or some other English-speaking country, the better
to secure entry to a prestigious university
(preferably Harvard). The “goose father” continues
working in South Korea, flying in to visit when he
can.
All of this combines to make South Korea’s
equivalent of the SAT the most important event in
a young person’s life.
As such, the vast majority of teenagers here do a
double shift at school: They attend normal classes
by day but go to hagwons for after-hours study.
Increasingly, online hagwons are replacing
traditional brick-and-mortar cram schools. The
hagwons have become a $20 billion industry.
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This devotion to studying is credited with helping
South Korea consistently rank at the top of the
developed world in reading, math and science,
although the latest rankings from the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development also
show that Korean students come last when asked
whether they are happy at school. South Korea also
has the highest suicide rate in the developed world,
which many suggest is related to a high-stress
focus on education.
Some politicians and educators are questioning
whether things have gotten out of hand. But even
parents opposed to this punishing system find it
difficult to opt out — their children complain that
they can’t keep up if they don’t go to a hagwon.
That’s good news for instructors like Cha, who
started teaching at a hagwon to pay his way
through his PhD program.
About 300,000 students take his online class at any
given time, paying $39 for a 20-hour course
(traditional cram schools charge as much as $600
for a course). He teaches them tricks for taking the
timed exams, including shortcuts that students can
take to solve a problem faster.
Asked what makes him stand out, Cha said:
“Suppose you give the same ingredients to 100
different chefs. They would make different dishes
even though they’re working with the same
ingredients. It’s the same with a math class. Even
though it’s all math and all in Korean, you can use
different ingredients to come up with different
results.”
His studio is set up with a green chalkboard and
desks, and behind the camera are piles of props —
including hippo and Batman masks and a gold
sequined jacket.
“You’re not only teaching a subject, you also have
to be a multitalented entertainer,” said Cha,
declining to give his age and offering only that
he’d been working for 20 years.
On SAT day, he visits schools to offer
encouragement to test takers. He also does
television ads, endorsing products such as a red
ginseng drink meant to boost brain power.
Kwon Kyu-ho, a top-ranked literature teacher, also
appears with K-pop stars and has a lucrative side
business in celebrity endorsements, lending his
name to a chair meant to help people study better.
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Maintaining his position doesn’t require just good
lessons. Kwon, 33, also gets regular facials and
works out, and he said some teachers even have
stylists..
“I always wanted to be a teacher, but I feel that
regular school teaching has its limits. There is a
certain way you have to teach,” said Kwon, whose
lessons appear on the sites Etoos and VitaEdu.
“And, of course, I’m making a lot more money this
way.”
He wouldn’t disclose how much he earned, only
that it was “several millions” of dollars a year. The
secret of his success, Kwon said, was finding the
parts of tests that make most students stumble. He
focuses lessons on those problem areas.
This style of education has its upsides, he said.
“I think one of the benefits of private education is
that teachers compete with each other and try to
develop higher quality content,” he said. “We have
money. We can invest in ways that normal
schoolteachers can not.”
As President Park Geun-hye promotes a “creative
economy” as the key to taking South Korea to the
next level in its development, many analysts say
the country would do well to take a more creative
approach to education.
Lee Ju-ho, who was minister of education until last
year, is among them.
“All this late-night study could lead to problems in
enhancing their other skills, like character,
creativity and critical thinking,” he said. “Hagwon
is all about rote learning and memorization.”
Lee said all the problems stem from the college
admissions procedures, which have been slow in
looking beyond test scores to other criteria such as
extracurricular activities and personal essays, as is
common in many Western countries.
“We really need to change,” said Lee, who is now a
professor at the Korea Development Institute’s
School of Public Policy and Management.
Below are picture of Cha and his Teaching Toys
by Olusegun Fapohunda ·
YABATECH warns students against joining cults as the
polytechnic would no longer tolerate acts of indiscipline.
Authorities of the Yaba College of Technology (Yabatech) in
Lagos on Wednesday warned students against participating
in cultism, gangsterism and other vices that could endanger
their careers on campus.
The Director of the Public Relations Unite of the college, Mr
Charles Oni, gave the warning in an interview with the News
Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos.
Oni said the college would no longer tolerate acts of
indiscipline from students on campus.
He advised students to focus their attention on their studies,
which he said was the primary reason for their stay in the
college.
“We have zero tolerance for cultism and gangsterism and other
negative conducts on our campus; everybody is now being
closely watched.
“Our certificate is issue based on intellectualism; we want the
college to continue to produce graduates who will make the
college proud.’’
The director attributed students joining bad companies to a
lack of parental control, monitoring and love.
“Most parents have abandoned the training of their children to
schools, churches and mosques.
“Many students have gone astray because their parents and
guardians have failed in their role.”
Oni said that lecturers in the college had been saddled with
the responsibilities of educating and mentoring students on
morals.
“The lecturers have now imbibed the role of being parents to
their students rather than just being teachers.
“And with their role as both lecturers and parents, they will be
able to transform their students to better persons,’’ he said.
Oni said that the college authorities are also doing everything
possible to beef-up security on the campus.
“We have patrol vehicles going round the campus 24 hours
everyday to ensure safety on the campus.”
Oni recalled that some students of the college were rusticated
last August for indulging in cult activities after they were found
culpable.
He said that following the incident, the authorities had
organised various orientation courses for both fresh and
returning students to forestall a re-occurrence. (NAN)
Posted in Nigeria Polytechnics Updates
