Menene Mental Health Da Kuma Mental Disorders Tare Da Jiga-Jigan Misalai

by Salihu LukmanJanuary 3, 2023January 7, 2023Education / mental health1 Comment

Tare Da: Dr. Salihu Lukman

Gabatarwa

Bayan na fitar da maqala ta a game da ciwon aljanu a inda na tabbatar da cewa alamomin da muke gani wadanda muke yanke cewa mutum na dauke da ciwon aljanu, to wadannan alamomi ne na wani Mental Disorder mai suna Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) wanda aka fi sani da Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) a da. Yanayin saqonnin da na samu a game da wannan matsala ya qara tabbatar min da cewa mutane suna da qarancin wayewa a game da ilimin Mental Health wato lafiyan halayya (emotional) da kuma dabi’un (psychological) dan’Adam. A sabili da haka ne na ga dacewar in yi rubutu kashi-kashi a game da Mental Health tare da Mental Disorder wanda yake nufin gamayyan wasu alamomi wadanda suke yin illa ga yanda ka ke tsinkayan abubuwa (feel) da kuma yanda ka ke tunani (think).

Kaman yanda mafi yawancin ku ku ka sani ne cewa ni ba likita ba ne, ni Assistant Professor ne na Civil Engineering a jami’an da ake kira University of Hafr Al Batin, Saudi Arabia. Amma kasancewa na zauna da mutane da yawa masu Mental Disorders a inda har ma na ke daukan wasu in kai su asibiti wajen Psychiatrist (likitan dabi’u da halayyar dan’Adam) da kaina domin nema musu lafiya tare da cewa kuma ni mai sha’awa ne da bincike a game da Mental Disorders, hakan ya bani daman fahimtar wadannan matsalolin sosai. Saboda haka, duk wani Mental Disorder da zan yi tsokaci akai a cikin wadannan rubuce-rubucen da zan yi, to matsaloli ne wadanda na sansu sosai kuma na yi mu’amala da masu irin matsalolin na qut da qut ba wai kawai na karanta su bane ko kuma naji anyi bayanin su, a’a. Saboda haka, kaman yanda na yi kutse a bangaren ciwon sukari wato Diabetes saboda nima na taba samun cutan amma kuma na warke, har ta kai ga cewa na shiryar da mutane da dama da taimakon Allah (SWA) hanyar da za su bi domin su yaye kansu daga shan magani kuma su samu waraka ta hanyan kiyaye abin da za su ci tare da motsa jiki, ina fatan ma a wannan karon cewa Allah (SWA) zai albarkaci wadannan rubuce-rubucen da zan yi a game da Mental Disorders har mutane su ilmantu sosai domin kare Mental Health din su yanda ya kamata.

Menene Mental Disorder?

Kaman yanda na fara bayani a sama cewa Mental Disorder yana nufin tattaruwan wasu alamomi wadanda suke iya jirkitadda yanayin da mutum yake tsinkayan abubuwa da kuma yanda ya ke tunani da mu’amala da mutane. Irin wadannan alamomin suna saka mutum ya shiga cikin matsanancin damuwa (subjective distress) sannan kuma suna janyo matsala ko naqasa (impairment) a game da yanda mutum yake mu’amala da iyalin shi ko ‘yan’uwan shi (wato a gida), da abokan aikin shi ko kuma abokan karantun shi (pervasive). Irin wadannan alamomin za su iya jimawa mutum yana fuskantan su (persistent), ko kuma a wani lokaci sai su zo gadan-gadan kaman saukan ruwan sama (relapse) daga baya kuma sai su yi likimo kaman anyi ruwan an dauke (remission). A wani sa’in ma sau daya kacal za su faru (single episode).

Manyan abubuwan da suke kawo Mental Disorders sun hada da gado (genetics), yanayin muhallin da mutum ya taso (environment), dabi’un yau da kullum da aka dora mutum akai (daily habits), da kuma yanayin halittan mutum (biology). Domin qarin bayani, ka kalli bidiyon Dr. Maryam Almustapha.

https://www.tiktok.com/@drmaryamm_a/video/7152750984563903745?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7142501723353286146

Manyan Alamomi 17 Da Ke Nuna Cewa Kana Dauke Da Mental Disorder

Matsanancin damuwa ko tsoro (extreme worry or fear)
Matsanancin baqin ciki ko rashin kuzari (extremely sad or down)
Kasa maida hankali waje guda har mutum ya kasa fahimtar karatu ko kuma abin da yake karatawa (disorganized thinking or difficulty concentrating and learning)
Kwatsam, sai mutum ya ji tsananin farin ciki da annashuwa har na zuwa aqalla kwanaki 4 tare da yin ayyukan bazata kaman almubazzaranci, ko karuwanci wadanda za su iya cutar da mutum. (mania)
Jimawa kana jin matsanancin haushi yanda ana tabo ka sai bala’i (sustained or intense feelings or irritability or anger)
Guje ma abokai ko ‘yan’uwa ko qin yin mu’amalan da mutum ya saba yi da mutane ko a ayyukan sa na yau da kullum (avoiding friends or relatives and social activity)
Kasa fahimtar yanda zakayi mu’amala da mutane yanda ya dace (difficulties understanding or relating to other people)
Canji a yanda mutum yake samun yin bacci a inda mutum yake kasa yin bacci sosai yanda ya saba ko kuma yake yin baccin da ya wuce qima tare da rashin kuzari da kuma yawan jin tsananin gajiya koda kuwa bakayi aikin gajiya ba (sleep disturbance and fatigue)
Rashin cin abinci kaman yanda ka saba ko kuma cin abincin fiye da yanda ka saba (changes in eating habits)
Qarin kuzari ko kuma rashin shi a gado (changes in sex drive)
Kasa banbance zahiri tare da yin jiye-jiye ko gane-ganen abubuwan da babu su a zahiri tare da yarda da imani da abinda ba zai taba yiyuwa ba a zahiri (psychosis: hallucination and delusion)
Rashin fahimtar cewa ka canza a yanda ka saba sannan kuma dabi’un ka sun canza ko sun tabarbare (lack of insight)
Yin tatil da giya da kuma tunanin ta a kodayaushe ko kuma shan kwaya ko kuma shan magani har ya wuce qiman da ya kamata (drug abuse)
Yawan yin ciwon kai ko ciwon ciki ko ciwon da mutum ba ma zai iya siffanta shi ba takamaimai sannan kuma koda anje asibiti akayi gwaji ba za a ga wani matsala ba (somatic complaints)
Tunanin cutadda kanka ko kuma tunanin kashe kanka (self-harm or suicidality)
Tsananin damuwan yin qiba ko kuma yanda suran mutum yake (dysmorphic)
Kasa mu’amala da mutane ko kuma kasa yin aiki yanda mutum ya saba na yau da kullum ko kuma kasa jure gwagwarmayan rayuwa na yau da kullum saboda wadannan matsalolin 1 – 16. (socioeconomic dysfunction)

Idan kaga cewa daya ko kuma fiye da daya daga cikin wadannan manyan alamomin Mental Disorders sun tabbata a gare ka kuma ba tare da bayan ka sha kwaya bane sannan kuma baka da wani matsala na jiki wato physical illness, to ya kamata ka ga Psychiatrist ko Clinical Psychologist domin ya duba ka yanda ya kamata.

Idan kana neman cikakken sharhin wadannan alamomin, to ka kalli bidiyon Dr. Fox (kwararren Clinical Psychologist) mai suna, ‘17 Signs You Could Have a Mental Illness’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtBWqBenNQE&list=LL&index=68

Misalai Na Mental Disorders

Mu sani cewa akwai sama da 300 Mental Disorders wadanda aka tabbatar da su a likitance kuma sun bambamta da junan su wajen tsanani (severity) da kuma yanda suke saka damuwa (subjective distress) da naqasa (impairment) ga mai dauke su. Shin ko ka san cewa in’ina wato stammering ko stuttering yana daga cikin Mental Disorders? Ana kiran in’ina wanda mutum ya fara a yarinta Childhood Onset Fluency Disorder (COFD). Mutum zai iya samun waraka gabaki daya daga Mental Disorder kaman in’ina ya na bacewa kwata-kwata wani lokaci idan mutum ya girma ko kuma ya ragu sosai. Wasu Mental Disorders din kuma sai dai mutum ya fahimce su da kyau sannan kuma ya koyi yanda zai dunga kiyayewa idan alamomin sun taso mai ranga-ranga (Psychotherapy). A wasu lokutan ma har magani ake bayar wa ko kuma a gasa kwakwalwan (Electro-convulsive therapy – ECT). Amma fa ku sani da cewa ba a dakatar da shan maganin Mental Disorders tashi guda, sai dai a rage a hankali a hankali (tapering) kaman yanda Psychiatrist zai bada shawara idan buqatan hakan ta kama. Kuma yawanci ana shan su ne na tsawon lokaci, wasu wata 6, wasu har shekaru ma, wasu kuma muddin rai.

Ga wasu daga cikin alamomin Mental Disorders tare da ainihin sunayen su.

Tsananin jin tsoro tare da fargaba idan mutum ya ga kyankyaso, gizo-gizo, bera, ko yin allura, ko hawa jirgin sama da dai sauran su (Phobia)
Shiga matsanancin damuwa da mata ke yi a cikin satin qarshe kafin zuwan al’adan su a inda za a lura cewa wani abu na damun su sosai wasu har da ciwon gabbai da tsoka, tare da rashin iya maida hankali da saurin gajiya ko rashin jin qarfi sosai, ga saurin jin haushi da yin fada ko a gida ko a wajen aiki da dai sauran su (Pre-menstrual Dysphoric Disorder – PMDD). Ya kamata maza su laqanci alamomin wannan disorder din saboda kiyaye uwargida idan tana da shi, idan kuma ba haka ba, to za ayi dauki ba dadi. ☺️
Kasa samun bacci gabadaya ko kuma yin baccin dan kadan da daddare amma kuma gari na wayewa sai ka ji baccin ya zo. Idan ma zaka sami dama zaka iya yin bacci ma’ishi tun safe har rana koma zuwa yamma (Delayed Sleep-Phase Syndrome – DSPS, daya daga cikin bangaren Circadian Rhythm Sleep-Wake Disorder).
Yaro mai tsilla-tsilla wanda baya iya zama wuri guda a yanayin da ake da buqatan yin hakan, kuma baya iya yin wasa shiru ba tare da yana iface-iface ba da zabure-zabure. Kuma a makaranta ma yana yawan tsilla-tsilla a cikin ji koda kuwa akwai malami a ciki kuma yana da yawan wasa da hannun shi yayi tabe-tabe ko kuma qafan shi ga yawan guje-guje da tadi da batar da kayayyakin shi da rashin tsayar da hankali a wajen karatu ga saurin bada amsa a cikin aji koda kuwa ba a tambaye shi ba (Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder – ADHD).
Mai qa’ida, mai taurin kai wanda idan ya kafe a abu, to babu mai iya daga shi, mai tsananin kiyaye mutunci tare da bin dokoki sau da qafa, ga maqo (shi bai ci ba kuma bai bayar an ci ba) ko kuma tsantseni wajen kashe kudi. Sannan ya na da qoqarin ganin cewa duk wani aiki sai an yi shi batare da wani kuskure ba (Mr. Perfect), kuma wani lokaci ma garin neman ayi aiki dari bisa dari sai kuma a kasa gama aikin akan lokaci. Kuma ba shi da daga qafa, duk dokan da ya gindaya to dole a bishi a haka babu sassauci tare da son cewa sai anyi abu a yanda yake so ko ya tsara (bossy). Sannan kuma agogo ne sarkin aiki (workaholic), a office aiki, a gida aiki, hatta weekend har ma abin ya kai ga cewa iyali ma basa samun lokacin shi yanda ya kamata domin yin fira ko kuma fita shaqatawa a waje, babu abin da yafi darjantawa irin aikin shi (Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder – OCPD). Wannan daban ne da mai OCD.
Tsananin ji da kai da ganin cewa shi na musamman ne (grandiosity) da kuma matuqar son a yaba mai koda kuwa bai cancanci yabon ba tare da nuna halin ko in kula da yanayin da mutum ke ciki na buqata ko damuwa (lack of empathy). Sannan kuma yana amfani da yaudara wajen cin ma burin shi, ga tsananin ji-ji da kai (arrogant) da hassada da neman ganin bayan mutum (Narcissistic Personality Disorder – NPD).

Domin samun cikakken qarin bayani a kan wadannan Mental Disorders din da kuma yanda ake sarrafa su, ka nemi, ‘Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association)’ wanda za ka iya sauke shi daga wannan adireshin: https://t.me/elibrary_mobile/6658

Idan ka ga cewa kana dauke da daya daga cikin wadannan Mental Disorders din guda 6 tum ma ba 2-6 ba, to yakamata kaje kaga Psychiatrist domin ya binciki lafiyan ka da kyau. Mu sani cewa lafiya fa ba shine rashin cuta a jiki ba kaman ace jiwon kai, ciki, hawan jinni, sukari wato physical illness kenan, lafiya ta qunshi rashin physical illness da kuma rashin Mental Illness ko Mental Disorder. Saboda haka, samun dawwamammen Mental Health yana da matuqar muhimmanci saboda rashin shi zai iya haddasa ma mutum physical illness da yawa. Sai mu kula. Mental Disorder shi ne dai ake kira Mental Illness, ko Psychological Disorder ko Psychiatric Disorder.

Wanene Yakamata Ya Duba Mai Mental Disorder?

Da zaran mutum ya fuskanci cewa yana dauke da wani Mental Disorder ko kuwa wani nashi ne yake dauke da shi ko kuma daya daga cikin alamomin da na zayyana a sama (1-17) sun bayyana sai a garzaya zuwa asibiti domin a ga likitan dabi’u da halayyan dan’Adam wato Psychiatrist. A wasu garuruwan, babu Psychiatrist kwata-kwata, a irin wannan yanayi, sai ka nemi Clinical Psychologist idan za ka samu amma dai Psychiatrist ne yafi cancanta mutum ya gani da farko kafin ganin Clinical Psychologist.

Domin qarin bayani a game da wasu daga cikin abubuwan da na tattauna, ka karanta wannan maqalan mai taken, ‘Mental Health Basics: Types of Mental Illness, Diagnosis, Treatment, and More’. https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health

Sai mun hadu a kashi na gaba mai taken:

Wasu Daga Cikin Mental Disorders Wadanda Suka Shafi Mata Kadai: PMDD & GPPPD

Salihu Lukman, Assistant Professor ne na Civil Engineering a University of Hafr Al Batin, Saudi Arabia

Amsoshin da na ba wani a game da ciwon aljanu

by Salihu LukmanDecember 31, 2022January 7, 2023EducationLeave a Comment

Tare Da: Dr. Salihu Lukman

Mai sharhi: “Ba ina kore abinda kake da’awar shi ba amma bayanen ka ya nuna baka da ilmin ruqya a karkashin koyarwar masana da halayyar Aljanu.”

Amsa ta: Da’awar ka na cewa ba ni da ilmin ruqya a karkashin koyarwar masana da halayyar aljanu ba gaskiya ba ne. Daga jin zancen ka, baka sanni ba kuma baka san tarihin karatuna ba a wannan fagen. Ba wai ina cewa ni wani malamin ruqya ba ne, amma na sami horaswa akan ruqya daidai gwargwado tun sanda batun ruqya ya fara yaduwa a cikin mutane wato wajen 93-94, ban sani ba ko an haife ka a wannan lokacin saboda na ga kaman kai matashi ne.

Na fara samun horaswa na ilimin aljanu ne a wajen Mal. Idris Salihu wanda ke Kwarbai a cikin birnin Zaria wanda daga bisani limamin mu wato Mal. Ahmad Harun (limamin masallacin Dansabo wanda take a Lemu Zaria City) ya qara mana wannan ilimin tare da dabbaqawa. Wannan duk ya faru ne a tsakanin 93-95 muna matasa. Daga baya kuma da na fara halartan karatuttukan marigayi Mal. Albani Zaria wanda yafi kowani malami shahara wajen yada ilimin aljanu a Zaria a iya sani na. Shima ya karantar damu littafin ruqya wanda a lokacin itace littafin da tafi kowane littafi yin bayani akan ruqya wato Assarimulbattar sannan kuma ya hada mana da Wiqayatul Insan duka na Wahid Abdussalam Bali. Wannan bayan ya yi ta yin seminars a Kongo Campus a inda yake qara ilmantarwa a game da aljanu da ruqya tare da yi a aikace. Duk wadannan karatuttukan za ka iya samun su a YouTube channel dina: https://www.youtube.com/@drsalihulukman
A baya bayan nan, Mal. Maishago na Magume Zaria ya hada ni da Mal. Ayuba na Gidan Kwano. Mal. Ayuba ya kasance yaron Mal. Abubakar Gidan Zuma, Kongo Campus, kuma yana daya daga cikin mashahuran masu yin ruqya a Zaria kuma na lizimce shi sosai a inda na qara ilimin aljanu da kuma ruqya a wajen sa.
Saboda haka cewa da kayi wai bani da ilmin ruqya a karkashin koyarwar masana da halayyar Aljanu wannan iqirarin shashi fadi kawai ba shi da tushe. Da ma dai ace ka tambaye ni ne in fada maka karatun da na yi akan ruqya da halayyar aljanu da yafi dacewa akan yanda ka yi amfani da cewa na kawo wani abu wanda kai ka ke ganin ba haka ba ne ka yanke hukuncin cewa bani da ilimin abun ne bayan na yi tsokaci a cikin rubutu na cewa nima a kafin wannan binciken da na gano ina yin ruqya. Ina yin ruqya kimanin shekaru 28 da suka wuce. Kuma na kai wasu daga cikin ‘yan’uwa na wajen mashahuren masu yin ruqya a Zaria domin a cire musu aljanu. Saboda haka, ina da masaniya sosai akan ruqya da kuma duniyan aljanu.

Mai sharhi: “Shawara akan haka idan kana da wani nazari da kayi ko kuma kake so ka tabbatar da ra’ayin wasu mutane ka tsaya ka bayyana ra’ayin ka ba sai ka kore abinda ilmi da gwaji ya tabbatar da shi ba”

Amsa ta: Ka sani da cewa duk abubuwan da na rubuta a wannan post din, ra’ayi na ne ba na wani ba. Ba dakon ra’ayin wani nake yi ba. Tun sanda batun shigan aljani jikin mutum ya shahara (93-94), wasu mutane har ma da malamai sun qi yarda da abun kwata-kwata amma ni duk wanda ya sanni zai baka shedan cewa ni ada na gamsu da ciwon aljanu kaman yanda ake siffantawa. Daya daga cikin mata na wanda take kwararriyar likita ce ta taba fada min a shekarun baya cewa duk alamomin da ake siffanta masu ciwon aljanu da su, to likitancin Psychiatry na da ta cewa akan su. A lokacin da ta fada min wannan maganan sai na ji ban yarda ba kawai saboda a lokacin ina ganin cewa babu abin da zai iya gamsar dani a game da ire-iren abubuwan da masu ciwon aljanu suke yi idan ba ciwon aljanun kanshi ba. Sannan kuma a lokacin na kasance ba ni da wani ilimin halayyar dan’Adam wato Psychology sannan kuma ilimina a kan Mental Disorders bai taka kara ya karya ba.

Amma daga baya, da na tsunduma yin bincike a game da Psychology da kuma Mental Disorders, ni da kaina na ci karo da wannan Dissociative Identity Disorder din. Bayan zurfafa bincike akan shi sai na gano cewa lallai shine Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) wanda mata ta ta taba fada min a shekarun baya wanda a gaskiya ni na ma manta cewa ta taba fada min komai a game da MPD.

Saboda haka, wadannan abubuwan dana gabatar duka abubuwa ne wanda ilimin zamani na Psychiatry suka tabbatar da su babu wani tambaba. Amma bance dole sai ka yarda da abin da na fada ba kamar yanda nima a baya na qi yarda da abin da mata ta ta fada min a game da ciwon aljanu har sai da na yi bincike na na gano hakan ni da kaina, kaima ina baka shawaran cewa ka zurfafa bincike a game da Mental Disorders ko da kuwa zai kama ka tuntubi Psychiatrists ne ko kuma Clinical Psychologists akan batun. Ilimi yana da matuqar fadi.

Har yanzu mutanen mu basu karbi likitancin zamani ba yanda ya kamata. Har yanzu wasu daga mutanen mu ba sa son zuwa asibiti sai abu ya baci tukuna wasu kuma har sai sun kusa kaiwa gargara. Imanin mutane a kan lafiyan su ya fi tafiya wajen masu bada maganin gargajiya. Ba ina cewa kada mutane suje wajen masu maganin gargajiya bane a’a, amma dole musan matsayin da za mu ajiye ko wannen su. Masu maganin gargajiya wadanda suke da tsantseni za ka ga cewa idan ka je musu da wani matsala, za su ce maka ka fara zuwa asibiti ayi maka gwaje-gwaje idan kuma abin ya ci tura to sai ka zo wajen su domin suga abin da za su iya yin maka. Ina kyautata zaton cewa da yawa daga masu bada maganin gargajiya a yanzu ba sa yin haka. Abin har ya kai ga wasu masu maganin gargajiya za ka ji su suna da’awar cewa wai suna bada maganin waraka daga Cancer, HIV, Hepatitis B, Kidney, Sickler da dai sauran manyan cututtukan da har yanzu ba su da magani a likitance. Idan da da gaske ne suna warkarwa daga wadannan cututtukan da suka addabe mu to ai da yau babu sauran mai dauke da wadannan cututtukan a NIgeria. A yawancin lokuta, suna fakewa da cewa maganin su yana da NAFDAC Registration, sai su yi nuni kaman ai har ma NAFDAC ta tabbatar da ingancin maganin su. Mutane su sani cewa abin da NAFDAC kadai take yi shine tabbatar da cewa mutum zai iya amfani da maganin ba tare da maganin ya cutar da shi ba kadai. Alal misali, idan ance wannan maganin sickler ne, to abin da NAFDAC zata yi kawai shine ta gwada magani ta gani cewa ba zai yi ma mutum illa ba idan ya sha amma ba za ta gwada maganin ba akan wanda yake da cutan sickler ta gani cewa ko zai warke daga ciwon ba. Mutane ya kamata su gane wannan. Mutane ya kamata su rungumi likitancin zamani da kyau saboda ni a gani na ma yana daya daga cikin mu’u’juzozin manzon Allah (SWA). Duk da yake a zamanin sa babu irin wadannan cigaba da muke da shi na wannan zamanin amma kuma a zamanin al’umman Annabi Muhammadu ne kawai aka samu wannan cigaban shiyasa zaka ga yawancin qasashen musulmai sun rungumi likitancin zamani sosai ba tare da wani kyama ba. Na ga cewa kana yin karatu ne a Dubai, ban sani ba ko ka taba ganin shagon maganin gargajiya a can. Tsawon shekaru 12 da na yi a Saudiyya, ban taba ganin shagon maganin gargajiya ba har ila yau. Mu kuwa a Nigeria ka ce mune cibiyar yada maganin gargajiya na duniya. Allah Ya sa mudace, amin.

Salihu Lukman, Assistant Professor ne na Civil Engineering a University of Hafr Al Batin, Saudi Arabia

Tagged : aljani / did / mental disorder / mpd

Ciwon Aljanu Ne Ko Kuwa Dissociative Identity Disorder?

by Salihu LukmanDecember 31, 2022January 7, 2023Education1 Comment

Tare Da: Dr. Salihu Lukman

Ina so in dan yi ma mutane ne wani tsokaci a game wasu cututtukan halayyan dan’Adam wato Mental/Psychiatric/Psychological Disorders wadanda yawancin mutane suke dangantawa da cewa aljani ne ya shiga mutum ko kuma a wasu lokutan ace an yi ma mutum sammu ko sihiri.

Ku sani cewa ba wai ina so in ce babu duniyar aljanu ne ba kwata-kwata ko kuma in ce aljani ba zai iya shiga jikin dan’Adam ba, a’a. Abin kawai da ni ke so in tabbatar a nan shine su wadannan cututtukan wanda zan ambato su a qasa likitocin halayyan dan’Adam (Psychiatrists) sun tabbatar da cewa wadannan cututtuka ne wadanda suka shafi halayyan mutum wato Mental Disorders kuma wasun su ma suna da maganin zamani na asibiti wanda idan mutum ya sha zai iya warkewa ko kuma samun sauqi, wasun su kuma Clinical Psychologists ko kuma Therapists ko kuma Psychiatrists wadanda suka sami horo a bangaren Psychotherapy za su iya warkar da mutum ko kuma su koyar da kai hanyoyin da zaka iya rage illolin abin da ke damun ka. Akwai qarancin wadannan kwararrun a Nigeria sosai.

Mutane suna da wani dabi’a na danganta wa aljani ko kuma sihiri duk wani abun da suke ganin cewa ya saba ma hankali da kuma dabi’a ta dan’Adam ko kuma bako ne. Alal misali, a da ana cewa cutan shan Inna wato Polio cuta ce wanda aljani ko aljana mai suna Inna ya/ta ke shafan mutum har ya/ta saka mai cutan a inda daya daga cikin qafafuwan mutum zai shanye ya kasa sarrafuwa. Daga baya, sai likitoci suka tabbatar da cewa cutan shan Inna ba aljani ne ke kawo shi ba, wata kwayar cuta ce mai suna Poliovirus wanda a halin yanzu kusan an kawar da cutan a Nigeria dama sauran qasashen duniya.

Mental Disorders din da zan yi dan tsokaci akan su ba irin Polio ba ne wanda wata kwayan cuta ke jawo wa. Su Mental Disorders cututtuka ne wadanda ake samu ta gado wato Nature/Genetics ko kuma yanayin muhallin da mutum ya taso ko kuma abubuwan da suka faru da mutum yayin girman sa wato Nurture.

(1) Dannau (Sleep Paralysis): Dannau dai wani yanayi ne wanda mutum ke shiga a bacci sai ka ji ka dan farka amma kuma ka kasa motsi kwata-kwata kaman an danne ka, tare da zufa da numfashi sama-sama, a wani lokaci ma har da sleep-related hallucinations wato jiye-jiye ko gane-gane wanda bayan dan wani lokaci (daqiqai zuwa minti 2) kuma sai ka dawo daidai wato sai ka iya motsa gabban jikin ka kaman wanda ya danne ka din ya tafi.

Wannan shine ake kira Sleep Paralysis, kuma mafi yawan lokaci yana kama mutanen da ke dauke da wadannan Mental Disorders din ne kaman insomnia, narcolepsy, depression, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Domin cikakken qarin bayani a kan dannau da kuma yanda ake maganin shi, ka bibiyi wadannan hujjojin a qasa:

(i) Bidiyon Dr. Maryam Almustapha: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSGyTxoOADY

(ii) https://www.healthline.com/health/sleep/isolated-sleep-paralysis

(iii) Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association). Page 375. https://t.me/elibrary_mobile/6658

(2) Shigan Aljani Jikin Mutum Ko Kuma Shafan Aljanu: Ana cewa aljani ya shiga mutum ne ko kuma ya kama shi idan wani lokaci mutum ya kan shiga wani halin da tabi’an sa da yanayin sa tare muryan sa duk sai su canza. Sai kaga mutum yana magana da muryar da ba a sanshi da shi ba. A wannan yanayin sai ace wai aljani ne ya kama shi kuma ma aljanin ne yake magana a bakin shi mutumin. Haka ko na iya faruwa ne haka kawai ko kuma a sa’ilin da ake karantawa mai ciwon Al-Qur’ani wato Ruqya. A lokacin yin Ruqya, ana iya yin magana da su wadanda ake zaton wai aljanu ne wadanda ke jikin mutum ko da kuwa suna da yawa. Wani lokaci za a ce mutum yana da aljanu 2, 5, 10, ko kuma ma fiye da haka sannan kuma duk sanda daya daga cikin aljanun ya halarto mai, to yanayin shi gabadaya zai canza, wani lokaci, zai san me ya ke yi a wani lokaci kuma ba zai tuna komai ba har sai ya dawo cikin hayyancin sa. Mutum zai iya yin tafiya zuwa wani wuri kaman ace ya tashi daga gidan shi zuwa kasuwa ko kuma wani gari daban amma kuma sai ya kasa tuna yanda akayi har ya yi wannan tafiya sai ace ai aljani ne ya dauke shi ya kaishi wajen. Hakazalika, za ka iya ganin kayayyakin kasuwa amma kuma ba za ka iya tuna sanda ka tafi kasuwan ba kayi siyayyan kayayyakin, sai ace wai aljani ne kawo maka. Makuwa ma tana iya faruwa da mutum. Sannan kuma za ka iya yin jiye-jiye na maganganu ko kuma gane-gane (hallucinations). Wani yana iya neman cutar da kansa ta hanyar azabtar da kansa ko kuma neman kashe kanshi idan ya shiga yanayin da ake ganin cewa aljani ne ya halarto shi. Da yawancin mutane sun tafi akan cewa ire-iren wadannan alamomin da na lissafta alamomin cewa aljani ya shiga jikin mutum kuma shine yake saka shi yake yin irin wadannan ayyuka.

Amma da na zurfafa bincike a kan cututtukan da suka shafi halayyar dan’Adam wato Mental Disorders sai na gano cewa abin da muke kira da ciwon aljanu ko kuma shafan aljani ba komai bane face wata Mental Disorder ne wanda likitocin halayyar dan’Adam (Psychiatrists) ke kira da Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) wanda ada ake kira da Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) ko kuma Split Personality Disorder (SPD). Yawancin mutanen da suke dauke da DID za a ga cewa suna kuma dauke da wasu Mental Disorder(s) abin da likitoci ke kira Cormobidity kaman PTSD, depressive disorders, personality disorders, da dai sauran su. Idan mutum yana da wannan cutan, to ya garzaya asibiti domin ganin Psychiatrist wanda zai duba yanayin da kake ciki domin maganin abubuwan da kake ji. Likitan zai iya baka magani ko kuma ya sa ayi maka Psychotherapy. Akwai turawa ma da yawa wadanda suke tattare da wannan cutan, saboda haka wannan ba cuta bane ta take shafan Musulmai kawai kaman yanda wasu ke tsammani. Kafin in gano Dissociative Identity Disorder, nima ina yin Ruqya ga wanda ake zaton cewa aljani ya shafa. Kuma an sha yin magana da aljani (alter) a gabana. Amma a yanzu na gane cewa a hakika ba aljani bane ake magana da shi, yanayin mutum ne wato personality ne kawai yake canzawa sai a dauka kaman cewa aljani ne ya hallaro. Ku gane cewa ba ina cewa babu aljani bane kwata-kwata, ko kuma ina cewa aljani ba zai iya shiga jikin mutum ba, abin kawai da ni ke so mutane su gane shine, abin da muke kira da ciwon aljani ko kuma shiga ko shafan aljani to ba komai bane illa wani Mental Disorder ne mai suna Dissociative Identity Disorder kamar yanda a da ake cewa dannau aljani ke danne mutum wanda daga baya Psychiatrists suka gano cewa a hakika ba aljani ba ne kawai wani alama ce ta Mental Disorder wanda ake kira da Sleep Paralysis. Abubuwannan suna da matuqar mamaki amma kuma ku gane cewa duk inda muke tsammanin kwakwalwar dan’Adam ta kai to ta wuce nan. Tana da abin ban mamaki sosai.

Domin cikakken qarin bayani a game da Dissociative Identity Disorder wato abin da ake kira ciwon aljanu da kuma yanda ake maganin shi, ka bibiyi wadannan hujjojin a qasa:

(i) Bidiyon da akayi fira da wata mai ‘aljanu’ (alters) 11 kuma daya daga cikin ‘aljanun’ ta hallara a yayin firan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0kLjsY4JlU

(ii) Bidiyon Dr. Ramani Durvasula a game da DID: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i-p3g3Epm8

(Iii) https://www.healthline.com/health/dissociative-identity-disorder

(iv) Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition, DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association). Page 292. https://t.me/elibrary_mobile/6658

(3) Sammu/Sihiri: Na yarda cewa za a iya yin ma mutum sihiri ko sammu kuma ta kama shi da ikon Allah. Amma abin da na lura da shi shine, mutane suna da saurin cewa an yi ma mutum sihiri da zaran yanayin wasu abubuwa na daban da bai saba yi ba ko kuma idan dabi’ar sa ta canza akan mutane ko kuma akan aikin sa ko karatun sa. Ga misalai akan haka:

(a) Wanda ya gudu daga wajen aikin sa ko makaranta, ko kuma ya daina zuwa aikin/makarantan kwata-kwata, ko kuma sai ya je wajen aikin/makarantan amma kuma sai ya kasa yin aikin/karatun gabadaya, ko kuma mutum ya daina fita waje kwata-kwata ya maqale a dakin shi a koda yaushe kuma baya son shiga jama’a sannan ga qazanta ko kuma yawan bacci ko rashin bacci. Ko kuma mutum yayi ta ciwon jiki, kai, ko ciki amma kuma duk gwajin da akayi a asibiti bai nuna wani cuta ba. Mutane suna da saurin alaqanta wadannan alamomi da cewa an yi ma mutum sammu ne alhali akwai tarin Mental Disorders din da za su iya sa mutum aikata duka wadannan ayyukan kaman depressive disorders, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, schizoid personality disorder, somatic symptom disorder, da dai sauran su. Idan ka ji daya daga cikin wadannan alamomin, to kai yi marmaza ka garzaya asibiti wajen Psychiatrist domin a duba a gano abin da ke damun ka domin ayi maka maganin da ya dace kafin abubuwan su tabarbare.

(b) Mutum ya dunga jin maganganu ko kuma gane-gane (hallucinations), tare da magana mara kan gado ko da sauri-sauri sannan da jin kai (grandiosity) ko kuma yarda da abin da ba zai yiwu ba (delusion) kaman mutum yace shi Mahdi ne wanda zai zo qarshen zamani, da dai sauran dabi’u mara kan gado kaman kashe-kashen kudi ba tare da tunani ba, ko kuma aikata wasu ayyukan da za su iya kawo ma mutum illa. Wanda ya ji irin wadannan alamomin ko kuma ya ga wani na kusa da shi yana dauke da wadannan alamomin to sai ya garzaya asibiti wajen Psychiatrist domin neman magani saboda akwai Mental Disorders da yawa da za su iya jawo wadannan alamomin kaman schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, da dai sauran su. Schizophrenia ta na daya daga cikin cututtukan da suke sa mutum ya koma mahaukaci tuburan idan dai har ba a yi maganin ta ba. Wasu daga cikin wadannan Mental Disorders idan ba a yi maganin su ba za su iya sa mutum ya yi tafiya akan titi tsirara ko kuma ya dunga dukan mutane ko kuma ya dunga sunbatu. Saboda haka a kula. A madadin da anga irin wadannan alamun a ce ai sammu ne, gara ayi marmaza a garzaya asibiti domin neman magani.

Daga qarshe, ka sani cewa mutane ba sa son zuwa ganin Psychiatrist saboda gudun ace sun haukace daga baya ayi ta yi da su wato stigma. Ka sani cewa shi Psychiatrist yana duba daga mai ciwon kai har zuwa wanda ake ganin cewa mahaukaci ne tuburan. Saboda haka, da zaran mun ji ba daidai ba a yanayin yanda muka saba ayyukan mu a wajen aiki ne ko kuwa a gida ne ko kuwa a alaqar mu ne da sauran mutane, to mu yi sauri mu tafi wajen Psychiatrist saboda a duba mu. A lokuta da dama, masu Mental Disorders ba sa son kai kansu wajen likita domin ya duba su, saboda haka, dole wanda yake jibintar lamarin su ko kuma yake kusa da su kaman uba, uwa, miji, mata, yaya, aboki da dai sauran su su kula sannan suyi abinda ya dace wajen garzayawa asibiti da zaran anga cewa akwai buqatan haka.

Salihu Lukman, Assistant Professor ne na Civil Engineering a University of Hafr Al Batin, Saudi Arabia

Tagged : aljani / did / mental disorder / mpd

ASUU Strikes, Subsidy Removal and Privatization of Nigerian Universities – Charting the Way Forward

by Salihu LukmanMarch 23, 2022September 19, 2022academic / Education / Mentorship2 Comments

Written By: Salihu Lukman (PhD)

Petroleum subsidy

Cambridge Dictionary has defined subsidy as the ‘money given by a government or an organization to reduce the cost of producing food, a product, etc., and to help to keep prices low’. The official price for petrol, also known as the Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), is N162 – 165 per liter. On March 5, 2022, BusinessDay Newspaper reported that the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC) claims that it pays N168 per liter as a subsidy and that the total daily petrol consumption in the country is 60 million liters. Accordingly, the monthly subsidy becomes N302.4 billion against an average of about N250 billion for the past recent months. This subsidy is expected to skyrocket as a result of the appreciation of the price of a barrel on the international market due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent banning of Russian crude oil by the US. Historically, General Olusegun Obasanjo introduced fuel subsidy in 1977 under his regime with the promulgation of the Price Control Act.

Subsidy removal & consequences

BBC Pidgin has reported that Nigeria spent about 10 trillion Naira on petroleum subsidies between 2006 – 2018. Former senate president, Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki, while appearing on the Politics Today program on Channels TV held in March, disagreed with the daily petrol consumption peddled by the NNPC. He purports that the actual daily consumption according to his findings does not exceed 30 – 45 million liters. According to him, fuel racketeers are the main beneficiaries of the subsidy. The smuggling of the product into the neighboring countries where it can be sold at much higher prices has been identified as one of the sources through which the subsidized product is being lost.

All previous administrations and regimes from 1979 to date have tried to remove subsidies by increasing the price of petrol. Complete subsidy removal is what the petroleum economists call full deregulation of the downstream sector of the petroleum industry. More than N3 trillion is expected to be spent on subsidies alone in 2022. The government claims time and again that its cash inflow cannot sustain the payment of subsidy on petrol and that it will surely remove all petrol subsidies in due course in a similar way that it removed all subsidies on power. Complete removal of fuel subsidy will surely lead to an inflation of market commodities, transportation, and some services. While subsidy removal will increase Nigeria’s gross domestic product (GDP), it will detrimentally affect household income, especially in poor households which constitute the majority of Nigeria’s populace.

The current state of our educational system

Basic/secondary education

In August 2020, I wrote two articles in which I exhaustively shared my views on the state of our educational systems at the basic/secondary level and university level. The first piece is titled: Education, My Journey & the Present State of Affairs – Primary & Secondary Education (Part 1). I will reproduce some portions of the piece.

‘Let me begin by saying that anyone whose age is around 40 years and above, will – without any fear of contradiction – agree with me that the Nigerian educational system has been experiencing serious and continuous devaluation for at least the past 2 decades. The one-time excellent and qualitative educational system has been experiencing a sharp and rapid decline at all levels, viz, primary, secondary, and tertiary. Many articles have been written in the past to buttress the poor state of our educational system, I choose to add to the list of these articles by highlighting some salient points that require urgent consideration by all stakeholders especially the Government (at all levels: Local, State & Federal), parents and educational administrators, using this memoir. This is borne out of my 23-year teaching experience at all levels (primary, secondary, remedial, diploma, undergraduate, and postgraduate) in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. Given the enormous challenges facing the educational sector, the need to urgently declare a “State of Emergency” in the educational sector cannot be overemphasized with a view to holistically overhaul the system such that our large population becomes our greatest asset rather than our greatest undoing.’

While reviewing the Kaduna State Government’s intervention in education under the leadership of Mal. Nasir El-Rufai, I have this to say.

‘There were 4,250 public primary schools when he took over as Executive Governor of the State in 2015, 50 % of whom were sitting on a bare floor due to lack of furniture. About 2/3, representing 67 % or 22,000 of the total 33,000 teachers were deemed ‘incompetent’ to teach after failing to score at least 75 % in a structured primary 4 examination. They were sacked to give way to the recruitment of 25,000 qualified teachers.’

Additional recruitment of several secondary school teachers has been undertaken and the new teachers have already received their appointment letters since August 2021 but up till now, they have not been posted to various secondary schools by the Ministry of Education to help in filling the manpower gap that has ravaged the public schools in the state.

On the infrastructural decay, I have this to say.

‘About 700 public primary schools have so far been renovated and the Governor’s effort in providing public schools with the required infrastructure and equipment has been commended by all irrespective of political party affiliation. Love him or hate him, he is truly a pacesetter and undoubtedly a visionary leader.’

However, providing adequate infrastructure and qualified teachers alone cannot guarantee the graduation of high-quality students from public schools. It is not unheard of to find a junior secondary school pupil who cannot write down his name correctly. State governments, most especially in the north, need to set some minimum learning outcomes for all primary and secondary schools using their quality control agencies and ensure that they are achieved otherwise all the investments in infrastructure and qualified teachers will be in vain. Do you wonder why Unity Schools, i.e., Federal Government Colleges (FGCs) produce high-quality graduates that can beat their counterparts from the best private schools? State governments need to understudy how FGCs are efficiently churning out excellent graduates with a view to improving the quality of graduates from public schools.

Tertiary education

The second piece which addresses the problems bedeviling university education is titled: Education, My Journey & The Present State of Affairs – University Education (Part 2). You may wish to spare some time to read this detailed piece if you did not read it before.

Core issues of ASUU struggles

Let me reproduce some portions from the piece I wrote on university education in 2020 when ASUU was on strike. These contending issues are still unresolved today and ASUU is already in its 2^nd month of another strike action.

‘These ASUU strikes which dominated the 90s culminated in the signing of an agreement between ASUU and FGN in 2001 with a view to reverse the decay in the university system, reduce brain drain by enhancing their remuneration, ensuring university autonomy and academic freedom, and to restructure Nigerian universities through massive and sustained financial intervention, among others. Also, the ASUU-FGN 2001 agreement was to be periodically reviewed every 3 years. Every right-thinking and rational human being who is conversant with the learning conditions in Nigerian universities will support ASUU struggles as per the above terms. Well, students may not be expected to be sympathetic to ASUU struggles for the obvious reason that their graduation will always be affected. As an undergraduate, I vowed never to join the union should I become an academic staff because of the 20 months added to my undergraduate residency period, due to ASUU strikes. When I joined as a lecturer in 2006, I deliberately refused to fill the ASUU membership form for the above reason but I was later registered automatically by the union by virtue of my being an academic staff. That membership allowed me to follow ASUU activities and struggles religiously until 2009 when I resigned from my membership in the union. ASUU embarked on monthly deductions in my salary for the building of its national secretariat in Abuja without following due process, we were not informed in writing before the deductions began. I hope to rejoin the union one day. Despite FGN’s acknowledgment of the rot in the university system through its needs assessment report of 2012 under Prof. Mahmud Yakubu’s committee, not much has changed. Since 2001 when the agreement was first conceived and ratified to date, FGN has been continuously reneging time and again which always leads to preventable ASUU strikes every now and then in the university education system and by extension, the remaining tertiary education systems run by Polytechnics and FCEs. To me, the simple way to curb and prevent these strikes that have bedeviled our tertiary education system is for the FGN, through the Federal Ministry of Education, to do the needful by providing the needed fund to turn around these universities for the better and improve the relatively ‘poor’ remuneration of the academic staff of universities. The current Minister of Education, Mal. Adamu Adamu accepted FGN’s failure in fulfilling its own part of the bargain in the following comment:

“I must confess that government has not fulfilled its own part of the bargain. Although we are unhappy that ASUU went on strike without fulfilling due process and giving us good notice, we realised that we promised something and did not fulfil it”

–Mallam Adamu Adamu, Minister of Education, August 15, 2017.

The two main contending issues that ASUU insists must be implemented before it calls off the strike are (1) implementation of the University Transparency and Accountability Solution (UTAS) in paying salaries for its members instead of the current Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS) which has been used to systematically reduce the net take-home pay of the academics as a result of inserting some bogus deductions and (2) implementation of the new condition of service or simply, salary increment which was renegotiated by a government-appointed team and ASUU. This renegotiation has been completed in May 2021.

On the first contending issue, the government declared, through the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) that UTAS has failed the integrity test. NITDA had previously expressed its satisfaction with UTAS as a suitable solution for salary payment in our universities when it conducted an integrity test on UTAS in August 2021 in the presence of relevant government agencies as reported by the ASUU president, Prof. Emmanuel Osodeke. On the second contending issue, the government set up another renegotiation team to renegotiate the already concluded renegotiation which was completed in May 2021 on the grounds that some of the proposed allowances were too high and needs to be renegotiated. Consequently, ASUU extended its 1-month warning strike by 8 weeks.

The foregoing contending issues all affect the remuneration of the academics which is currently extremely poor when compared to what their counterparts obtain in other federal government agencies. Imagine, a newly promoted academic to the final rank of a professor earning just about N333,000, i.e. $580.

On the poor remuneration and its attendant negative impacts, I have this to say in my 2020 article on university education.

‘FGN should understand that if lecturers are not paid well enough to take care of their basic responsibilities, they will surely search for alternative means of livelihood which could be by engaging in another job on a part-time or even full-time basis (e.g. business, consultancy, running a firm, farming, etc.). These jobs would take their time so much that they cannot give their best to their primary assignment. I am not against lecturers taking part-time jobs like consultancy or farming. However, you find that in the long term, these part-time jobs systematically and unofficially replace their primary jobs. ‘Self-preservation is the first law of nature’, man would do anything to survive, whether legal or illegal. The terms ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’ have now become relative terms in Nigeria and are purely subject to one’s interpretation and perspective because of the harsh conditions that people find themselves in. Who will ultimately be at the receiving end? The poor students – our leaders of tomorrow. It is not uncommon to hear of full-time lecturers who come to the university only once a week, or once in a month because they are busy attending to their side businesses or jobs elsewhere. This will only worsen the university education system further. The Government can reverse this unfortunate trend if it wishes. No wonder, studying abroad is now more rampant than at any time in the past. About 13 thousand Nigerians are currently studying in America alone. We have many Nigerians studying in Malaysia, the UK, China, Saudi Arabia, India, Ghana, and even Niger Republic. Some of them would engage in other untoward and corrupt practices such as extorting money from students to pass them in their courses, diverting research funds for personal use i.e., if they have access to one, etc. Local and international brain drain. Those who can get jobs at other lucrative MDAs or private firms would resign from their university jobs and go for a greener pasture. Others who have internationally recognized qualifications would get jobs abroad and leave the country for good or for only God knows when. Universities have now become ‘transit camps’, where you temporarily start before you can get a better job. I am not saying that lecturers should earn the highest salary in the land, no! All I’m saying is that lecturers should earn a decent salary just enough to keep them on the job and enable them to give their best. Nobody would go as far as obtaining a PhD only for him to remain a pauper. You have many PhDs that cannot afford to buy a car. Many lecturers cannot pay their rent without doing an annual ‘contribution’. They become more affected when their salaries are stopped by the Government whenever they are on strike to press home their demands. The Government would not honor an agreement she had entered into with the union for reasons best known to her, yet, she would starve the innocent souls by cutting off their meager livelihoods for months. This, to say the least, is the highest level of injustice. No country can survive if she stands on the pillars of injustice.’

Incessant ASUU strikes and privatization of universities

Some people are of the opinion that ASUU strike has failed to achieve any meaningful outcome, hence, ASUU should change its tactics, or better still, accept the privatization of universities as the only lasting solution to their demands.

One of the best outcomes of ASUU struggles is the creation of TETFUND. On TETFUND, I have this to say.

‘TETFund (Tertiary Education Trust Fund) scholarship for academic staff was introduced in 2008. By 2010, it had spread to most institutions. This helped increase the number of academic staff who obtained PhDs abroad (mostly in Malaysia) or did bench-work in other countries such as South Africa or the USA. Now, foreign-trained PhDs have flooded our universities and some polytechnics & FCEs.’

This is in addition to countless infrastructural projects undertaken by TETFUND which resulted in addressing the infrastructural deficit in our tertiary institutions. TETFUND thrives on just 2 % education tax paid from the assessable profit of companies registered in Nigeria.

If the government understands any other language apart from the strike, then ASUU would not have been embarking on strikes whenever it wants to press home its demands. People should also remember that strike is always the last straw when all negotiations hit a dead end. Academics suffer more during the strike because their salaries which may be their only source of income are usually stopped by the government. Can you imagine that ASUU has to always go on strike before its members can be paid their arrears of Earned Academic Allowance (EAA)? EAA is always paid in arrears after it has accumulated for several years because the government did not find it suitable to include the allowance in the annual budget of the universities which would have paved the way for paying the allowance as and when due without the need to embark on any strike before it is paid. Much as I hate strikes, to tell you the truth, I have a phobia for ASUU strikes, but I cannot blame ASUU for these incessant strikes. I can assure you that ASUU will continue to embark on strikes for the welfare of its members, for the infrastructural decay on our campuses, and by extension for the brighter future of the teeming Nigerian students until that day when Nigeria will be blessed with a government that will accord university education the much-needed attention it deserves.

Another school of thought argues that the government does not possess the financial wherewithal to address ASUU demands and that the only viable solution is the privatization of all universities as obtains in most developed nations such as North America and Europe. To me, this is tantamount to comparing apples with mangoes instead of comparing apples with apples. Rather than trying to force privatization on Nigerian universities by looking at the US or Europe, I think it is better if we try to copy from some of the developing nations like South Africa, Ghana, or Saudi Arabia.

For the sake of discussion, let us assume that the government does have enough funds to efficiently run the current universities even though it keeps on creating new ones every now and then – how interesting and convenient to hide under paucity of funds when it comes to effective maintenance of the current universities – is privatization the only solution? I intend to provide an alternative to privatization vis-à-vis the subsidy removal palliatives that the government intends to provide to the poor masses, because in my view, Nigeria is not yet ripe for privatization of her universities.

Firstly, subsidy removal is only a matter of when is it going to be completely removed not a matter of whether the government will completely remove it. Even Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter of crude oil in the world has removed the petrol subsidy. Petrol sells at SR2.18 (N329) per liter in Saudi Arabia and the price undergoes a monthly review. Yet, citizens and residents who work in the government sector enjoy free education in public schools at all levels and free healthcare services at all government hospitals even before the subsidy removal. The dollar to riyal exchange rate has been stable for time immemorial. Can we also enjoy these goodies in Nigeria using the money that would accrue from the subsidy removal rather than giving N5,000 stipend monthly to about 40 million poor masses as indicated by the Finance Minister?

Based on the current price of petrol and Nigeria’s daily consumption, the monthly subsidy stands at around N300 billion. I have the following proposal on how to spend the money that would accrue from subsidy removal instead of giving 40 million poor Nigerians N5,000 per month. Over 40 % of Nigerians live below the poverty line. Hence, there are more than 80 million poor Nigerians, not just 40 million. Hence, there is a need for an all-inclusive solution that will go a long way to cushion the effects of subsidy removal on all Nigerians not just 20 % of the total population.

Create a new agency that will receive N200 billion monthly from the NNPC instead of giving out this money to just 40 million poor Nigerians N5,000 per month.
Use the money to declare education free for all at all levels (primary, secondary and tertiary) and improve the standard of education at all levels to such an extent that private schools will no longer be appealing to the masses as they used to be in the 70s and 60s.
Use the money to declare free healthcare for all and improve the standard and quality of our healthcare delivery system to such an extent that medical tourism and private hospitals will no longer be appealing at all.
Current petrol subsidy engulfs about N300 billion and counting not N200 billion, hence, the government can still save over N100 billion monthly that can be dedicated to areas such as improving the power supply, boosting local production and incentives, providing and maintaining infrastructure, and stabilizing the dollar exchange rate. Stabilizing the dollar exchange rate will in no small measure curb inflation and attract foreign investments into the country.

If you wonder whether N200 billion monthly could provide free and standard education and healthcare, then, be informed that TETFUND got only about N221 billion throughout 2019, as reported in its annual report. It received a total of N251 billion in September 2020 and was projected to receive a total of about N300 billion at the end of 2020. It means that for all the good works undertaken by TETFUND, its annual income is just slightly above N200 billion which in this case will be the monthly income to be used for the provision of free education and healthcare. With this proposal, the poor masses will suffer at the beginning of subsidy removal due to inflation in essential commodities and transportation but will later smile when they receive free qualitative education and healthcare. Consequently, there will be no need to privatize public universities at all, and subsidy removal would turn out to be a blessing for the masses rather than a curse.

Dr. Salihu Lukman is an assistant professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Hafr Al Batin and writes from Saudi Arabia. salihulukman@yahoo.com

Tagged : ASUU / education / Nigeria / privatization / strike / subsidy

Education, My Journey & The Present State of Affairs – University Education (Part 2)

by Salihu LukmanAugust 4, 2020March 24, 2022academic / Biography / Education / Mentorship6 Comments

Written By: Salihu Lukman (PhD)

Twitter Handle: @SalihuLukman

Challenges Of University Education

Oh, home sweet home! This is my primary domain. I have been teaching at the university level since 2006. Hence, I have many things to say here without any fear of contradiction. Problems affecting university education ought to be treated with utmost diligence because the university serves as the training ground for teachers, public servants, leaders, politicians, etc. We cannot afford to sit back and just watch the university education getting ‘raped’ and destroyed.

(1) Overseas Training of Lecturers and its Impact on Academics

Lecturing used to be an attractive job in the 80s. One would obtain his bachelor’s and master’s degrees here in Nigeria before proceeding to either UK or USA on Government scholarship for PhD. This continued till 1984 when President Muhammadu Buhari came to power. He canceled overseas training for lecturers. It was one of the numerous changes he made to the university system. Former Central Bank Governor and Emir of Kano, Muhammadu Sanusi II (SLS), narrated how he was affected by this. He was a lecturer in the Department of Economics, completed his MSc at the time with the hope of going abroad for his PhD. His hope of studying abroad was dashed and he exited the system on that note. I remember my department’s founder, late Prof. Ogunrombi of blessed memory, obtained his BSc, MSc and PhD from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the best university in the world. I learned that resident medical doctors also used to go abroad for an internship during their residency training to get foreign exposure until sometime in the 80s. NARD has been agitating for the reinstatement of this internship.

Petroleum Technology Development Fund (PTDF) revived Government’s overseas scholarship to the UK in 2000, in the fields of Engineering, Geological Sciences, Environmental Studies and Energy Studies to meet the long term capacity building and energy requirements of the Oil and Gas Industry. It started awarding the overseas scholarship in master’s degrees only but later expanded the scholarship to include PhD scholars from academia only. This has significantly improved the training of lecturers and enhanced their technical and field capabilities. UK’s PhD programs are usually industry-tailored and purely research-based without any official coursework. It produces excellent researchers for the industry. On the other hand, American PhD programs have intensive coursework for about 2 years before one begins his research work which can last for about 2-4 years. In some cases, the coursework and research work may run concurrently but a PhD student officially begins his research work after completing his coursework and passing a ‘comprehensive examination’ to become a PhD candidate. This intensive drilling in courses, yet again, makes the American PhD programs more robust and produce far better teachers than their UK counterparts. With the introduction of coursework at PhD level in Nigerian universities, we stand to gain more by obtaining an American or American-based PhD than the UK or UK-based PhD. I hope PTDF will expand the country coverage to include the USA, Canada and Australia. Canada and Australia both use the American system of education.

TETFund (Tertiary Education Trust Fund) scholarship for academic staff was introduced in 2008. By 2010, it had spread to most institutions. This helped increase the number of academic staff who obtained PhDs abroad (mostly in Malaysia) or did bench-work in other countries such as South Africa or the USA.

Now, foreign-trained PhDs have flooded our universities and some polytechnics & FCEs. The million-dollar question is what is the impact of this foreign training on the quality of education vis-à-vis curriculum development and updating, quality control and assurance, monitoring and evaluation, and research output.

(a) Curriculum Development & Updating:

Despite the periodic curriculum review observed in most of the universities and departments, a lot needs to be done in this regard. Lecturers who trained in some of the best universities abroad have an important role to play in this regard because they have experienced 2 different systems – one local and the other international. This is the most important step toward achieving the program’s educational objectives (PEOs) and student outcomes (SOs) – two requirements of outcome-based education. Before developing any new curriculum for new programs or reviewing existing ones, bench-marking all courses and descriptions with the top universities globally is the only way to achieve an internationally recognized degree plan.

We need to redesign our engineering and some science curriculums such that their durations are reduced from 5 years to 4 years, irrespective of whether the summer or third semester is re-introduced or not. Even the best universities globally don’t offer engineering in 5 years. Hence, the 5-year duration does not in any way confer any special or extraordinary skill or knowledge to the students but only ends up unnecessarily prolonging their stay in the university and preventing them from effective utilization of the extra 1 year. Even the so-called American University of Nigeria (AUN) has all its engineering programs spanning for 5 years. This is not to mention the fact that these 5 years are actually 5 + X years, even for the brightest student where X is the additional years due to ASUU’s (Academic Staff Union of Universities) cumulative strike actions within the stipulated 5-year period. For the period of my undergraduate study period, from February 1999 to August 2004, ASUU’s cumulative strike period was 20 months, i.e., X = 1.7 years, hence, I ended up spending 6.7 years (almost 7 years if you factor in when final results were announced) instead of the already long stipulated period of 5 years. 7 years of continuous uninterrupted study could have earned me BEng, MSc & PhD in Malaysia and possibly the UK, you can imagine the precious time wasted. I bet you, all other students from Nigerian public universities (except the University of Ilorin) have a similar experience. Similarly, I obtained my MSc in 3.6 years (i.e. 3 years and 7 months), something I was supposed to spend just 2 years but the ASUU strike helped in unnecessarily prolonging my residency again. Another unfortunate thing is that ‘all ASUU strikes are preventable’! I will prove this statement of fact as we continue. After obtaining my MSc, I became fed up with the Nigerian educational system – ASUU strikes and lack of a conducive environment to quench the thirst of a passionate young academic – I vowed never to obtain my PhD there. I made up my mind that even if the best place I could go to was Ghana, then I was ready to go there to obtain my PhD. Luckily, I got a PhD scholarship at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia, after passing TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) and GRE (Graduate Record Examination) organized by the American Educational Testing Service (ETS). I spent just 3.2 years (i.e. 3 years and 2 months) for my PhD, i.e. 5 months less than what it took me to get my MSc in Nigeria. But for a minor hitch, I would have finished my PhD in just 2.7 years.

I observed in one of my previous articles, that;

“The 5-year compulsory duration of our undergraduate engineering and science (in some universities) programs are adopted from neither the American nor the British educational systems. On average, it takes 3-4 years and 4 years to obtain a bachelor’s degree, under the British and American systems, respectively. Even in the GCC Arab Nations, where students study the English Language during their preparatory (remedial) year program, they spend 4 years for all their engineering and science disciplines and they all follow the American university educational system almost in toto. Our undergraduate engineering educational system needs a complete overhaul to be in line with global best practices in engineering education.”

At this juncture, I must confess that the Nigerian educational system has this “advantage”. It teaches resilience to students due to the unconducive atmosphere of most learning institutions. This resilience is what makes a Nigerian graduate with a Third Class or Pass degree become the Overall Best Graduating Student in a postgraduate classy (MSc or PhD) abroad, under a conducive atmosphere. This is a known fact and there are countless examples.

I have a special passion for curriculum development, having co-authored a Civil Engineering curriculum from scratch, supervised the development of a Chemical Engineering curriculum from scratch, and reviewed a Mechanical Engineering curriculum. This took place when I headed Mechanical, Civil and Chemical Engineering Departments at the University of Hafr Al Batin, Saudi Arabia.

A friend of mine narrated to me how he had to study an undergraduate course on Python programming language when he was doing his PhD at one of the top ten universities in the world because he needed to use the programming language in his research work and the curriculum he studied in Nigeria during his undergraduate study did not include Python. Consequently, his PhD graduation had to be delayed because of our outdated curriculum that failed to be in sync with the recent developments in the world. I don’t know if BASIC and FORTRAN programming languages are still being taught in our universities at the expense of recent and more widely applicable ones like the C Language, Java, Python, and other multidisciplinary simulation and modeling related packages like MATLAB, MATHEMATICA, COMSOL Multiphysics, Design Expert, etc.

I am not oblivious of the only advantage of a 5-year course over a 4-year course in Nigeria when it comes to the starting academic ranks in universities. Graduates of a 4-year course start as graduate assistants and those that spent 5 years and above (such as Engineering, Medicine, Law) start as assistant lecturers. In fact, if a medical doctor has an MBBS degree and an additional 3-year experience in any hospital (not necessarily a teaching hospital), the starting point is Lecturer II (L2). I seriously don’t comprehend why all these unnecessary discrepancies and discriminations in the Nigerian academic staff ranks. This means that a fresh PhD in the Sciences or Social Sciences who does not have publications will be employed as a mere Assistant Lecturer (02 Grade Level) even if he got his PhD from MIT while a mere bachelor’s degree holder of MBBS having 3-year working experience will be employed as a Lecturer II (03 Grade Level), i.e. one Grade Level higher than a PhD. I cannot rationalize this discrimination that is inherent in our university academic staff ranks despite benefiting from it. The worst hit by this discriminatory stratification are graduates from 4-year programs in the Sciences and Social Sciences. This only fuels the superiority complex. The medical doctors will argue that their bachelor’s coursework of 6 years is the reason why they are compensated in the academic staff positions. I respond thus, as long as after the 6 years of coursework they will graduate with a bachelor’s degree, not an MSc or a PhD, then, there is no need whatsoever to discriminate between someone whose bachelor’s degree program spanned for just 4 years and someone who spent 5 – 6 years to obtain a bachelor’s degree. How will someone who spent 7 years in America to obtain a bachelor’s degree in Law or Medicine be compensated if he is employed as an academic in that case? Will he start as Lecturer 1? Again, where will our system place someone who obtained a 3-year bachelor’s degree in engineering from Malaysia, South Africa, or the UK? Unfortunately, there is no rank below Graduate Assistant. I assure you that he will still be employed as Assistant Lecturer. These 2 examples clearly demonstrate the arbitrariness in the starting position of academics based on the number of years they spend obtaining their bachelor’s degree. The same unnecessary discrimination and arbitrariness have crept into our civil service where all other fresh graduates start on Grade Level 08 whereas fresh medical doctors start on Grade Level 10 and lawyers and geologists on Grade Level 09 (in some States and parastatals). This apparent and undeserved favoritism by NUC in the employment and promotion of academic medical doctors is going to hit a brick wall come 2025 because NUC has declared that there will be no promotion to the level of Senior Lecturer and above for medical doctors in the clinical departments of faculties or colleges of medicine without a PhD! This means that once they become consultants by obtaining a National Fellowship or West African Fellowship, they will be promoted to L1 and this rank will be the ‘terminal rank’ for them if they don’t have a PhD. In other words, their Fellowship will no longer be considered an equivalent of a PhD. I wonder if NUC has opened new postgraduate programs in all areas of clinical medicine that will be awarding the needed PhDs in the area before 2025 or it is just making the rules without consulting the Vice Chancellors to discuss the practicability of creating new postgraduate programs in all areas of clinical medicine to meet up with the 2025 deadline. I seriously pity those caught in the middle, I.e. the younger academic medical doctors who cannot enroll in any PhD program in their areas of specialization due to unavailability of such postgraduate programs.

The minimum teaching qualification is a PhD. Let us use standard systems from other developed nations. There should not exist any dichotomy between a GA and AS, all bachelor’s degree holders should be employed as GA or AS irrespective of the duration of their undergraduate programs. GA and AS should be synonymous in all aspects. All master’s degree (or its equivalent) holders should be employed as lecturers irrespective of their various disciplines. Let us abolish L2 and L1 dichotomy. All PhDs should be employed as senior lecturers (SLs). Let us keep it simple. Promotion requirements and intervals can be updated to suit this proposed stratification. For instance, the minimum promotion interval can be increased from 3 years to 4 years. This will eliminate the unnecessary discrimination among academic staff who possess the same degree but are unfairly ranked based on the duration of their undergraduate degrees.

The following points can be considered when attempting to reduce the duration of engineering programs from 5 years to 4 years with a view to restructuring our engineering curriculum to fit into the 21^st-century outcome-based education, rather than some traditional and conservative system which is completely outdated.

(i) Elimination of Non-Essential Courses: There is really no need to design an engineering curriculum in which almost all the programs have similar courses in the 2^nd year, i.e. 200 Level. All non-essential courses should be purged out of the degree plan depending on specific program needs and intended student outcomes. Such courses that may need to be eliminated can be major courses from a given program or core or elective courses from other programs. For instance, the following 2^nd-year common engineering courses should no longer be common for all engineering programs.

Electric circuits (from Electrical Engineering): Deemed non-essential for Chemical Engineering program.
Thermodynamics (from Mechanical Engineering): Deemed non-essential for Civil and Electrical Engineering programs. Some universities give a choice between Electric Circuits and Thermodynamics.
Statics (from Civil Engineering): Deemed non-essential for Electrical & Chemical Engineering programs.
Dynamics (from Mechanical Engineering): Deemed non-essential for Electrical & Chemical Engineering programs.
Strength of Materials or Structural Mechanics (from Mechanical or Civil Engineering): Deemed non-essential for Electrical & Chemical Engineering programs
Fluid Mechanics (from Civil Engineering): Deemed non-essential for the Electrical Engineering program. Mechanical and Chemical Engineering programs may need a different fluid mechanics course targeting mechanical engineering systems involving gas and energy.
Electrical Power and Transducers (from Electrical Engineering): Deemed non-essential for Civil & Chemical Engineering programs.
Materials Science (from Mechanical Engineering): Deemed non-essential for Electrical & Civil Engineering programs.

(ii) Defragmentation of Courses: This entails combining related courses to free up some credit hours. For instance, instead of splitting Fluid Mechanics into 2 or 3 courses, the same course contents can be delivered using just 3 credit hours rather than 4 or more credit hours. Similarly, instead of having 2 courses (a total of 4 credit hours) for Structural Analysis, the same course contents for the 2 courses can be delivered using just a 3-credit-hour course.

(b) Teaching Quality Control & Assurance, Using Monitoring And Evaluation

Without proper monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of teaching-related activities, even the best-developed curriculum cannot achieve the desired PEOs and SOs. Some of the basic, yet important items to be discussed under the teaching quality control and assurance include detailed syllabi development, the achievement of course outcomes (COs), teaching, and program evaluations. All tertiary institutions must have a clearly defined framework for each of the above items if we truly want to overhaul our tertiary education for better service delivery. National Universities Commission could come up with these frameworks for universities for their strict adherence and program accreditation. Alternatively, the Directorate of Academic Planning & Monitoring of various institutions can come up with these frameworks and ensure strict adherence by all programs in a given institution to ensure uniformity.

(I) Development of Syllabi:

A comprehensive course syllabus should contain not just course description, but additional useful information such as textbook, course objectives, course outcomes, weekly lecture schedule (if possible), assessment plan and timelines or deadlines, class rules, etc. It is the contract between a lecturer and students.

One of the important components of the syllabus is the choice of an appropriate textbook for the course, especially for undergraduate courses. More often than not, there are available excellent textbooks that cover the course description in detail with adequate numerical and conceptual examples for better students’ understanding. For Science and Engineering programs, I found American textbooks to be the best in spite of the cost. In this internet age, one can find numerous ebooks for free online by simply googling the title of the book. Copyright issues associated with some online content especially ebooks are some of the concerns of the developed nations who usually author these books, they are the inventors, custodian and police of the internet, hence, it is on them to take down any of such websites that provide materials without legal copyright. Unfortunately, Third World Countries like Nigeria cannot afford such expensive, yet, must-have textbooks in their libraries for their students. For instance, a world-class textbook used for teaching Statics written by Hibbeler costs about $190 (i.e. about N90,000) on Amazon. For this reason, cheap Indians books have flooded our bookshops. It will do academics, students and tertiary institutions in the country good if the National Library of Nigeria could subscribe to outstanding ebook publishers and journal databases such as Wiley, McGraw-Hill, Taylor & Francis, ScienceDirect, ProQuest Dissertation, Springer, etc. and grant access to all tertiary institutions, students and academics in the country for free if possible or charge a small but subsidized token, if necessary. In Saudi Arabia, we access all these databases, some content from the publishers, and many more for free using the Saudi Digital Library.

By now, we should migrate to outcome-based education whereby all our courses will have a clearly defined set of skills and capabilities intended to be acquired by any student who enrolls in that course. They are called Course Outcomes (COs) or Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs). At the end of the course, all COs should be quantitatively evaluated using rubrics or other methods to determine the extent of the achievement of the COs.

(ii) Teaching Evaluations

It is not enough to draft the best course syllabus without following up on the lecturer’s adherence to the syllabus as well as l quality delivery of course. Students, being the target audience, should be engaged in evaluating the lecturer’s conduct and overall performances using unambiguous evaluation criteria. The overall score of the students’ evaluation should be communicated to the lecturer for his record and possible improvement, where necessary. If a lecturer’s evaluation by students consistently turns out to be below a certain threshold, then, there is a cause for alarm. We still have a long way to go in this regard. We should eliminate lecturers’ absolute impunity which is inimical to the growth of our educational system. These impunities include:

Absconding from attending classes at will. Some lecturers start attending classes almost half-way into the semester while some postgraduate courses get only a single-day lecture for the whole semester. You read it right, a single-day lecture to cover all the course content of a given course per semester. This is the highest level of irresponsibility and has got to stop!
Poorly prepared and delivered lectures that add almost zero value or knowledge to the students. Due to a lack of passion for academics exhibited by some lecturers who consider lecturing as just another job rather than a passionate career. Many lecturers have no passion for the profession. It is just another job, they cannot take their time to carefully prepare and effectively deliver their lectures to the satisfaction of their clients, the students. Some lecturers hide under the name ‘lecturer’ to tell students that they are not teachers, they are lecturers. Hence, they are not expected to come down to the level of teachers to effectively teach everything. This should not be used to justify the ineffective delivery of course materials. I took 11 courses during my PhD study, and all my professors taught me effectively as though I were an undergraduate or even a secondary school student. If we fail to properly teach our students today, they will become lecturers tomorrow and cannot give what they don’t have. Hence, an undesirable chain reaction will be initiated, and the quality of our educational system will keep on deteriorating.
There should be a transparent, non-victimized and unbiased process of remarking an examination to address students’ concerns. Although this is a student’s right, for fear of victimization by lecturers, students are usually afraid to apply for remarking even when they are almost sure (99.99 %) that they were wronged. I once failed a course during my 2^nd year undergraduate days together with my friends from other departments, most of whom were either the best or one of the best students in their various departments. It appeared as though the course was inversely marked, meaning, those with low Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) multiple carryovers scaled through unscathed while most of those who failed the course were top of their class in various departments. There was no attempt to remark the course for the affected students and we could not summon the courage to apply for remarking, for fear of victimization. A year or 2 earlier, the same lecturer was confirmed to have wrongly interchanged final year students’ grades whereby he awarded low grades (E or D) to the best students and excellent grades (A or B) to the poor students. The best students at the time were quick to raise a loud alarm and the matter was rectified in their favor.
Sexual harassment. This is one area that many lecturers are found wanting. Using one’s privileged position to make sexual overtures towards students now attracts a jail term of 2 years under the proposed law. ASUU opposes this bill on the grounds that the bill is discriminatory and infringes on university autonomy. According to ASUU, the bill particularly targets lecturers in the tertiary institutions for an act that is a general societal problem and not exclusive to the tertiary institutions. Anyone with the slightest inkling on the widespread menace of sexual harassment in our institutions will wholeheartedly welcome this new bill with open arms. While ASUU is correct when it says that sexual harassment is a general societal problem and not peculiar to tertiary institutions, lecturers hold a privileged position that they can use to escalate the menace more than most employees in other sectors. I truly pity the womenfolk, because they encounter ‘predators’ day and night, in all nooks and crannies.

Peer review of lectures by other lecturers may also be undertaken to provide useful feedback to individual lecturers using assessed pro forma. In this case, the assessor attends the lecture from the beginning to the end before he fills the pro forma, similar to what obtains during the assessment of teaching practice interns.

These evaluations by students and peers are meant to ensure optimal delivery of course materials to the students irrespective of one’s teaching experience.

(iii) Program Evaluations

From curriculum development to teaching quality control and assurance, NUC can play the most important role coming up with a unified framework for all Nigerian universities to adhere to, for accreditation of new and existing programs. Alternatively, the Directorate of Academic Planning & Monitoring of universities could spearhead these activities. I have the privilege of using the Saudi Arabian NCAAE (National Center for Academic Accreditation and Evaluation) and American ABET (Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) accreditation systems for our programs here in Saudi Arabia. Although ABET is the most prestigious accreditation for Engineering and Technology programs globally, NCAAE is more detailed and has some common components with ABET. Most Engineering and Technology programs in Saudi Arabia and the other GCC Arab countries have ABET accreditation. One would expect the Engineering programs offered at the American University of Nigeria (AUN) to possess ABET accreditation since it claims to offer the American standard of education. AUN claims on its School of Engineering website, that “our programs aspire to pursue international accreditations such as the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET).” If it truly intends to give its students the American standard of education in all ramifications not just in name, then, merely aspiring to pursue ABET accreditation is not enough. My humble opinion is that NUC should make it mandatory for AUN to obtain ABET accreditation for its Engineering programs to lend credence to its claim of teaching the American curriculum and save unsuspecting Nigerians from being scammed into believing that they are truly getting the much-coveted American standard of education standard-wise. Recall that AUN’s Engineering programs have a 5-year duration. From a cursory look at the Engineering curriculum, it looks more Nigerian than American despite the relatively expensive tuition fees of N 2.66 million per annum which it charges.

In addition to external program evaluation by accreditation, internal key performance indicators (KPIs) can be developed and assessed annually to provide useful feedback on the state of the various organs of a program. A realistic and ambitious target should be set for each KPI.

(c) Research Output

Lecturers who returned from overseas and whose specializations don’t need any lab equipment to conduct their research have relatively little challenges compared to those whose specializations require expensive cutting-edge equipment that is usually not available in our labs. Engineering is one discipline that requires highly sophisticated and very expensive equipment before any meaningful research can be undertaken. The availability of adequate research funds is another area that needs attention. The enormous number of current postgraduate admissions which is close to the undergraduate admissions in some universities brings with it the need to provide research funds to lecturers and students alike and adequately equip the labs for effective postgraduate training. This will limit the amount of high impact research and publications coming from Nigeria. Hence, lecturers can hardly publish in a high impact factor ISI (Clarivate Analytics) journal. ISI-indexed journals represent the best quality scientific journals and are recognized globally. Just 8 Nigerian journals from Medicine, Pharmacy, Library Science & Agriculture (none from Engineering) are currently ISI-indexed out of 21,643 ISI journals. Saudi Arabia has 23, Egypt 41 and South Africa 170. Universities are grossly underfunded by the Federal Government. It is making commendable efforts by establishing professorial chairs such as PTDF and Shell in some universities in addition to centers of research excellence and TETFund interventions. The Executive Secretary of TETFund lamented last year that about 80 % of research proposals received by the agency were rejected because they are poor. He further mentioned that most Nigerian professors, 8,000 in all, have low capacity to write a fundable research proposal. Most of those who studied abroad especially at PhD level do not have this problem at all because they have written many research proposals and gotten them. A Paucity of research grants, poorly equipped labs, inaccessibility to world-class scientific databases and books in Nigeria dampen the research productivity and output of lecturers who studied abroad. We have excellent researchers in Nigerian universities who got many US patents during their studies abroad. They however could not keep the tempo when they returned home due to the unconducive environment that keeps one’s performance below the optimal level. Our lecturers have the intellectual capacity to undertake cutting-edge research but they are mostly limited by the availability of research grants, lab equipment and technical materials. If the Nigerian Government would adequately invest in universities, we can perform better than Malaysian universities because we have all it takes to be great. The best Malaysian university (Universiti Malaya) now occupies the 59^th rank in the world based, on the 2021 QS World University Rankings. No Nigerian university has made it to this list. It is no longer good enough to just earn a degree abroad in any university irrespective of its global ranking. Choosing universities based on their global rankings on QS World University Rankings, Times Higher Education (THE) or Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) can help to boost one’s international appeal and recognition for securing international research grants, research fellowships and for employment.

(2) Incessant ASUU Strike, Salary of Lecturers & Corruption

(a) Incessant ASUU Strike

These ASUU strikes which dominated the 90s culminated in the signing of an agreement between ASUU and FGN in 2001 with a view to reverse the decay in the university system, reduce brain drain by enhancing their remuneration, ensuring university autonomy and academic freedom, and to restructure Nigerian universities through massive and sustained financial intervention, among others. Also, the ASUU-FGN 2001 agreement was to be periodically reviewed every 3 years. Every right-thinking and rational human being who is conversant with the learning conditions in Nigerian universities will support ASUU struggles as per the above terms. Well, students may not be expected to be sympathetic to ASUU struggles for the obvious reason that their graduation will always be affected. As an undergraduate, I vowed never to join the union should I become an academic staff because of the 20 months added to my undergraduate residency period, due to ASUU strikes. When I joined as a lecturer in 2006, I deliberately refused to fill the ASUU membership form for the above reason but I was later registered automatically by the union by virtue of my being an academic staff. That membership allowed me to follow ASUU activities and struggles religiously until 2009 when I resigned my membership of the union. ASUU embarked on monthly deductions in my salary for the building of its national secretariat in Abuja without following due process, we were not informed in writing before the deductions began. I hope to rejoin the union one day. Despite FGN’s acknowledgment of the rot in the university system through its needs assessment report of 2012 under Prof. Mahmud Yakubu’s committee, not much has changed. Since 2001 when the agreement was first conceived and ratified to date, FGN has been continuously reneging time and again which always leads to preventable ASUU strikes every now and then in the university education system and by extension, the remaining tertiary education systems run by Polytechnics and FCEs. To me, the simple way to curb and prevent these strikes that have bedeviled our tertiary education system is for the FGN, through the Federal Ministry of Education, to do the needful by providing the needed fund to turn around these universities for the better and improve the relatively ‘poor’ remuneration of the academic staff of universities. The current Minister of Education, Mal. Adamu Adamu accepted FGN’s failure in fulfilling its own part of the bargain in the following comment:

–Mallam Adamu Adamu, Minister of Education, August 15, 2017.

In support of ASUU struggles, he wrote 3 articles in 2013 when ASUU was on strike to press home its demands. In one of the articles, he wrote the following statement, 2 years before he became the Minister of Education:

“No doubt, the 2009 agreement with ASUU and the memorandum resulting from it provide a very good starting point if the government is really interested in helping education. But perhaps that much is clear that no one in Abuja is really interested in anything that can move the nation forward, especially anything as nebulous as education, and more especially what needs to be spent on it.”

–Mallam Adamu Adamu, November 8, 2013.

Mal. Adamu Adamu may need to come out to tell Nigerians what has changed since he became the Federal Minister of Education in 2015, a position that can see him putting the incessant ASUU strikes to rest for good. Ironically, ASUU has been on strike since March 2020.

I wonder why ASUU does not have a functional website to display its activities for its members and non-members alike.

(b) Salary of Lecturers

Despite the important role the universities play in supplying the nation’s manpower needs for all sectors of the economy, it is among the least-paid sectors of the Federal Government’s MDAs (Ministries, Departments & Agencies). Ministry of Health is among the best-paid sectors.

ASUU wrote the following on its Facebook Page on July 17,

“Did you know that the peers of University Professors in other Nigerian sectors fare much better. The army General, the Police DIGs, the justices not to mention political appointees putting in few or no hours of work in a week. What crime has the Nigerian lecturer committed?”

I said to myself, does ASUU know that a newly-employed medical resident in a Federal Teaching Hospital who has just an MBBS earns almost the salary of a newly-promoted professor in our Federal universities? The resident is just starting as a Federal civil servant in the Ministry of Health while the professor has just reached the peak of his career in the university under the Ministry of Education. Of course, the professor in this example does not belong to the medical profession. While I don’t know how much a professor in clinical medicine earns, but a newly appointed consultant in the hospital who is an academic staff earns about 2 times the salary of a professor in other disciplines. This is the sorry but true state of salary stratification that affects the remuneration of professors. Some years back, a newly-promoted professor in a Federal university told me that a senior lecturer, which is the equivalent rank in a polytechnic, earned more than him. There used to be very few MSc holders and PhDs in polytechnics because they used to join the university once they earned their master’s degrees or PhDs. This is no longer the case now. They are very comfortable where they are, relative to university lecturers and may work less than them. NNPC (Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation) is another lucrative sector whose employees are well-paid. Three of my friends who were employed with me as assistant lecturers back in 2006 soon left for NNPC. I also learned that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), and Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) are among the best-paying sectors. If FGN is truly serious about upgrading the salaries of lecturers in Nigerian universities, then she should upgrade the salary scale of the Ministry of Education to be at par with other lucrative MDAs. This will go a long way in eradicating the serious local and international brain drain facing the universities. FGN should understand that if lecturers are not paid well enough to take care of their basic responsibilities,

they will surely search for alternative means of livelihood which could be by engaging in another job on a part-time or even full-time basis (e.g. business, consultancy, running a firm, farming, etc.). These jobs would take their time so much that they cannot give their best to their primary assignment. I am not against lecturers taking part-time jobs like consultancy or farming. However, you find that in the long term, these part-time jobs systematically and unofficially replace their primary jobs. ‘Self-preservation is the first law of nature’, man would do anything to survive, whether legal or illegal. The terms ‘legal’ or ‘illegal’ have now become relative terms in Nigeria and purely subject to one’s interpretation and perspective because of the harsh conditions that people find themselves in. Who will ultimately be at the receiving end? The poor students – our leaders of tomorrow. It is not uncommon to hear of full-time lecturers who come to the university only once in a week, or once in a month because they are busy attending to their side businesses or jobs elsewhere. This will only worsen the university education system further. The Government can reverse this unfortunate trend if she wishes. No wonder, studying abroad is now more rampant than at any time in the past. About 13 thousand Nigerians are currently studying in America alone. We have many Nigerians studying in Malaysia, the UK, China, Saudi Arabia, India, Ghana, and even Niger Republic.
Some of them would engage in other untoward and corrupt practices such as extorting money from students to pass them in their courses, diverting research funds for personal use i.e. if they have access to one, etc.
Local and international brain drain. Those who can get jobs at other lucrative MDAs or private firms would resign their university jobs and go for a greener pasture. Others who have internationally recognized qualifications would get jobs abroad and leave the country for good or for only God knows when. Universities have now become ‘transit camps’, where you temporarily start with before you can get a better job.

I am not saying that lecturers should earn the highest salary in the land, no! All I’m saying is that lecturers should earn a decent salary just enough to keep them on the job and enable them to give it their best. Nobody would go as far as obtaining a PhD only for him to remain a pauper. You have many PhDs that cannot afford to buy a car. Many lecturers cannot pay their rent without doing annual ‘contribution’. They become more affected when their salaries are stopped by the Government whenever they are on strike to press home their demands. The Government would not honor an agreement she had entered into with the union for reasons best know to her, yet, she would starve the innocent souls by cutting off their meager livelihoods for months. This, to say the least, is the highest level of injustice. No country can survive if she stands on the pillars of injustice. Nobody should tell me that the country does not have enough money to provide adequate resources in the universities and handsomely pay the lecturers. We read and hear about billions of Naira spent on ‘ghost’ projects everyday by MDAs. Few people in the position of power and authority are milking the country dry at the expense of the general populace. Something urgent needs to be done to reverse this unfortunate trend.

(c) Corruption

In all fairness to other low-paying MDAs, all employees should be paid a minimum wage that can truly cater to their basic needs. This will help in curbing the menace of corruption which has become omnipresent. I know that corruption is not just about providing enough to the populace, but failure to adequately pay employees is one of the factors that exponentially promotes corruption on a cosmic scale. There is a group of innocent law-abiding citizens that the system has literally forced into the arms of corruption, I call them the ‘passively corrupt’ because they cannot fight the existing corrupt system alone no matter how hard they try. ‘Actively corrupt’ people are those that are willing participants in corrupt activities and can even go out of their ways to ensure that corruption thrives by all means and at all costs because of the benefits they drive therefrom. These are the agents of the devil or devil incarnate. Civil service has now become synonymous with corruption. Corruption has seriously affected our psyche, you appear ‘abnormal’ if you don’t give in to corrupt practices. On the spectrum of corruption, there is only a thin line separating actively corrupt and passively corrupt individuals, very few people belong to this category. Corruption has become more of a mental disorder than merely a moral problem. Some people are obsessively and compulsively corrupt.

In 2017, I practically witnessed the corruption taking place in contract bidding, award and ‘kickback,’ firsthand. I asked my boss and mentor the question “when are we going to eradicate corruption in Nigeria?” He replied with one of the best answers I have ever come across, ‘until people are adequately paid’. In the same year, I applied for a Managing-Director’s position in one of the agencies in my State, following an advertisement placed by the State Government to attract the best-qualified candidate for the job. This I did out of my passion to use my experience in the water resources and environmental sector to turn around the comatose water sector in the State. Unfortunately, I have been an academic all my life with zero industrial experience in the water sector except during my undergraduate internship. For that reason, my application for the MD’s position was rejected, and I was being considered for the position of Director of Operations in the agency. Two weeks to my interview, I found out that the salary of a Director in the agency including all other allowances was less than what I was just surviving on as a lecturer. It then begs the question if my current salary could not cater to my basic needs, how can I survive on anything less? I feared becoming “passively corrupt” if I accepted the position. On that note, I opted out. This has nothing to do with greed because I was not expecting to be paid a humongous amount that will make me rich, at the same time, I was not patriotic enough to sacrifice my little salary that I was just surviving on for anything less. I just wanted to be pragmatic. I know that the salaries of State and Federal Government employees are wide apart, but I never expected a Director to earn that low. I was vindicated a few weeks later when I met a family friend who worked in that agency and even acted as a Director at one time. He verified the Director’s remuneration that I gathered earlier and then explained to me how I could augment the meager salary. He said Director of Operations was responsible for all maintenance works of water infrastructure in the State, hence, a job that would normally cost N 3 million could be quoted for N 10 million and I can conveniently pocket the balance of N 7 million. In the end, the agency’s management team that was constituted that year after I opted out was sacked. That was a year after the appointment. I could not thank the Almighty Allah enough for opting out.

I still believe that the Government can do better in her fight against corruption. She celebrates when her anti-graft agencies secure convictions of top Government officials like former Governors, Ministers or Heads of Agencies such that millions or billions are recovered from them in cash or assets. While this is truly worth celebrating, but the Government should try harder to nib corruption in its bud. In other words, corruption should be fought fiercely from its cradle not to wait until it is just about entering its grave and has already done some irreparable damages to the polity. The main anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) is only interested in high-profile corruption cases that involve millions, say, starting from N3 million upwards. Unfortunately, everyday corrupt practices that take place in the country fall far below this minimum threshold, hence, they continue to flourish unattended to and over time, accumulate to generate billions of Naira to its benefactors. More unfortunate is the fact that these ‘petty’ corrupt practices are the ones affecting the ordinary person on the street. For some unknown reasons, the Government has chosen to turn her head the other way on the following everyday corrupt practices that could be completely eliminated within the shortest possible time.

Our Federal highways have many so-called security checkpoints for ensuring the safety of the highways. This they do at the expense of commercial car drivers. You see them in broad daylight, confidently extorting money from mostly poor and hardworking commercial car drivers and they don’t face any consequences for their heinous act at all. There are numerous confirmed reports of commercial drivers dying after being shot at a checkpoint for refusing to pay a bribe of sometimes as low as N20 or N200.

In January this year, the energetic Borno State Governor, Prof. Umara Zulum caught the security personnel at a checkpoint leading to Maiduguri extorting N500 and N1000 from poor travelers plying the road. Can you imagine how much the security personnel made per day, week and month? Can’t the heads of these security outfits (Inspector-General of Police and the Chief of Army Staff) work round the clock to eliminate this long-standing menace? Definitely, EFCC has nothing to offer here.

Kaduna State Governor had to constitute a task force that consists of his humble self and cabinet members, viz, commissioners, heads of agencies and parastatals, aides, etc. to take over the patrol of the State borders from the security personnel to prevent inter-state movement of vehicles enforced by the State Government. Do you think that he involved his cabinet members just for fun? No way! The security officials manning the checkpoints were allowing vehicular movements after receiving bribes from drivers. This made the Governor take the bull by the horn and do it himself. Although he is the chief security officer of his State, the security outfits (soldiers and police) are federally-owned and controlled. Hence, there may be little he can do to ensure that these security personnel at the checkpoint stop collecting bribes that allowed inter-state movement.

What does it take FGN to wake up one day and declare that this highway bribe collection by her security personnel has to stop and take concrete steps to completely stamp it out? I believe it is achievable, where there is a will, there is a way.

This applies to NCS at the borders and some highways. Despite declaring that importation of foreign rice has been banned since last year, this same foreign rice finds its way into our markets and is available in all shops in the markets across the nation. Is it that our foreign rice reserve has not been exhausted for all this time or the Custom officers manning our borders have decided to allow the passage of this contraband? I am no longer being extorted at Mallam Aminu Kano International Airport whenever I arrive from Saudi Arabia. It used to be another avenue for open extortion by the NCS officials. They used to openly block and extort passengers on arrival without showing any interest in searching any baggage. Now, they search my baggage and I don’t have to pay them a dime. I used to stock Naira whenever I was coming back to Nigeria for that extortion because they would demand foreign currency if you told them you didn’t have naira.

In all the 10 years I spent in Saudi Arabia, I have never been extorted by anyone. I never had any cause whatsoever to bribe anyone except once when I was going to Nigeria from Jeddah. Despite having the right baggage allowance in terms of the number of bags and their associated weights, an Egyptian man denied me and a fellow Nigerian entry into the departure lounge for no just reason. He later hinted that I see a cleaner to ‘settle’ him before I could pass. For fear of losing my flight, I had to succumb to his extortion rather than taking the matter up with the airport managers. Egyptians are also extremely corrupt. Toilet cleaners at their international airport in Cairo would openly and shamelessly extort money from passengers for using the toilet.

Another sector that needs serious attention is the FRSC (Federal Road Safety Corps) and its corresponding State-owned outfit like KASTELEA (Kaduna State Traffic and Environmental Law Enforcement Agency). FRSC is responsible for the safety of the traffic plying our highways. What does it take to bring back ‘genuine’ driving tests for those applying for driver’s licenses? I said ‘genuine’ because first-time applicants have to obtain driving school certificates now before they can get the driver’s licenses. While this is a step in the right direction, but the aim of ensuring that applicants truly get tested at a driving school is defeated because all one needs to do is to pay the fees for the driving school and wait for about 4 weeks to collect the certificate. In the end, introducing the driving school into the process has only increased the price of getting the driver’s license unnecessarily. I paid for a 5-year license in 2018 but received a 3-year license without receiving any balance from the officials because the 2 licenses have different fees.

The biggest life-threatening state-sanctioned corruption is in the issuance of the so-called ‘road worthiness’ confirmation document. It is one of the car documents issued together with vehicle license and vehicle insurance. It contains the signature of the Director, Road Traffic Vehicle Inspection Office who testifies in the document as follows:

“I hereby certify that I have examined the Vehicle or Motorcycle described below which in all respects conforms with the requirements of the Road Traffic Regulations 79(1-4) of 1975, and that it is Roadworthy and suitably constructed for use.”

It also has a list of tests or inspections (e.g. chassis, suspension, axle, tires, steering, windscreen, doors, hydrocarbon emission, engine, etc.) that are supposed to be carried out and passed before declaring the vehicle roadworthy. None of these tests or inspections are carried before the road worthiness confirmation is issued by KASTELEA. No matter how unmotorable your car is, no matter its life-threatening mechanical problems, all you need to do is to pay the money and you will surely get the document in a jiffy. There is no mechanism in place to carry out these tests and inspections at all. States and FGN are aware of this. Why can’t the Government think about preventing unnecessary accidents on our highways resulting from allowing unmotorable and unfit vehicles ply our roads daily by ensuring that every vehicle undergoes and passes these inspections and tests before they are issued with the road worthiness confirmation. Those that do not pass the tests after several attempts should be banned from our roads and taken to the junk yards for recycling. This is what obtains in any law-abiding nation and we can also do it. This will save us from many deaths resulting from sudden mechanical failures of vehicles on the roads and veering into oncoming vehicles or crowd as well as the unnecessary breakdown of vehicles in the middle of our roads.

Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) now uses the process of obtaining an ‘international’ passport to milk Nigerians dry. Officials of the NIS hoard the passport booklets and sell them to the highest bidder. The price is no longer fixed, it depends on who among the officials is contacted and how much he is willing to process the passport for you. At least this is my sad experience at the Kaduna NIS office which may or may not be different from what obtains in other states. I used to get a new passport or renew it in a day. Nowadays, we hear all sorts of stories about the unavailability of the passport booklets just to push you to pay for more if you are truly in a hurry. This corrupt practice can be stopped if the comptroller-general of the NIS is determined to root it out.

NIS has also systematically replaced the 32-page booklet with the 64-page one in its bid to cunningly generate more revenue. The 64-page booklet is targeted at frequent travelers who may run out of pages before their expiry dates. Since the introduction of the supposedly ‘optional’ 64-page booklet in 2014, the 32-page booklet has been gradually and systematically eliminated from the options making people pay higher prices for what they don’t really need. Again, I don’t really understand the wisdom behind asking anyone visiting the NIS office to obtain a passport to mention the person that he is visiting at the gate. This happened to me always at their offices in Kaduna and Abuja. Can’t I just walk into the NIS office without knowing anybody and request a passport?

Job racketeering is another corrupt practice that has seeped into most MDAs. The requirement for getting a fat job is “connection”, not merit. Gone are those days when graduating with a first-class degree guaranteed one an academic position in the university. Jobs in ‘juicy’ MDAs have been completely reserved for the sons and daughters of the ‘who is who’ in the country and shrouded in utmost secrecy.

As per my little understanding of public service and governance, heads of agencies and parastatals and the boards supervising the agencies can all play key roles in helping to curb corruption as long as they get the necessary support of their supervising commissioners at the State level and Ministers at the Federal level. Ultimately, the full support of Governors and the President in this fight against corruption cannot be over-emphasized. Remember the popular saying that if we don’t kill corruption, then corruption will surely kill us. All hands must be on deck, the haves and the have nots, the old and the young, the employed and the unemployed before corruption can be successfully brought to a standstill.

We need to use digital technology to our advantage in exposing corrupt practices and individuals. Our smartphones and social media can be effectively utilized for this purpose. Secretly record any untoward activities by any Government official or extortion by any security personnel and make it go viral on social media platforms. Learn how to create hashtags (#) and share your sad story or experience on any MDA, banks, or any other private organization. Sometimes you may not need to go this far, a simple threat can bring the required change. Many accounts from many Nigerians have proven the efficiency of this method in fighting corruption and injustice. This way, the Government may be forced into taking appropriate measures on her erring officials. Let us keep writing and talking about the various specific injustices taking place in our polity. This is no time to keep quiet. We have to change this sad narrative of daylight corruption and injustices taking place daily in our country, in our own way. Corruption does more damage to Nigeria than the corona virus pandemic can ever do.

No country can be rendered 100 % corrupt-free, every country on Earth grapples to contain corruption and reduce it to the barest minimum. Corruption in Nigeria is different, it is killing us and will continue to do so till we do something about it. We still don’t have adequate power and pipe-borne water, our roads have become death traps either due to accidents resulting from the poorly-maintained roads across the nation or the activities of kidnappers who have turned some of the Federal roads into their dens where they feast daily. It is my sincere belief that our security agencies are up to the task. They have the expertise it takes to protect us against all enemies, foreign and domestic. This they have demonstrated times without number by capturing any kidnapper that dares to kidnap any highly-placed popular figure or those close to them. Occasionally, kidnappers of the poor and “unconnected” are also captured.

There is the challenge of getting adequate security personnel to contain the rising insecurity in the country vis-à-vis the provision of adequate weaponry and timely payment of their entitlements. President Muhammadu Buhari has admitted that the army is poorly equipped to adequately fight the insurgency ravaging the North East. This he did during the presidential debate moderated by Kadaria Ahmed before the 2019 presidential election. Recently, he pledged more resources for the country’s security agencies to tackle the unwanted security situation heads-on. We have seen frontline soldiers fighting Boko Haram in Maiduguri staging a protest when their allowances are not paid. Payment of allowances to security personnel should be deemed sacred and any default in such payments should be met with the harshest punishment from the Government.

Dr. Salihu Lukman is an assistant professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Hafr Al Batin and writes from Saudi Arabia. salihulukman@yahoo.com

Tagged : curriculum / education / Nigeria / schools / syllabus

Education, My Journey & The Present State of Affairs – Primary & Secondary Education (Part 1)

by Salihu LukmanAugust 3, 2020March 24, 2022Biography / Education / MentorshipLeave a Comment

Written By: Salihu Lukman (PhD)

Twitter Handle: @SalihuLukman

Background

Let me begin by saying that anyone whose age is around 40 years and above, will – without any fear of contradiction – agree with me that the Nigerian educational system has been experiencing serious and continuous devaluation for at least the past 2 decades. The one-time excellent and qualitative educational system has been experiencing a sharp and rapid decline at all levels, viz, primary, secondary, and tertiary. Many articles have been written in the past to buttress the poor state of our educational system, I choose to add to the list of these articles by highlighting some salient points that require urgent consideration by all stakeholders especially the Government (at all levels: Local, State & Federal), parents and educational administrators, using this memoir. This is borne out of my 23-year teaching experience at all levels (primary, secondary, remedial, diploma, undergraduate, and postgraduate) in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia. Given the enormous challenges facing the educational sector, the need to urgently declare a “State of Emergency” in the educational sector cannot be overemphasized with a view to holistically overhaul the system such that our large population becomes our greatest asset rather than our greatest undoing.

Challenges of The Universal Basic Education (Primary + Junior Secondary Levels)

Undoubtedly, the Basic Education (UBE) is the most important level in the educational hierarchical pyramid, where a rock-solid foundation needs to be laid. This should be made mandatory and free for all. All subsequent educational levels are secondary. In the 70s, the National Policy on Education opted for the American 6-3-3-4 (6 years: primary education; 3 years: junior secondary school; 3 years: senior secondary school; 4 years: university education) system, instead of the 7-5-2-3 (7 years: primary education; 5 years: secondary school; 2 years: higher school certificate; 3 years: university education) system. For more exposition on the colonial era and post-independence National Policy on Education read, “Educational Policy in Nigeria from the Colonial Era to the Post-Independence Period”. It is a known fact that the primary 7 graduates of those days were better than some of today’s university graduates. Nowadays, our tertiary institutions are churning out semi-literate graduates, some of whom cannot write a single comprehensible English paragraph. In fact, some polytechnic graduates cannot communicate in English at all.

Rigasa Primary School With 22,000 Students

In 2017, a school in Rigasa, a Kaduna metropolitan suburb area, was found to have a staggering 22,000 students. You read me right. 22,000 students in one school taking lessons, mostly in tents with just 70 teachers in 2017. A teacher to student ratio of 1:300. This total number of students in just one primary school has surpassed total enrolments in most of our 174 universities. Mal. Nasir El-Rufai (Kaduna State Governor) cried out loud and the World Bank came to his aid, provided N30 million for addressing the school’s horrible condition in terms of providing good infrastructure, modern learning and teaching equipment (computers and projectors) and staffing. Before this development, the Governor had embarked on an ambitious plan to change the sorry narrative of the mostly dilapidated and poorly equipped public primary and secondary schools in the state, earlier in 2016. There were 4,250 public primary schools when he took over as Executive Governor of the State in 2015, 50 % of whom were sitting on a bare floor due to lack of furniture. About 2/3, representing 67 % or 22,000 of the total 33,000 teachers were deemed ‘incompetent’ to teach after failing to score at least 75 % in a structured primary 4 examination. They were sacked to give way for the recruitment of 25,000 qualified teachers. To give you an idea of the rot in the educational system, one of my wives teaches in a Junior Secondary School in Zaria where her class enrolment is about 200 students. The Zaria Educational Zonal Director said that the school was even ‘lucky’ when he visited the school and received complaints about the school’s overcrowding condition. Must all the schools have 300 students to one teacher like that of Rigasa before an emergency alarm is triggered? About 700 public primary schools have so far been renovated and the Governor’s effort in providing public schools with the required infrastructure and equipment has been commended by all irrespective of political party affiliation. Love him or hate him, he is truly a pacesetter and undoubtedly a visionary leader.

My Primary School Experience in Zaria – The 3 Musketeers

Well, my own story may be a little bit worse than the Rigasa school situation. The public primary school I attended in Zaria from 1985 – 1991 started with only 2 classrooms, increased to 3 just before I graduated from the school. Primary 1 was taken in nearby residential neighbors’ lobbies called ‘Zaure’ (an empty unoccupied room which serves as the gateway or passage into the traditional Hausa houses) and car garages without any furniture. Primary 2 was taken on the veranda of the existing school building, without any furniture. I sat for the first time in a conventional class with furniture in Primary 3. Primary 4 was conducted in the school premises under the tree without any furniture. Primary 5 & 6 were conducted inside the only 2 classrooms with furniture.

We were not so many in a classroom, I think we were around 20. Coupled with the alarmingly poor infrastructure, the quality of education was nothing to write home about. I can vividly remember that our promotion examination to primary 3 required us to read the vowels and the different consonant + vowel combinations in Hausa such as BA BI BU BO BE to ZA ZI ZU ZO ZE. That was it- the qualifying exam. One of my classmates, who could not read these consonant + vowel combinations was demoted to primary 2. I was among the lucky ones who passed. It is also worth noting that I finished primary school without being able to speak English and I was not alone in this. The same applies to all of us who went through the school from primary 1 to 6, what a humble beginning. I taught myself English language with the aid of a small popular pamphlet at the time called ‘Teach Yourself English’ and guess what? I learned how to speak English before I started JSS 1 (Junior Secondary School 1). It was a self-imposed ‘competition’ that led me to learn how to speak in just a few months. The details of this exciting and self-imposed ‘competition’ which has positively impacted my life is a story for another day. I would later polish my command of the language by reading more books such as ‘Kamus Na Turanci Da Hausa’ (English to Hausa dictionary which I almost memorized), Brighter Grammar, Common Mistakes In English, English Without Tears, etc. I still submit my articles to one of my wives with impeccable command of English to proofread.

Who could imagine that 3 students, brought up in the same house – who graduated from such a primary school described above – would later earn their PhDs abroad in some of the world’s best universities in Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and South Africa in such interesting disciplines as Environmental Engineering, Medical Physics & Education Management respectively. This is the interesting story of ‘the 3 musketeers’ or ‘the three inseparables’ of the Lukman’s family who were and are still best of friends. The first one and the youngest among them is my humble self, who would later become an assistant professor of civil engineering at the King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (Hafr Al Batin campus) and later at the University of Hafr Al-Batin. He is also the first PhD in the Lukman’s family. The 2^nd one is Dr. Yahaya Musa, a Medical Physicist, and lecturer at the Physics Department of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria, and a researcher at the university’s Centre of Energy Research and Training. He obtained his PhD from Universiti Tecknologi Malaysia (UTM). The 3^rd one who is the oldest and the ‘Gang Leader’ is Dr. Yusuf Lukman who would go on to obtain his bachelor’s, master’s and PhD degrees all from South Africa and specialize in Education Management. Given his outstanding performance during his PhD, he was retained by the university where he obtained his PhD as a lecturer. We may all be late bloomers, but our extremely poor educational background did not stand in our way to achieving excellence later in our different spheres of endeavors. You are what you want to be in this life. There is no food for the lazy man. Dream and dream big!

My dream that one day I would be successful in this life was seen only by my late beloved mother (may Allah have mercy on her departed soul) – my greatest pillar and supporter, Haj. Halima ‘hali dubu babu na yarwa’ – since when I was a child and had no signs of excelling in anything. Well, I had a sharp memory and excelled in truancy and hyperactivity. As unpromising as I was, she would always tell me directly or indirectly that I would become ‘somebody’ someday. She would warn me to dress properly to school and avoid wearing ‘patched’ trousers, lest my friends should mock me when they remembered my shabby dressing when I became ‘somebody’ in the future. We would just laugh over it. I never took her words seriously. Fast forward to 3 decades later, I am still a nobody, but I am very happy for who I am and what I have achieved so far in life. She died when I was still an undergraduate in 400 Level and struggling with my studies. The only part of my dream that I envisioned was getting a PhD. In 1997 after graduating from Secondary School, I came across late Dr. Shehu Lawal Giwa’s calendar on the wall of one of my cousin’s rooms. What caught my attention were his abbreviated degrees and memberships which came after his name – BSc, MSc, PhD, FNIQS, PPNIQS, FCIArb. He was an epitome of generosity & simplicity. I was fascinated by his earned degrees and honors and vowed to get the first 3 earned honors – BSc, MSc, PhD – the remaining ones would naturally come with experience and registration with the appropriate professional bodies, hence, I did not make them my target. Thereafter, I used to write my name on all books as ‘SALIHU LUKMAN (BEng, MSc, PhD)’ even before I got admission into the university to study engineering. 16 years later, in 2013, that dream became a reality, I got all my 3 degrees (BEng, MSc, PhD) and a host of other memberships and a fellowship (MNSE, FRHD, MNAHS, MMSN, MSOSEH). Late Dr. Rilwanu Lukman was my uncle and my mentor. He had 5 different honorary doctorates from universities in Nigeria and abroad, but even he did not inspire me the way Dr. Shehu Lawal Giwa did. Dr. Rilwanu Lukman was a renowned Mining Engineer, an ‘oil man’, that successive Nigerian Governments could never get enough of his exceptional expertise in the petroleum industry for almost 3 decades. He was a proud engineer. I once had reason to ask him if he was a ‘professor’ as was addressed by some of the media outlets at the time and he responded, ‘No. I am not an academician. I am an engineer’. Shortly before he died in 2014, I called him in Austria to clear a rumor making the rounds that he had joined the religion of Scientology – a new American religion that was spreading all over the world. I asked him, ‘Baba, are you a Scientologist?’. He replied, ‘No. I am a Muslim. Don’t you read about other religions like Christianity?’. I replied in the affirmative. (I have a certificate in Comparative Religious Studies which I obtained in 2001 after studying the following courses: Qur’an, Bible, Preaching Methodology, History (Islam/Others). I am a ‘Muslim missionary’, a proselytizer who successfully converted 2 persons into Islam). He continued, ‘I study all religions and have books on all religions in my library, but I am a Muslim’. That conversation laid to rest all doubts about the matter.

Dr. Lukman was the first Mining Engineer in the North, the first African to be honored with the Fellowship of the Imperial College (his alma mater), London, and the first Nigerian to be the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) Secretary-General. One of his classmates in Middle School was my father-in-law, late Alh. (Pharm.) Ibrahim Saidu (may Allah have mercy on his departed soul) who died recently at the age of 85. A man of timbre and caliber, truly worthy of emulation. In the 3 years that I knew Alh. Ibrahim Saidu, he left an indelible mark on me. He once informed me that Dr. Rilwanu Lukman had a photographic memory and did not use to write anything while in class at the time because he committed everything to memory, similar to our brilliant Governor when he was in Primary School. At some points in my life, I was also blessed with a photographic memory. I would always derive inspiration from Dr. Lukman’s excellence. My late dad was another of those breeds-men of timbre and caliber. He inspired me to choose moral righteousness always. You can dream to become anything in life, but you have to walk your dream, match your dream with action, and leave the rest to the Almighty Allah.

When I was in Primary 4 or 5, having seen those attending Therbow School in our house (the best school in Zaria in those days) who were speaking English so well – something I could not at the time – I approached my late Dad (May Allah have mercy on his departed soul), a retired Upper Shari’ah Court Judge, and requested him to transfer me to Therbow School telling him that I was not getting quality education in my current school and that Therbow School was the best. He replied that he would look into the matter. I forgot to remind him again. One of my elder brothers, an army officer, who attended Federal Government College (FGC), Azare wanted to transfer me to the Federal Government College (boarding) in Jos when I was in JSS 2 so that I could get better education but my beloved Dad refused to grant his wish. I again asked my dad to be transferred to the famous Barewa College (boarding) where two of my elder brothers were attending, my request was not granted. In SSS 1, another elder brother of mine who was a lawyer, and his children were attending the famous Essence International School (EIS) (the best school in Kaduna at the time), Kaduna, attempted to transfer me to EIS but my Dad refused. I realized that my Dad did not want me to be far away from him. It was at that point in my life that I resigned to my fate and vowed to make do with the ‘little’ educational resources available to me. This pushed me to seek out assistance from my older colleague, and religiously attend two extra-mural lessons organized by Mal. Ibrahim Physics during the weekdays (2 days per week) and the iconic Muslim Refresher Course Program (MRCP) on Saturdays (9 am – 1 pm) and Sundays (9 am – 1 pm). These 3 learning outlets made up for anything I could have missed for not attending FGC Jos, Barewa College Zaria or Essence International School Kaduna. I narrated in my article, ‘REFRESHER: The Priceless Value of Mentorship’ that,

‘This intensive personal learning voyage yielded positive results within a short while. While in SSS 2, I won a 1st position trophy in Essay and Spelling Competition organized for secondary schools in Zaria by Zaria Educational Development Association (ZEDA). After I was presented with the trophy at the ZEDA Annual General Meeting (AGM), His Royal Highness, the Emir of Zazzau, Alh. (Dr.) Shehu Idris secretly pledged to personally sponsor my tertiary education. He lived up to his words and even bought me a desktop computer system needed for my final year project at the undergraduate level. I still have this computer system and it is still functional – I hold it so dear to my heart and consider it a very important souvenir that I will live to tell my children the interesting story behind it. This, in addition, he gave me about four different bicycles in total sequentially whenever he learned that I lost my bicycle or it was stolen.’

As for my Mathematics background, I was empty-headed in that subject from the primary school up to the end of my 2^nd term in SSS 2, despite belonging to a science class that requires expertise in mathematics. I never made any concerted effort to learn the subject until during one of my vacations in SSS 2. My ambition to become a medical doctor at the time pushed me to learn Mathematics in just about a month so that I could satisfy the O Level requirements for gaining entry into the university to study medicine. I was encouraged by one of my greatest mentors, Dr. Lawal Haliru (Dr. Daddy) to learn Advanced (A) Level Mathematics after graduating from secondary school to prepare me well to study medicine. However, after tasting the sweetness of Advanced Level Mathematics, I arrived at the conclusion that a life devoid of the combo- Advanced Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry was not something I could imagine. Hence, I chose Engineering.

The doggedness displayed by ‘the 3 musketeers’ narrated above reminds me of the doggedness of Albert Einstein, one of the best scientific geniuses the world has ever known. Einstein faced many challenges on his way to greatness. When his mother asked his headmaster at the end of his primary school education about the career most suitable for her child, he responded to her that Einstein would not amount to anything and that she should not bother – he would later become the greatest genius of the 20th century. In high school, he graduated with excellent grades in Physics and Mathematics only. He could not get any recommendation letters from his professors because he was rude to them during his undergraduate days. He only managed to secure a job at a patent office where he reviewed patent applications. His office job was not time demanding, he would utilize his free office time to think about the nature of light and gravity. In 1905, Einstein published one of his groundbreaking articles where he modeled the Brownian motion of pollens in water observed by Robert Brown, a botanist, in 1827. He confirmed one of the postulates of Dalton’s atomic theory that all matter consists of tiny particles called atoms. He went further to calculate the size of an atom. His explanations about the haphazard movement of pollen grains in water serve as the confirmatory test about the existence of atoms. Jean Perrin verified Einstein’s model experimentally in 1908. Einstein and Perrin would later receive the Nobel prize in Physics for their subsequent works on the atom in 1921 and 1926, respectively. The year 1905 was the year that Einstein witnessed a quantum leap in his life, he became an overnight sensation, moving from zero to hero. He never got dissuaded, he never threw in the towel. He would always pursue his scientific ideas and imaginations passionately and tenaciously.

Personal Appeal To Kaduna State Governor On Behalf Of Teachers

In 2018, Mal. Nasir El-Rufai undertook to pay teachers higher than average civil service salaries to attract the best and brightest brains to the teaching profession, in his bid to emulate Finland’s school model system which has the best school system in the world. Shortly thereafter, I was so thrilled when I read that his erstwhile Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Ja’afaru Sani, said at a news conference in Kaduna that all public school teachers would enjoy a salary increase of 27.5 %, an additional 5 % for those posted to rural areas, head teachers and other teachers would be entitled to a 3-bedroom accommodation and 2-bedroom flats respectively, motorcycles to ease transportation challenges to schools. The Commissioner later said that he was misquoted by journalists on the BBC Hausa. I contacted one of the Special Assistants to the Governor to seek clarification on the subject matter and he confirmed to me that the accommodation package for teachers was still in the pipeline. I pray and hope that it comes to pass, I also pray and hope that the ‘purported’ salary increment for school teachers reported by the media also comes to pass in line with the Governor’s pledge that he will ensure that school teachers are paid higher than average civil servants enough to attract the best brains to the teaching profession. I am not oblivious of the fact that teachers do currently receive ‘slightly’ higher salaries than other civil servants even before El-Rufai became the Governor of Kaduna State, but such ‘purported’ salary increment and incentives (accommodation and motorcycle) will go a long way in seriously attracting the best brains to the profession.

Our public primary schools are so bad that even the low-income earners are forced to enroll their wards in private schools where they will be paying heavily as long as they want their wards to have a qualitative education. Primary school teachers are at the mercies of the various Local Government Authorities where salaries get paid sometimes untimely and needed infrastructure is seriously lacking in most of the Northern states, coupled with students’ overpopulation and lack of qualified teachers. These are some of the incessant challenges facing free UBE. Let me authoritatively report here that the Governor has been successful in eradicating the collection of the ‘infamous PTA levy’. Poor students used to be sent back home if they could not afford to pay this levy. School heads used to rely on the levy to provide the needed logistics such as chalks, whiteboard markers, brooms, pay teachers responsibility allowances, bribe Education Inspectors whenever they visit schools by giving them ‘fuel money’ and buying them breakfast or lunch, give commission to teachers who are in charge of collecting the levy from students, squander part of the money since there was neither transparency nor accountability in spending the fund, etc. The Government rose up to its responsibility by providing what is called ‘a second alert’ to the heads to fill this ‘vacuum’ which the school heads used to fill in their own way – as they say, nature abhors a vacuum. It is my unbiased opinion as someone who has been closely following the activities of the Governor since 2015 when he was sworn in as the Executive Governor of Kaduna State, that the Governor is doing well in overhauling and rescuing the failing educational system in the State and should be praised for that.

Given the ‘harsh economic reality’ that Governments at all levels are currently facing coupled with the recent minimum wage-induced salary increments for all civil servants in the country, teachers may not expect any other salary increment in the nearest future – in spite of the Governor’s post and his former Commissioner’s comments on increasing teachers’ salaries – the Governor can review the following urgent areas in need of his kind interventions with a view to stamping out corrupt practices that have hitherto bedeviled the system. This will go a long way in improving the teachers’ welfare and enhance job satisfaction in no small measure.

(1) Promotion and its arrears:

Despite the timely promotion of teachers, financial benefits associated with such promotions don’t see the light of the day without going to the State Ministry of Education and offering a bribe to those who are responsible for processing one’s file. If you don’t understand how to play along or don’t want to bribe anyone before your salary is upgraded as per your current level, then, you may be receiving level 10 salary even after having been officially promoted to level 12 (level 11 is normally skipped). We should all remember that we are all products of these teachers, hence, their entitlements should be sacred and anyone found using his position to inflict hardship on these poor souls should be decisively dealt with, without fear or favor. Specifically, promotion exercise that was concluded last year around December has not been financially implemented (both for those who went to bribe the Ministry officials and those who chose not to go and bribe anyone in the Ministry). There wouldn’t be any cause for alarm at all if they would be paid promotion arrears whenever the implementation began. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The promotion letters clearly spell out that there will be no arrears at all. I find this totally strange and appalling! I don’t know if the general principle behind arrears of promotion is only applicable to the Federal civil servants. I don’t know if arrears of promotion are not paid in others States, but I want to appeal to the Kaduna State Government to look into this matter with a view to improving the financial status of the school teachers even if it cannot provide any salary increment for the teachers any time soon. If teachers’ promotion arrears can be introduced and without them having to pay any bribe before implementation, then, that will put some smiles on their faces.

(2) School inspectors and supervisors:

They are meant to ensure educational quality delivery and control at the primary and secondary schools, but some of them are being bribed by the school heads to avoid reporting anything negative about their schools or teachers’ performances to the higher authorities. PTA levies used to be the source of funds for paying the inspectors’ or supervisors’ ‘fuel money’. With the complete eradication of PTA levy collection by the El-Rufai-led Administration, I wonder if the school heads have resorted to using the ‘second alert’ money that is meant for providing the needed teaching materials to bride these inspectors. Every school teacher knows about this corrupt practice. Governments can still do better in this regard to come up with a ‘secret’ whistleblowing strategy to reveal these corrupt school inspectors or supervisors and eliminate them from the system completely so that the Ministry of Education can be receiving true and unadulterated feedback. There are ‘bad eggs’ everywhere and it is one of the cardinal duties of any Government to root out corruption in its entirety as much as possible. If we don’t kill corruption, corruption will surely kill us.

Contributory Health Management Scheme & Annual Salary Increment:

On 31 January 2020, the Deputy Governor of Kaduna State, Dr. Hadiza Balarabe flagged off the enrolment of all Civil Servants into the State’s Contributory Health Management Scheme. Director-General of the Kaduna State Contributory Health Management Authority (KADCHMA), Aliyu Saidu, further explained that “enrollees become eligible to access healthcare under the scheme after the registration process.’’ I don’t know if enrollees in other sectors have started accessing the promised healthcare under this scheme yet, but teachers have not started accessing this excellent healthcare scheme even though salary deductions toward contributing to the scheme have already commenced even before they become officially registered in the scheme. If the State Government can expedite action to ensure that teachers and other civil servants in the State start accessing the healthcare services under this scheme in both Government and private hospitals, the better. That will reduce teachers’ financial healthcare expenses drastically and increase their net take-home pay. Currently, they are just paying for some ‘phantom’ services. According to the teachers, Annual Salary Increment has been eradicated with the introduction of this scheme and has been transformed into paying for the Contributory Health Management Scheme. If this is true, then it becomes a classical example of ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’. I don’t know how logical this is, but the summary of it all is that teachers may no longer get the ‘small’ annual increments on their salaries. If the teachers’ Annual Salary Increment could be restored, then, their net annual take-home will increase even without any official salary increment for them.

(3) Payslip:

Every civil servant has the right to know each component of his monthly salary. This is a right, not a privilege! The State’s Ministry of Education has been denying teachers access to their payslip claiming that it is following the Governor’s directive. I seriously doubt this claim because, if the Governor has access to his payslip which he made public in 2017, why would he deny access to teachers? Access to one’s payslip is a fundamental right of employees. It is my honest belief that there are ‘scavengers’ in the Ministry of Education who benefit from this corrupt act. Teachers are now used to arbitrary deductions in their net take-home pay without any explanations because they cannot obtain their payslip even if they visit the Ministry to request for it. 2 teachers employed at the same time and on the same level could have their salaries differing by as much as N10,000 without any explanation that the ministry could provide. For instance, the recently deducted 25 % COVID-19 palliative contribution has seen a teacher, my wife in this case, whose net salary is N68,000 have N20,000, instead of N17000, deducted from her salary. Who can account for the N3,000 deficit and how can someone clearly lodge a complaint of over-deduction and follow-up for reimbursement without accessing the payslip? To add insult to injury, their complaints are not appropriately attended to at the secretariat of the Ministry of Education, you have to pay your way to get an effective resolution of your problem. Clearly, some staffers of the Ministry are feeding fat on teachers’ salaries with impunity. Illegal deductions will be curbed and accountability and transparency will be enhanced if the State Government can mandate the Education or Finance Ministry to make available teachers’ monthly payslips for their records. A similar sad story of payslip unavailability also exists in the Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital (ABUTH), Shika, despite belonging to the Federal Ministry of Health. The same ABUTH does not pay arrears of newly joined staff at all. I wonder how the Accounts Department can justify these manifest infractions on employees’ rights. More surprising to me is the apparent failure of the associations that these employees belong to, to change the status quo, probably they are not perturbed by these infractions.

Most of the issues addressed may not be the plight of teachers only. if the Kaduna State Government could resolve these issues in favor of all the public civil servants of the State, that would be most desirable. Otherwise, the State may consider ‘special treatment’ for the teachers. This will not be the first time that such a ‘special treatment’ is considered for a section of the State’s public civil servants. In May this year, the Kaduna State chapter of the Joint Health Workers Union which comprises medical doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc. embarked on a 1-week warning strike over the 25 % COVID-19 salary deductions. In the end, the health workers were exempted from the 25 % deduction and they were reimbursed to keep their morale high in the fight against the deadly pandemic.

Eradication of the Almajiri System & Going Digital

In 2018, Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) reported that there were 13.2 million out-of-school children in Nigeria, out of this number, 7 million are Almajirai (plural of Almajiri in the Hausa language) or Almajiris (if I want to pluralize the Hausa singular word Almajiri following English language plural suffix). In 2010, it was reported that there were about 5.2 million out-of-school nomadic children, in spite of the FGN’s intervention through the National Nomadic Education Commission (NNEC). In June 2019, the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) took a very bold, yet commendable step to proscribe the Almajiri System (AS) which has gained acceptance in Northern Nigeria due to the prevailing insecurity in the country. FGN took back its words later and encouraged the Northern States where the Almajiri System is being practiced to take the necessary action toward eradicating the practice in their various states. With COVID-19 pandemic ravaging all cities, some Northern States such as Kaduna, Kano and Jos have proscribed the Almajiri System and have returned all the Almajiris in their states to their respective states of origin where they will be reunited with their parents. This is a welcome development. Kaduna and Kano States went further to make education free for all, boys and girls up to the Senior Secondary School level and compulsory for all children up to the Basic Education level (JSS 3). These are all steps in the right direction. However, the Governments need to follow these promulgations with the provision of more public schools and quality teachers at all levels to match the anticipated increased enrolment into schools. Most of the current public schools are overloaded with students and lack basic education facilities such as furniture, laboratories, equipment, etc. We should always view our large population as our greatest asset rather than our greatest undoing. All hands must be on deck (Governments, parents, students) to turn our teeming population into a useful workforce by empowering and guiding our youth to become entrepreneurs and digitally compliant. We are in a digital age, where people earn billions of dollars by doing their businesses purely online.

We need to move toward a digital economy. All thanks to our outstanding Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Pantami who has started the process of moving Nigeria away from a majorly oil-dependent and exporting country to an ICT-proficient and exporting country through implementing the digital policies that he created. This will go a long way to help our people get liberated from the current abject poverty ravaging most of the Northern States and some parts of the Southern region. Just a few days ago, the Minister was speaking on ‘Nigeria’s Digital Economy Policy’ on NTA’s Good Morning Nigeria Program. He narrated how a Nigerian in America developed an app in 2016 which the giant tech company Apple bought at a whopping price of $ 1 billion. Under the right atmosphere, we can have many of such Nigerians who can come up with many excellent apps that can fetch real money. I have already started teaching my 11-year-old child web design using HTML and CSS coding. A 10-year old Nigerian girl who is a programming prodigy was recently hired by a school in the UK as their new web design instructor who will be teaching the basics of HTML and CSS coding. We have countless undiscovered genius kids, we only need to discover and put them on the right track to explore their full potentials. We are truly a ‘blessed nation’ despite our numerous challenges in the form of insecurity, corruption and poverty. With ambition, doggedness, determination, patriotism, and professionalism, we can change the sad narrative and take Nigeria to greater heights.

Nigeria is the poorest nation on Earth, it overtook India in 2018 to become the poverty capital of the world because it has the highest percentage of poor people in the world. About 87 % of Nigerian poor citizens are concentrated in the Northern part of the country according to a 2020 World Bank report. Our youth ought to know by now that getting just a bachelor’s degree is no longer a ‘meal ticket’. No matter how qualified someone is, nowadays you have to pay bribe heavily as a precondition before you can get a Government job. Merit, excellence and competence have been completely substituted by mediocrity and ‘connections’. This has led to corruption becoming ‘bolder’ and more ‘audacious’ than at any time in Nigeria’s history.

Kaduna State Governor has positively changed the narrative of employment racketeering by advertising all available openings for any qualified candidate to apply, from low cadres up to Directors, Heads of Agencies, and even Commissioners. This ensures that only qualified candidates are hired for any post and gives hope to those excellent candidates who may have no connection with any ‘big shot’. He has a knack for working with the best brains and carrying youth along by appointing them to top management positions. One of his ‘pet projects’, Sir Kashim Ibrahim Fellowship – in which young Nigerians across all states are drawn to undergo a 1-year fellowship in public service – is a testimony of his passion for youth empowerment. How I wish other Governors would emulate him in all these aspects where he clearly stands out like a full moon in the dead of the night. Sometime in 2017, he told me face-to-face in his office at the Sir Kashim Ibrahim House (Government House), that he would want to always appoint young people like me into the position of authorities so that they could learn the art of governance, make mistakes and be corrected. He went on further to tell me that he would not want a situation whereby someone of his age becomes his successor as the Governor of Kaduna State, he would want a far younger person who has been thoroughly and correctly mentored in all aspects of governance to succeed him. Love him or hate him, but you cannot deny the fact that Mal. Nasir El-Rufai always leads while others follow, a true pacesetter. He is highly innovative, enterprising, entrepreneurial, courageous, intelligent, dedicated, promising, and passionate for his cause. I truly admire him for these and many other good qualities that he has. He is one of my role models.

It is no longer news to find unemployed graduates with a master’s degree and PhD in Northern Nigeria, this was almost non-existent 2 decades ago. Just imagine, about 10 PhDs are teaching in Demonstration Secondary School (DSS), ABU Main Campus, Zaria. Do you think one needs a PhD or master’s degree to teach in a secondary school? Definitely no! But if a PhD cannot secure employment in an institution that is commensurate with his qualifications, then, he has to settle for whatever is available that will enable him to bring food on the table, thus becoming under-utilized and under-employed. Many holders of master’s degrees in my extended family are still jobless. One of my friends who completed his PhD abroad 2 years back is still unemployed. We need to start introducing our children to various skill acquisition programs at an early age and make them digitally-compliant so that they can withstand the current enormous challenges and competition at both local and international levels. We need to de-emphasize the acquisition of degrees or higher degrees and start emphasizing entrepreneurship, ICT innovation, job creation and digital knowledge. This way, our teeming youth will become job creators instead of certificate holders seeking white-collar jobs that are extremely scarce these days.

These 7 million Almajiris can be turned into an asset if we properly channel their talents and effectively educate them in both Western and Islamic education. Anything short of this will keep leading to chaos and insecurity in the land. The King of Hausa singers, Alan Waka, mentioned in his song titled ‘Gudun Hijira’ when he was talking about the Boko Haram insurgency,

‘Mu kiyaye bara ta yara don da sune ake fakewa; in ba su yi ilimi ba yara babu mai kwanciya a inuwa’

Translation: Let’s deter Almajiris from begging because evil perpetrators are using them; if they are not educated, then no one would lie in a shade (meaning, we will all suffer the consequences of not preventing them from begging).

Do you know that the founder of Boko Haram, Muhammad Yusuf, was an Almajiri? He had zero formal Western education. One of the ludicrous reasons why Western education was prohibited according to him had to do with the existence of 9 planets. Dr. Pantami (Minister of Communications and Digital Economy) took him on that in 2008 during their famous debate and explained to him what planets truly were as against what Muhammad Yusuf thought they were. For all those who truly know the teachers of these Almajiris, most of them have a strong aversion to Western education or in some instances modern facilities and equipment which according to them are produced by the West. They pass this aversion to their students. For instance, Late Sheikh Albani Zaria (of blessed memory) narrated a story to us during one of his lectures that one of his childhood Qur’anic teachers would tell him that on the day of resurrection, he would be in Hellfire for the period he spent attending Western education – that was from morning until the afternoon – and he would be in paradise for the remaining period that he attended the Qur’anic school. That did not deter him from vigorously pursuing Western and Islamic education until he became one of the most renowned Islamic scholars in his time and an ICT guru. He was running his master’s degree in electrical engineering at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, when he was killed by ‘Boko Haram’ in 2014. May the Almighty Allah admit him into paradise. If we truly don’t want to have the likes of Muhammad Yusuf ever again, then, we must eradicate the traditional Almajiri system of education and transform it to include both Western and standard Islamic education without children begging on the streets for alms. Otherwise, these Almajiris will keep sliding ‘from alms to arms’.

The proponents of the Almajiri system often mistake eradicating the supposed ‘spiritual begging’ inherent in the system for eradicating Qur’anic education. I make bold to say that nobody can stop Qur’anic education in Nigeria, even the colonialists-cum-missionaries did not even attempt. In a recent live media chat with the Governor and his commissioners, the Commissioner of Education mentioned that they are not going to stop Qur’anic education, they are only going to introduce measures that will eradicate begging and ensure that those attending the Qur’anic schools also attend a conventional school where Western education is taught.

Challenges of Senior Secondary Education

Next in importance after primary education is the senior secondary education where students are generally divided into Science or Art class. Art classes do not face as many challenges as the Science classes because they don’t need laboratories (labs). qualified Art teachers are also more readily available. The reverse is the case for the Science class. Rampant examination malpractice is one issue that is common to both Science and Art classes.

(1) Absence of Well-Equipped Science Laboratories

The most essential labs for Science students are the Chemistry and Physics labs. Biology lab is common to all classes. These labs are essential in teaching students’ the main concepts of science, especially Chemistry lab which helps to demonstrate difficult Chemistry concepts like chemical reactions, electrolysis, physical and chemical properties of gases and other chemicals, titration, etc. Unfortunately, the chemical reagents and consumables needed to properly equip the Chemistry lab are very expensive, hence, most schools cannot afford them. On the other hand, Physics equipment may also not be cheap, but unlike the Chemistry reagents which are usually in the form of consumables and not reusable, the Physics equipment is always reusable. Both Government and private schools are seriously lacking properly-equipped Science labs. State Government should work seriously to provide its Science schools and other schools offering Science classes good Science labs because, without these Science labs, the quality of Science education is seriously compromised. It is a known fact that there is no development without sound Science education. I can vividly remember during my Senior School education, Science labs of my school were adequately equipped. Now there is nothing in the labs, not even furniture. Left to me, I would opine that the ministry of education should not allow any secondary school – whether public or private – to run any Science subject if they don’t have well-equipped laboratories. At the University level, the National Universities Commission (NUC) would not give accreditation to any program, Science- or Applied Science-based programs if it does not have the appropriate supporting laboratories for its students. This makes Science education very expensive to initiate and maintain. That is why most new universities kickstart with less initial capital-intensive faculties such as the Humanities or Social Sciences, Education, and Science. Engineering, Pharmacy and Medicine usually come last on the list because they need huge initial capital investment and expensive labs for the proper running of those faculties. We should ensure that our children have an unshaky foundation come what may.

(2) Scarcity of Qualified Science Teachers

I will narrow the definition of Science teachers to include Physics and Chemistry teachers only, because, they are the most scarce of all the Science teachers. Finding an excellent Science teacher is usually a big challenge. During our time in the senior class from the mid-90s, Mal. Ibrahim Physics was the most famous Physics teacher in Zaria and its environs since the 80s. He taught Physics either as a full-time Physics teacher or part-time at Government Day (Government Secondary School, Tukur-Tukur), FGGC (Federal Government Girls College) Zaria, Yellow Fever (Government Girls Secondary School, Kofan Gayan) Zaria, Government Girls Science School, Soba, and numerous others. I was lucky to be taught Physics by him, from what is Physics (SSS 1) to the end of Physics, i.e., end of the SSS 3 Physics syllabus all covered in a famous extra-mural lesson that he used to organize for students across Zaria which was held only 2 days per week and about 1 hour per subject (Physics & Chemistry). He also taught Chemistry. He delivered his lesson notes by heart and had an extraordinary and sound understanding of Physics and how to teach it. Even this year, I taught my undergraduate Fluid Mechanics class using some of the conceptual examples he described to us in 1995 while he was explaining some basic concepts in SSS 1 Physics. Among his former students are medical doctors, engineers, scientists, pharmacists, etc., many of them are now PhDs lecturing in ABU and other tertiary institutions in Zaria and beyond. This rare gem of a Physics teacher was prematurely retired in 2017 by the Kaduna State Government. If the Ministry of Education had the slightest inkling on the contributions of Mal. Ibrahim Physics in Science education which had spanned for more than 3 decades, it would have hired him on contract even after retirement to help it in uplifting Science education in the State. What a great loss to the educational system! Unfortunately, his enormous contributions to Physics education is known only to his former students. Mal. Zubairu Rilwan – aka Baban Jummai, Deputy Coordinator of the famous Muslim Refresher Course Programme (MRCP), Tudun-Wada, Zaria – is another undisputable giant in Science education in general and Physics education in particular who has left his fingerprints on us and countless other people in Zaria from various walks of life. For about 3 decades, anyone who wanted to talk about Science education in Zaria must begin with these 2 exceptional and highly dedicated teachers who had impacted generations of students. If I could have an audience with the current Commissioner of Education (Dr. Shehu Muhammad Makarfi) or Kaduna State Governor I would highly recommend that he hires these 2 exceptional Science education prodigies as his Special or Technical Assistants to utilize their immense wealth of impeccable and long-standing experiences in Science education for the betterment of the State’s educational system rather than retiring one of them prematurely.

(3) Fallen Standard of Education

It is a known and indisputable fact that our standard of education especially primary and secondary school levels, has been gradually waning for at least the past 3 decades. As a result, hardly can you find products of public secondary schools that have fulfilled all the university admission requirements such as possession of credits in all the required subjects, especially Science students (Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics, English, Biology, etc.). In a big hamlet like Anguwan Alkali in Zaria City where I come from, we could count the number undergraduates in the area in the 90s because they were very few. If you take out graduates from Demonstration Secondary School, ABU, Therbow School and FGGC, Zaria, I can count only 2 persons – my friend Engr. Muhammed Yunusa (from Kufena Science College) and my humble self (all graduates of MRCP) – who obtained credits and distinctions in all the Science subjects needed for university admission in 1997. Engr. Yunusa proceeded to Nigeria Defence Academy and later obtained a degree in Chemical Engineering.

I remember in 1998 when the erstwhile State Minister of Petroleum Resources, Alh. Umaru Dembo, a Zarian, tasked one of his relatives to get 7 people from Zaria who had passed the basic Science combination subjects in WAEC (West African Examinations Council) – NECO (National Examinations Council) did not exist at the time – to be sent to study Petroleum Engineering in America. My former primary school mate contacted me to be included on the list and to help him get more qualified people, he had already got one other person from Zaria City who was in 100 Level studying Chemical Engineering. After my search, I could only find 3 other friends of mine who were all undergraduates in 100 Level studying Medicine (from Tudun-Jukun), Veterinary Medicine (from Wusasa) and Electrical Engineering (from Sabon-Gari). We could not fill in the remaining 2 slots, because, we could not find qualified candidates. I was the only one among them who was not yet an undergraduate. As Allah will have it, former president Sani Abacha suddenly died, Abdulsalami Abubakar took over, and the matter died a natural death with the passing on of Abacha.

Those were the days when the WAEC certificate was extremely credible and reliable at gaging students’ performances. It was so common to find people who had failed to complete their correct subject combination for university admission and had been re-writing WAEC exams 4-5 times without success. The most common subject combinations were Hausa and Islamic Studies fondly referred to as ‘GIDA DA MASALLACI’. When I joined ABU in February 1998-1999 session, to study Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, a sub-specialization in Civil Engineering, we were only about 5 undergraduates in 100 Level. There were 5 lecturers from Zaria in the whole Faculty of Engineering which consisted of about 9 different departments at the time and I learned that there was only 1 Zarian who made it to study Medicine. Now, we have at least a Zarian student per set and lecturer in almost all the departments in ABU. With the tremendous impact of MRCP – a free week-end extra-mural lesson for primary and secondary school students held at Nurul Huda Primary School, Tudun-Wada Zaria – on Science education in Zaria, these figures appreciated in 1999-2000 admission. With the introduction of NECO in the year 2000 when it conducted its first SSCE (Senior School Certificate Examination) and ‘dashed’ its first ‘largesse’, ABU and all other tertiary institutions in Zaria witnessed an exponential rise in the number of admissions secured by Zarians. Federal College of Education (FCE), Zaria, had to introduce a Part-Time stream to accommodate the large number of candidates who were ‘qualified’ for admission into its various programs. With this first ‘NECO largesse’, you could find a candidate who cannot construct a single error-free sentence scoring A1 in the English language. Two years later, schools around Zaria started complaining that the FCE Teaching Practice interns could not teach their students very well. It was not uncommon to find English language interns who could not communicate in the English language. That marked ‘the beginning of the end’ of the already deteriorating quality of education in Zaria. This sad story may not be different from what obtained in other parts of Kaduna State or the country at large. For some reason, WAEC also soft-pedaled after the introduction of a competitor, NECO, so as not to lose all its customers to NECO. This saw WAEC awarding goods grades to some ‘undeserved candidates’ the following year similar to what NECO did in the previous year. Again, the rest, as they, is history.

(4) SSCE Examination Malpractice From The 90s To The Present Day

I have stated that getting credits in all the relevant subject combinations in the 90s was a herculean task that very few exceptional students could achieve, especially for those in public schools. Candidates from FGGC, DSS and Therbow School were the lucky ones to get the required credits for admission into the university. SSCE examination malpractice began to set foot in some of the public and private schools. Impersonation was among the common exam malpractice of the time. Other forms included ‘exam leakage’ (became notoriously rampant in the 2000s), issuance of fake WAEC certificate, answer booklet substitution by invigilators, school-sanctioned mass cheating by writing answers on boards for students to copy, using cheat notes during the exam, exchange of answer booklets by candidates within the same exam hall, etc. Some of those early participants in some of these exam malpractices tried to defend themselves saying that they were just ‘helping’ those in need by pushing them up the ladder. This may hold true for some of the candidates who were brilliant and hardworking but just could not pass 1 or 2 subject(s) to complete their subject combinations needed for university admission. Exam malpractice in whatever form should be discouraged and frowned at, no matter the supposed benefits that its proponents may advance as justifications. With more and more people becoming desperate to gain admission into universities, exam malpractice skyrocketed in the late 90s and the early 2000s. Those involved in this heinous act were students, teachers, principals, examiners, parents, proprietors of most private schools, etc. Currently, we still have ‘miracle centers’- private schools where candidates pay exorbitant fees to ensure that the WAEC/NECO supervisors are bribed enough so that students can be allowed to do whatever they can to pass the exam. This is the most dangerous of them all. Surprisingly, we all know these so-called ‘miracle centers’, yet, the Ministry of Education is either not aware of all the different exam malpractices taking place in both public and private schools – which I doubt – or has chosen to turn a blind eye to all these untoward practices. Eradicating exam malpractice is a herculean task, no doubt. But it is not impossible. All it takes is the Government’s appreciation of the gravity of the problem and its resolve to stamp it out at all costs. I have no iota of doubt that if Mal. Nasir El-Rufai chooses to bring an end to examination malpractice in the State, he would achieve it. All it takes is for him to become passionate about it and the rest will be history. When he vowed to destroy the ‘gajimari’ (cloud) that used to prevent Zarians from getting pipe-borne water, he succeeded, and most parts of Zaria are now getting running pipe-borne water. When he was determined to prevent inter-state vehicular movement during the lockdown period, he achieved just that by forming a task force consisting of all his cabinet members (commissioners and aides) and heads of agencies/parastatals. I hope he will declare a ‘state of emergency’ on this examination malpractice issue and use all the forces at his disposal to dismantle and eradicate this menace that has been eating away the very fabric of our quality educational system.

I know that corruption has become our unofficial working constitution. It has ravaged every nook and cranny of our life. Our precarious situation in Nigeria- extreme poverty among the masses, poor development in terms of infrastructure, power, road, and other utilities, is all thanks to corruption. A select few individuals are benefitting and thriving on corruption while the vast majority of the masses are paying the price. We should all rise and gang up against corruption in whatever form, shape, or size. This we can do with the unflinching support of our leaders and the collective effort of individuals whether rich or poor. Our leaders cannot change our sorry state by using any magic wand, the needed change should begin with all of us. We should all instill discipline in our families and try as much as possible to do things the right way. Our leaders have to first understand the different forms of corruption that take place in all sectors and then set out to establish transparent and reliable systems that are aimed at eradicating them as much as possible. You cannot fight what you don’t know. More often than not, our various systems have a mechanism that frustrates anyone who wants to follow due process or attempts to do things the right way. As Dr. Farooq Kperogi would say,

‘There’s no greater enabler of corruption than the knowledge that there’s no consequence for it.’

Dr. Salihu Lukman is an assistant professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Hafr Al Batin and writes from Saudi Arabia. salihulukman@yahoo.com

Tagged : education / Nigeria / pantami / schools

Leaving The Diaspora To Take A Government Job Is Indeed A “Great Sacrifice” (Part 4)

by Salihu LukmanJuly 12, 2020March 24, 2022EducationLeave a Comment

Written By: Salihu Lukman (PhD)

Twitter Handle: @SalihuLukman

To get a full grasp of what I set out to achieve by writing these articles, you need to read Part 1 – 3.

Part 1 was aimed at debunking Sheriff Almuhajir’s claims that Dr. Pantami was not a professor in Saudi Arabia as claimed and that the salary of academics in Saudi Arabia is rigidly fixed, without any possibility of variability. On his 1^st claim, I proved beyond any reasonable doubt that Dr. Pantami was, in essence, a professor in Saudi Arabia. This is no conjecture! On his 2^nd claim, I also explained the obvious, i.e., for the fact that all expatriate academics in Saudi Arabia are on contract, it goes without saying that a contract is ‘negotiable’ based on some considerations which I presented in my article. This is again no conjecture!

In Part 2, I reiterated that:

“I did not set out to present a table juxtaposing the exact values of salaries and allowances of a Minister versus an expatriate professor in Saudi Arabia.”

This article titled, “Do University Professor in Saudi Arabia Earn More Than Nigerian Minister?” attempted to present some exact values of the total emoluments for comparison.

In Part 3, I set out to respond to 4 questions raised by Prof. Dankofa: 2 of them were conjectures (20 million housing allowance which later turned out to be about 4 million and severance gratuity of hundreds of millions which later turned out to be about 6 million) and the remaining 2 were clearly out of context (flying first-class and official cars) because they did not fall within the purview of salary or allowance. With regards to the purported housing allowance 20 million, I analyzed one of the accommodation options granted academics in Saudi Arabia and proved that the cost of the accommodation is by far more than the concocted 20 million annual housing allowance for Ministers. This is again no conjecture. As for severance gratuity, I mentioned a case in which someone received over a hundred million in Saudi Arabia as the end of service benefit before it was reviewed downward. This is no conjecture! I also responded to the remaining 2 claims that were out of context.

Sincerely speaking, the Minister’s claim that he earned more as a professor in Saudi Arabia than as a Minister is not supposed to be a bone of contention at all for all those who have the slightest idea of what obtains abroad in salaries and allowances. Now I realized that this clear-cut and indisputable information is actually at the disposal of a select privileged few. I can assure you that all those making noise about this matter are either mischievously misinforming people with some bogus and unsubstantiated figures (housing allowance – 20 million instead of 4 million; severance gratuity – hundreds of millions instead of 6 million) or do not have good foreign exposure and experience that will enable them to understand first-hand the salaries and allowances of academics abroad.

I am not oblivious of the fact that our political office holders sometimes use vague and misleading statements just to gain cheap and undeserved popularity. This is certainly not one of them. Just 2 days back, another Nigerian academic, based abroad mentioned that he earns more than twice what the Nigerian President officially earns.

I am not unaware of the plight of Nigerians which has blinded us from seeing anything good in any political office holder. This led us into believing that any political office holder is just there to enrich himself and steal our money, no more no less. While this may hold for some of them, it certainly does not apply to all. We still have people of integrity, people we can trust, people who can undeservedly forgo their comforts and personal preferences for something more valuable to them, i.e., the rare privilege to wholeheartedly serve Nigerians. This is their way of giving back to the motherland that has nurtured them into becoming whoever they may ever be. Not all diasporans can leave their comfort zones to come back to serve Nigerians for obvious reasons. Those that are selfless and courageous enough to accept the clarion call deserve our support and appreciation because they sacrificed to come back home to give back to the motherland what other diasporans cannot do for whatever reasons. If this is not a “sacrifice”, then I wonder what other patriotic act can qualify to be described as a “sacrifice”! Hence, leaving the diaspora to take a government job is indeed a “great sacrifice”. To me, “sacrifice” and “giving back” are the two sides of the same coin, they are all driven by patriotism.

Living in the diaspora for study or work comes with useful experience and exposure that positively reshape one’s overall touch. Two diasporan Nigerians that come to mind: (1) Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, former Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and current President of the African Development Bank (nominated to the post by the PDP government and later supported by the incoming APC Government in 2015 and renominated by the APC in 2019) (2) Dr. Ngozi Okongo-Iweala, former Nigerian Minister of Finance under PDP and current nominee for the post of the Director-General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) – nominated by the APC Government.

Tagged : Nigeria / pantami / professor / sacrifice

Response to Professor Yusuf Dankofa’s Rhetoric on Dr. Pantami’s Claim (Part 3)

by Salihu LukmanJuly 10, 2020March 24, 2022Education3 Comments

Written By: Salihu Lukman (PhD)

Twitter Handle: @SalihuLukman

Background

Let me begin by drawing your attention that this is Part 3 of my piece aimed at enlightening my readers on Dr. Pantami’s statement, ‘that as a serving Minister, Dr. Pantami’s salaries and allowances fall below his earnings as a Professor at the International University Madinah Saudi Arabia.” In Part 1, I debunked the mischievous claims of one Sheriff Almuhajir who purported that the Minister was not a professor in Saudi Arabia and that his salary was a standard amount known to all which cannot be increased for anyone. In Part 2, I presented the economic perspective of why the Naira, and by extension, any supposed huge earnings in Naira have low value owing to the continuous devaluation of the Naira against the US dollar.

Here, I will respond to Prof. Yusuf Dankofa’s rhetoric reproduced below which were widely shared on social media platforms.

(1) “Which university places a professor on a N20 M or more yearly housing allowance or first-class international travels.”

Let me start with a disclaimer that I have no idea how much is the actual yearly housing allowance for a Minister. For the sake of discussion, let us assume that N 20 million is the annual housing allowance of a Minister. Many people who leave outside Saudi Arabia have a poor understanding of how things work in the country. In fact, even those who live inside the Kingdom, sometimes misunderstand how things actually work depending on how much they interact with other people from the same or different parts of the country. At first glance, N20 million appears to be a huge sum of money for a Nigerian. One of the options for faculty housing in Saudi Arabia is hiring hotel suites where the university does not have a built faculty housing. 5-star hotels are sometimes used for this purpose. Yes, you heard me right, 5-star hotels. An average rate of a 5-star hotel here is about SR1,500 (N186,000) per night which adds up to SR540,000 (N66,960,000) per annum. Note that this is a conservative estimate that may apply to just one room, what about a suite for a family? If you think that this is too much for a faculty, then do you know that:

(a) A 5-star Ritz-Carlton Hotel was used in 2018 as an interrogation center in a crackdown on corruption in which about 381 high profile figures where detained on graft allegations? Just imagine the suspended EFCC boss, Ibrahim Magu, and other suspected high profile figures are detained at Transcorp Hilton Hotel Abuja for interrogation.

(b) Saudi Arabia isolates her COVID-19 patients in 5-star hotels across the country except those who opt to isolate at home. Currently, it has 223,327 total cases out of which 60,131 are active and receiving attention. I am a living witness to this fact because even yesterday a new COVID-19 patient was given the option to either isolate at a 5-star hotel or home. The government provides not just free accommodation to the patients but free 3 square meals.

About the second segment of (1), i.e., using first-class international travels, this does not form part of either a salary or allowance of the Minister according to my understanding. For the records, I choose to reproduce below, a portion of the statement issued by Dr. Isa Ali Pantami’s spokesperson Uwa Suleiman in this regard.

“It is worthy of note that as a serving Minister, Dr. Pantami’s salaries and allowances fall below his earnings as a Professor at the International University Madinah Saudi Arabia, where he still holds the record of being the first Nigerian to lecture at that level. He only returned to Nigeria out of the zeal to contribute his quota to national development.”

“Dr Pantami is one of the few Nigerians who are driven by nothing, but an unequalled sense of patriotism and selfless service as demonstrated in his act of sacrifice, to answer the call to serve his country as a sign of his patriotism and selfless service.”

Let us examine the veracity of the statement further. Does a Minister fly first-class? The answer is no. In April 2016 and December 2019, President Muhammadu Buhari has banned Ministers, Heads of Agencies and others from flying first-class.

(2) “And which university gives a professor Jeeps as official vehicles together with pilot cars.”

This does not form part of either a salary or allowance of the Minister. Nevertheless, let us examine the use of Jeeps or SUVs in Saudi Arabia. Please note that SUVs do not have the same prestige and grandeur as they do in Nigeria. They are like ‘Jamfa a Jos’, meaning, they are so common and affordable for all irrespective of one’s status or class. About a month ago, we bought a watermelon from a roadside parked vendors who sell them in their cars. Guess which car they were using to house the watermelons? It was an excellent SUV fitted with car TV LCDs – similar to any SUV belonging to any of the top-notches in Nigeria. One of our housing security guards cruises similar SUV that our former Rector/President (Vice-Chancellor) was using. Here, it is perfectly normal to find a primary school teacher cruising an SUV that our Ministers and Governors are using. They are also used for taxis.

(3) “And which university gives you hundreds of millions as severance fee when you leave for good. Which university in this whole world does that???”

First, I don’t know how much is the severance gratuity of a Minister, hence, I cannot say with certainty that it runs into hundreds of millions. However, let us assume that this is correct. Severance gratuity is similar to what is called End of Service Benefits (ESB) in Saudi Arabia which can accumulate into more than a million Saudi Riyals a few years back depending on one’s years of service. ESB was later reviewed downward. I know someone, a Nigerian, who got more than a million Saudi Riyals as ESB, that will definitely be more than a hundred million Naira.

(4) “People should learn how to keep quiet if they have nothing to say!”

From the foregoing analyses, I would say that even if you have anything to say, then, ponder upon it a thousand times before spitting it out.

Tagged : dankofa / pantami / professor

Re: Dr. Sheriff Almuhajir’s Exposition on Dr. Isa Ali Pantami – Setting The Record Straight (Part 2)

by Salihu LukmanJuly 9, 2020March 24, 2022EducationLeave a Comment

Written By: Salihu Lukman (PhD)

Twitter Handle: @SalihuLukman

I choose to reproduce my response to a comment (on my Facebook wall) by Abdullahi A Abdullahi on my Facebook post titled, “Dr. Sheriff Almuhajir’s Exposition on Dr. Isa Ali Pantami – Setting The Record Straight (Part 1)” for more explanation.

I did not set out to present a table juxtaposing the exact values of salaries and allowances of a Minister versus an expatriate professor in Saudi Arabia. Also, I did not set out to provide irrefutable proof that the Minister’s emoluments are truly less than that of an expatriate professor in Saudi Arabia. You can contact Dr. Pantami’s media aide for that purpose.
I only set to prove the following points and have gladly done just that:
(1) Sheriff Almuhajir is just a wolf in sheep’s clothing – he hid his true motive behind his unsubstantiated attack on Dr. Pantami in the first 2 posts on the subject until the last (3rd) one in which he poured out his heart.
(2) To sound justifiable in his attack and convincing in his argument, he ignorantly presented false perspectives on Saudi Arabian university teacher’s ranks and their salary structure. I cleared all the misconceptions he presented in his posts with regards to the above points in my article.

To be candid, if he had attacked Dr. Pantami purely on the grounds of his religious scholarship and teachings, I would not have written a single word in his defence, because, that will be glaringly crystal clear for all to judge and separate the wheat from the chaff.

What people fail to factor into the equation of this comparison is the fact that our currency, the Naira, is continuously being devalued year after year and that single factor will make our currently extremely weak against other stable currencies like the Saudi Riyal whose exchange rate to the US dollar has been stable at about SR 3.75/$ ever since I came to the Kingdom in 2010 when the Naira was exchanging at about N160/$ and now at N465/$ (190 % Naira devaluation). This significant Naira devaluation reduces the Naira value against any other stable currency like the Saudi Riyal and when hundreds of thousands or millions of Naira are converted into Saudi Riyals, they appear to have low value. This is not to talk about the accompanying inflation and reduction in the purchasing power of the Naira that are associated with the Naira devaluation. This is because, whether we like it or not, goods and services are directly or indirectly tied to the dollar exchange rate. Someone may be earning in 2020 far more than he did in 2010, yet, he was slowly and consistently moving backward when you compare his earnings in dollar terms. Look at the picture below and ponder upon it. One does not have to be an economist to understand that we are getting poorer and poorer by the day despite the fact that our Naira earnings have significantly grown over the years, yet, the rate of inflation in goods particularly is not commensurate with the rate at which our earnings increase.

Dr. Isa Ali Pantami was, for all intents and purposes legally a professor in Saudi Arabia based on Saudi Arabian professorial ranks, and Uwa Suleiman correctly referred to him as such. Those refuting his description as a ‘professor’ are only displaying their ignorance of the Saudi Arabian system and ignorance is not an excuse come what may! That is why I took my time to present a comprehensive review of the subject matter to enlighten my fellow Nigerians.

Tagged : devaluation / dollar / economics / inflation / saudi riyal

Dr. Sheriff Almuhajir’s Exposition on Dr. Isa Ali Pantami – Setting The Record Straight (Part 1)

by Salihu LukmanJuly 8, 2020March 24, 2022Education17 Comments

Written By: Salihu Lukman (PhD)

Twitter Handle: @SalihuLukman

BACKGROUND:

Motive: I intend to provide in-depth analyses of Sheriff Almuhajir’s (Dr. Sheriff Muhammad Ibrahim) posts against Dr. Isa Ali Pantami’s claim that he earned more as a professor in Saudi Arabia than as a Federal Minister of Communications and Digital Economy. My main motive behind writing this piece is to enlighten my readers about the fallacies presented by Sheriff Almuhajir in his recent posts where he unknowingly displayed his sheer ignorance on the Saudi Arabian academic ranking system and her salary structure for expatriate faculty and yet, was bold enough to use his half-baked knowledge on the above 2 points to discredit and malign the person of Dr. Isa Ali Pantami.

About Sheriff Almuhajir: His full name is Dr. Sheriff Muhammad Ibrahim, a senior lecturer at Yobe State University. He obtained his PhD from the University Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) in Economics & Islamic Finance. I obtained this piece of information from his Facebook page.

About My Humble Self: My name is Salihu Lukman, an assistant professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Hafr Al Batin (formerly known as Affiliated Colleges at Hafr Al Batin, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals). I have so far spent almost 10 years in Saudi Arabia from 2010 to date, about 3 years as a lecturer and a PhD student at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals (KFUPM) and about 6 years as an assistant professor – I have spent about 5 years from these 6 years as a Head of Department (HOD) of Mechanical, Civil and Chemical Engineering.

DISCLAIMER:

Acquaintance with Dr. Isa Ali Pantami: I have no acquaintance whatsoever with Dr. Isa Ali Pantami. However, as someone interested in Nigeria’s development, I have been following his trails as the former Director-General of NITDA and now as the Honorable Minister of Communications and Digital Economy. Based on facts available to be public, he is someone who has a knack for turning things around in the most positive ways by making significant contributions. Based on his performance as a public office holder, I view him as one of the most significant achievements of Buhari’s Government in addition to the Comptroller-General of Customs, Col Hamid Ali (Rtd.), JAMB Registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede and NPA Managing-Director, Haj. Hadiza Bala Usman.

I also don’t have any political affiliations, whatsoever. (APC, PDP, Kwankwasiyya, etc.) I did not set out to please or displease PDP, Kwankwasiyya, APC, Dr. Isa Ali Pantami or Sheriff Almuhajir, I only set out to clear some misrepresented and twisted facts presented by Sheriff Almuhajir in his bid to indirectly or directly settle a score with Dr. Isa Ali Pantami. This singular act has exposed the sheer ignorance of Sheriff Almuhajir on the topics he thought to have known so well. Unlike Sheriff Almuhajir who is an APC member – yet, chose to malign his fellow APC-appointed Federal Minister just because of their religious ideological differences by hiding under the guise of disproving the Minister’s declaration about his greater earnings as a professor in Saudi Arabia than as a Minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (read Sheriff Almuhajir’s recent Facebook posts as a proof) – I don’t belong to any political party. However, based on the performances of some of the political office holders, I am at liberty to choose or prefer anyone from any political party, region, or religion based on a good leadership style and ability to deliver good governance for all. For instance, I secretly pray and hope that one day Mal. Nasir El-Rufai (Kaduna State Governor) from APC, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo (Nigerian Vice President) from APC or Engr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso (former Kano State Governor) from PDP becomes our president.

DILEMMA OF THE NIGERIAN UNIVERSITY EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM

Before I delve into comparing UK & USA systems, I will like to say a few words on the Nigerian university educational system. While in theory, we claim to have abandoned the UK university educational system (Almighty June) since around the early 80s, for the American university educational system (semester system, cumulative grade point average), we are still neither here nor there. We still use the UK academic ranks (lecturer, senior lecturer, reader, professor) as against the American academic ranks (lecturer, assistant professor, associate professor, professor).

Coursework for PhD students – an important characteristic in the American system – has just been recently introduced for all courses in Nigerian universities. This is one core attribute of the American system that makes it far more rigorous and time-consuming than the UK system. Even though some universities are still grappling with how to properly conduct these courses because more often than not, the lecturers who are supposed to teach the courses at this level did not take any course during their PhD studies. Hence, they often resort to asking the students to make term paper presentations only,

Our academic master’s degree coursework and research are purely based on the American system whereby a graduate (postgraduate) student completes at least 2 semesters, the equivalent of 1 year for coursework alone, and writes his thesis in the 2^nd year. In the British system, just 1 year is required to complete a master degree – while they have coursework in form of modules, the 1-year rigorous thesis in the American system is replaced with a mere project that sometimes Nigerians who are studying in the UK come back home after completing their coursework to write and send their master’s project, even in engineering disciplines. You may be shocked to know that some UK master’s degrees were frowned at and almost got rejected in a Nigerian university for the simple fact that such British 1-year master’s degrees are equivalent to our professional master’s degrees in terms of duration, scope and rigors. You cannot proceed to pursue a PhD with a professional master’s degree without doing an MPhil, in Nigeria.

The 5-year compulsory duration of our undergraduate engineering and science (in some universities) programs are adopted from neither the American nor the British educational systems. On average, it takes 3-4 years and 4 years to obtain a bachelor’s degree, under the British and American systems, respectively. Even in the GCC Arab Nations, where students study the English Language during their preparatory (remedial) year program, they spend 4 years for all their engineering and science disciplines and they all follow the American university educational system almost in toto. Our undergraduate engineering educational system needs a complete overhaul to be in line with global best practices in engineering education. Nigerian university’s everyday vocabulary is still British.

Overall, a graduate from a Nigerian university (except the American University of Nigeria) may be deceived into believing that he is familiar with the American educational system while all he knows about it is the use of the cumulative grade point average (CGPA) and a faint idea about the American semester system. With the aforementioned mix up in our university educational system, one can only imagine the confused state of some Nigerian academics when it comes to defining what system of university education do they actually follow, only the National Universities Commission (NUC) can streamline these inconsistencies if it so wishes. A similar thing is also obtainable in our political system where we still have permanent secretaries (deputy ministers) for all ministries from the UK system and yet appoint state ministers (another deputy minister) for some ministries.

PROFESSOR VS LECTURER: AMERICAN AND BRITISH SYSTEMS

First, Nigerians should know that the generic term for describing any university teacher – with or without a PhD – is “professor”. In Saudi Arabia, only those on the professorial cadre (assistant, associate or full professor) are considered and referred to as professors. For this professorial cadre or professoriate, the official occupation on the resident identity cards of either assistant, associate or full professor is “university professor”. For instance, you can say, ‘Salihu Lukman, a professor of civil engineering, teaches at the University of Hafr Al Batin’ without necessarily adding ‘assistant’ before ‘professor’. The equivalent of a professor in the British system is “lecturer”. The following renowned personalities were all referred to as former professors in USA, yet, none of them possess a PhD: Former American presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, Amina Mohammed (United Nations Depute Secretary-General). With just a bachelor’s degree, academics can also attain the professorial rank in the old British system. Do you know that professors Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Yemi Osinbajo (he has an MSc) and JP Clark do not have a PhD?

Second, let us examine the professorial cadres in the two systems. In spite of the generic use of the term professor in the American system, certain American university ranks are exclusively considered to technically belong to the professorial cadre. These ranks are assistant professor, associate professor and full professor. These ranks enjoy similar benefits and privileges contractually in Saudi Arabia and the other GCC nations. In addition to the generic use of the term professor to describe any university teacher in the American system, any rank in the professorial cadre (assistant, associate or full professor) can be addressed as a “professor” without necessarily using the precise rank. For instance, you can say, ‘how are you Prof. Lukman?’ Unlike what obtains in the Nigerian universities whereby it is a ‘crime’ to address a professor as Dr., it is perfectly normal to address a full professor here in Saudi Arabia or in America as Dr. without any offense. In other words, all those on the professorial cadre can also be addressed as just Drs.

A simple analogy to this one is the use of the rank ‘General’ in the military, note that Nigeria uses the American military ranks. The ‘general’ cadre consists of 4 ranks, viz, Brigadier General, Major General, Lieutenant General, and General and anyone on any of these ranks can be formally or informally addressed as ‘General’ without any problem. For instance, the following generals Olonisakin (Chief of Defence Staff), Buratai (Chief of Army Staff), Buhari (Nigerian president, GMB) and Marwa (former Military Governor of Lagos State) whom we are all conversant with and are known to be been addressed as generals belong to following specific ranks respectively: General, Lieutenant General, Major General (Rtd), and Brigadier General (Rtd).

In the British system, the professorial cadre includes just 2 ranks, viz, ‘reader’ and ‘professor’. That is why in Nigeria, whoever reaches the professorial cadre before turning 65 years, then his retirement age is 70, otherwise, it is 65. Nowadays, ‘Readers’ in the British system prefer to be addressed as associate professors. In fact, I conveniently address my Nigerian friends who are associate professors as just professors., because, they have joined the professorial cadre irrespective of whether they are addressed and ‘readers’ or associate professors. However, the same cannot be said for senior lecturer rank which is equivalent to the American ‘assistant professor’ but not exact. In the British system one can rise to the ‘senior lecturer’ rank without a PhD, but probably only holders of the JD (Juris Doctor) – which is a 3-year professional doctorate and is a prerequisite for practicing law in America – can be appointed assistant professors without a PhD. In one of my Facebook posts (also available on my blog at salihulukman.com) last year titled, ‘My Unbiased Critical Analysis of Professor Ango Abdullahi International School, 2016 to date’, I called out some of my colleagues back in Nigeria for using ‘assistant professor’ instead of their actual British rank ‘senior lecturer’ as follows:

‘There is a new trend now in town whereby Nigerian Senior Lecturer academics are running away from their true British and official ranks of senior lecturers, instead, they prefer to use the American equivalent of senior lecturer which is assistant professor as their official rank thereby making them appear scammish or fraudulent since they are not lecturing in an institution that follows the American academic ranking system like the American University of Nigeria.’

I frown at such rank interchange because a ‘senior lecturer’ in the British system has not yet joined the professoriate whereas an ‘assistant professor’ in the American system is already part of the professorial cadre. Although Nigerians are beginning to hear ‘assistant professor’ now more than before, their brains always switch ‘assistant’ with ‘associate’ such that I am tired of correcting them that I am an ‘assistant professor’ not yet an ‘associate professor’. This ‘neurological’ confusion may be removed if NUC will impose that all Nigerian universities should use the American academic ranking system. After all, we claim to follow the American educational system in theory.

Please note that even with a PhD, one can be recruited as a lecturer in the American system which is a rank just below that of an ‘assistant professor’. This happens in America as well as in Saudi Arabia. In Saudi Arabia, this happens if there is no opening for ‘assistant professor’ but there is for a ‘lecturer’ or if one’s university where he obtained his PhD is unranked or low-ranked. In Saudi Arabia, the minimum promotion interval from one rank to the next on the professoriate is 4 years as against the 3-year interval in the British system. In America, an ‘assistant professor’ is given up to 6-7 years to become an ‘associate professor’ and thereby obtain a tenure-track appointment which ensures life-employment as an academic. Saudi Arabia has no tenure employment for expatriates. All expatriates are on a contract which is renewable every 2 years and now, annually. For a more detailed analysis of the American and British university educational system comparisons, don’t miss the 3-part series written by Prof. Farooq Kperogi titled, ‘Comparing the Vernaculars of American and British Universities’. I have extracted many pieces of information from his articles and combined them with my practical teaching experience at the university level in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia to come up with the above explanations on the American and British university educational systems.

Sheriff Almuhajir made the following claims in his first Facebook post on the matter in the Hausa language (translated into English by me) after he stated that it was not appropriate for an individual to be investigating a political office holder’s source of wealth if one was not officially assigned to do that by the relevant authorities.

(1) Top-notch (ministers, political office holders, politicians, etc.) of the society should always speak truth to the poor and not take them for fools.

(2) Firstly, ‘senior lecturer’ rank does not exist in the Saudi Arabian system, one becomes an ‘assistant professor’ upon completion of a PhD, then, one is promoted to ‘associate professor’ after 3 years and finally to ‘professor’.

(3) If our Minister (referring to Dr. Isa Ali Pantami) has assumed the rank of a ‘professor’ when he knew pretty well that he did not attain the rank of a ‘professor’ in that university (referring to the Islamic University of Madinah), then, he had betrayed knowledge.

(4) Secondly, there is doubt about the Minister’s assertion that he enjoys a better life in Saudi Arabia, he came back to Nigeria to offer his selfless service in addition to his desire to help Nigerians. I am sure it will be difficult for anyone who knows the everyday life of a Nigerian Minister and a Saudi Arabian academic to accept this statement.

I will limit my responses to just (2) and (3) because they are very specific statements that facts can either prove or disprove and skipped (1) and (4) because they are vague allegations and statements. For the records, I choose to reproduce below, a portion of the statement issued by Dr. Isa Ali Pantami’s spokesperson Uwa Suleiman in this regard.

On Sheriff Almuhajir’s 2^nd statement, I have already highlighted above that it is not always the case that one becomes an ‘assistant professor’ by virtue of just completing a PhD in Saudi Arabia. This is an over-simplification that is highly misleading. I know many people with a PhD in my alma mater KFUPM and my current university (University of Hafr Al Batin) who work as lecturers. In addition, saying that one gets promoted from ‘assistant professor’ to ‘associate professor’ after 3 years is false. I have already mentioned that the minimum promotion interval here in Saudi Arabia is 4 years, not 3 years as claimed by Sheriff Almuhajir. Obviously, he thought that the Saudi Arabian promotion interval is the same as Nigeria’s.

On Sheriff Almuhajir’s 3rd statement, I have extensively discussed how the American system adopted by the Saudi Arabian educational system allows anyone on the professoriate (assistant professor, associate professor, professor) to address himself or be addressed by someone else as a ‘professor’. On our official Iqama (resident identity card), all these 3 ranks are simply referred to as ‘university professor’ without distinction. Hence, Uwa Suleiman (Dr. Isa Ali Pantami’s spokesperson) did not in any way err or falsely ascribe to him a position that he did not have. On Sheriff Almuhajir’s statements (2^nd and 3^rd), it is very clear that he has no clue whatsoever on the Saudi Arabian university educational system, yet, he presented himself as though he were an expert on Saudi Arabian system.

SALARY STRUCTURE OF EXPATRIATE ACADEMICS IN SAUDI ARABIA

All expatriates are recruited on contract as per some general guidelines and terms of reference. Hence, the contract terms, especially the annual salary is subject to negotiation and acceptance by the 2 parties involved in the contract – employer and potential employee. This salary negotiation is more applicable to those on the professorial cadre. While allowances are usually fixed for all, the actual salary is something that one can negotiate. They established a minimum salary based on some considerations that I will not breakdown the details, but there exist some significant variations from one university to another and from one program to another. Factors that affect salary negotiation include how badly the institution needs the individual, one’s nationality, how good one is (ranking of universities attended, possession of excellent research articles and experience), etc. You can find two academics on the same rank, probably from the same university whose salary may differ by 50 – 500 % – this is a very wide range indeed, but not impossible to come across.

Sheriff Almuhajir followed the 1^st Facebook post summarized above with a 2^nd one in which he narrated how he visited Umm Al-Qura University in Makkah at the beginning of 2019. He narrated how he was honored and provided with an office and was given an opportunity to come and teach in the university for 1 year, on contract as ‘assistant professor’ which he declined due to some reasons. He further claimed that the salary structure of all contract staff (implying expatriate academics) is well known to anybody working in Saudi Arabia and there is no way that one’s salary can become higher except if he is recruited for a different job entirely.

In other words, Dr. Isa Ali Pantami’s salary as ‘assistant professor’ is something that is fixed and known to all expatriate academics and cannot be higher at all for the rank. Well, this is another misrepresentation of fact by Sheriff Almuhajir which was meant to indicate that Dr. Isa Ali Pantami’s salary as ‘assistant professor’ was just being exaggerated on, it was in no way close to that of a Minister. Imagine how people can be so mischievous at attempting to tarnish one’s image using falsehood. Just because you have been offered a 1-year contract as ‘assistant professor’ which you did not accept or serve, does that make you an expert on Saudi Arabian expatriate faculty contracts? How could a PhD descend so low as to advertise his sheer ignorance and forcefully try to twist facts for all that have the slightest inkling on the Saudi Arabian educational system to see? His 3^rd Facebook post answered my question – Sheriff Almuhajir is out to tarnish Dr. Isa Ali Pantami’s image just because they have ideological religious differences, no more, no less. It actually begs the question, why can’t Sheriff Almuhajir face Dr. Isa Ali Pantami head-on, in areas where they differ religiously rather than resorting to unjustly maligning him without any basis, except lies and ignorance? If you have issues with his Islamic scholarship and teachings, I challenge you to hit the nail on the head. Reveal yourself as the wolf that you are and stop hiding in sheep’s clothing! Almighty Allah has asked us not to allow our hatred or enmity of other people to stand in our way to being just to them.

يَٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ كُونُوا۟ قَوَّٰمِينَ لِلَّهِ شُهَدَآءَ بِٱلْقِسْطِ ۖ وَلَا يَجْرِمَنَّكُمْ شَنَـَٔانُ قَوْمٍ عَلَىٰٓ أَلَّا تَعْدِلُوا۟ ۚ ٱعْدِلُوا۟ هُوَ أَقْرَبُ لِلتَّقْوَىٰ ۖ وَٱتَّقُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ خَبِيرٌۢ بِمَا تَعْمَلُونَ
Qur’an, Al-Ma’idah (5:8): O you who believe! Stand out firmly for Allah and be just witnesses and let not the enmity and hatred of others make you avoid justice. Be just: that is nearer to piety, and fear Allah. Verily, Allah is Well-Acquainted with what you do.

Translation: Muhammad Taqi-Ud-Din Al-Hilali And Muhammad Muhsin Khan.

I challenge Dr. Sheriff Almuhajir to ask all those Nigerians who were previously working abroad but had to come back to Nigeria to serve as Ministers, Heads of agencies or Directors if they did not earn more abroad than in Nigeria, except of course if they were ‘beggars’ abroad. I am a living witness to this fact, but that is a story for another day. Find out from Jelani Aliyu, Director-General, National Automotive Design and Development Council (former top GM motors designer), Dr. Ibe Kachikwu, former Minister of State, Petroleum Resources (former ExxonMobil Executive Vice Chairman) and Prof. Usman Yusuf, former Executive Secretary, National Health Insurance Scheme.

Tagged : minister / pantami / professor / saudi arabia

Zazzau Inspirations

Category: Education

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ASUU Strikes, Subsidy Removal and Privatization of Nigerian Universities – Charting the Way Forward

Written By: Salihu Lukman (PhD)

Petroleum subsidy

Subsidy removal & consequences

The current state of our educational system

Basic/secondary education

Tertiary education

Core issues of ASUU struggles

Incessant ASUU strikes and privatization of universities

Education, My Journey & The Present State of Affairs – University Education (Part 2)

Challenges Of University Education

Education, My Journey & The Present State of Affairs – Primary & Secondary Education (Part 1)

Background

Challenges of The Universal Basic Education (Primary + Junior Secondary Levels)

Rigasa Primary School With 22,000 Students

My Primary School Experience in Zaria – The 3 Musketeers

Personal Appeal To Kaduna State Governor On Behalf Of Teachers

Eradication of the Almajiri System & Going Digital

Challenges of Senior Secondary Education

Leaving The Diaspora To Take A Government Job Is Indeed A “Great Sacrifice” (Part 4)

Twitter Handle: @SalihuLukman

Response to Professor Yusuf Dankofa’s Rhetoric on Dr. Pantami’s Claim (Part 3)

Twitter Handle: @SalihuLukman

Re: Dr. Sheriff Almuhajir’s Exposition on Dr. Isa Ali Pantami – Setting The Record Straight (Part 2)

Twitter Handle: @SalihuLukman

Dr. Sheriff Almuhajir’s Exposition on Dr. Isa Ali Pantami – Setting The Record Straight (Part 1)

Twitter Handle: @SalihuLukman