DID NIGERIA KILL DR FESTUS IYAYI?...WHY DOES DR NIYI OSUNDARE THINK SO?

Nigeria Killed Iyayi By Niyi Osundare

Prof. Festus Iyayi

By Niyi Osundare

And so Nigeria killed Festus Iyayi. . . .

He was one of our very best: creative, energetic, dependable, and forthright. We were there in 1980 (with the then young and irrepressible Tunde Fatunde) when what we call ASUU (Academic Staff Union of Universities) today was in its infancy. Iyayi served the Union tirelessly and loyally, becoming its President in 1986, by popular acclamation. I worked with Iyayi, and saw him at close quarters. Fearless but fair, courageous but compassionate, demanding but decent, Iyayi was a great leader and an even greater follower, the kind who pressed on when others were seized by trepidation and despair. There is a painful logic in the fact he met his death while on a vital errand for our beloved ASUU.

Iyayi was a Balogun of the Barricades in our struggle against military dictatorship and our battle for Human Rights. He gave so generously, so valuably of himself and his inexhaustible physical and mental resources. Like the great Nelson Mandela, he could have said, without any fear of contradiction, that the struggle was his life.

All these virtues informed every line he wrote, from creative works to occasional interventions in the media. Art for Human Sake; clear illumination of the past; sensitive appreciation of the present; intelligent apprehension and anticipation of the future: Iyayi is a writer with the answerable vision. He chose his heroes very carefully, very judiciously. He ridiculed tyrants out of their despotic inclinations, challenged the unaccountably wealthy to show the source of their loot; urged the pauperized and the marginalized to interrogate the grounds for their plight instead of merely collapsing under its weight. Iyayi's blood boiled at the sight of injustice. Whenever he raised his voice it was to denounce the monsters that make progress impossible by laying us low. Iyayi challenged, then redefined our concept of heroism, for he knew that many of those propped up as heroes are nothing short of heinous villains; that many of our so-called giants are smaller than ants. His novel on the Nigerian civil war is never ambiguous as to who the real heroes of that war are, and where to look for the villains.

For many of his readers, Violence remains his all-time classic. In this unforgettable novel, Iyayi invites us to a Fanonian aetiology of violence, its actuation, and awful ramifications. In this heart-rendering story, we meet a millionaire who never labours for his money but uses it to take advantage of the moneyless; we meet young people so desperate, so  poor – no, impoverished –  that they are forced to sell their very blood for money for the very basic essentials of life. We encounter the uncommon courage and stoicism of the poor and lowly and the callous bestiality of the rich and powerful. In the annals of African fiction, only Ousmane Sembene’s God’s Bit of Wood and Ngugi wa Thion’go’s Petals of Blood have dissected Africa’s social reality in such gripping detail and with such committed panache. I love all Iyayi’s works with a passion, but for me, Violence remains for him what Things Fall Apart is for Chinua Achebe: a magnificent story ennobled by unforced lyricism and spontaneous narrativity. Violence marked a new accent in Nigerian fiction when it appeared in the late 1970’s. In many ways, it is the harbinger for the likes of E.E.Sule’s Sterile Sky published about three decades later.

     Personally, to encounter Festus was to get ready to fall in love with him. Natural. Unabashedly, unapologetically natural. Humorous and always loaded with funny anecdotes, Festus took the sting out of the scorpion of the Nigerian jungle by laughing and helping others to laugh at its countless foibles. Victim of incarceration, unwarranted sack, vilification, and other abuses, he was always ready to forge ahead. Utterly disenchanted with Nigeria’s present, he never lost hope in her future. Festus was a comrade who was also a friend, a fellow-traveller and a brother.

     And so Nigeria killed Iyayi. Nigeria, that dragon which feeds so insatiably upon the most precious of its own eggs. We lost a gallant fighter and great patriot. Terrible. Unspeakably terrible. Behold the terrifying irony: the patriot who labored so tirelessly to rid his country of violence has become a victim of her egregious violence.

Yet another chapter in our running saga of waste. . . .

Adieu, brave comrade. Nigeria’s wasters are still here, Awaiting Court-Marshall. 

Niyi Osundare

New Orleans, Nov. 15, 2013

YOUTHS HAVE BETTER PROSPECTS IF THEY STAY IN SCHOOL - OSOTIMEHIN

Youth are key to development but can only fully contribute to their communities if they realise their right to make choices related to reproductive life, says UNFPA executive director Dr Babatunde Osotimehin.

And community development, mother and child health minister Dr Joseph Katema will be among more than 20 finance, planning, youth and gender leaders who will convene to discuss investments in family planning to meet the needs of Africa's youth.
In a statement ahead of the high-level ministerial meeting which starts tomorrow in Addis Ababa in conjunction with the third International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP 2013), Dr Osotimehin said young people could have better prospects and more opportunities if they avoid adolescent pregnancies and stay longer in school.
"Governments, together with national institutions, civil society, communities, and other development partners, are responsible for creating opportunities for their people, especially the young. That youthfulness is the real wealth of a nation," said Dr Osotimehin.
Dr Katema is listed to join Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, Malawian President Joyce Banda, Thai Prime Minister
Yingluck Shinawatra and African Union Commission chairperson Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma during the opening ceremony of the International Conference on family planning (ICFP 2013) to be held from November 12-15.
According to the ICFP 2013 secretariat in Addis Ababa, the high-level ministerial investment meeting on family planning is aimed at maximizing the youth's future potential for national development.
"Discussions will focus on the key role of family planning in helping nations reap the benefits of a demographic dividend, the accelerated economic growth that can result from a rapid decline in a country's fertility rate, coupled with smart investments in health, education, and job creation. Multiple Asian countries have achieved the demographic dividend. Now, with the right investments, it could be within the reach of African nations," it stated.
ICFP added that earlier this year in Abidjan, African ministers of finance and economic development issued a joint call to launch a continental initiative on the demographic dividend

HERE WE ARE AGAIN...ANOTHER BRILLIANT NIGERIAN SHINES MORE LIGHT ON OUR VERY,VERY DARK EDUCATIONAL TUNNEL!...DO OUR MINISTRIES OF EDUCATION COLLATE AND EXAMINE OPINIONS SUCH AS THIS FOR IMPROVING THE LIVES OF OUR YOUTH OR ARE THOSE IN CHARGE MORE INVOLVED WITH POLITICS?

Wanted: A Culture of Learning

 

Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéjú

Every facet of our national life is a presentation of oddities. Part of the reasons why we have no defined vision and no definitive national character is because our learning got ossified at the rudiments. Most unfortunately, even the foundation on which this country rests, is objectively disordered for lack of evolutionary learning after its conception. We need a culture of learning to remold  rebuild and rebrand Nigeria, if we are to succeed and compete.

Nigeria stopped learning by the late 1970′s when it started defunding education, stigmatizing vocational education and apprenticeship by excessive glorification white collar jobs. By the early 1990′s, the failure of critical thinking and the triumph of rote learning started manifesting itself. By the 2000′s, the circle was complete, Nigeria was in full embrace of willful ignorance. After decades of tinkering around the edges and avoiding the hard choices, we are yet to adopt sound education, quality training and skills acquisition as the basis of our development. Can we succeed in helping our exploding and impoverished population learn without good public education? No! We must revive, restore, improve and equip our public and vocational schools to global standards. This country must believe, adopt and embrace equal access and equal opportunity to qualitative education as a fundamental right. Nigeria cannot get anywhere if we fail to prepare all children regardless of their circumstance and socioeconomic status for productive citizenship.

For Nigeria to endure, remain viable and compete, we urgently need to revamp how we learn, think on our feet to be able to identify and respond to emerging opportunities with greater ingenuity and speed. Our thinking must change, we must re-learn how to think, learn and act. We must adopt new competitive thought processes unlike the consumptive thinking we have developed. Our educational and vocational systems must change, adapt and evolve in line with global prevailing forces. In this age, only the fittest will survive. Competition for all resources including indigenous ones will be allocated to the fittest in the face of ever changing conditions. If we are not smart enough to recognize the value of our resources, someone else will appropriate them and we will be subjugated again in and on our own land.

Our continued underdevelopment stems from our refusal to institute a culture of learning as our compass for competitiveness. In this century, every aspect of life will be defined by information and technology much like what happened in the industrial age. We cannot continue to think we can evolve by consuming other peoples output. Singapore and Japan are excellent examples of societies that has adopted, implemented and imbibed a culture of learning and has become what is called a “learning society” in literature. These two countries have almost nothing in terms of natural resources. Japan achieved 99% while Singapore has 92.5% literacy rate. They are success stories today. The combined powers of the allied forces nearly removed Japan from the map in World War II. Today the “Japanese miracle” is a product of unalloyed dedication to building a solid human resource base, relevant integration of skills and training and a unique management system based on quality and continuos improvement.

In the 1960′s Singapore was just an “irrelevant” Island in the pacific populated by an overly impoverished people. Now, Singapore has been transformed to a computerized industrial giant, many thanks to the exceptional brilliance, dedication and vision of Lee Kuan Yew. He jump started his country from the scratch and educated his people. Singapore invested heavily in computer related learning and focused on making Shipping an export. The drive sounds wacky at the onset but today the success story is enviable.

In the last four decades, we have witnessed the gradual decimation of our values and learning. Our administrators must ask themselves; what we can do to improve Nigeria’s ability to learn? How can Nigeria excel at getting better? Urgent steps needs to be taken to reverse the anti-intellectualism that crystallized during the Babangida era and created the brain drain phenomenon that eventually shaped Nigerian higher education tragically, forcing Nigerian intelligentsia to seek conducive environments abroad. Nigeria’s power elite must resist the temptation of politicization of our Universities, effectively reducing our ivory towers to citadels of ignorance. Leaders must read, learn and teach by example. Students must be shown to embrace optimistic meritocracy and abandon the current stew of exam malpractices, cultism, and bribery to pass through the system. In Japan even the bureaucracy is a study in meritocracy, intellectualism and hard work. Their technocrats are not rejects or half baked idiots, very unlike our own technocrats who have become vulgar sycophants of political hegemony.

A nation’s set of leaders are a reflection of who they are. We are a miseducated lot and we got miseducated leaders deservedly. Since you can not give what you have not, it is hard to imagine how we can get out of this knowledge deficit. Everyone want to “make it” doing nothing. A “learning society” is one that can produce purposeful leadership, a nation adaptive to change and focused on competitiveness; the very factors that dictated success in the globally. A society in learning fosters political stability and discipline. A society where the government and the governed discharges their duties as appropriate, dedicated to the preservation of the rule of law, respect for human rights, responsibility and accountability.

This is the ideas century, it is not a make-a-wish century. Education, literacy, technological knowhow and skills are mobile, ubiquitous and fluid. These have become critical factors influencing the dictates of political and economic success. We need a learning formula that will help us understand and navigate the intersection of knowledge, responsibility and accountability. Nigerians need a fresh start, a redirection, a brand new focus to help conjugate our bifurcated destiny. We need a chance to move on. We need a citizenry imbued with ethics, ideals, ideologies, morals, norms, morality and values. When we are learned, we will understand the dynamics of life and living. Learning will liberate our minds, so we can stop clinging to religion for nothing and stand for something to further our collective destiny.

By Bámidélé Adémólá-Olátéju/Premium Times

Kindly follow me on Twitter @olufunmilayo

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http://lagosbooksclub.com/there-you-are-one-lantern-in-our-dark-educa

MANDARIN IN LAGOS STATE SCHOOLS (2)...KNOCK,KNOCK,KNOCK!...IS ANYONE LISTENING?

RE-BLOGGED FROM OUR SISTER SITE ON WORDPRESS.COM

SAME NOVEMBER 2012, WE MADE THESE COMMENTS ON OUR SISTER BLOG AND ON VANGUARD ONLINE...IS ANYONE LISTENING?

guv-fashola-of-lagos-state

HERE IS OUR OPINION:

Let's congratulate our hard-working  governor on many of his progressive policies and methods…no one surely will disagree with the ideas and needs leading to what might become a goal or an objective of his government…but there are many questions needing answers before we move any further on this proposal…these include…

1.Can Lagos State on its own include any subject on its secondary school curriculum without appropriate research work by the NIGERIAN EDUCATION RESEARCH COUNCIL (NERC) and approval by the Federal Council on Education through the Federal Ministry of Education? For instance can Lagos State set up an airport without approval by the Federal Ministry of Aviation? Should we not have some measure of order or of coordination in matters such as this?….

2. Who is going to teach the subject? Who is going to train the potential trainers? Where will they be trained and at what cost to the state? Has  our governor  ensured that this proposal is not one of the hundreds of money-making schemes that usually get to his table through interested cabinet members?

3. Has the Lagos State Ministry of Education submitted the reasons for the dearth of Yoruba,Igbo and Hausa teachers in its schools and why the failure rate is so high?

4. No matter how prosperous the Chinese become will English ever become a second-class language on the world  stage without a physical conquest of the Western world? That is without an Armagedon?

5. What is so special about Chinese that did not make us put Japanese in our curriculum? At least their economy is still rated higher than that of the Chinese.And if India  or Brazil which are also surging forward become as significant tomorrow will our children also have  their languages in their curriculum?



…busy at chinese…huh?

“…even English Language has not yet been mastered by our students…pidgin is pulling at them,they hardly can speak local languages to their grandmothers and they take french as a joke…now add Chinese on top to see the bundles of confusion we want to create…i think they should restrict mandarin studies to universities as was done for Russian,German,Spanish and Portugese studies…governor Fashola’s ideas are forward looking but its better to set up a department of Mandarin Studies at LASU and encourage those interested with scholarships…but before doing this they should have 2 or three Chinese brought there through bilateral agreement  with the government of China that will cost Lagos State nothing…note that China is desperately expanding its influence in Africa and Lagos is definitely a prime target…these people should map out the syllabus and training schedules starting first with 2yr diploma courses and eventually move on to B.A….if i was the Commissioner of Education for Lagos State  that will be my suggestion to our Governor." Fall out.