NIGERIA'S 2015 ROAD TRIP:HOW MUCH SHALL IT GO WRONG BEFORE SANITY PREVAILS?...WILL OUR POLITICAL VEHICLE HAVE HICCUPS OR PANEL-BEATING WAHALA LIKE IN THESE PICS?

When Road Trips Go Wrong:Can any of these happen to us in 2015?

Traveling is fun, but it’s also risky. Leaving your comfort zone increases the likelihood that something might go awry, especially when it comes to driving in countries other than your own. In some cases, like the one above, horribly awry. But while such stories might be mortifying in the moment, they give us plenty to laugh about afterwards. Never forget that the root of comedy is tragedy e.g. me slipping on a banana peel is tragic, you slipping on a banana peel is hilarious. With that in mind, we’re proud to present: When Road Trips Go Wrong.



Since it’s still winter for now, we’ll start with some photos of drivers failing to navigate icy roads properly. This driver sure caught a break.



This one didn’t.



Kind of gives a new meaning to the phrase “scared straight.”



At the very least, that guy doing the balancing act above was able to get into his car. Not sure what the procedure is for when your car is completely encased in ice (we live in California.) Can any snowbound readers enlighten us?



Not that driving in the rain is fool-proof either, especially when combined with, you know, a giant log flying off the back of a truck and straight at your head.



But don’t be fooled into thinking that driving behind a produce truck is any safer; you might end up being attacked by potatoes.



When driving abroad, make sure you understand the terrain. Even the most heavy duty of vehicles can fall victim to an unfortunately located swamp.



But all Hummer drivers can take comfort in their ability to mercilessly (and literally) crush their parking competition.



Speaking of parking, always be sure to choose a spot that’s not under a giant volleyball.



Or on an airport runway.



Or directly under the path of a falling tree.



If you hire your own limo driver, make sure he understands how to drive in the city. We can still hear the San Franciscans laughing about this one.



Hah, we hear you say, I’m going to avoid all of this by taking the bus. Sorry to say it, but even buses get into tight spots.



Everyone makes mistakes, such as hitting the accelerator when you mean to reverse.



Or hitting reverse when you mean to go forward.



Trying to squeeze your car, no matter how small, onto a pedestrian walkway is never advisable.



Ultimately, traveling is a lot like life. Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. The important thing is to keep moving forward.



But not into the pool or local Chinese restaurant.



 culled from boutique home dispatches

HERE IS ONE EXAMPLE.YOU LOST AN ELECTION,THEN YOU ASK THE WINNER TO BACK DOWN!

Jang asks Amaechi to back down as NGF’s leader

Jos: Factional Chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum, NGF Governor Jonah Jang of Plateau State returned home Sunday admitting that he never bargained to lead the group but has accepted it as God’s handiwork.

Jang who spoke to journalists on arrival at the Yakubu Gowon Airport on arrival pleaded with Governor Rotimi Amaechi to back down and accept him as the new leader of the forum. 

Amaechi had been declared winner of the election but the Jang group revolted against his declaration citing Jang’s purported endorsement by 19 governors in a pre-election agreement.

He said he would do his best to get Amaechi to work with him as the new leader of the forum.

The brief interview went thus:

Did you actually bargain for what you got now?

Jang:  Well, I never bargained for it, but that is the way God Work. So this is God’s will.

What was your impression of the election sir?

Jang: As far as Iam concerned, I have been given an assignment and by the grace of God I will do my best to unite the forum and make sure the forum provides the right leadership for the people of Nigeria because we are governors that are governing our respective states. And so we are bound together to work with one another. The NGF election or selection as you call it, should not divide the governors. We have one purpose and were elected by the people to work for them. We have worked with Governor Amaechi the former Chairman of NGF before and I am appealing  to him  to calm down and also work with me so that together we will continue to give Nigerians the right leadership for electing us as their governors.

Are you ready to work with him if he agrees to support you?

Jang: I mean I am going to really try to get him to work with me; I have once worked with him before; he too should work with me so that we can be able to give this country the right leadership that she is yearning for.

Meanwhile, a body known as the Plateau Merger Group has faulted Jang’s declaration as the new chairman of the forum based on a pre-election endorsement. 

The group in communique at the end of a meeting on Saturday jointly signed by the Plateau ANPP Chairman, Hon. Nazifi Ahmed and State Secretary of the CPC, Pastor Dabit Joseph hailed the re-election of Amaechi by the governors.

“As democrats we wish to seize this opportunity to congratulate all Nigerian governors for demonstrating exemplary democratic practice for returning His Excellency, Rt Hon. Rotimi Amaechi as chairman of the Nigerian Governors Forum (NGF). We applaud their decision, and believe that our democracy will flow without any hic-ups.

“It is sad to note that at this level of our democracy, pre-election commitments (so called endorsement) before the said NGF election are being paraded as election results by the losers”, the communique stated.

It commended the leadership of the merging political parties for successfully conducting their congresses and dissolving into the  All Progressive Congress (APC and commended the electorate and political office holders for working for the survival of democracy in the past 15 years.

“We remind all public office holders on the need to appreciate the fact that the positions they currently occupy are held in trust on behalf of the greater majority. Thus the need to ensure that the dividends of democracy trickle down to the Nigerian people”, it added.

By Taye Obateru

WILL THE FRENCH LANGUAGE EVENTUALLY BECOME OBSOLETE AND DISCARDED LIKE GREEK AND LATIN? EVEN THE FRENCH THEMSELVES ARE NO LONGER SURE!...LETS BE CAREFUL OR SMARTER BEFORE JUMPING ON THE CHINESE TRAIN FOR OUR SCHOOLS,PLEASE!

FRANCE TO DEBATE INTRODUCTION OF MORE ENGLISH-SPEAKING COURSES PLANS TO EASE A BAN ON THE USE OF ENGLISH IN FRENCH UNIVERSITIES WILL BE DEBATED ON WEDNESDAY (YESTERDAY) WITH UNIONS THREATENING TO STRIKE IN PROTEST AT A MEASURE SOME CLAIM WILL TURN FRENCH INTO A “DEAD LANGUAGE”.

[caption id="attachment_9021" align="aligncenter" width="593"] English and French flags[/caption]

The French parliament will debate a proposal to introduce more English courses in the country. Photo: ALAMY

Under a 1994 “Toubon” law defending the French language, French must be used in classrooms from right through nursery to university, barring lessons in a foreign language and visits from foreign guest teachers.

The law also obliges public bodies to find French alternatives to Anglicisms, such as “mercatique” for “marketing”.

Geneviève Fioraso, the Minister for Higher Education, wants to ramp up courses in English, warning that otherwise universities will eventually end up with "five people sitting around a table discussing Proust". The measure, she said, is aimed at increasing the number of foreign students at French universities from the current level of 12 percent of the total to 15 percent by 2020.

But it has ignited a storm of protest from language purists, including the influential Academie Francaise, set up in 1635 and the official guardian of the language. Courriel, a French language defence association, even branded it “linguistic assassination”.

Now several leading unions in the education sector have threatened to strike on Wednesday, when a parliamentary debate over the proposal opens, with even some members of the ruling Socialist party opposing the plan.

Leading the MPs' protest is Pouria Amirshahi, a lawmaker representing French expatriates living in north and west Africa.

She said: "The signal given out to those everywhere who learn French is not reassuring.”

Concessions ensuring the use of English or other foreign languages only accounts for part of the course were still “unacceptable”, critics said.

"It is the cultural heritage which is at stake," said Claudine Kahane, a senior official of Snesup-FSU, one of the main unions in the education sector.

Will introducing English-speaking classes in France turn French into a dead language?

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Will introducing English-speaking classes in France turn French into a dead language?

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Journalist Bernard Pivot, a leading figure in French cultural circles who long fronted a national dictation contest, said it could kill off "the language of Moliere."

"If we allow English to be introduced into our universities and for teaching science and the modern world, French will be vandalised and become poorer," he said.

"It will turn into a commonplace language, or worse, a dead language."

But with France battling record unemployment the case for English has never been stronger in an increasingly global jobs market.

Miss Fioraso said the controversy was unjustified.

"Today there are 790 training courses mainly in English ... and nobody is shouting," she said.

Khaled Bouabdallah, vice-president of the conference of the heads of universities, said: "We have been in favour of this for many years.

"Foreign students who normally shun our universities will come", and "for our own students the mastery of English is an important aspect," he said.

Emmanuel Zemmour, head of France UNEF students’ union, said the entire row was missing the point. What really students really care about, he said, was: “Can I go to university, pass my diploma and find work?”

By Henry Samuel, Paris/THE TELEGRAPH,UK.


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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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LAGOS EDUCATION SUMMIT:WE RESPECT MRS EZEKWESILI BUT ALWAYS WONDER WHERE EDUCATIONAL STATS USED BY PUBLIC OFFICIALS COME FROM...AND WHY WAS NO MEANINGFUL REFERENCE MADE TO MASS CHEATING IN JAMB AND PRESENT PREDICAMENT OF STUDENTS?

56 Million Nigerians Illiterate –Ezekwesili  

[caption id="attachment_9006" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Oby-Ezekwesil[/caption]

Former Minister of Education, Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili says report has revealed that 56 million Nigerians are still illiterate and cannot read and write.

She spoke at the 3rd Lagos State Education Summit at the Eko Hotels and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos, southwest Nigeria on Tuesday. The summit has the theme: Qualitative Education in Lagos State: Raising the Standard.

According to Ezekwesili, Nigeria “accounts for 6 million out of 36 million school girls that cannot attend primary education worldwide. There are about 56 million illiterates in Nigeria. Primary school completion rate ranges between two percent to 92 percent depending on the state.”

She said the issue of bureaucracy was a major hindrance to raising the standard of education in the country, while lamenting the overwhelming power of the education minister with respect to decision-making at the unity schools, which she said, was the practice before her appointment.

Ezekwesili explained how she found out that 96 percent of the capital expenditure appropriated for the unity schools in the federation went into the construction of fences and toilets, among others and called for intensive, increased and meaningful efforts at developing public schools, showing data that more than 65 percent of Nigerians still depended on publicly funded secondary education while about 75 percent depended on publicly funded primary education.

She said when she became a minister, enrolment “was low; quality of education below standard; schools were not well-managed; and it displayed wide inequity in terms of gender enrolment, though differed across the states.”

Delivering his address on the occasion, Governor Babatunde Fashola explained that the government had not taken any decision on whether pupils would wear Hijab or not, adding that the emphasis was on what the children know and not what they wear.

According to him, government was mindful of the inequality in the society and thought also that  continuous investment in education would help to bridge those inequalities, adding that the results from public examinations from 2007 showed that education was heading in the right direction in the state, and that if it was a quick fix, it would have its many political appeals.

“It is not a quick fix. I understand that it is a very long journey. It yet may be many years long after we have left that we will see the result but it is a journey that I am convinced that we should undertake,” he said.

“Today, one of the outcomes of our investment is that a poll conducted among 5,000 disaggregated citizens in our state recently showed that 51 percent of the citizens would put their children in public primary schools. This was not the case a few years ago. It also now shows that 60 percent of the citizens will put their children in public secondary schools and the reason is not far-fetched.

“What are we doing to improve further on those outcomes? It is the training of our teachers. In the last three years, they have spent a larger part of their long vacation in training at our Staff Development Centre in Magodo,” he explained.

Fashola also spoke on the policy shift that now placed emphasis on real success in examinations to earn promotion to the next class, saying that “we are already planning this year’s training immediately they finish the exams but perhaps to underscore what our teachers have done; over the years, our children went through school from primary through secondary school moving from one class to the other with a grade of 30 percent. So the only time they ever have to score 50 percent is when they are doing the external WAEC.”

Deputy British High Commissioner in Nigeria, Mr. Peter Carter said Britain is personally committed to the success of the Summit as it believes that education improves the quality of living of people.

He noted that the United Kingdom had continued to play roles such as facilitating inclusion of Lagos as one of the six states that is benefitting from education support programme from the Department for International Funds and Development, DFID.

Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Olayinka Oladunjoye said the State Government had been using the Lagos Education Summit to generate new ideas to take the education sector to new heights.

—Kazeem Ugbodaga

 

FOR 2013 BATCH ‘B’ ORIENTATION COURSE ,25TH JUNE - 16TH JULY, 2013...WHAT TO TAKE TO CAMP AND OTHER RELEVANT INFO

READ THE FOLLOWING FOR MOST OF WHAT YOU NEED.GOOD LUCK,OTONDOH!(click on 1 to 6 below)


1.http://lagosbooksclub.wordpress.com/2012/12/25/life-twits-for-2013-nysc-batch/……SEE CAMPING TIME-TABLE BELOW(about a month old) 



JUST FOR THE RECORDS

NYSC Mobilization Time Table For 2013 Batch B

S/No     Event     Date

1     Registration of Foreign-trained Nigerian Graduates     8th April - 7th June, 2013

2     Submission of Masterlist. Screening/Vetting by Mobilization Officers.     29th April - 6th May, 2013

3     Action by the ICT Department.     29th April - 20th May, 2013

4     Delivery of Preliminary Printouts to CPIs     21st - 23rd May, 2013

5     Return of Corrected Printouts by Institutions to NYSC NDHQ     28th - 31st May, 2013

6     Correction of errors and printing of call-up letters by ICT Dept.     28th May - 11st June, 2013

7     Sorting and Packaging of Call-up letters     11th - 17th June, 2013

8     Delivery of Call-up letters to Institutions / NYSC Secretariats     18th - 21st June, 2013

9     2013 Batch ‘B’ Orientation Course     25th June - 16th July, 2013

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2.2013 NYSC BATCH B : WHAT TO EXPECT DURING YOUR 1 YEAR OF SERVICE



 

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3.http://lagosbooksclub.com/more-interesting-pics-from-our-one-year-of-nysc/



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4.http://lagosbooksclub.com/nysc-2013batch-a-ajuwaya-sir-what-is-the-worth-of-the-life-of-each-otondoh/




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5.http://lagosbooksclub.com/in-case-you-need-the-addresses-of-nysc-orientation-campshere-they-are/




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6.http://lagosbooksclub.com/nearest-nysc-state-secretariats-in-case-of-any-emergency-please-take-note/