Celebrating Intellectual suicide (Published in The Punch and BusinessDay)

Celebrating Intellectual Suicide

Folarin Samson

                                                                                                     

Two Nigerian youths made news headline recently for their extra-ordinary academic feats far away from home. Emmanuel Ohuabunwa, 22, broke America’s John Hopkins University record after he obtained a Grade Point Average of 3.98 out of a possible 4.0. His phenomenal achievement not only opened up a new vista in his medical pursuit, but also earned him a place in Phi Beta Kappa Society, a group that has past American presidents, US Supreme Court Justices and 136 Nobel Prize winners as members. That’s no mean feat. In far away Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, Tunji Anthony dusted his Engineering faculty with a sweeping Cummulative Grade point of 4.00 out of 4.00. For many Nigerians, the news offered consoling break from the blasts of bombs and bullets together with the accompanying sorrow, tears and blood. Their exploits may have mopped up a little the bloody trail to the mention of the country’s name in foreign media.

Be that as it may, the performance of these young men has shown that Nigeria is no push over in intellectual business. Although we possess oil mines, we are also rich in sound minds. Again, it was 16 year old Oluwaseun Alamu of Ogun State who emerged the best science student in Africa in a keenly contested UNICEF World Science Day competition. The world stood still for the young lad who made a strong statement of the brand of Nigeria’s coming generation. This concatenation of events should strike the right chord in the heart of our policy makers and stakeholders. Beyond the euphoria and flurry of half-hearted accolades, there is need to examine the extent to which we have explored our intellectual resources. There’s the need to critically analyze our priority and value system, and the collateral and posterior damage we will suffer if we continue in our present policy path. This is a case for the Nigerian youth.

To quote business mogul Aliko Dangote in a statement he made to Reuters, Nigeria is the best kept secret in the world. Although Mr. Dangote understandably spoke in terms of business opportunities, the matter is beyond monetary exploitation. Nigeria is full of young intelligent and brilliant minds that are wasting away due to poor academic programmes, dysfunctional educational structures and unstable academic calendar resulting from recurrent strike actions. The testimony of Ohuabunwa in this regard seriously indicts the handlers of our educational sector of negligence and gross incompetence. Or why should a four year academic programme take eight to ten years? What of the issue of immoral compromises for grades that is fast turning our ivory tower into brothels, and the general problem of lack of adequate state-of-the-art facilities and infrastructures especially for those in the peculiar fields of science and engineering. These frustrating learning conditions have been killing our potential and few lucky Ohuabunwas and Anthonys are fleeing the country on a regular basis for rock-solid education.

The danger in that? The more our youth exit the country to improve their academic profile, the more we endanger the future of our nation. It was nice reading Ohuabunwa and Anthony talk so passionately about returning to Nigeria upon the completion of their studies to contribute to nation building. That’s cheap talk friends. Why would a foreign country invest into a young man that has shown promise, only to throw him overboard when it knew he could help develop their economy? Nigeria-born super computer genius, Philip Emeagwali was passionate about Nigeria too when he left the shores of the country for America. His experience will suffice at this juncture:

“On the day I left Nigeria, I felt sad because I was leaving my family behind. I believed I would return eight years later, probably marry an Ibo girl, and then spend the rest of my life in Nigeria. But 25 years ago, I fell in love with an American girl, married her three years later, and became eligible to sponsor a Green Card Visa for my 35 closest relatives, including my parents and all my siblings, nieces and nephews. The story of how I brought 35 people to the US exemplifies how 10 million skilled people have emigrated out of Africa during the past 30 years. We came to the US on student visas and then changed our status to become permanent residents and then naturalized citizens.”

So, our loss becomes their gain. The more the emigration of our brilliant minds to overseas countries, the more the depletion in our intellectual capital. We seem to have a bigger problem here. We have perfected the art of outsourcing. We have lost faith in the ability of our own structures and institutions to deliver so, we send our resources abroad. We export our crude oil to be refined in the US because our refineries are in state of disrepair. We do the same in education. Instead of providing the necessary facilities and buying or borrowing technology for the upgrade of our tertiary institutions, we send our best brains abroad to study, hoping they would return. The average are returned, the best are retained. Worse still, we try to create more mushroom institutions to continue to churn out charlatans into the intellectual community.

The clincher here is if government does not take a radical step at stemming this tide, then we’ll soon fall off the precipice. Capitalist Europe will continue to exploit our ignorance and entice our youths with visas and scholarships. There will be a massive wealth transfer both in fiscal and professional expertise. According to the United Nations, an African professional working in the US contributes about 150, 000 dollars per year to the US economy. Money does not equate wealth, so that’s a loss on a relative ground. Another recent survey by World Bank shows that African universities are exporting a large percentage of their graduating manpower to the United States. In a given year, the World Bank estimates that 70,000 skilled Africans immigrate to Europe and the United States. That’s the disaster!

It is true this matter belongs to the bigger subject of brain-drain, but this writer is particular about the unchecked and encouraged exodus of our youth on educational ground. Our private universities are nowhere near enviable standards and that’s why many of them don’t even come close in national ranking. The National Universities Commission must keep pruning like it did recently when it suspended the operational license of seven private universities.

We must begin a process of repairing our structures and institutions to match world standards. The full implementation of the agreement between Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and the Federal Government will be a step in the right direction. Of note is the recommendation which demanded a progressive increase of annual budgetary allocation to 26 per cent and that for a three year gestation period all federal universities would require about N1.5 trillion, while each state university would require about N3.6 million per student. That may be a stint in comparison with Ghana which devotes 28 to 40 per cent of its national budget to education. But it’s a way to begin.

We need to also review our academic curricular to compare international best practices. Junks and extraneous courses must be purged from our syllabus for our graduates to be sufficiently trained in their area of specialization. It is pathetic students are saddled with distracting courses with no relevance to their calling. A redirection for more focus on research work and practical will provide considerable fillip to our learning than outdated and soporific theories with no application.

Our academics need a wake-up call. It is high time we stopped the frequent disruption of academic activities with strike actions. It weakens confidence in our institutions. We are also in dire need of a government that does not need to be threatened before it honours mutual agreement. And now that our professors have the latitude of 70 years retirement, it is hoped they would impart more into our institutions and not lapse into the senility of old age.

But this essay will not be complete without a mention of job opportunities. Many youths have left the country in search of greener pastures. The lopsided nature of our education makes job a challenge. Sound education should not only develop the capacity to work in a man, but train him on how to make ends meet. Nigeria is full of opportunities that can be tapped when the mind is lucidly innovative and creative. From a dialectic standpoint, Nigeria has problems. The presence of problems means there are works to be done, but only few people with discernment will see the possibilities in the perplexities.

If the likes of Mr. Aliko Dangote could invest into our education, we would be the better for it. If our rich men could be more proactive about the coming generation, then Nigerian youths will not think of schooling in Ghana or South-Africa. If the federal government could pay more attention to our education, then we’ll not be losing our Ohuabunwas, Anthonys and Emeagwalis. Many more of these brilliant chaps are about taking the next flight for Europe. Let’s create a good environment for learning and stop frustrating the hope of this nation.

Folarin Samson

NYSC Ebonyi

08030572852/ childofdkingdom@yahoo.com