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30 years After Gideon Okar Coup: What lessons for Nigeria

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5 years ago

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By Abbas Yushau Yusuf
On April 22, 1990, Gideon Okar led a coup to oust General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida from power.
In early 60’s, 70’s and 90’s Nigerian military was synonymous with coups and counter Coups. But the one that would have been fatal had it succeeded was the Gideon Okar Coup which carried serious ethnic and religious coloration.
Analysts related the failure of the coup on how it was conceived and the manner of its execution.

General Babangida’s Administration was one of the military regimes that  suffered  coup attempts but they all turned out to fail.
The first coup that welcomed General Ibrahim Babangida Administration was the botched Mamman Vatsa coup, but some pundits described the coup as phantom.
But other people said the coup was masterminded to ease out Vatsa who was General Ibrahim Babangida’s close friend from the Nigerian Army.
With two attempts to remove General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida from power, the mission was not accomplished till after he voluntarily stepped aside after annulling the June 12 1993 elections.
The coup staged by Gideon Okar was unique in the sense that they  made serious blunders which no one would have said to do it in the history of coups and counter coups in Nigeria.
The biggest blunder was excising some parts of Nigeria from the rest of the federation which included Kano Katsina Sokoto and Borno States to other countries.
Gideon Okar’s coup would have set a precedence for other Nigerians who felt that dismembering Nigeria was the only solution to its myriad of problems as an entity and independent nation since 1st October 1960.
Coups and counter coups are not solutions to donkey problems facing Nigeria, the first coup of January 15, 1966, that eliminated northern top notch from the army and the political leadership of the country did not offer the solution the mutineers agitated for.
The military was always against itself in overthrowing its fellow from top position and carry on with the leadership aiming to proffer solutions but to no avail.
Still after Gideon Okars 1990 coup, which is thirty years today Nigerian Tracker observed that the leadership question in Nigeria is not about one’s ethnicity or religion but ability to deliver good governance.
With the attitude of we are the one’s ruling or they ruling the country,no major or minor tribe has changed the fortunes of its fellow ethnic groups even when they hold power.
Nigerian Tracker has viewed Gideon Okar Coup for its thirty years anniversary as a lesson for the country, the political leadership and all Nigerians who see their ethnicity and religion of a fellow leader a way of changing their fortune

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Deputy Senate President Distributes New Motorcycles To Barau FC Players, Officials

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1 month ago

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October 21, 2024

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The deputy president of the Senate, Dr. Barau I. Jibrin, donated motorcycles to the Barau Football Club players and officials.

In a statement signed the club’s Media Officer Ahmad Hamisu Gwale, revealed that the distribution of the motorcycles was held on Sunday 20 October 2024, during an event at the Aztec mini stadium centre, Dangi, roundabout, Kano.

Recalling that, Barau Jibrin had on June this year (2024) promised donations of a brand-new motorcycle to each player and official of the team, in celebration of their triumph and promotion to the Nigerian National League NNL.

Speaking at the ceremony, Barau I. Jibrin, said the gesture was to ease the movements of the players and officals, with a view to boosting the welfare of the clubs.

Represented by his chief of staff, Professor Muhammad Ibn Abdullahi, the deputy president of the Senate, reiterated his commitment to contribute and making the club self-reliant.

“This is not the first, and it will not be the last. By Allah’s grace, he will continue to carry out our intervention programmes to enable our people to be self-reliant,” Mr Abdullahi said.

In his remarks, the Barau FC Chairman Ibrahim Shitu Chanji, thanked Barau Jibrin for his endavors commitment to the club.

He also commended the Deputy President of the Senate for his commitment to football development in Kano and the country.

Najib Yusuf, while speaking on behalf of the players, thanked Barau Jibrin, satisfied to play for the Barau Football Club, commited to admiring being part of the team.

The distribution ceremony, attendent by Shawwal Barau Jibrin, the President of the Barau FC, Professor Abdullahi Shehu Ma’aji, managing director of North West Development Commission NWDC.

Also, the event had gatherd thousands of the Deputy President of the Senate aids, supporters, and well-wishers were all attendance.

 

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Muslim-Muslim Ticket: idea fixation pathetic, religion be excluded in politics and governance, says El-Rufai

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2 years ago

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June 11, 2022

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The Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, has described the possibility that the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, would run a Muslim-Muslim ticket in the 2023 presidential election as mere speculation.

Making a remark on Channels TV’s political show, Politics Today, he said, Nigerians’ obsession with religion – when it comes to voting – rather than competence is sad. “This fixation of Nigerians on religion instead of competence, capacity, and capability is quite sad and pathetic.”

El-Rufai said that anyone asking him questions about the controversial Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket is asking the wrong person, because, in the 2019 general election he settled for a qualified Muslim woman as a running mate and won the election in Kaduna State.

He said, “I don’t look at people from Muslim-Muslim or Christian-Christian angle. Most of my closest friends are Christians. It was Pastor Tunde Bakare, a Pentecostal pastor, that took me to the CPC, not President Buhari. I’m very close to Bakare. I’m very close to many Christians. I don’t think the business of governance has anything to do with religion. I think we should look for the best person for the job. A person that will get the job done and let him do that.”

He advised Nigerian journalists to keep religion out of politics and government. He said, “I don’t think we should be looking at religion. We want to develop this country. When I get into a plane, I don’t ask about the religion of the pilot. When I go to the hospital, I don’t ask for the doctor’s religion of the doctor, I just want to get well. I just want to get to my destination when in an aircraft.

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Nigerian Universities, the interference of Professional bodies, and the time bomb

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3 years ago

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November 4, 2021

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Having worked with multidisciplinary teams during my PhD at the Department of Engineering of the University of Leicester and postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Electric Power Engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), I decided to experiment the acceptability of a multidisciplinary team in Engineering departments in Nigerian universities in 21st century on my return in 2015. Then, I was already due to be a Senior Lecturer in ABU since 2014. So I sent my CV and an application letter for the position of Associate Professor to the VC through the Head of Electrical Engineering Department of one of our public universities in November 2015. And I received the following not very surprising reply.
“Having perused your application documents, I found them interesting and relevant to the need of the department. However, I cannot pass your application for further processing because of the post applied for. For your information, the Council for Regulation of Engineering in Nig. (COREN) has fixed the bar of an Engineering lecturer who is not registered with COREN at Lecturer I regardless of the number of his/her publications.”
The question that came to my mind was that is the regulation of engineering lecturers in universities part of the mandates of COREN? I read the reply again and he was very emphatic on my PhD and postdoctoral research experience and the relevance to his department. I was made to understand that the University has no academic staff in the area of high voltage engineering, but for them to utilize my experience in high voltage engineering, if I was actually ready to move there, I have to accept to be demoted for 4 years because COREN said so. And I can’t grow no matter my research output till I am registered with COREN. Amazing offer! It will take a complete idiot to accept such an offer. That is the reality of the compartmentalization of our university system and the destruction of the Nigerian university system and the structure by supposed professionals.
This was completely different from my experience in my two universities in Europe. Prof. Len Dissado had a first degree in chemistry and a PhD in chemistry but was a Professor of Engineering at Leicester because his research area was in Dielectrics, a topic very relevant to High Voltage Engineering. He was retained as Emeritus when I left in 2012. Dr. Steve S. Dodd had his first degree in Physics and PhD in Physics but was employed as a Senior Lecturer in Engineering (High Voltage Engineering group) because his research area was in Electrical insulation materials. He retired as a Reader in High Voltage Engineering. The HoD of the Electric Power Engineering as at the time I left the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2015 had a PhD in Physics and was a Professor of Electric Power Engineering. Universities in the rest of the world are closing gaps, while we are widening the gap. Since I could not close the gap, so we decided to have a High Voltage Laboratory in the Physics department.
In universities, we are academics and research workers. Irrespective of the field, we are employed to teach and do research. The yardstick for evaluating your performance is research output. Engineering graduates in academia are not left out. They are not employed as Engineers. Universities have their Engineers to do the engineering work. As an academic, you can be COREN registered to enable you to practice outside the university but not for the classroom and research labs in the university. I once asked a colleague some years back if as a university worker, he is an Engineer for real or a teacher and he was silent. I asked about the value of COREN registration in his teaching of Engineering courses, research output, and student project supervision and he could not give me a straight answer.
I still find it weird that COREN, a body regulating practicing engineers on the field is now setting standards for promotion in the Engineering departments of Nigerian universities. They will soon be telling Nigerian universities what to teach and what not to teach. The other councils of professionals will soon follow to set what they perceived as standards for the respective faculties or departments.
The interference of the Councils of professionals in the affairs of Nigerian universities has grown beyond setting promotion guidelines. They are now deciding the establishment of faculties and the duplication of academic departments. It does not matter the burden of running such faculties and departments on the universities. I am still wondering how they are able to twist the hands of NUC and the universities’ Senate and Governing Council to achieve all that. Not long ago, the Faculty of medicine in Nigerian public universities were converted to Colleges of Medical Sciences with 4 faculties and several departments, thanks to the Medical and Dental Council of Nigeria.
What baffled me was the fact that the Department of Biochemistry, for example, that has taught medical students the biochemistry they know since the inception of the study of medicine in Nigerian universities is suddenly no more qualified to teach medical students because the Lecturers do not have a degree in medicine. Very amazing! We now have duplicated Biochemistry departments across Nigerian universities that they called “Medical Biochemistry” in the college of medicine. The “medical biochemistry” will possibly be taught by the Medical Doctors based on what they learned from the Biochemists in life science while in medical school. Could this be a case of trading quality for ego?
We also, for example, have a medical microbiology department in the college of medicine, a microbiology
department in the faculty of life science, and a vet microbiology department in the faculty of Veterinary medicine.
The microbiologists will be able to explain to us the difference between the different versions of the microbiology.
I was in Norway in 2014 when the Norwegian couple at NTNU shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine with a Professor at the University College London (UCL). I tried to check the structure of these 2 universities. The faculty of medicine at NTNU has no biochemistry department. The Department of Biotechnology and Food Sciences, a replica of the Biochemistry department, is in the faculty of natural science and they provide service to the faculty of Medicine as we had before the coming of the colleges of medicine in Nigerian universities.
How the increased number of departments helping to improve the quality of our academic output is what I can’t figure out. Rather than the duplication of service departments that will only increase the number of academic departments and won’t really add much value to the system but increased running cost, we should have created a college of life sciences and pulled the relevant faculties and departments into it.
Individualistic research is going extinct and most of the novelties of the 21st century are from interdisciplinary researches. One of the winners of the 2014 Nobel prize in medicine John O’Keefe is a neuroscientist in the Faculty of life sciences at the UCL with his degrees in Psychology. But the others, May-Britt Moser and Edvard I. Moser are both neuroscientists from the Faculty of Medicine at NTNU and received their first degree from the Department of Psychology and PhD in neurophysiology at the Faculty of Medicine in Oslo.
There is nothing more fascinating than the fusing of different ideas together to produce a unique product. That is the exploration in the 21st century. The world has left us behind in individualistic ideology and moved into multidisciplinary academics. If we must make progress in our universities, we must break our erected artificial barriers that are keeping us apart. The academics in physical sciences and engineering must come together with possibly a research centre that is into cutting-edge research that will involve research groups from all the relevant departments. Same way to bring life science and medical complex together.
I have seen graduates of mathematics that became Professors of Econometrics in Economics departments in universities in Europe, but not in Nigerian universities. I have seen a graduate of Chemistry that became a Professor of Engineering in Europe, but not in Nigerian universities. I have seen a graduate of Physics that became a Professor of Electric Power Engineering in Europe, but not in Nigerian universities. In Nigeria, I have seen Engr (Prof) XXX boldly written on our doors in the department but not in the universities in Europe. Are we having an identity crisis?
Professional bodies that are supposed to focus on the regulation of Professionals in the field should focus on their mandate and not be given free hands to change University policies as it pleases them. If we don’t end their interference, just like the medical council, COREN could wake up one day to tell our universities that there is a need for colleges of Engineering with departments of mathematics and physics to service the college because those in Mathematics and Physics departments are not qualified to teach engineering students because they don’t have engineering degrees. Vet council, Pharmaceuticals council, builders council, architects council, Quantity surveyors council, etc, may follow. So, how are we going to handle that?
Let’s stick to the founding principles of the university. Universities have world standards. We can stick to our British standard or borrow a leaf from the world’s top universities to improve our system, instead of allowing professional bodies to manipulate us and create barriers within the university system that will further slow down the progress we are to make.
Our universities are not in it’s best form and we have to do what we have to do to improve them. We should be more preoccupied with that. We should be discussing how to reposition Nigerian universities to be able to stand up to our various challenges and not duplicate departments without facilities because some Councils of professionals said so.
Finally, to my colleagues in Electric power engineering or high voltage engineering in Nigerian universities, you are welcome to experience our High Voltage Materials Laboratory in the Department of Physics, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria. We have a 400 kV DC generator and 100 kV AC source with a partial discharge measurement system to serve you. Join us to learn the physics of electric power equipment. We do not have barriers!

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