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Jeopardising Nigeri’as future

Published

5 years ago

May 30, 2020

By Abba Dukawa

“As a result of our inability to cultivate financial discipline and prudent management of the economy, we have come to depend largely on internal and external borrowing to execute government projects with attendant domestic pressure and soaring external debts, thus aggravating the propensity of the outgoing civilian administration to mismanage our financial resources.”

History always repeat itself exactly 36 years after then Major General and now President Buhari justified the coup against late Shehu Shagari government. More than any times in the history of Nigeria our dear country became a debtor and begger nation relying on loans to execute infrastructural projects.

President Muhammad Buhari

When President Buhari came onboard Nigerians are hopeful the administration would diversify the nation’s economy, let Mr president and his administration remembered that before 2015 elections APC’s promised to grow the national economy include reduction of power supply deficit and dependence on imports of petroleum products; provision of a country-wide multi-modal transportation network that integrates the economy using roads, railways, air transport, inland waterways, and seaports with modern equipment and services; implementation of a National Industrial Policy that grows the domestic economy, increases the stock of locally made products, keeps the people in paid jobs, reduces our trade deficits, and strengthens the value of the naira.

The administration vows to strengthen agriculture in order to provide food security, as an instrument for national security, industrialization, and job creation and provide a guaranteed market for agricultural produce at a competitive market commodity exchange linked prices. Despite the government has consistently assured that it is working hard to grow the nation’s economy each passing days Nigerians seeing raised ever escalating Nigeria debt profile as scary economic situation throws up some salient questions, all begging for answers. Nigeria is using 50% of its revenue to service its debts! this is unsustainable. This is just part of an economic malaise that has consigned millions of Nigerians to “Multidimensional Poverty” even as a few ones continue to enjoy the nation’s wealth.

But unfortunately these promises are not achieved ,the administration has no clear-cut policy initiative to stem the nation external and internal debt, high level of inflation and falling value of the naira against the United States dollar.

Every concerns Nigerians have complained about PMB’s administration penchant for debts believing that it could put the future of Nigerians in jeopardy. Nigeria’s rising debt profile is fast becoming a worrisome trend. Debt servicing gulps N7.04 trillion under President Buhari’s administration. The government claims, it had no choice, seeing its oil revenues fail to meet up with target and thus unable to fund Nigeria’s huge infrastructural deficit required to propel economic growth.

Most of these debts were borrowed in the. 5 years of the President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration via multilateral, development, bilateral and commercial loans (Eurobonds and Diaspora bonds).

On the eve to mark one year in office of PMB administration of second term Nigerians were caught unaware with another efforts to continue jeopardising Nigerians and unborn generations.

President Muhammadu Buhari has written to the Senate and the House of Representatives, seeking approval for a fresh loan of $5.513 billion. The request comes weeks after the National Assembly approved a loan of N850bn. Already last year, Senate approved another $22.79bn loan which is currently pending before the House. Even though the loan was to finance the 2020 budget deficit, financing of critical projects, and supporting some states of the federation. Is this necessary for the government. Government and its Supporters believe the borrowing was necessary to invest in critical sectors of the economy particularly infrastructure.

Why the country continue becomint debt ridden nation and over dependence on one major government revenue source, the country will remain weak and fragile, being outstripped by population growth. With the outbreak of the Covid 19 which has puts global economy in uncertainty ,Nigeria’s economy is being caught in the cross-hairs.

Let Mr president and leadership of Nigeria’s National Assembly understand that One’s current concern is who will pay these huge debts? Will the burden to be left by the reckless and frivolous political class not be too weighty for the lean shoulders of our weak economy ? Will Nigerians not be turned to slaves and beggars in their own country by the creditor nations, just because they want to pay off the debts left by the locusts that have ravaged our common patrimony? But that is not all. What is the guarantee that the administrations and the subsequent ones would have the capacity to repay without harming the security and welfare of the citizens which are primary reasons for being in government? History will judge our executive leaders and legislative arm of government for compromising its responsibilities in checkmating this reckless loans spree by the government. Both executive and legislative will be held responsible toward jeopardy Nigerians and unborn one future. This reckless loans spree by the government clearly demonstrated they gross insensitivity citizens.

Nigeria will continues to struggle to revive the economy amidst dwindling oil revenues compounded by unemployment, poverty and insecurity unless Nigeria’s resources of revenue change toward provocative policy of the government change toward tapping the nation mineral resources as the country is blessed with untapped mineral resources.

Dukawa wrote it from Kano and can be reached at abbahydukawa@gmail.com

Uncategorized

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

Published

2 months ago

October 21, 2024

Nigerian Tracker

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.

News

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

Published

3 years ago

June 11, 2022

Misbahu el-Hamza

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.

Column

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

Published

3 years ago

November 4, 2021

Nigerian Tracker

Abdelghaffar Amoka, PhD

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.

https://nigeriantracker.com/2021/07/21/kwankwaso-receives-new-phd-holders/

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.

https://nigeriantracker.com/2021/10/21/ptdftetfund-and-other-nigeria-overseas-scholarship-training-schemes-why-are-we-doing-the-training/

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?

https://nigeriantracker.com/2021/09/06/asuu-condemns-alleged-assault-on-their-member-by-dss-operatives/

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!