Month: May 2024

Reorganizing NOUN for excellence under new neadership

By Mukhtar Jarmajo

The recent appointment of Mallam Isa Yuguda as the Chairman of the Governing Council of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) has sparked hope for a new era of growth and excellence at the institution.

As a former minister and governor, Yuguda brings a wealth of experience to the table, which will be crucial in shaping the future of NOUN.

However, the new leadership faces significant challenges. NOUN has struggled with issues of funding, infrastructure and quality of education, which have hindered its ability to reach its full potential.

One of the primary challenges is the need to improve the university’s infrastructure, including its virtual learning platform, to enhance the learning experience for students.

Another challenge is addressing the issue of funding, which has been a perennial problem for NOUN. The new leadership must explore innovative ways to secure sustainable funding to support the university’s programs and initiatives.

The quality of education is also a critical area that requires attention. NOUN must ensure that its programs meet the highest standards of academic excellence, and that its graduates are competitive in the job market.

Despite these challenges, the prospects for NOUN are bright. With the right leadership and support, the university has the potential to become a center of academic excellence, providing access to quality education for millions of Nigerians. The new leadership must also focus on building strategic partnerships with local and international organizations to enhance the university’s research and innovation capabilities.

Furthermore, NOUN must leverage technology to expand its reach and improve its services, including online learning platforms and digital resources. It has the potential to play a critical role in addressing Nigeria’s development challenges, including poverty, inequality, and unemployment. By providing access to quality education, NOUN can help build a more skilled and competitive workforce, which is essential for driving economic growth and development.

The new leadership at NOUN faces significant challenges, but the prospects for growth and excellence are bright. With the right vision, leadership, and support, NOUN can become a beacon of hope for millions of Nigerians, providing access to quality education and driving national development.

Jarmajo wrote from Lobito Crescent, Wuse 2, Abuja.

Sokoto police arrest father for selling six biological children

By Uzair Adam Imam

A father, Bala Abubakar, has been arrested by the Sokoto State Police Command for selling six of his own children, along with 22 others, to human traffickers.

The children have been rescued and taken to a state orphanage.

The police commissioner, Ali Kaigama, announced that Abubakar and other suspects were arrested for their roles in the illegal child trafficking ring.

Abubakar allegedly sold his biological children and 22 others to traffickers for between N150,000 and N250,000 each.

In a separate incident, the police arrested Saifullah Hassan for murdering a woman, Balikisu Garba, in a hotel.

Additionally, three kidnap victims, including Barrister Rukayat, were rescued, and weapons and ammunition were seized from the suspects.

The police commissioner reassured residents of the state’s commitment to maintaining law and order and thanked the state governor for his support.

He urged the public to collaborate with the police to ensure a safer community.

ACG Yusuf takes over Zone A leadership as ACG Swomen retires

By Sabiu Abdullahi

Assistant Comptroller-General of Customs Saidu Yusuf has assumed leadership of Nigeria Customs Service Zone A Headquarters, succeeding ACG Hammi Swomen who retired after 35 years of service.

The handover ceremony took place at the Federal Operations Unit, Zone A, Headquarters on May 29, 2024. 

Outgoing ACG Swomen expressed gratitude to God, the Comptroller-General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, and the management team for their support.

He also commended the Area Controllers within the Zone, saying, “I’m leaving Zone A in good hands. I believe in your competence, and I know we will celebrate a better result than last year.” 

Incoming Zonal Coordinator ACG Yusuf praised his predecessor as “principled, hardworking, and intelligent.”

He sought cooperation from officers within the zone, saying, “Let us engage stakeholders and ourselves to move this service forward. We have one goal: to succeed and leave Nigeria Customs Service better than we met it.” 

Customs Area Controllers within the zone hailed the outgoing ACG as a “thoroughbred professional” who shared his experience generously.

They pledged support to the incoming zonal coordinator, ACG Yusuf, as he begins his tenure.

Kano mosque tragic bombing: Death toll reportedly rises to 21

By Sabiu Abdullahi

The devastating bombing of a mosque in Gadan village, Gezawa Local Government Area of Kano State, has claimed 21 lives, with four more victims succumbing to their injuries.

The attack, which occurred on May 15, has left a community in mourning and shock. 

A total of 25 worshippers were injured in the bombing, with one person dying on the spot.

Twenty others have since passed away at the Muhammed Specialists Hospital, Kano, where they were receiving treatment.

Only four survivors remain in the hospital. 

Alhaji Bature AbdulAziz, Chairman of Friends of the Hospital, confirmed the latest fatalities during a visit to the hospital.

“We have lost 21 precious lives, and we are left with only four patients in the hospital,” he said. 

AbdulAziz praised the hospital’s management for their dedication to treating the victims and expressed gratitude to various individuals and organizations for their support.

These include the Deputy President of the Senate, Barau Jibrin, the wife of the President, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, the Kano State Government, and the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, Dr. Abdullahi Ganduje. 

The Kano Business Community has also donated N80,000 to each of the victims and N20,000 to other patients in the hospital. 

Governor Abba Yusuf has vowed to prosecute the suspect, who has been charged with culpable homicide and grievous harm, to the fullest extent of the law.

If convicted and sentenced to death, the governor has pledged to sign the death warrant. 

According to the police, the suspect, a 38-year-old man, carried out the attack due to a family dispute over inheritance.

He aimed to draw attention to his grievances by targeting the mosque during dawn prayers.

JUST IN: Court declares 25 Rivers Assembly seats vacant

By Uzair Adam Imam

A Rivers State High Court has declared the seats of 25 lawmakers who defected from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC) vacant.

The court ordered the Speaker, Rt. Hon. Martin Amaewhule, and 24 other lawmakers to stop parading as lawmakers pending the determination of a suit before it.

The court gave the order in Suit No PHC/1512/CS/2024, brought by Rt. Hon. Victor Oko Jumbo, Speaker, Rivers State House Of Assembly, Hon. Sokari Goodboy Sokari, and Hon.

Orubienimigha Adolphus Timothy, over the crises rocking the legislative arm of the state.

The defendants include 25 lawmakers who defected from PDP to APC, including Hon. Martin Chike Amaewhule, Hon. Dumle Maol, and 23 others.

The Rivers State Governor, Sir Siminalayi Fubara, and the Honourable Chief Judge Of Rivers State, Simeon Amadi, are also defendants in the suit.

The court restrained the lawmakers from parading as lawmakers or meeting to carry out legislative business pending the hearing and determination of the substantive suit.

The case was adjourned to July 1, 2024, for mention.

Dear FG, why has there not been Udoji since 1974?

By Bilyamin Abdulmumin

To commemorate Workers’ Day on May 1st, FG announced the long-awaited salary increase from 25% to 35 %. However, hours later, the NLC president, Joe Ajaero, kicked against the increase and instead stuck to the 615,000 they proposed as minimum wage.

Although this total figure looks astronomical, it suddenly looks normal, putting the breakdown that Ajaero gave into perspective, especially with the current high inflation. At least that amount should reflect the salary of anyone receiving 100k or more before Tinubu came to power. In other words, the breakdown might be exaggerated to the bottom-line salary earners but not the middle ones.

When several pundits shared their analysis on National Assembly wages, the Ajaero recommendation suddenly became realistic again. The National Assembly’s daily take-home is more than the recommended minimum monthly take-home. So, the argument is that if NA daily wages are so high, the minimum monthly salary asked by NLC should not be too much. This is quite plausible.

But from the interview Abdulaziz Abdulaziz gave, it could be discerned that the highest minimum wage the government is ready to pay is double the current minimum. Abdulaziz first clarified that the current salary increase is temporary, pending when the tripartite committee under the former head of service concluded their assignment. However, as a committee member, he said unlike the 25 to 35% increase, the minimum wage may go up to 50 to 60k. He also emphasised that the federal government is bidding for the highest among the three parties: federal, state, and private.

An argument accompanying the discussion of salary increases is the plight of non-governmental citizens. The argument is that if FG increases government workers’ salaries, what about the rest of the citizens? To buttress this point, government workers are said to be just about 10% of the total population. This argument appears to carry substance, but it is misleading by flipping the coin because the more money on the government workers, the more money on every one.

The people who should be rather pitied are the state and LG workers. Because some of these tiers of government still receive the 1999 salaries benchmark. A friend who works with the local government health sector summarises their predicament. He said a decade ago, when he married, a mudu of foreign rice was 450 naira, and they only used half of it. Now the mudu costs five times, and because their family has increased, they need the whole mudu, but the pathetic part is that the salary hasn’t only increased since, but several bogus deductions have eaten deep into it.

At this time when the FG and labour are arguing about high salary increases to meet public expectations due to high inflation, there is no better time to remind ourselves of the famous “Udoji award” than now.

As a fan of Dan Anache, I heard one of his songs mention “Udoji.” I understood that he was mocking someone, but I didn’t know what it meant, so I took it at face value and enjoyed the song. The lyrics read: “Kai baka soja, kai baka dan sanda, kattsaya jiran Udoji. To Udoji in dai sadaka ce muma araba abamu.” It wasn’t until I came across Mahmud Juga’s article titled “UPE, WAI and Udoji” that I realised what it meant. 

In the article, Jega concluded, “Why has there been no Adebo and no Udoji in this country since 1974? Any young person who does not know what that means should please ask the elders.” So, with the right name in hand, I did what everyone does when faced with a burning question—I turned to search engines.

The Middle East, the world’s oil bank, is known for conflicts and unrest, so anytime one arises, just like the current one is on the card, the global oil price experiences a meteorological rise. One of the most popular oil price rises occurred during the Arab-Israeli War and the Iranian revolution in the 1970s. This was when Nigeria had had an oil boom, and there appeared to be no idea what to do with excess money, so the Udoji Award was. 

Jerome Udoji chaired the committee focused on the effectiveness of public service. One of the committee’s recommendations was to increase the salary twofold, which was implemented by the military head of state, Yakubu Gowon. The salary increase was so popular that it became known after Udoji. Please, someone should tag the current chairman of the minimum wage committee, Bukar Goni Aji.

There is no oil boom now, but there is a subsidy removal boom. So, to paraphrase Jega, Please FG, why has there not been a Udoji Award since 1974?

Engausa Global Tech Hub hosts ‘Startup Friday’

By Sabiu Abdullahi 

Engausa Global Tech Hub is hosting a Startup Friday programme on May 31, 2024.

The theme of the programme is “Unlocking Potentials: Mentoring for Success in Skills Acquisition and Career Development”.

This event is for parents and students of the programme’s March-May 2024 class.

The programme will be held at the Conference Hall of the Technology Incubation Centre on Guda Abdullahi Road in Kano, Nigeria.

The event starts at 10:00 a.m..

Engausa Global Tech Hub is a Kano-based centre that teaches young people digital skills in the Hausa language.

The centre’s mission is to bridge the gap in technical knowledge and empower young people with the skills they need to succeed in the digital economy.

BREAKING: ASUU embarks on two-week warning strike

By Uzair Adam Imam 

The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) at Yusuf Maitama Sule University has embarked on a two-week warning strike, citing the Kano State government’s failure to address its longstanding demands.

According to the union, despite numerous engagements and submissions to the state government, there has been no commitment to resolving the issues affecting the university and its members’ welfare, leaving the union with no choice but to declare a warning strike.

This decision was announced in a joint statement by ASUU branch Chairman Dr. Mansur Said and Secretary Dr. Yusuf Ahmed Gwarzo on Wednesday.

The union stated that the strike became necessary after interventions by various stakeholders, including government officials and ASUU’s Kano Zone and National delegation, but it yielded no tangible results.

“The branch resolved to embark on a two-week warning strike, effective immediately, during its congress on May 29, 2024,” the statement read.

The union’s demands include the reinstatement and reconstitution of the University Governing Council, which was dissolved over a year ago, payment of outstanding Earned Academic Allowance totalling ₦178,705,735.91, and payment of salary arrears resulting from the 2019 minimum wage adjustment, among others.

The alliance of history and the “Good Old Days” phrase

By Sharif Ishaq Abubakar

Introduction

Man envisages hope and secures confidence. In the course towards thriving to make a better positive arrival to the future, emanating from a past and rolling to a thoughtful destination, though I’m not quite sure, I set goals to beat what has to spell the past. There is a joint alliance with history as a discipline and what a layman could call the “Good old days”. 

The good old days, as the essay subscribes to them, are precision in explaining what is commonly attested to when there is a flashback in a human being’s life, portraying the rosy and more easygoing way of life or the simple life of the past. This is usually not welcome in the language of academic historians, as what is more vividly visible is the past in response to the doctrine of history. 

The good old days in question are what I find and regard as a commonly digested utterance by those who find their past life more pleasing. They are not necessarily shouldered with success in a weighted rate, but a sense of appeasing and touching unforgettable times that the present has swallowed but left tangible emotions for the utterer to describe. It is not elusive. It happened, occurred, took place, and was quite eventful. 

With this periodic relevance, I sensed a spectacular alliance between the history known as a Study and the phrase candid by mostly good explainers of events and happenings, adhering and recalling their past days as the good old days. I see the two working relatedly, but I saw them separating as the latter could not get a fixed spot as shallow as a topic.  This essay, therefore, will highlight the alliance of History and the phrase” Good old days”.

The Past and the Emotion of the Old Days

This piece does not set itself in the medicinal or health advocative stance, guided by medication or clinical hypothesis. In this context, the past and the emotion of the old days patronise a common fact that should be well acknowledged by every human being, which posits that the past was not that less patchy or lacked bruises in the lane that gave birth to the present. There were struggles, but the man still thrived like the men of the stone age. The measures and methods might not constitute similar skills and advancement, but what ascertained the inbuilt tradition of man is to uncover the path for survival, which further comes with attached conditions and risk-taking that also spells more of man’s ways. 

If this is how the generational pattern of man’s life was and will continue to be, how did man develop emotion for the past and even refer to the past with an emotional remembrance phrase, the Good old days?

I found the worthiness of my response to these questions in stages of human being growth. 

In the study of history, those before us paved the way for the advancement we enjoy today, and we are responsible for what will become of future advancement. It is a stage, and it is periodical. Man, stages of growth come with several definitive developments and mistakes, which transform into lessons. Historically, our forefathers have been down to us, and we shall be forefathers to another set. 

Man grows up leaning on his parents, forming a bond and several events transpiring in his life; in several clicks of time, one can no longer go back to those days, but the days stay in the heart, brain and the whole body system, despite the natural heritage from the parents which of course speaks clearly of who you took after, one still look back at the gone days and smile, blushing out some event that occurred not because there were meant to make a joke of, but because there are several notable notations attached to that scenarios. The past is lovely because it makes you remember who you are and what you are supposed to strive for. The mind works in a mysterious way that flashes back in a second to events that take you out of your present, honouring the past and handing over the juridical capability to make your choice forward. It is emotional, but the phrase “good old days” weighs a lot.

The Alliance of History and the Phrase the “Good Old Days”.

Standing from within, inspecting the past, observing the turning points of events, and profoundly judging the historical stages that led to the current development, one would apparently love the past because it is historical; it takes you back to the meaning of the present. This sets a distinct correlation between the term history as a study and the above phrase.

What will become of the understanding of democracy or the modern pattern of international relations when one thinks of imperialism and how it transpired, where it became economically and practically legal to show nation strength and capability by annexing and conquering more land, these territories and lands have settlers and indigents inhabited in them. Still, the wake-up of the clamour of securing your land by defending and raising quite a courageous military to secure land proves the days to be readymade for wars. 

Territories prepare and anticipate war. Some nation-states have made a fortune and are where they are today because conquest was practicable before today, and there is no favour history can bring about their success without pointing at those days. Today, national flags speak volumes of reasons why they appear with specific colours, not because the past covers the unscratched step to their current capability, but because it was worth passing through the past and having the present as a representative of the past.

Aside from the above example, why would a layman refer to the past as the good days, and how is it related to history?

Indeed, they have been developed, but glaring at the present harbours inflation and population growth as resources tend to be fewer than in the past. Looking back to the past and scoring those days as good days defines the long way the past determines the future and how related they are. It breaks an alarming projection when the hope of the future is always cherished to be better. It hence gives birth to a predicament when the future of the past becomes less provident than it was judged to be. 

Man is hence left with a single option: turn to the better days, which is why history deals with everything. History is used to judge the progress of a certain goal; it tracks the impact and provides facts that place the past and the present on a scale for one to choose between whether the past had a more promising trajectory, or the present thwarted those policies initiated to befit the future (Now Present). Either way, I will cite Nigeria as a critical reference.

Nigeria gained independence in the year 1960. The individuals who worked through the path of success in attaining Nigeria’s freedom from colonialism were highly respected and celebrated with greater hope for the country’s future. All reflection points to leadership, health care, education, youths, democracy, infrastructure, and other aspects that require reliable leaders’ consent. That was hope, and it started on a good platter, but the future led to crises and other predicaments, resulting in a civil war within six years of attaining a positive foot in the country’s history. 

The future rolled on, leading to several phases of military leadership, and the country bounced back to democracy in 1999. Why, then, will one refer to the days of the leaders of the first republic as the good old days? There is a response to the question when one depicts the days of the previous leaders who died not owning or amassing the wealth of the public or citizens of the country despite being labelled as corrupt. 

One of the reasons the First Republic’s political settings crumbled was corruption. Still, till today, the pattern of corruption has only taken a glorifying approach that seems more degrading than that of the leaders of the First Republic. That is to assert that in a situation where the past seemed to be more politically sound than the future (now present), the past must be seen as the good days, not because it was hoped for to be that way, but because it proves better than the worsening present/ future.

 Conclusion 

 This essay captured the relevance of the past, thereby mirroring the fact that not all events that happened in the past historically can be beaten by the future or present. Some might indeed wish the past should fade, but growth seems to make one attached to his past so much that the yearning for past memories leads to a label known as the “Good Old Days.”

Sharif Ishaq Abubakar wrote via Sharifishaq55@gmail.com. He is a PhD Student at the University of Abuja, Department of History and Diplomatic Studies.

Tinubu signs bill, returns old national anthem

By Uzair Adam Imam

President Bola Tinubu has signed the National Anthem Bill 2024, reverting to the old national anthem, “Nigeria, we hail thee”.

This was revealed by Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, at a joint session of the National Assembly marking the Silver Jubilee of Nigeria’s 4th Republic.

The old anthem, composed when Nigeria gained independence on October 1, 1960, replaces the current “Arise, O Compatriots” anthem.

The lyrics were written by British expatriate Lillian Jean Williams, and the music was composed by Frances Berda.

The anthem played a significant role in shaping Nigeria’s national identity and unity during the 1960s and late 1970s.