By Ahmad Deedat Zakari
The Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) has fixed the date for registering for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME).
According to Dr Fabian Benjamin, JAMB’s spokesperson, the registration starts on February 12 and lasts until March 19, 2022.
The examination board made this known through its weekly bulletin, released on Monday, January 24.
By Salisu Uba Kofar-Wambai
Functional education is the key to solving most of the joblessness and unemployment predicament Nigerians face today. Therefore, the philosophy of education matters a lot. Moreover, the kind of philosophy under which a particular curriculum operates determines the quality of graduates a particular system of education breeds.
The idealism philosophy, which Nigeria’s education system subscribes to, contributes grossly to the condition of our graduates. They frequently end up chasing shadows, seeking jobs when in reality, there’s none. This is because the idealism philosophy emphasizes and dwells so much on book knowledge. The students are made to jampack and cram all the knowledge and ideas in their heads, but practising the knowledge is ultimately zero.
In other words, the idealism philosophy thrives in theoretical aspects. And this British model has since been abandoned by many countries of the world, as it has no successful ends and doesn’t suit 21st-century challenges.
However, more innovative countries like China, Germany, and Japan that adopt a pragmatic philosophy of education in their curriculum are getting it right regarding employment issues. Most of their graduates are fully equipped with the specific skills required to handle jobs effectively and efficiently. Moreover, even before graduation, their students are already into temporary employment.
The functional education practised in such countries has made their graduates vibrant job-providers instead of perpetual job-seekers we see here in Nigeria.
It is a mammoth challenge for our education policy formulators to do the needful. They should help us migrate from idealism to pragmatism as a system. Students will then have practical skills or functional education that will enable them to establish their businesses based on their acquired skills, not just memorizing books and blowing grammar all over.
When a mechanical engineering professor could not repair a simple technical fault on his car until he refers it to a local technician, you know there’s a massive challenge with such a system of education.
I think these entrepreneurial studies and industrial training introduced by our institutions of learning are equally astute and sagacious towards achieving the desired goal. But they’re not close to where we’re aiming at. So, we must change the philosophy in its entirety first to have enough roadmap on the ground.
The sooner we migrate, the better for us.
Salisu Kofar-Wambai wrote from Kano. He can be reached via salisunews@gmail.com.
By Aliyu Muhammad Aliyu
We often ask ourselves the question, “why do we lack reading culture in our contemporary society?” The answers we get are associated with our background and perspective on the issue. To a teacher, knowledge of all fields and disciplines is documented mainly in writing. We explore and acquire it by reading relevant resource materials of our interest for their information. We read enough literature persistently to acquire what is sufficient to be knowledgeable through either the education process or self-learning. To read and continue reading, the reading itself has to be easy, attractive and exciting to the reader. In this way, it becomes second nature and a hobby unwitting.
As a common saying, “the beginning of everything is the most important.” When a child learns how to read and comprehend the information, write what is understood by their readers, and express themselves verbally, effective communication skills manifest, hence reading culture and knowledge acquisition. This marks the beginning of intellectual independence achievable only through standard, sound and comprehensive primary education.
Children are taught to be literate in primary schools; they familiarize themselves with alphabets and numerals, words recognition, pronunciation, formation of sentence and paragraph and finally, the whole passage comprehension and composition in mother tongue and lingua franca. Reading begins by reading adventure stories in which the heroes get into difficulties. Then, using the suspense technique, the readers’ interest is held until they find how the heroes escape in the end. This boosts readers’ imagination and interests, which results in reading more stories searching for ways to be heroes themselves. With age, the readers grow older and develop an interest in how people think, talk, feel and handle situations and circumstances. That makes them critical in their thoughts and figuring out how to solve their problems through someone’s experience put in writing.
A society that adopts a reading culture will produce vibrant youth of revolutionary character that will be satisfied only with the best from anyone in all circumstances. On the contrary, anything one does with difficulty, the interest in that particular issue gradually fades away until one loses it completely, more so on the reading activity as energy and time consuming are immense. Those who are incapable of reading a quarter of the minimum words expected per minute of an average reader will certainly lose interest in reading since they are expending what isn’t worth it when they can use the same amount of effort that bear fruit in other activities comfortably. They have to abandon reading and then lose all its life-changing attributes.
The cascade of events that lead to poor reading culture begins with poor primary school back and forth. Pupils attend poor primary schools and leave without learning anything substantial. They move to secondary school still without learning much because of a lack of foundation to support the lessons taught. Somehow, they manage to pass the final exams by exam malpractice or otherwise. They get admissions to higher schools of learning and can sail through in different ways. Some do that by cheating, and others with great difficulty of mere rote learning due to inefficient lecturers that are probably victims of poor primary education or lazy in evaluating their students’ performances.
The poor products are the so-called qualified teachers that are given the available teaching job in primary school to continue the vicious cycle. It is common knowledge that one learns much less than one is taught. So, this indicates that a negligible amount of knowledge and motivation is to be learnt from incompetent teachers. Moreover, this results in the decline of knowledge in every generation.
The only way to correct this existing problem and prevent its future occurrence is to recruit enough competent primary school teachers. They should also be given sufficient orientation training that focuses on what they are to teach according to the syllabus and continuously retrain all existing teachers. Furthermore, educated parents and guardians are to monitor the ability of their children’s literacy and numeracy by themselves to ensure their performance since results are faked by teachers, especially those private schools to mislead parents.
Primary school leavers taught by competent primary school teachers don’t need to spend a dime on them in private secondary schools because they’re well equipped to muddle through and even be among the best in the current unsound state of public schools. A qualitative primary education that leads to unlimited reading culture and curiosity is what the first-generation students and their successors got and proved to be highly knowledgeable in virtually all fields of learning despite their lower certificates. Contrary to what is currently obtainable with those with all the degrees but never fails to hide their ignorance of general knowledge and simple basics that were not obtainable right from primary school.
To fix a society, fix education. To fix education, fix primary education, as simple as it sounds.
Aliyu Muhammad Aliyu wrote from Kano via amabaffa@yahoo.com.
By Sumayyah Auwal Usman
The Governing Council of the Kaduna State University has named Prof. Yohanna Tella the acting Vice-Chancellor of the university. Tella, a professor of mathematics and the current Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Administration, was announced on Thursday by the Governing Council.
Prof. Tella takes over from Prof. Muhammad Tanko, whose five-year tenure ended. This was after a heated debate lasting about five hours. The new acting Vice-Chancellor will act for six months before the appointment of a substantive Vice-Chancellor.
The Daily Reality had earlier reported that electing the institution’s new VC has been tense due to clashes between various interest groups in and outside the university.
By Uzair Adam Imam
A renowned political analyst, Prof. Kamilu Sani Fagge, the lead presenter in the Nigerian Guild of Editors Meeting held in Kano, has said that media play a vital role in consolidating democracy in Nigeria.
Citing historical examples, Prof. Fagge said that after Nigeria’s independence, media was at the forefront in any attempt to democratise the country.
Fagge spoke at the Tawn Hall Meeting of Guild Editors held at Tahir Guest Palace Hotel, Kano, on Wednesday, January 19, 2022.
The event, supported by the US Embassy, was themed: Agenda Setting For Sustainable Democratic Culture.
Owing to the press role of holding the government accountable, Prof. Kamilu stated that media serves to deter corruption. If the media is silent about corrupt officials, many issues will have been swept under the carpet. However, “If you don’t kill corruption, corruption will kill you!”
In his remark, The Emir of Kano, Alh. Aminu Ado Bayero has urged editors and journalists to avoid spreading fake news, which hampers democracy and threatens the unity of Nigeria.
Also commenting, Prof. Auwalu Nadudu emphasised that “media has been the tool and mechanism of sustaining and protecting democracy.”
Reporters and editors of various media organisations, including students of mass communication from Bayero University and Kano State Polytechnic, were among the event participants.
By Abdullahi Adamu
Nigeria’s economy has not been in good shape for the past five years and first went into recession in 2016. Then, in 2020, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it plunged into another recession – its worst in four decades. As a result, it recorded a gross domestic product contraction of 3.62 per cent in the third quarter of 2020.
There’s been a lot of uncertainty about where people should invest, mainly due to policy inconsistencies. This cut across various economic sectors. The poor performance of different sectors of the economy, especially the agricultural sector, has created uncertainty and unemployment. In addition, the recurring farmer-herder crisis has hurt agriculture in the country.
However, can agriculture be used to reduce the high rate of poverty and unemployment in Nigeria? Absolutely! Agriculture has the potential to reduce the high rate of poverty and unemployment in the country by employing millions of Nigerians across the agriculture value chain.
Take cassava processing as an example. Nigeria is the largest cassava producer in the world. There is much to gain from knowing the value chain of cassava, starting from production to processing and then marketing. Cassava, just like yam, is a root and tuber crop.
However, unlike yam, it can grow in relatively poor soil and low rainfall areas. Cassava and its by-products have various uses. It can be processed into starch: the cassava starch used for making paper and textiles. It can be processed into flour to make cakes, bread and biscuits. It can be processed into chips usable for animal feed. It can be processed into ethanol, which is used as bio-fuel when combined with additives. Cassava is also processed into fructose, used in the industry for sweetening fizzy drinks.
In Nigeria, we produce over 50 million tons of cassava every year, and over 26 states out of the 36 states in Nigeria produce the crop. Therefore, if we embrace good agricultural practices, the production, processing, and marketing of cassava can serve as a good tool to reduce the country’s high rate of poverty and unemployment.
It is also important to note that the most considerable portion of the population of Nigeria is the youth. The percentage of youth (age 15 – 35) among the unemployed population is 55.4 per cent. So, with increased youth involvement in agriculture, the sector can reduce youth unemployment.
Agriculture is the easiest and fastest route to empower the most vulnerable, especially the youth. However, it also needs improvement in the micro and macroeconomics of the country.
It is imperative to turn around the economic fortunes of Nigeria through the agricultural revolution, especially in the face of dwindling revenue to the governments due to the global financial crisis aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The country needs to sustain the present agricultural revolution tempo and bring about social engineering that will inspire more young people and women to engage in mechanised farming.
Abdullahi Adamu wrote via nasabooyoyo@gmail.com.
By Nuru Aliyu Bauchi
Permit me a little space in your new but rapidly growing and widely read newspaper to contribute from my little knowledge of English on English Tenses. Tenses are among the most important but often neglected and poorly mastered topics, even among graduates of the English language. Two incidents involving two graduates of the English language from different universities recently made me dumbfounded.
The first incident was a Corp member posted to serve at one of the secondary schools in my home state. I asked her to list the twelve English tenses but could only provide five (not accordingly). She confessed that the last time she had a lesson on tenses was in secondary school. The second was another graduate of English seeking a teaching job. I was one of the interviewers. Again, I asked her to list and exemplify the twelve English tenses. Likewise, she could only supply four randomly. I always wonder what is so tricky in mastering English tenses, considering that one must use them whenever one writes or speaks.
We have three (3) main tenses. These are 1. Present tense 2. Past tense 3. Future tense. Each of the three tenses has four (4) aspects, as can be seen below:
PRESENT TENSE
1. simple present tense
2. Present continuous tense
3. Present perfect tense
4. Present perfect continuous tense
SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE
This tense expresses habitual/repeated actions, general truth, sports commentary, or news heading. Infinite or ‘s form of a verb is used alongside the subject (noun or pronoun). If the subject is either first person (I, we) or second person (you) or third person plural (they), use an infinitive form (go, wash, brush, fly, teach). But, if the subject is third person singular (he, she, it, Nuru, the boy, the teacher) or any singular indefinite pronoun (each, one of the…, everybody, someone etc.), use and ‘s form ( goes, washes, brushes, flies, teaches).
In other words, if the subject is singular, use a singular verb, while if the subject is plural, use a plural verb. REMEMBER that singular nouns do not have an ‘s (bag, boy, car, house), but singular verbs have an ‘s or ‘es( teaches, goes, cooks, sweeps, etc.). E.g., Subject + verb(s).
Example
1. Nuru goes to school every day.
2. The children play football every day.
3. Dogs bark.
4. I like ice cream.
5. Mr president presents the 2022 budget.
6. Everybody knows the answer.
COMMON MISTAKES
1. I goes to school (wrong)
2. He brush his teeth every day (wrong)
3. Musa teach English language (wrong)
PRESENT CONTINUOUS TENSE
This tense is a bit simple because it has only subject+auxiliary verb (is or are ) + verb in -ing form. This tense is used for ongoing activities.
Example
1. The boy is reading.
2. The girl is cooking.
3. The students are writing.
4. We are jumping
5. He is sleeping
COMMON MISTAKES
One should be careful to avoid using nouns and pronouns together as follows
1. Adamu he is reading. (wrong)
2. Zainab she is cooking. (wrong)
To be continued
Nuru Aliyu Bauchi teaches at Abubakar Tatari Ali Polu (ATAP), Bauchi State. He can be reached via nurubh2015@gmail.com.
By Haidar Hasheem Kano
Kano State continues to mark its name in gold as its indigenes emerged best in different academic fields in national and foreign universities.
Engr. Yahaya Hassan Labaran, an indigene of Kano state from Kura local government, emerged as the overall best student for the 2020/2021 academic session with a CGPA of 9.9 out of 10, at prestigious Sharda University, India.
Engr. Yahaya graduated with first-class in Civil Engineering graduate of Kano University of Science and Technology (KUST), Wudil, in 2017. He won a fully-funded scholarship to study Master of Technology in Civil Engineering with a specialization in Construction Management in India in 2019.
In addition to being the university’s overall best student, He also won a Vice-Chancellor’s Gold Medal award for securing the 1st position in the Master of Technology course at the School of Engineering.
Engr. Yahaya stands out to be the best among hundreds of students from different countries across the globe.
According to his sighted CV online, Yahaya has numerous publications to his name and membership in professional organizations such as the American Society of Engineers, the Nigerian Society of Engineers, and 11 others. In addition, he attended over 40 conferences, seminars, and workshops.
Apart from that, he has completed numerous professional courses at various universities worldwide, including the University of California, Irvine, Georgia Institute of Technology, IE Business School, and the University of Geneva, to name a few.
By Uzair Adam Imam
Following the strike embarked upon by the Commercial Tricycle Riders (alias A Daidaita Sahu or Keke Napep), the management of Bayero University, Kano, has directed the university lecturers to suspend all continuous assessments (CAs) that were to be conducted this week.
The directive was on a social media post which the Bayero University Spokesman, Malam Lamara Garba, has confirmed to The Daily Reality.
It said all planned continue assessments that were to be conducted by the lecturers this week had been suspended pending the strike’s outcome.
The A Daidaita Sahu Riders commenced a seven-day warning strike on Monday, January 10, 2021.
It was gathered that the riders are protesting against the Kano Road Traffic Agency (KAROTA) registration fee.
The agency is charging new registrants N18,000, while renewal is N8,000 annually.
By Aisha Abdullahi Bello
The word “Almajiri” is derived from the Arabic word “Almuhajir”, which means an immigrant or someone who migrates from one place to another. So, originally, Almajiri is an immigrant who leaves his place of birth at a very tender age to acquire Islamic education.
It was believed by the people then that if a child received Islamic education at a very young age, he was likely to retain it throughout his lifetime. This had made many parents enrol their male children in the system.
In the ancient days, the system was so organised, and the parents were much responsible that they didn’t just dump their children at the “allo [slate]” schools the way today’s parents do. They also made it mandatory upon themselves to provide necessary food items and other provisions for the children, which would be enough for them throughout their stay with the “malams [teachers]”.
At each interval, maybe a period of three to four months, the children were readied for a return to their various homes. So, you’ll find out that each Almajiri would at least visit his parents thrice or even four times a year.
Now, the system is no longer what it used to be. Everything seems to have changed completely; the system, the parents and the children have all turned into something else. If you call the name ‘almajiri’, instead of the title to ring the bell of a child who came from a distant land to acquire knowledge, a different bell will ring. The name suggests an unlucky child whose parents gave birth to and later abandoned on the streets to fend for himself by whatever means.
I am used to asking myself, what could be the cause of this disguised child abuse in the name of “almajirci”? What is the essence of bringing a child to this world if you cannot cater to his basic needs such as food, clothing, shelter, and quality education? Could this problem (almajirci) be attributed to poverty, lack of parental care, or is it a lack of adequate measures to tackle the menace by the government? These are the series of questions that are yet to be answered.
The rate at which the syndrome is growing could be checked if the parents control their birth rate through family planning measures. The government should try to enlighten parents on the benefits of family planning and its impact on society as much as possible.
To sanitise the system, the government should create a committee that will focus on the issues by standardising it to suit the present time. This could be achieved by taking the statistics of all almajirai, providing them with uniforms and building classrooms for them to have a conducive learning atmosphere. This will go a long way in curbing the extent to which they wander over the city.
The government and well-to-do individuals in the society should join hands together to create skill acquisition programmes and sponsor programs on TV and radio to educate the almajirai on how to acquire skills and make use of them for survival. These skills could be tailoring, dyeing, soap making, blacksmithing, shoemaking, etc.
With this, I believe the rate at which the almajirci syndrome grows will hopefully reduce to some considerable level and, if carefully sustained, will someday become history.
Aisha Abdullahi Bello sent this article via aishaabdullahibello@gmail.com.
