Nigeria

By Salisu Yusuf

Like other teachers in the so-called Third World countries, Nigerian teachers of English have their dilemma and challenges ranging from sociocultural issues to pedagogical, personality, and condition of service. A teacher has a lot to contend with.

Teaching (at the higher level) in the 21st century has evolved from the traditional teacher-centred to a more pragmatic students-centred approach. Teachers are no longer the dominating forces in the classroom. Instead, they serve as coordinators while students run the show. Ultimately, communicative situations are created in the classroom. Consequently, teachers of English need to be acquainted with the role and place of theatre and drama in education, a method that makes teaching a communicative endeavour.

Unfortunately, students in 21st century Nigeria are no longer interested in communicative situations as education at primary and secondary schools has gone below the standard bar. A teacher, therefore, ought to devise a way to motivate a class of passive learners.

Besides students’ lack of communicative approach, teachers of English in Nigeria are confronted with a dual phonetic issue; a teacher is expected to teach the British phonetic patterning of speech in a strictly diverse Nigerian environment with students under the influence of Nigerian phonetics. The confusion in most Nigerian phonetic realisations emanates from a mix-up of British and American dialects in our daily usage.

Most English words are pronounced in American phonetic realisations. Moreover, Yoruba language phonemics has hugely influenced how we pronounce English words. Therefore, an English teacher must fully explain the phonetic versions to his students. For example, the word “minor” has double pronunciations; the British /ˈmʌɪnə/ and Nigerian /ˈmʌɪnɔː/. Students should know this difference and why the former is the aptest while the latter is strictly Nigerian.

Our students’ lack of reading culture has immensely affected English and literary studies. For instance, some students in literature class don’t want to frequent libraries and read selected texts. Instead, they prefer to visit internet sites, download summaries and read haphazardly. Teachers ought to be mentors in this regard.

A contemporary English teacher must keep abreast with modern English usage. For instance, some years back, a professor of English told our class that the plural of compound nouns such as female teacher and male servant are ‘females teachers’ and ‘males servants’, respectively. While some compound nouns are turned to plural from their first or last elements, the above two and many more are pluralised from their first and last elements. His assertion is, however, today obsolete; contemporary grammar has massively changed such patterns; female teachers and male servants have replaced the former.

 A teacher of English must not lose his head to the identity crisis. Some learners in philosophy and literature subsume into ideological attributes of these fields, thereby becoming victims of pull and inferiority complex. They can only feel superior when they identify with the other culture.

A teacher of English should see himself as a second language user who teaches a foreign language. He should not see himself as an English teacher but as a teacher of English. I have seen a colleague with cultural schizophrenia due mainly to an obsession with English culture. A second language user who sees himself as a  first language user usually suffers from identity crisis, culminating in cultural schizophrenia and, ultimately, psychological turmoil. Many I know have lost their faith and turned to atheism.

A teacher should see himself as someone who mediates between cultures in order to reach cultural equivalence. He should not pretend to be an English man, nor should he speak sleek English through a pointed nose. Rather, he should speak as an African who teaches a foreign language.

This doesn’t free him from strictly adhering to rules governing language use. He should be a traditional grammarian in his pedagogical engagements; he employs some aspects of contemporary grammar in both his classroom and outside classroom engagements.

Girl child abuse, pornography and sexual objectification have immensely affected the teaching profession in the 21st century. Victorianism, that 19th-century literary movement with all its attendant moral lashings, could not stop these deviations in academia. Some teachers see their female students as objects of beautification to be exploited. Female students stereotype and generalise their male teachers as admirers of their sleek bodies. Male students use their female counterparts as shields before their teachers, especially when looking for favours. These and many more are some of the causes of sexual scandals.

A teacher should see his female students as his congenial sisters whom he feeds with knowledge, no more, no less than this.

Many see teachers of English as grammar police, therefore, prescriptivists. I was numerously called a representative of her majesty, the late Queen. A teacher should do away with such social constructs and stereotypes and tackle his work head down. He’s a second language user called by fate to teach a foreign language, foreign culture. Therefore, he cannot escape such naming.

Last but not least, Nigeria’s teachers suffer from poor service conditions. Politicians have turned almost all other professions into… besides their own. Today, a month’s take-home pay of a politician can only be earned by a public servant for his entire working career. An instructor at a college in the neighbouring Niger Republic earns twice my wage.

 A teacher should consider his profession service to humanity, not a means to an end.

Salisu Yusuf wrote from Katsina via salisuyusuf111@gmail.com.

By Uzair Adam Imam

Reports from Kaduna disclosed that a pregnant woman abducted July this year has put to bed while in captivity.

The victim reportedly called on her ailing mother when bandits abducted her alongside her two sisters.

The victim’s husband, Muhammad Alabi, decried the traumatic development, adding that his wife was maltreated and severally flogged.

He stated that, “My wife gave birth at the kidnappers’ camp on 2nd August, 2022 and since then, both mother and child have not received any medical attention and to make matter worse, we learnt they were being maltreated and flogged.

“We are all dying emotionally and physically, that is why we are appealing to whoever God will use to secure their release to please help us free them.”

Recounting the family’s ordeal, father of the victims, Malam Abdulwahab Yusuf said the bandits broke into their Mando home around 1:05 am on the day of the attack.

“My two daughters used to take care of their mother who is sick, but unfortunately, that day their elder sister, who is pregnant came from her husband’s house to look after her mother when the bandits broke into the house and kidnapped my three daughters.

“They initially asked for N140 million, but now they have reduced the ransom to N50 million. The family has been adversely affected by the trauma. My wife, who was able to walk unaided before the incident, now uses wheelchair.

“We just carried out a surgery on her. I have not been myself, I cannot sleep, once it is night I don’t know how my body feels.”

By Nura Jibo

There is no point wasting time on Nigerian leaders and their style of leadership.

Since its independence, Nigeria has been embroiled in a series of leadership experimentation. And the reality of its situation is that it cannot develop! I argued this position nineteen (19) years ago in a full-page opinion column in Daily Trust stable of 19 November 2003, page 6. I highlighted the dual mandate of Lord Lugard extensively.

Nigeria falls squarely under a plural society with several groups of population sharply divided along religious, ethnic and cultural formations. The sharp divide between the North and South qualifies the country as a plural community with lots of ethnic, tribal, religious and cultural conflicts.

Unlike the pluralistic United States, which was or/and is able to embrace a cultural semblance, Nigerian people are yet to even start appreciating the essence of togetherness. Its people’s behaviour (s) is not significantly different from dual societies such as Belgium and Rwanda, for example. Under these dual societies, each group accounts for about eighty-five per cent ( 85%) of cultural independence.

Now contrast my assertion with other countries of the world that have this duality in operation. Belgium, for example, is a classical example with its significant population from France and another group of Flemish identities. But today, the GDP value of Belgium accounts for more than 0.45% of the world economy.

Sweden, on the other hand, constitutes more of a singular society with ethnic swedes population of up to 80.3%. The rest are Syrians 1.9%, Iraqis 1.4%, Finnish 1.4% and others 15%.

Now contrast this with Senegal, which has a near-perfect singular society with a predominantly Muslim population that accounts for 94% that two Christian Presidents ruled for two decades. And yet the Senegales lived peacefully under those Christian Presidents.

Nonetheless, Sweden, because of its large singular population with the same cultural, tribal and ethnic semblance, has been enjoying peace for over 500 years!

Why Senegal did not enjoy this kind of Swedish peace is a subject for another day.

Now coming back to Nigeria as a plural society, it cannot develop like the United States because of its multifaceted traditional beliefs and cultural barriers brought about by the colonial demarcations and global mapping.

One wonders why the colonialists drew their countries’ maps so perfectly that it favours them from all angles.

Indeed, Gérardus Mercator did not favour Africa and all African nations like Nigeria when he came up with his conformal cylindrical map projection that he and his groups originally created to display accurate compass bearings for sea travel. In the end, they added additional features to this projection in form of local shapes by defining them as “accurate” and “correct”. The irony is they demarcated Europe so perfectly at a finite scale by drawing Nigeria and all African countries at an infinitesimal scale in 1569.

That is why Nigerians, even though are pluralistic under Mercator’s cylindrical mapping, the diverse population do not share common identities and cultural semblance like the Swedes.

People like me that consider Geography as the mother of history will continue to question the division or/and the dichotomous drawing of the African continent, which did not in any way and spot favours its people to grow and develop.

Therefore, it is not out of place or context to say or/and conclude that Nigeria and the African continent cannot develop as it is because the African States can’t take advantage of their multiethnic, multicultural and multireligious Mercator “gifts”.

Instead, they will continue revolving leadership that is corrupt and very dangerous for national and international development.

And, of course, there is the need for me to explore the ambivalent nature and relationship(s) between what is wrong with Nigerian and African leaders, their leadership styles and the African condition by tracing these to the fundamentals.

In the end, we may conclude that it is better for Nigerians and Africans to move out of Nigeria and Africa and settle somewhere in Europe and the Americas because the conditions there are more favourable and Mercatoristic than living in the African continent that is deliberately mapped out not to grow and excel by the colonial masters. I will, in the end, take a tour to Rwanda and Senegal to sit with the former African Union president, His Excellency Paul Kagame and its current Chairperson, His Excellency President Macky Sall of Senegal.

But before I do that, I hope to write formal open letters to President Kagame and President Sall on the way, I think the African continent and its people must follow to call or agitate for a united African Security Council. This will be distinct from the United Nations Security Council. It is when we have this, in my view, that we can call for an emergency meeting with European Union and redraw the map of Africa in an African style. Only then can we start championing the cause of Africanity, and its revolutionary proposal, and the triumph of facts for its underdevelopment will begin to emerge through the ages.

But as it is, the message to all Africans, including Nigerians, is: Never care to suffer about elections or having a better Nigeria or Africa. Because the duo are not meant to grow.

Indeed, listening to former and current Nigerian leaders and their African counterparts’ leadership “gospels” will never change anything. Rather it will inflict more pain and quandary on Nigerians and Africans, multivalent French, American, British and European marketers, negotiators and their marketability of African continents’ wars and resources.

Nura is a Research Analyst for the Director of Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, United States.

By Bilyamin Abdulmumin

In the first part of this article, Ponzi alias pyramid schemes were discussed in detail, including their cunning modus operandi. If you come to these schemes with suspicion and scepticism, the chance is that you would notice some funny or dubious traits associated with them. The second part wishes to discuss these traits.

An obsession to prove originality

When someone is not truthful, he knows. So, he will assume the suspect mode consciously or unconsciously. He will always show the urge to convince others that he is a saint. This phenomenon is a funny trademark of Ponzi schemes.

These vague platforms float all kinds of certificates at any given opportunity to prove they are real. The more one becomes obsessed, the easier it becomes to detect his flaws. For instance, how could a firm claiming to be a global investment but floating a CAC with business name registration (which even a market woman can get) as evidence of originality? Many Ponzi agents woo potential subscribers with certificates as evidence of legitimacy, “mai kaza a aljihu ba ya jimirin” as” loosely means “he who has a skeleton in the cupboard live in fear.”

Unprofessional communication

 In this 21st century, communication has become a fundamental part and parcel of any firm, especially the one claiming to be a global player. Any renowned firms there will seek to prove to be professionals in their platforms and customer service delivery. For instance, if you visit any Nigerian telecommunications or bank platforms or engage their customer service agency, you will find them very professional. Likewise, their command of the English language is standard. But that is not the case with many Ponzi schemes. One will find their platform full of average written English, their responses sometimes as good as any street English user.  I have observed one costly mistake from these platforms; they kept replying “transaction successced (sic)” instead of “transaction succeeded” This is an embarrassing mistake no firm would afford. 

Definite and stable gains

Market forces dictate that there is always a level of uncertainty for the return of any investment, but not in the world of seemingly Ponzi schemes. Most legitimate investments are based on “gain and loss”. Sometimes the investment return will be much, small, or even deficit depending on the market forces. Still, as mysterious as it is, this basis of ‘gain and loss’ does not exist in the realm of Ponzi schemes. The song is always the same in these fraudulent platforms: gain and gain, invest x naira and recoup 2x naira.

 Some market forces not long ago that caught the global economy unaware were Covid-19 and Ukraine inversion by Russia. The only market immune from the shocks was the Ponzi scheme. So, dear investors looking for easy money, wake up and smell the coffee.

Camouflage 

Of course, anyone who wants to play a shady game will woo others into believing him by camouflaging a well-known establishment. The Ponzi schemers are masters of camouflage. They float a famous brand as their own. But a simple way to discern this trait is by noting the difference in name between the platform and its website address; let me emphasize this point by riding on the back of the white paper issued on Sunpower.

Sunpower is an acclaimed online investment but was found untrustworthy by “nogofallmaga”, an NGO dealing with scam practices.  The pseudo-Ponzi scheme is known everywhere as Sunpower, but their website name is www.sunsolar.one. This appears to be camouflage because there is a genuine global brand with the name Sunpower and has www.sunpower.com as its website address. So, dear Sunpower, why is the vagueness (brand name different from the website address)?

The dubious and funny traits of fraudulent platforms are many. Control your desire for windfalls, and it becomes difficult to sell you a dummy.

Bilyamin Abdulmumin wrote via bilal4riid13@gmail.com.

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari

The Chairman of Board of Trustees of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Walid Jibrin has resigned his position in the opposition party.

According to reports, Jibrin resigned at the National Executives Council (NEC) meeting in Abuja on Thursday.
He said he resigned to make things easier for the party.

“I am stepping down as the chairman of BoT. I am stepping down to make it easier for all of us,” he said at the party’s NEC meeting on Thursday

This is coming amidst internal crisis that has bedevil the opposition party.

Many southern stakeholders in the party are also calling for the resignation of the chairman of the party, Ayorchia Ayu.

By Uzair Adam Imam 

A former minister of sports, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, has blamed the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) for the mess and hardship in the country.

Abdullahi tackled the party, saying only persons with love for suffering will vote for APC in the forthcoming elections of 2023.

The former minister is the PDP senatorial candidate for Kwara Central. He said this while speaking with journalists in Ilorin.

He stated, “You have to have a love for suffering to even consider voting for APC again after how they have ruined this country.

“If not for the way things are, nobody should even be talking about APC again after the mess they have brought to the country. The next election is going to be the PDP and any other party but APC.”

According to him, the party has failed the country in all development indices. Meanwhile, Nigerians must be careful not to return it to power across all levels.

By Fatihu Ibrahim Salis

It is with a great sense of depression I am writing this on behalf of thousands of “inconclusive graduates” yes, I am referring to the class of 2020 of Kano University of Science and Technology (KUST), Wudil. We are inconclusive because we are yet to collect our statement of result. We sat for our final exam in October 2021. To date, we have not collected our certificates, thanks to the industrial action of the Academic Staff Union of the Universities (ASUU). However, we have seen our final year examination results.

The strike started in February 2022, four months after our final paper, which is more than enough time to compute our result and mobilise us for the mandatory one-year service to our motherland, which is the dream of any patriotic and faithful son of the soil.

Today marks almost a year of completing our studies without knowing our fate. We have tried our best to fight together and show solidarity to ASUU, but it seems it is not worth it since they cannot feel the trauma we are facing.

As a state-owned university, KUST is not related to IPPIS or UTAS battles because the staff’s salary comes directly from the state government treasury (I stand to be corrected). Hundreds of opportunities have slipped from our hands because of this action. Many of us have been confronted with life-changing shots, but unfortunately, we have no certificates to offer, although we have the required knowledge.

We have faced many tribulations during the long journey from our first year to our final year the annual strikes, the unrest saga, the one-year Covid-19-imposed lockdown, and the current strike, among others. What an irony; a five-year course has turned seven years with no hope in sight.

If I may understand them right, ASUU’s fight is for the protection of the educational sector from collapsing and emancipation of the University students from studying in challenging environments, and at the same time fighting for the well-being of their members. But now, with the continuation of the strikes, they are doing the government’s dirty work for them.  ASUU, your fights to liberate our lives as university students (pardon me if I sound rude) have changed direction to deter us from attending classes. It seems you are helping the government pro bono by continuing the industrial action.

Education is not a privilege but a fundamental right. Yet, as Nigerians, that basic right has been snatched from us. As a result, our futures are deterred, and our progress is choked. We are not holding only the federal government responsible but ASUU as well. 

With all due respect, ASUU’s timing for the strike is wrong. On the brink of the 2023 general election, the government’s focus is on the election, not education. ASUU should realise the bitter truth and suspend the strike. Withdrawing from a battle is another battle strategy to fight for another day. The association and the federal government should compromise for the sake of the Nigerian students who are hurt the most as the saying goes, “when two elephants are fighting, it’s the grass that suffers the most”.

The guiding philosophy of KUST is the provision of community-based education that will facilitate the production of graduates who shall fulfil the stipulated requirements in learning and character to graduate in their various fields of specialisation. The graduates shall also be groomed in such a manner that they will be able to function effectively in the community.  The students have been groomed so well that we spend seven years in a five-year course, but we have been denied our certificates. We have been told that we only receive them after the ASUU strike, which has no hope of resumption. 

As a state university student, I am very much aware of the contribution of the TETFund to our schools, which is ASUU’s brainchild. But this blind loyalty and solidarity to an association that not only consider you as second-class citizens but “quacks” should be halted. We are talking of our future, so remember the psychological and emotional effect the strike has on our lives.

Most of the graduates for the next batch of NYSC will be private university graduates. So indirectly, the masses have been kicked out of the struggle while the elites enjoyed a great monopoly, typical aristocracy restored. ASUU’s battle has denied many of us the opportunity to serve our nations. Most of us have reached the exemption age of 30, and a considerable amount is on the rim of the exemption age.

Finally, I want to call on the attention of all stakeholders to intercede on our behalf and call upon the school management to show us empathy. We are their children. They are our parents. We appreciate their fatherly support in our careers. Please, consider our future.

God Bless Nigeria 

Fatihu Ibrahim Salis wrote via fisabbankudi123@gmail.com.

By Ahmad Deedat Zakari

A man identified as Peter Orji has allegedly murdered his elder brother, Godwin Orji, over N1500 electricity bill at Nnewi in Anambra State.

The State Police Public Relations Officer, DSP Tochukwu Ikenga, confirmed the development and disclosed that Peter Orji and his wife were arrested by the Nigerian Police Force, NPF, on Tuesday.

Ikenga added that the State Police Commissioner, Echeng Echeng, has ordered for the transfer of the case to the State Criminal Investigation Department, CID, for proper investigation.

According to local sources, Peter’s refusal to pay N1500 electricity bill led to the disconnection of power supply to his flat. The action was carried out at the behest of his elder brother and ensued in an altercation between the duo. Peter then took a gun and fired at his brother which caused the later to die on the spot.

By Muhammadu Sabiu

Matthew Kukah, the Catholic Bishop of Sokoto Diocese, has cautioned politicians against exploiting politics in the nation through religion, noting that a severe result would follow such a move just as it had in Germany during Adolf Hitler’s rule.

On Tuesday in Abuja, as part of the celebrations for his 70th birthday, Kukah spoke at the launch of his new book, Broken Truth.

“If you look at history, there is a consequence for using religion to manipulate politics. We just need to look at Germany. The consequences are there to see in Hitler.

“The problem is that the Nigerian political elites lack the mental capacity to understand the consequences of the fire they are stoking because there is nothing to suggest that the average person who is living in the north, who is Fulani, who is a Muslim, or who is Hausa, can say that they are proud of the Nigerian political system, beyond a very tiny percentage.

“So, if you decide that you want to give privilege to a religion or an ethnic group, what will happen is that others automatically become outsiders,” the bishop was quoted as saying.

Additionally, he indicated that protests are still taking place in the nation because the populace is more knowledgeable than those in charge of its affairs.

Kukah added, “The agitation that persists in Nigeria is largely borne out of the fact that those who govern us are not aware of how much mental progress ordinary people have made.

“Those who are being governed are more intelligent and endowed. And it will not have been a bad thing if people who don’t know seek knowledge.”

By Hassan Ahmad Usman

Recently, I read a post on Facebook cautioning ASUU not to ignite the government into following the path of the former UK prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, in her famous face-off with unionists. Before then, I only knew of her being called the  “The Iron Lady”, and that’s all. It prompted me to find out more about her struggle with them. I got a book, Margaret Thatcher: A portrait of the Iron Lady by John Blundell. 

After winning the war of about eleven weeks against Argentina over the Falkland island, she made a famous statement in 1983: “We had to fight the enemy without in the Falklands, and now we have to fight the enemy within, which is much more difficult but just as dangerous. These few men are the wreckers in our midst.”

The miners, led by Arthur Scargill under the NUM, started a strike action after learning of the National Coal Board’s chairman’s plan to close uneconomical pits. The NUM held a special place in the political landscape.

They were somewhat invincible. In fact, the unionists brought down a government a decade earlier before Thatcher’s. But as the book’s author opined: “I think it possible that her defeat of General Galtieri (in the war)  emboldened her to take on the mineworkers with robustness she may otherwise not have shown”.

She welcomed the fight against the miners, defeated them and reformed the unions. 

Now, let us relate the defeat of the NUM and ASUU’s likely end if they thread the same path. One of the early actions that Thatcher’s government took when the strike heightened was to promise a big Christmas bonus to whoever resumed work. It yielded positive results, and a war started between the striking and non-striking workers. Imagine the federal government promising to pay the unpaid salaries for six months to only lecturers that resumed. What do you think? There is already a push for a rival union.

Nigerian government can actualize the new union, which would automatically birth the beginning and end of ASUU. ASUU chairman’s recent labelling of universities not on strike as quacks is a big blunder. Other state universities felt insulted too. If the union keep on this trend, its end looms. A divided house is a recipe for a fallen one. 

Another area is politicizing ASUU strikes. One mistake the union should not make is making the politicians understand that they can win elections with or without an ASUU strike. It’ll ultimately show that the public is not sympathetic to the union. Parents are already tired of seeing the unhappy faces of their wards. Like the NUM, their resolve would eventually wane after the election litmus test.

The NUM leader Scargill was embarrassed when the press revealed that President Gaddafi and Soviet President Gorbachev were sending large sums of money to the NUM. Indeed treason was in the air. In the case of Nigeria, it is nothing close to treason, but acting as an opposition party by the ASUU chairman while calling on Nigerians not to vote for the government that made their universities to be closed is an apparent derailment from the status quo. It gives the government reason to cling. 

I’ve long wondered if ASUU listens to its ordinary members’ cries. Do they even have a voice? Yes, solidarity and loyalty are good, but how long can they be sustained with a hungry stomach? They are passing through a lot, and words of the mouth alone cannot keep them going. Just like NUM members that couldn’t hold on for long without cheques, ASUU members, too, are humans and any given opportunity thrown at them to abandon their war gear, they’ll heed without hesitation.

Prime minister Thatcher weakened the old arrangements that made membership in the union mandatory by giving more power and rights to individual workers. She went to the British public and the ordinary members of the unions. She explained that strikes affected union members just as much as the rest of the public. And she used simple examples to show how the kind of economic thinking represented by the TUC would keep Britain on the road to ruin.

Thatcher’s strategy was to break down the closed shop and bring real democracy to these institutions so ordinary members could regain control. As a result, union membership dropped from 51% when she assumed power in 1979 to just 18% in 1997, seven years after leaving. 

Lastly, it is my utmost prayer to see ASUU get what they want from the government for the betterment of our education, for I believe they are doing it with good intentions and for the interest of all.   

Hassan Ahmad Usman writes from Lafia and can be reached via basree177@gmail.com.