2011 ELECTIONS AND THE NIGERIAN YOUTH

The 2011 elections are fast approaching in Nigeria and I think it is time that we look at the past elections we have had in this country since the advent of democracy and what we have gained as a nation from such elections. We can then try and suggest ways to make elections better, ways to make sure our votes count this time around. We have to be sure that this time around the elections will not just be another waste of time so precious.
In the past, elections have been a very big affair in Nigeria and since when I have been able to understand things going on around me, I have got the impression that elections time is a like a time of activities and various political maneuverings in Nigeria. However, I have also noticed that in Nigerian elections, the votes of the electorate does not really count and we are only wasting our time by going on the queues on election day to cast our votes. Since the advent of the Yar’adua government and by extension the Goodluck government, we have been promised that this time around, our votes will count and things will not just be business as usual. We can only hope they mean what they are saying!
This article however, is an attempt to examine the state of the preparedness of Nigeria as a nation and the state of the electorate with regards to making sure our votes count in a Nigeria where the rule of law is relegated to the background and morality and justice are nowhere to be found, one can only wonder what effect the elections will have and why we are being so disturbed as a people. Why don’t our leaders just go ahead and install whoever it is in whatsoever position and stop playing on our intelligence as a people since we all know that our votes don’t really count.
We all know that what actually happens is that they monitor the voting exercise and doctor the results just to make sure their candidate gets the position. And afterwards, they say the will of the people has been done when in actual fact, it is their own will that has been done. In order to make sure that this time our votes count therefore, we have to stand up as a people and monitor the votes ourselves. We have to defend our votes with our lives and realize that it is better for us that way than for us to fold our hands and watch while they force candidates on us and such candidates in turn make life more difficult for us.
So as election year draws near, I shall propose some ways through which votes of the electorate may count and shall try to enumerate some responsibilities to be carried out by the government and citizens alike.
If the government is to make the election truly credible, then I think the election process should be made transparent. I also think the Independent National Electoral Commission (I.N.E.C) should be made truly independent; I.N.E.C should be made independent of the office of the president. I think the president should not be the one to appoint I.N.E.C chairman as this is tantamount to asking a player to be the umpire in his own game. Also independent candidates should also be encouraged by the government as it has been discovered that candidates that got in on the platform of a political party think their allegiance is first to their political; a case I find absurd and morally repugnant.
Also, the general populace should be sensitized as to the importance of voting as many people have lost hope in the election process itself after having discovered that their votes don’t count. Many people would rather stay in their homes than go and queue up in the sun to cast their votes and then seeing their votes don’t count at the end of the day. The national assembly should also rise and perform their duties as a legislative house; they should create an enabling environment for the votes of the people to count. They should pass laws that protect the integrity of the vote of the common man. Also, strict punishment should be meted out to those found to be rigging or influencing the result of the election in any way; this would serve as deterrent to others who would want to follow in their footsteps.
As a people, we should also stand and be counted when election time comes. We should defend our votes with our lives and realize that the future of our children both born and yet unborn, depend on the decisions we make today and in order to guarantee a rewarding future for our children, we have to make a good decision today; decisions that will make future generations bless and pray for us after we are gone and not one that will make them curse us! We should pay attention as we are casting our votes and call the attention of those present to any untoward act being perpetrated by anyone at the polling venue. We should realize that as Yoruba’s say; “oju ni alakan fi’n so’ri” meaning “the crab watches his head with his eyes” and as such we should watch our votes by ourselves and not wait until someone defrauds us before we lodge complaint.
I am also of the opinion that anyone thought by the court of law to have been illegally sworn in should be made to give account of the time he/she has used in the office and made to refund everything that has accrued to him/her as a result of the office he/she occupied illegally; every allowance, salary etc. he/she should not just walk away. Everyone discovered to have been part of the scam that brought the man or woman into the office should also be punished severely so as to serve as deterrent to others. Proper monitoring should also be carried out by the relevant bodies so as to make sure that the whole election process is carried out with transparency and integrity.
I believe that if all these steps are taken, the electoral process can be sanitized and made corruption free and the will of the people can actually be done in the selection of public officers for our various political offices and we can rest assured that our votes actually count.

GOD HELP NIGERIA!!!
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THE SCAM CALLED PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES IN NIGERIA

In many countries of the world, the universities are a standard used to measure the state of the nation as you can guess the kind of future a country will have by just considering the kind of education that country is giving to its youths and young adults. Education in this sense is not just formal education but also the informal. In this write-up however, I shall try to consider the state of the Nigerian public universities using my own ‘citadel of learning’ as a case study.

This write-up is an attempt at analyzing the state of the universities in Nigeria. As you know already, the educational sector of Nigeria is nothing to write home about. More so are the public universities in the country. These universities that are supposed to be citadels of learning are fast becoming a refuse dump. Worse still, they are becoming a breeding ground for criminals and hoodlums. Universities, which are supposed to be the place where people go to be trained to become leaders and responsible members of the society, have become a farce. Students no longer go to school to learn to be responsible rather, they go to obtain a certificate and break free from the group of illiterates in the society. This is rather unfortunate as it really defeats the purpose for which the schools were founded which purpose is so that responsible and respectable leaders can be to take over the mantle of leadership and responsibility when the present crop of leaders are dead and gone.

In Nigeria however, public universities can best be described as a joke and a slap in the face of the Nigerian government. I shall try to buttress my argument with some points using my own ‘citadel of learning’ as a case study.

My school is one of the ‘best’ universities in the country considering that it is currently ranked the best state university in Nigeria. It is located in one of the south western states of the country. It is a non-residential university which in itself is an absurdity considering that the school still has a very large expanse of land on which hostels could be built but the school authority in its wisdom, decide not to. The reason for this decision is best known to them but I think it is because most of the people in positions of authority and on whose shoulders the decision rests are the ones running private residential hostels in the school area and are charging exorbitant prices for such hostels knowing that the student will have no choice but to pay for these hostels. Even the hostel where I currently reside is reportedly owned by the current registrar of J.A.M.B but that is just by the way.

Putting into consideration that the school has a population of about 35,000 students (including those registered for the pre degree program), one would expect that the school would have facilities required to cater for that population but that is not the case as the lecture theater’s present in the school can sit only 1500, 1200, 1000, 750, 250, 150 students at a time. This causes crises as the students have to fight for lecture venues despite paying huge amounts of money as tuition fee but I shall get to that part presently. The number of lecture theaters currently present is grossly inadequate but the school authority could not care less. Even the lectures take advantage of this situation to be lazy as they cite the non-availability of lecture venues as excuse for not teaching the students and of course, as a student, you write examinations whether you are taught anything or not. This situation is very unfair because as a student, it means you have to be examined on things that you were not taught.

In this school, newly admitted students are expected to pay an acceptance fee of N20,000 as well as the general tuition fee of N40,000 expected of every student in the school. After the payment of this fee, a receipt for the amount paid is issued to the student and on it is written such things as the student has paid for. But on getting to the school, the student discovers that he/she has to pay for these things all over again as the receipt does not carry any weight. Take for instance, the payment for medical tests at the health center, the receipt clearly states that the student has paid for the test but on getting to the school, the student discovers that he/she has to pay the amount for the test again at the bursary and obtain another receipt which he/she will then take to the medical center to enable him/her take the medical tests.

After doing some simple calculations, I arrived at a very huge sum of money being made by the school yearly and I begin to wonder why this money is not spent to make the school a more conducive learning environment but then I realize that in this country, corruption is the order of the day and as such, I am not surprised that the money is not spent judiciously.

Worthy of note also, is the deplorable state of our facilities in Nigeria’s higher institutions of learning. In my school for instance, the various lecture halls and other faculty and departmental buildings are in various states of disrepair and the school authority is making no attempt whatsoever to fix this rot. The school authority prefers to buy some other irrelevant things for themselves like cars etc. instead of fixing the rot in the school.

Also, lecturers prefer to go about their private businesses instead of going for classes to impart knowledge in the students and this has adverse effects on the students as this ensures that half baked graduates are produced in our institutions of higher learning. Those who do not go after their private businesses prefer to go and lecture in private universities because the conditions of work there are favorable as against staying to teach in the public universities. This is also because in this private universities, they are well monitored and any lecturer found to be lacking in his duties is heavily sanctioned. This is not so in the public universities.

I would also like to state here that in my own opinion, my school is too densely populated and there are not enough resources to cater for the too many students. Take my department for instance, we are about 240 students in my class alone and multiplying this number by 5, you have more than 1,000 students in one department alone! This in my opinion is about 6 times the number of students that are supposed to be in the department. This being the case, you find that in a laboratory that was built to sit about 100 students, you have about 800 students struggling to sit in the lab just because there is no other laboratory that can sit that many students and the practical class is taken by about 3 or 4 departments. There is the case of a student in a particular public university who had studied a particular item of equipment in details only for him to get to the field where they had gone on an excursion and not be able to identify the equipment until he was told what it was. This situation is very unfortunate and it is due to the fact that in Nigeria, students are not taught to know. They are taught to pass examinations and even when such a student study hard and pass the examination very well, the lecturers cut down their scores by doing what they call ‘regularization if result’. This is a situation where marks of students in given courses are pruned down just because the lecturer thinks they should not pass that well. In fact, there is the case of a particular lecturer in my department that says and I quote ‘you can never get an A in my course; A is for God, B is for the lecturer to give to whomsoever he likes, C is for the genius student and D, E and F are for the rest of the students. I did not have a first class in this department when I was a student so why should you?’ this is a very disturbing scenario and is one I think should not be encouraged.

In my own school, I have discovered that you pay for everything from collection of results to registering courses in the departments. The situation is very unfortunate and it is no wonder many students are clamoring to go abroad to study even if it means they have to go and start all over again. I have discovered however, that this situation is not peculiar to my school as many of my friends in other public schools also claim they do the same.

All this got me thinking and I was recently lamenting to a family friend about this situation. He then pointed out to me that it is not a new thing and that it is not just happening in the universities alone; it is happening in public secondary schools as well and it is only because I was privileged to attend a private secondary school where I did not have to contend with all these irregularities that those things seem new to me. I couldn’t agree more with him!

I hope that very soon, our government and other stake holders will rise to proffer and implement solutions to all these challenges. I believe the educational system in Nigeria needs revamping and complete overhauling. Maybe it is high time we took a cue from Ghana. We should also close down our universities (though I don’t know how possible that will be) to give way for massive restructuring and rebuilding. The universities can then be re-opened and turned into institutions that will be able to compete favorably with the best in the world.

I hope the government will rise to this challenge and work to make the future of this country assured by making sure the leaders of tomorrow are well trained and equipped to do the job of leading this country in the future.

GOD HELP NIGERIA!!!

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