The story of how I reverted to al Islam is a story of plans. I made plans, the group I was with made plans, and Allah made plans. And Allah is the Best of Planners.
When I was a teenager, I came to the attention of a group of people with a very sinister agenda. They were and probably still are a loose association of individuals who work in government positions but have a special agenda: to destroy Islam.
It is not a governmental group that I am aware of, they simply use their positions in the US government to advance their cause. One member of this group approached me because he saw that I was articulate, motivated and very much the women’s rights advocate.
He told me that if I studied International Relations with an emphasis in the Middle East, he would guarantee me a job at the American Embassy in Egypt. He wanted me to eventually go there to use my position in the country to talk to Muslim women and encourage the fledgling women’s rights movement.
It is not a governmental group that I am aware of, they simply use their positions in the US government to advance their cause. One member of this group approached me because he saw that I was articulate, motivated and very much the women’s rights advocate.
He told me that if I studied International Relations with an emphasis in the Middle East, he would guarantee me a job at the American Embassy in Egypt. He wanted me to eventually go there to use my position in the country to talk to Muslim women and encourage the fledgling women’s rights movement.
I thought this was a great idea. I had seen the Muslim women on TV; I knew they were a poor oppressed group, and I wanted to lead them to the light of 20th century freedom. With this intention, I went to college and began my education.
I studied Quraan, hadith and Islamic history. I also studied the ways I could use this information. I learned how to twist the words to say what I wanted them to say. It was a valuable tool. Once I started learning, however, I began to be intrigued by the message of Islam. It made sense. That was very scary. Therefore, in order to counteract this effect, I began to take classes in Christianity.
I chose to take classes with this one professor on campus because he had a good reputation and he had a Ph.D. in Theology from Harvard University. I felt I was in good hands. I was, but not for the reasons I thought. It turns out that this professor was a Unitarian Christian.
He did not believe in the trinity or the divinity of Jesus. In actuality, he believed that Jesus was a prophet. He proceeded to prove this by taking the Bible from its sources in Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic and show where they were changed. As he did this, he showed the historical events which shaped and followed these changes.
By the time I finished this class, my deen had been destroyed, but I was still not ready to accept Islam. As time went on, I continued to study, for myself and for my future career. This took about three years.
In this time, I would question Muslims about their beliefs. One of the individuals I questioned was a Muslim brother with the MSA. Alhamdulillah, he saw my interest in the deen, and made it a personal effort to educate me about Islam. May Allah increase his reward. He would give me dawaa at every opportunity which presented itself.
One day, this man contacts me, and he tells me about a group of Muslims who were visiting in town. He wanted me to meet them. I agreed. I went to meet with them after ishaa prayer.
I was led to a room with at least 20 men in it. They all made space for me to sit, and I was placed face to face with an elderly Pakistani gentleman. Mashallah, this brother was a very knowledgeable man in matters of Christianity. He and I discussed and argued the varying parts of the bible and the Quraan until the fajr.
At this point, after having listened to this wise man tell me what I already knew, based on the class I had taken in Christianity, he did what no other individual had ever done. He invited me to become a Muslim.
In the three years I had been searching and researching, no one had ever invited me. I had been taught, argued with and even insulted, but never invited. May Allah guide us all.
So when he invited me, it clicked. I realized this was the time. I knew it was the truth, and I had to make a decision.
Alhamdulillah, Allah opened my heart, and I said, “Yes. I want to be a Muslim.” With that, the man led me in the shahadah – in English and in Arabic.
I swear by Allah that when I took the shahadah, I felt the strangest sensation. I felt as if a huge, physical weight had just been lifted off my chest; I gasped for breath as if I were breathing for the first time in my life.
Alhamdulillah, Allah had given me a new life – a clean slate – a chance for Jennah, and I pray that I live the rest of my days and die as a Muslim. Ameen.
Chief of Army Staff (COAS), Nigerian Army, Lieutenant General Tukur Yusuf Buratai has directed officers who are interested in politics to resign and join the politics or face disciplinary action should they be found to be having secret meetings with politicians for whatever reason.
The directive was given today, Monday, according to Director Army Public Relations, in a statement, Brigadier General Sani Kukasheka Usman, following information that some individuals have been approaching some officers and soldiers for undisclosed political reasons.
He said that the army chief such officers and their political collaborators “to desist from these acts.”
General Buratai reminded the officers that the army is a thorough professional, disciplined, loyal and apolitical institution that has clear Constitutional roles and responsibilities.
“Therefore, he seriously warned and advised all officers and soldiers interested in politics, to resign their commission or apply for voluntary discharge forthwith”, the statement added.
“Any officer or soldier of Nigerian Army found to be hobnobbing with such elements or engaged in unprofessional conducts such as politicking would have himself or herself to blame.
“The COAS has further reiterated that the Nigerian Army will remain apolitical and respect the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
“Heads of security agencies must not leave anything to chance; some people may be taking advantage of the C-in-C’s absence to plot what only they can explain. God forbid a coup.
“Expect the DSS and Police to issue similar statement in the coming days. That’s all I would say for now.”
It was gathered that Buratai’s statement came on the heels of intelligence reports that some politicians are holding secret meetings with top Army officers due to the absence of President Muhammadu Buhari.
President Buhari travelled on May 7 to London again for medical attention. [myad]
Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has said that many good ideas that would have taken Nigeria to highest pedestals in terms of economic growth never saw the light of the day.
According to him, some of such ideas usually came as if they meant nothing to the country’s growth, but that if care were taken for such ideas to be developed and nurtured, they could make the difference in the development of the country.
The Acting President, who spoke today, Tuesday at the 10th Anniversary of the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) in Abuja, the nation’s Federal Capital, recalled that from the little discussions he had with the former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Governor, Professor Charles Soludo, it was clear that Nigeria often neglected the small things that could develop into big things.
“A few minutes ago, I was talking to his Excellency, the former President, Olusegun Obasanjo and the former CBN Governor, Prof. Charles Soludo, and they were talking about how a few conversations between them and the approval of President Obasanjo at that time birthed what is today the AFC.
“It struck me that just as it is always the case, the greatest ideas that become the sort that we celebrate today never really seem anywhere near what they turn out to be; they are just seeds and if that seeds are planted, if they ever get done, then there is a good chance that they can become what they should be as we are witnessing today. Many of the best seeds never get planted, but I am very glad that this particular seed was planted and we can see the big oak tree that it has become. We are truly grateful to God and to the great men and women who made this happen.”
Professor Osinbajo said that one cannot but wonder how true it is that the timeless values of a clear vision, planning, hard work, courage, resilience, and above all the grace of God always adds up to phenomenal success.
“The idea of a public- private development finance institution, wholly African from scratch, not born of the will and wishes of the other international multilateral Development Financing Institutions (DFIs) but of the will of African nations, African leaders and institutions, surely seemed a little far-fetched barely a decade ago.
“But the story of AFC is the story of a core of solid African professionals whose courage and faith in leaving the safety and certainty of institutions where they had established firm reputations for the unknown world of the start-up multilateral DFI has formed an ethos that today defines the corporation. An ethos that has quickly built up such trust and confidence that has in these few years initiated, led participated in, and offered project finance and management services to some of the most significant infrastructure projects in Africa.”
The Acting President said that despite the uncertainty and turbulence in the African and world economies, the next decade will be even rockier, adding: “it would seem that the only certainty in the future is the uncertainty.
“But for the student of history and social phenomena, that milieu is the precursor of some of the most phenomenal opportunities for prosperity and growth that we have seen thus far. The coming years may well call for a different mindset and a more nuanced skill set. For example who could have predicted the phenomenal success of the so-called disruptive technologies and businesses riding on their backs.
“So, today the owners of the largest taxi fleet in the world own no cars and have no permanent drivers, the largest real estate agency in the world actually also owns no real estate of note and their clients both landlords and tenants sign up to their company. So technology, its accelerative power, and the capacity to disrupt established business, thought and even creative value chains will clearly stretch all our theories and assumptions on financing and management. But if we begin with the known even in this unknown it might help.
“Investments in broadband infrastructure, for example, is crucial. Broadband infrastructurehas now won its place as the new utility alongside electricity, transportation, telecoms, and water supply. And it is bound to affect and indeed is already defining how every one of these other utilities work and will work in the coming years.
“I want to note AFC’s support for the MAIN ONE cable project is one of those farsighted initiatives that these times will require.
“It is important to mention also how in the past most nations, especially African countries were able to pay up for infrastructure projects in one way or the other. But that sovereign risk environment is changing quickly. Governments had always in the past been the largest contributor to infrastructure even when payments were always never really smooth, but they were able to offer sovereign guarantees or cash support.
“But today, that is no longer forthcoming given the huge deficits and sovereign debts that most governments now experience.
“So, the time certainly calls for new thinking, AFCs and DFIs like that must now begin to look for new ways of engaging with governments, you must look for new ways of engaging with African governments.
“We cannot forget that unless corporations like AFC recognize that what is important to do in these times, the next 10 years will indeed be very difficult years for our economies, for the African economy. We will be relying on AFC, our own DFIs to do much more; we will be relying on them to show much leadership to take greater risks.
There is no question at all that all of what is required, all of what we need will not be provided just by government, government cannot finance the huge infrastructure needs of most countries. As a matter of fact, without the private sector, it is completely impossible for government to finance all the infrastructure needs.
“Take Nigeria for example, all our refineries put together at the moment does not produce 600, 000 barrels of oil, we don’t refine 600, 000 barrels of oil but one single private sector investor is building one single line of 650, 000 barrels. So there is no question at all that government cannot match the power of the private sector and the resources that the private sector can put together.”
The Acting President admitted that it is the AFC that can bring the private sector and public sector together to deliver on the kind of infrastructure need that our country requires.
He said that the one certain thing to which everybody had agreed on is that the market will determine practically everything, adding: “it cannot be any form of central planning, of course government will interfere, but I think all of us have agreed today that we must ensure that market determines all things; it is the markets that has led to the mobile technology boom.
“The fact that we allowed the private sector to take the lead and we created the regulatory environment that made it possible, is why today in, Africa 750 million Africans have access to phones. For many, their first use of a phone was the mobile phones and that is the power of the market where the public sector comes together with the private sector.
“This is the role that DFIs will play; that mediatory role and I believe that the AFC is centrally positioned to do so.
“So, let me again commend the AFC for the excellent work they have done in the past ten years and especially the leadership of Andrew Alli, Olusegun Akin-Olugbade and all of the great professionals who have come together to make that institution what it is today. And I pray that the next ten years will be the best ten years yet.” [myad]
A legal expert, Chief Anthony Idigbe (SAN), has warned Nigerians against compelling President Muhammadu Buhari to resign on account of the present condition of his health.
Idigbe, who is the Chairman of the Legal Profession Regulation Review Committee, said that the decision as to whether to resign or not should be the personal right of the President.
The lawyer, who made the remark shortly after he was inducted into the Third Degree of the order of the Knights of St. Mulumba (KSM) with his wife, Elizabeth as Lady of St. Mulumba, said: “the fact that someone has some medical challenges doesn’t mean the person can’t work. “There are lots of facilities nowadays. So the decision to resign is very personal. Nigerians should give him that privacy and allow him to consider his situation.” [myad]
Dame Patience, wife of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, is fighting the federal government over the balance of her $5.9 million, as she headed to the Court of Appeal to ask for the reversal of the order of the Federal High Court that froze her Skye Bank account.
Following an ex parte application by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), on April 26, this year, Justice Mojisola Olatoregun had made an interim order freezing Patience’s account.
The judge ordered the EFCC to publish the freezing order in a national daily and adjourned till May 15 for any interested party to appear before her to give reasons why the money should not be permanently forfeited to the Federal Government.
At the resumed proceedings in the case yesterday, Monday, Dame Patience’s lawyer, Mr. Ifedayo Adedipe (SAN), said that her client had not been given sufficient notice of the case to enable her respond, pointing out that the EFCC only published the freezing order May 11.
He added that his client had also gone on appeal to challenge the freezing order and had also filed an application praying that further proceedings in the case should be suspended until the outcome of the appeal.
But the EFCC lawyer, Mr. Rotimi Oyedepo, insisted that the business of the day was for anyone who had objection to the forfeiture order to appear in court to give reasons why the money should not be permanently forfeited.
He urged the judge to ignore Adedipe’s submission, saying it was not in consonance with the business of the day.
Responding to the counsel, the judge noted that the forfeiture order was published too late and said she would adjourn the matter to avail interested parties adequate time to appear before her to show reasons why the money should not be permanently forfeited. She consequently adjourned till May 22, 2017.
The EFFC had while obtaining the freezing order told the judge that the $5.9m found in Patience’s account was suspected proceeds of crime.
Apart from the Skye Bank account with $5.9m, the EFCC also obtained a freezing order in respect of an Ecobank account with a balance of N2.4bn which was opened in the name of one La Wari Furniture and Bath Limited.
In an affidavit filed in support of the new application, an operative of the EFCC, Musbahu Abubakar, stated that Patience opened the Skye Bank account on February 7, 2013 and used it to allegedly warehouse proceeds of crime.
According to Abubakar, Patience made several cash deposits in United States’ dollars into the account through a former Special Assistant to ex-President Jonathan, Waripamo-Owei Dudafa, and a State House steward, Festus Iyoha.
He said that as of January 30, 2015, the Skye Bank account had a balance of $6.7m but Patience subsequently withdrew it down to $5.7 million.
The EFCC prayed the court to urgently freeze the account so as to prevent Patience from moving the funds. [myad]
The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, has commended the immediate past administration of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan for embarking on massive projects that were beneficial to Nigerians.
Speaking at a Town Hall meeting in Abuja, Amaechi, who is former Rivers State governor, said that his ministry did not meet any uncompleted project on assumption of office.
He said that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration had continued with the projects of the previous administration because “we realized the impact of the recession.”
Amaechi said that the Kaduna-Abuja railway was nearly 80 percent completed by the Jonathan’s administration, adding: “in the ministry of transportation, we did not meet anything comatose. We met an attempt to bring back our rail services.
“The Kaduna-Abuja railway was nearly 80 percent completed which we commissioned and commercial services have commenced.” [myad]
The Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Professor Is-haq Oloyede, has announced the release of the results of the United Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), conducted Saturday last week.
The Registrar, who made the announcement during the monitoring of the ongoing UTME exams, said: “The result of UTME has come out and the performance is not too bad. But we are sure that this is the performance now rather than thinking you can get result one way or the other.”
Speaking along with the Minister of State for Education, Professor Anthony Anwukah, in Abuja, Oloyede expressed satisfaction over the smooth conduct of the examination so far. [myad]
Justice Oluwatoyin Ipaye of an Ikeja High Court has sentenced the former Chief Accountant of Vanguard Newspaper, Bhadmus Abiodun, to 14-years in prison for forgery and stealing of N3.1million. The money belongs to the media house.
The Judge, in his ruling today, Tuesday, pronounced:“the defendant is hereby sentenced to seven years in prison on count one. He is sentenced to seven years in prison each for counts two to eight. The prison terms for counts two to eight are to run concurrently.”
Abiodun, a middle-aged man and a resident of No. 5, Tijani Ashogbon St., Bariga, Lagos was convicted of an eight-count charge of conspiracy. Two of the charges filed against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), are stealing and forgery.
He was initially arraigned alongside Samuel Ogbole, the Vanguard Media Representative in Onitsha. He absconded when bail was granted to the duo by the court after their arraignment. He remains at large.
According to the EFCC prosecutor, Abba Mohammed, Abiodun committed the offences alongside Ogbole between January 9, 2006 and January 4, 2008.
“The convict and his accomplice on various dates illegally converted the sum of N400,000, N2.5million and N120,000 belonging to the complainant.
“On January 16, 2007, the duo conspired to and forged a Wema Bank deposit slip with No. 7125699 purporting to be the value of N225, 165.
“On May 30, 2007, the men conspired to and forge a Wema Bank deposit slip with No. 3270712 purporting to be the value of N256, 850.
“The offences violated Sections 390 (7), 467 (2)(i) and 516 of the Criminal Code Law of Lagos State 2003,” Mohammed said.
If you visit the website of the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital (UATH), you would be somewhat impressed. Unlike many Nigerian institutions that boast appalling websites, the UATH website closely resembles the virtual personality of a modest government owned medical facility. You would easily rate UATH a fairly decent teaching hospital if you didn’t know better than to accept its digital persona at face value.
But if you pay a physical visit to the hospital location, you would experience a shocking cognitive dissonance. The sleek University of Abuja Teaching Hospital that exists on the web is a total stranger to the rundown brick and mortar University of Abuja Teaching Hospital you encounter in Gwagwalada. The real UATH is a veritable whited sepulcher, coated with makeup on the surface and full of rottenness and stench within.
The University of Abuja Teaching Hospital is a 350-bed facility with an assumed capacity for expansion to 500 beds. A hospital that evolved from a specialist hospital to a teaching hospital for the University of Abuja in 2006, UATH was established to serve the medical needs of residents of Abuja and environs and to function as a tertiary health institution for the training of medical students of the University of Abuja. However, the edifice is serving as an architectural argument in favor of the bastardization of The Hospital Idea.
The University of Abuja Teaching Hospital is a tangible equivalent of ‘the valley of the shadow of death.’ If your life depended on professional medical treatment, your rushing to UATH, rather than improve your chances of survival, will increase the odds that you will leave the facility in a worse state than when you were admitted. ‘The hospital’ is such a miserable interpretation of the concept of a hospital that you are more likely to die passing through it than anywhere else.
Granted, the standard of the public hospitals in Nigeria is nothing to write home about, which is the reason why the rich go overseas to treat the commonest ailments. Time and again, we shudder as Nigerian leaders themselves pass a vote of no confidence on our healthcare system by unabashedly leading the incestuous medical safari that also represents the capital flight of billions of dollars in foreign exchange.
But UATH is not your average Nigerian hospital. UATH is the gold standard of disguised incapacity. It is a hospital that has the distinction of being farthest from the merit of the name.
You wouldn’t want an emergency to introduce you to the fraud that is ‘the hospital’. Because the experience could cost you your own life. UATH has the one of the highest mortality rates in the country.
The intensive care unit (ICU) of UATH has a 50% mortality rate. That is to say, one in every two persons who enters the ICU is carried out dead. Or to put the statistic another way, one’s fate depends on the tossing of the coin.
Patient death is so common in the UATH environment that incidences of recovery are largely celebrated as happy accidents. The facility produces such preponderance of deaths that it might well be officially mandated to feed as many of its patients as it possibly can to the morgue!
The condition of UATH is terrible beyond exaggeration. The operating theatre of UATH works for only four hours a day. And sometimes, the hospital lacks consumables for surgery. This means that patients have to wait for long hours and for days, in certain instances, and the unlucky ones with desperate conditions have to die due to delayed intervention.
‘The hospital’ is so dysfunctional that people die routinely from simple procedures such as an appendectomy. It is a stretch to task the supposed ‘Teaching Hospital’ with relatively complex procedures because the result is guaranteed to be much worse. In cases simple and complex, trying ‘the hospital’ for a cure is a risk…on the side of assisted suicide!
The real tragedy is that this abattoir of a hospital, this death factory called University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, is operating ‘normally’ in the Federal Capital Territory. It is not located in some far-flung part of Nigeria. Yet, the Federal Government of Nigeria is indifferent to the hospital’s mass murder business.
The killings continue under the watch of supervisory authorities. The Department of Hospital Services in the Ministry of Health is responsible for monitoring the operations of Nigerian hospitals and evaluating the quality of their service. But that department which coexists with UATH in the FCT has effectively permitted ‘the hospital’ to sustain the war on the sick.
The carnage in UATH is an open secret. It is well known to the superior authorities. But they can’t interpose to stop the waste of human lives because the status quo favors their individual bottom line. They are getting rich off the death of the sick.
The hospital laboratory is a corrupt cottage industry of its own. It is in such dismal state of disuse that doctors disregard results obtained from the laboratory. Thus, laboratory scientists have a ‘legitimate excuse’ to collect samples from patients, run the tests in their own private labs in town and rob the sick twice for the same service.
The management of the hospital is an active part of this regime of exploitation. They wink at the extortion. And they receive tithes of the filthy proceeds to allow staffers of the hospital bleed patients of money before abandoning them to die.
One tiny fact: nobody is punished for this gang-rape. Because remittances are sent up to the top of the pyramid in the Ministry of Health. Everybody in the depraved food chain is quiet and happy because the gains enrich them.
It’s a racket. A rent system. A syndicate of vampires!
There has to be an urgent sanitation in UATH. There is a need for a clean sweep of the officials that have reduced the hospital to a slaughter house. The hospital staffers must be weaned from blood money and introduced to a new paradigm that respects the sanctity of human life and incalculable value of health.
At the moment, the cleaners, porters and guards of the hospital are on strike. It’s a protest. They are demanding payment of their 4 months’ salary.
The teaching hospital cannot persist as a mockery of its original mission. Presently, it is neither competent in its ‘teaching’ mandate nor in its foundational life saving and body healing assignment. It is just as woefully incapable of imparting the requisite knowledge to its medical students as it is in restoring health to the sick.
The medical students who finish from ‘the teaching hospital’ are behind the curve. The climate they were presumably trained in is not oriented to groom them to function better than quack medics. So their potential practice is doomed to reflect the poverty of their proficiency –and this, at the expense of human lives.
The Nigerian poor deserve better than to be killed by a hospital that is not worth its name. We have to make the hospital work. Or quit killing the sick seeking for relief.
We cannot purport to maintain a hospital that is antithetical to its purpose. One that kills sick people under false pretenses. We just cannot continue to acquiesce to the reign of a death cult over our hospital.
Our humanity should forbid the subsistence of this scam called University of Abuja Teaching Hospital.
The Daily Trust newspaper has published an interesting feature story (May 15), on the sudden surge in the number of First Class degrees being churned out by Nigerian universities. Daily Trust reports that its investigation reveals that in the last five years, 16 Nigerian universities have produced a total of 3, 499 first class graduates. Between 2011 and 2016, 12 of these universities produced 2, 822 First Class graduates, and it seems this First Class galore is a growing fashion particularly among the private universities.
This trend should ordinarily be a good thing: if Nigeria can manage to produce more First Class intellects, this should reflect on the long run on the country’s business, social, economic and cultural life. We would have more Ph.Ds hopefully, and so produce more qualified, research academics, especially now that close to 60% of Nigerian university lecturers do not have a Ph.D. The more brilliant persons a country’s education system is able to produce, the better, such persons can indeed make a significant difference and drive the leadership process on all fronts.
The only problem is that this growing trend needs to be interrogated. Previously, a First Class degree, the equivalent of a Distinction, was something quite rare, awarded by Departments after very careful consideration. I am not too sure that the entire Faculty of Arts of the University of Ibadan would have awarded up to 3,000 First Class degrees in the entire history of that Faculty. University departments talked about a First Class as if it was a comet. When students got a 2:1, they were the real lords of the Department, and even then a 2:1 was never given out in bus-loads.
I recall the story of a former colleague at the University of Calabar who was denied a First Class in those days, because he slapped a young lecturer, who had just been recruited and who did not know that this particular student was the star of the department and his Faculty. It was our final exam. He was summoned to appear before a disciplinary panel and told matter-of-factly that university degrees were awarded on the basis of character and learning. Check: it was always character before learning.
He made the First Class grade, but they gave him a 2:1. He was later appointed a Graduate Assistant though. He was also recommended for a Commonwealth Scholarship and sent to Cambridge for graduate studies. He would later prove to be a true First Class Brain. It was also the practice in those days for lecturers to remind brilliant students of the achievements of those who had obtained First Class degrees. Because they were not too many, a First Class graduate served for many years as a role model for succeeding generations.
It was also the case that there were more First Class graduates in the Sciences, Engineering and the Applied Sciences. The Humanities produced fewer First Class graduates. Some of our lecturers used to ask: “What do you want to write that will earn you a First Class? You must be really exceptional to know all the answers in literature, history or philosophy?” Those were the days when a Professor would start a class and frighten you with the information that the last student who scored an A grade in the course was a certain Professor so and so who ‘sat in this same class 30 years ago!’ If you must get an A, you’d have to prove to me that you are smarter than him”.
University authorities created such big myths around a First Class degree that many students just didn’t want to kill themselves trying to get one, only to be disappointed at the end of the day. The students who tried were not necessarily popular. They were labeled “Triangular Students”, “Bookworm”, “Effiko”, or “Akukwo”. Students in the 2:1 category felt more relaxed, many of them could even be as good as the First Class students, but just didn’t bother to apply themselves hard enough. The 2:2 students were easily the most popular. They would proudly tell you “they wanted to pass through the university and also allow the university to pass through them.” Maybe they were right.
In later life, many 2:2 graduates still ended up with Ph.Ds and even became Professors, or captains of industry. We also had those students in the Third Class and Pass categories: we referred to them jokingly as the “let my people go, no-future-ambition crowd”. If you ended up with a First Class, your colleagues congratulated and admired you, but they didn’t feel like they had failed in any way. The Nigerian education system in those days was so good every graduate left the campus confident that he or she had been well-equipped. First Class graduates by the way did not enjoy any special privileges. There were employment opportunities in the country. Companies came to the schools and the youth corps camps to recruit prospective staff, and many “let my people go” graduates also got jobs and opportunities as soon as they graduated!
So much has changed. It looks like there is now a greater emphasis on people getting better paper grades, and with the way our universities are churning out the First Class grades, very soon, there will be a First Class graduate on every street corner. One justification given for this is that the population of students in Nigerian universities and the number of courses, have increased. With 153 universities, we should logically, so the argument goes, expect more First Class graduates. It is also possible that university students in Nigeria today are smarter than the ones before them.
Except that the quality of their grades is at variance with the quality of their skills or the environment that is producing them. No one will argue that the quality of our universities, both private and public, is poor, for instance. Where are the outstanding scholars in our universities who are breeding First Class graduates? Where are the First Class universities churning out high grades?
Within the same period that Nigerian universities produced more than 3, 000 First Class graduates, only one Nigerian university –the University of Ibadan- was ranked among the world’s top 800 universities, number 601 as at September 2015. In the older Nigerian system that I described, Nigerian universities boasted of world-class intellectuals, with some of them ranking among the very best in their fields. There were top research libraries and laboratories in our universities and the environment was conducive for intellectual pursuit.
Obafemi Awolowo University, known then as the University of Ife, was considered the most beautiful campus in Africa! Tourists visited our universities to visit either the zoos or take pictures. The animals in the zoos have been sold or eaten, the libraries are old, with a few now digitalized, the laboratories are either non-existent or they lack equipment. The university authorities complain of poor funding; the lecturers do not always get their salaries and research grants.
The idea of the university is in trouble. These days, Nigerian academics become Professors with “scholarly, research essays” published in departmental journals or in journals published by their friends in other departments and printed in Somolu or Dubai. There are Professors who have never published an article in a leading international journal or conducted any significant research. A National Universities Commission official quoted by the Daily Trust tried to justify the First Class galore in Nigerian universities by saying NUC is not aware of anybody buying First Class degrees and that “our system is one of the best.” I hope that is not the mind-set of the NUC.
Could it be that the examinations have become too easy or that the teachers have become less rigorous in setting standards? It is sad to hear for example, that students in the Humanities, and Management and Social Sciences in some universities now sit only for multiple-choice examinations at the end of the semester, because they are so many and the lecturers can’t mark exam papers?
Our education system is far behind the rest of the world. Are we dealing with a problem of grade inflation? Any degree at all, is useless without the skills and competence to justify it. Private universities in Nigeria are reportedly more notorious for giving out high grades as a marketing strategy to attract rich parents to patronize them. A First Class or 2:1 degree may get you a job, and provide you an advantage in the face of the unemployment crisis in the country, but what will keep you on the job is something far more than the paper you hold: talent, skills, competence, creativity, people and communication skills and the ability to work with a team to achieve results. Many employers of labour in Nigeria, have had to retrain new recruits because they are often confronted with graduates with good grades, who can neither write nor think, or who may have learnt whatever they know through simulation or alternative methods. This is the real, worrisome trend, and it only gets worse: the evidence can be seen, increasingly, in the low quality of public debate, the public and private sectors and our cultural life.
Many professional associations try to raise the bar by setting rigorous standards for membership qualification, but of what use is a university system that may have adopted the tactics of GSM companies, offering bonus top ups, to gain market share?
II:
The New President in France
Emmanuel Macron, the 39-year old who was sworn in on Sunday, May 14 as the new President of France has become a reference model for persons who would also like to see young Nigerians occupy high positions of responsibility, including the Presidency. There is a Not-Too-Young-To-Run-Campaign already being promoted, with plans to seek relevant constitutional amendments. The Macron Miracle may still take a long time to come in Nigeria’s democracy. A young Nigerian seeking to be President of Nigeria, under circumstances similar to Macron’s would find it difficult.
They don’t have a sit-tight syndrome in France. President Francois Hollande who handed over power to Macron had only done one term in office, and was eligible to run for a second term. But seeing that his ratings were low, he just didn’t bother. In Nigeria, Hollande’s supporters, ethnic, political and religious, would have threatened to kill anyone that stood in his way. Hollande himself would have insisted that it is his right to have a second term by every means possible.
Macron would have been accused of trying to bite the fingers that fed him. He would have been told to go and sit down and that he knows nothing about politics. Five years ago, Macron was unknown. He got his first major job in 2012, and was appointed in 2014 as Minister of the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs, both by President Hollande. He has never run for any elective office. To become President he had to start his own movement, “En Marche!” He doesn’t belong to any of the existing political groups, right or left. In Nigeria, even if he is the best thing since toothpaste, he would need Godfathers, and he would need to spend money, to bribe voters and the “kingmakers”.
Macron is President of France, the youngest since Napoleon, on the strength of sheer luck, ideas, vision and the people’s choice. In Nigeria, the voter would have placed little premium on his ideas. He is married to his former drama teacher. She is 64. He is 39. Her first son is Macron’s age-mate. She is now the First Lady of France. The French public is laughing at the cradle-snatching incongruity of their professed love. Nigerians would have laughed even more, but this would probably not have been an issue for some Nigerians if Macron was 70 and his wife, 17.
When Macron holds his first France-Africa summit, he will be hosting African leaders who would be mostly of his grandfather’s age. Cameroon’s 84-year old President, Paul Biya, became President in 1982, when Emmanuel Macron was just 4 years old. That is where the real joke lies. Immediately after he was sworn in, Macron visited wounded soldiers at a military hospital. Yesterday, he travelled to Berlin for a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel. He hit the ground running and named Edouard Philippe, 46, his Prime Minister. To have the kind of change we admire in other democracies, we must begin with a reform of the processes, culture and tone of Nigerian politics. [myad]
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Dame Patience, wife of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, is fighting the federal government over the balance of her $5.9 million, as she headed to the Court of Appeal to ask for the reversal of the order of the Federal High Court that froze her Skye Bank account.
The Scam Called University Of Abuja Teaching Hospital, By Emmanuel Ugwu
If you visit the website of the University of Abuja Teaching Hospital (UATH), you would be somewhat impressed. Unlike many Nigerian institutions that boast appalling websites, the UATH website closely resembles the virtual personality of a modest government owned medical facility. You would easily rate UATH a fairly decent teaching hospital if you didn’t know better than to accept its digital persona at face value.
But if you pay a physical visit to the hospital location, you would experience a shocking cognitive dissonance. The sleek University of Abuja Teaching Hospital that exists on the web is a total stranger to the rundown brick and mortar University of Abuja Teaching Hospital you encounter in Gwagwalada. The real UATH is a veritable whited sepulcher, coated with makeup on the surface and full of rottenness and stench within.
The University of Abuja Teaching Hospital is a 350-bed facility with an assumed capacity for expansion to 500 beds. A hospital that evolved from a specialist hospital to a teaching hospital for the University of Abuja in 2006, UATH was established to serve the medical needs of residents of Abuja and environs and to function as a tertiary health institution for the training of medical students of the University of Abuja. However, the edifice is serving as an architectural argument in favor of the bastardization of The Hospital Idea.
The University of Abuja Teaching Hospital is a tangible equivalent of ‘the valley of the shadow of death.’ If your life depended on professional medical treatment, your rushing to UATH, rather than improve your chances of survival, will increase the odds that you will leave the facility in a worse state than when you were admitted. ‘The hospital’ is such a miserable interpretation of the concept of a hospital that you are more likely to die passing through it than anywhere else.
Granted, the standard of the public hospitals in Nigeria is nothing to write home about, which is the reason why the rich go overseas to treat the commonest ailments. Time and again, we shudder as Nigerian leaders themselves pass a vote of no confidence on our healthcare system by unabashedly leading the incestuous medical safari that also represents the capital flight of billions of dollars in foreign exchange.
But UATH is not your average Nigerian hospital. UATH is the gold standard of disguised incapacity. It is a hospital that has the distinction of being farthest from the merit of the name.
You wouldn’t want an emergency to introduce you to the fraud that is ‘the hospital’. Because the experience could cost you your own life. UATH has the one of the highest mortality rates in the country.
The intensive care unit (ICU) of UATH has a 50% mortality rate. That is to say, one in every two persons who enters the ICU is carried out dead. Or to put the statistic another way, one’s fate depends on the tossing of the coin.
Patient death is so common in the UATH environment that incidences of recovery are largely celebrated as happy accidents. The facility produces such preponderance of deaths that it might well be officially mandated to feed as many of its patients as it possibly can to the morgue!
The condition of UATH is terrible beyond exaggeration. The operating theatre of UATH works for only four hours a day. And sometimes, the hospital lacks consumables for surgery. This means that patients have to wait for long hours and for days, in certain instances, and the unlucky ones with desperate conditions have to die due to delayed intervention.
‘The hospital’ is so dysfunctional that people die routinely from simple procedures such as an appendectomy. It is a stretch to task the supposed ‘Teaching Hospital’ with relatively complex procedures because the result is guaranteed to be much worse. In cases simple and complex, trying ‘the hospital’ for a cure is a risk…on the side of assisted suicide!
The real tragedy is that this abattoir of a hospital, this death factory called University of Abuja Teaching Hospital, is operating ‘normally’ in the Federal Capital Territory. It is not located in some far-flung part of Nigeria. Yet, the Federal Government of Nigeria is indifferent to the hospital’s mass murder business.
The killings continue under the watch of supervisory authorities. The Department of Hospital Services in the Ministry of Health is responsible for monitoring the operations of Nigerian hospitals and evaluating the quality of their service. But that department which coexists with UATH in the FCT has effectively permitted ‘the hospital’ to sustain the war on the sick.
The carnage in UATH is an open secret. It is well known to the superior authorities. But they can’t interpose to stop the waste of human lives because the status quo favors their individual bottom line. They are getting rich off the death of the sick.
The hospital laboratory is a corrupt cottage industry of its own. It is in such dismal state of disuse that doctors disregard results obtained from the laboratory. Thus, laboratory scientists have a ‘legitimate excuse’ to collect samples from patients, run the tests in their own private labs in town and rob the sick twice for the same service.
The management of the hospital is an active part of this regime of exploitation. They wink at the extortion. And they receive tithes of the filthy proceeds to allow staffers of the hospital bleed patients of money before abandoning them to die.
One tiny fact: nobody is punished for this gang-rape. Because remittances are sent up to the top of the pyramid in the Ministry of Health. Everybody in the depraved food chain is quiet and happy because the gains enrich them.
It’s a racket. A rent system. A syndicate of vampires!
There has to be an urgent sanitation in UATH. There is a need for a clean sweep of the officials that have reduced the hospital to a slaughter house. The hospital staffers must be weaned from blood money and introduced to a new paradigm that respects the sanctity of human life and incalculable value of health.
At the moment, the cleaners, porters and guards of the hospital are on strike. It’s a protest. They are demanding payment of their 4 months’ salary.
The teaching hospital cannot persist as a mockery of its original mission. Presently, it is neither competent in its ‘teaching’ mandate nor in its foundational life saving and body healing assignment. It is just as woefully incapable of imparting the requisite knowledge to its medical students as it is in restoring health to the sick.
The medical students who finish from ‘the teaching hospital’ are behind the curve. The climate they were presumably trained in is not oriented to groom them to function better than quack medics. So their potential practice is doomed to reflect the poverty of their proficiency –and this, at the expense of human lives.
The Nigerian poor deserve better than to be killed by a hospital that is not worth its name. We have to make the hospital work. Or quit killing the sick seeking for relief.
We cannot purport to maintain a hospital that is antithetical to its purpose. One that kills sick people under false pretenses. We just cannot continue to acquiesce to the reign of a death cult over our hospital.
Our humanity should forbid the subsistence of this scam called University of Abuja Teaching Hospital.
You can reach Emmanuel at immaugwu@gmail.com and follow him on Twitter @EmmaUgwuTheMan. [myad]