Universities Without Electricity: Nigeria’s Contribution To 21st Century Knowledge

By Owei Lakemfa

June 2024. Festivity was in the air. Professors and students, staff and high class visitors were in attendance. The highlight was a first class dinner. Africa’s book factory, Professor Toyin Falola, flew into the country to deliver the farewell lecture. It was all in honour of Professor Abd-Rasheed Na’Allah, out-going Vice Chancellor of the University of Abuja, UNIABUJA. But, trust spoilers.

They are never far away from festivities. As the wining and dining went on with fine speeches seeing off the VC at month end, students of the university were lamenting the N500 daily they pay to charge their cell phones. It was the second week the university had been plunged into darkness. It was not that the university is new to power outages, but this particular one had lengthened to pay farewell to Professor Na’Allah.

Slavery Is Not An Option

 By Pat Utomi

Beginning from age 17 as an undergraduate at the University of Nigeria I have rallied resistance against injustice.

My early cry for doing things right peaked with my calling out students at UNN to protest police killing of University of Ibadan Student, Kunle. Given the emotions of the times when UNN students lost three years as they watched friends and family die like chicken while UI students were in class during the Civil war was a hard sell. But we joined forces with Bassey Ekpo Bassey and founded the Students Democratic Society because we prized human solidarity.

Peter Obi Is Not A god

 By Chuks Iloegbunam 

(Chuks Iloegbunam uses the birthday of the Labour Party’s presidential candidate to celebrate him and the Obidient Movement) 

*Peter Obi

Yes! There’s nothing they haven’t said of Peter Obi. They have charged that he is not a god. They have said he is no more than a political opportunist. They have ridiculed his promise to change Nigeria from consumer to producer. They pooh-poohed as unfounded the statistics the man churned out on successes abroad that could be replicated back home. But the traducers wouldn’t reckon with reality. The subject of their insistent lambasting never ascribed divinity to himself. He did not circle his head with sanctity’s hallo. In the league of politicians, he didn’t claim to be more human. He only asked for the chance to lift a comatose country. 

How My UNN Sojourn Changed My Perception Of Igbos

 

Let me start by making a confession. But for the entry requirements of the University of Lagos, I’m not sure that I would ever have ended up leaving the city where I had spent my formative years to head roughly 610 kilometres east to the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN). I had always wanted to read Mass Communication because after watching so many movies when I was growing up, I wanted to end up being a top-notch film director in the mould of Stephen Spielberg, the man behind some of the biggest films ever produced, including such classics as Jaws, Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Shrek and Schindler’s List among others. However, the Almighty had other ideas for me. My failure to get a credit in mathematics barred me from Unplug, which classified it as a Social Science and awarded a B.Sc.

I Weep For My Country Nigeria

 By Christian Ikechukwu Eze

I cry for my country, Nigeria; a country endowed with both human and natural resources to an enviable magnitude, yet bedevilled by corruption whose stench oozes to the highest heavens. A country where the hopes of her citizens are repeatedly and brazenly dashed by a few individuals who are entrusted with basic responsibilities of safeguarding these hopes. The happenings of the last few weeks make one ponder and ask if there is still hope.

Hope for a Nigeria that works for all irrespective of whether or not you know anybody and not for a few political class and their cronies; hope for a Nigeria devoid of corruption, where diligence, honesty, competence and good character will be rewarded instead of thuggery, bigotry, mediocrity e.t.c.; hope for a Nigeria that we shall all be proud to call a home.

Gov Soludo’s Pettiness And Unconscionable Tactlessness

 By Robert Obioha 

 In an election season, political campaign can come in diverse forms, including crude use of language to possibly settle an old score or even attempt to diminish someone’s rising fame and political relevance. Even lending support to one’s favourite candidate can be subtly or brazenly done depending on one’s choice of words and deployment of language, which can also be brutal and lacking tact and diplomacy. 

*Obi and Soludo
Although politicians have been tasked by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), National Peace Committee and other stakeholders to engage on campaign based on issues and desist from campaign of mudslinging and calumny, but every day, the polity is suffused with hate speeches, diatribes, incendiary comments, ethnic stereotyping of some leading presidential candidates all in an effort to pull some of them down. 

On This ASUU Matter

 By Obi Nwakanma

I was at the University of Nigeria in February to give the keynote to a conference jointly organized by Nsukka’s Institute of African Studies and the Harris Center of the University of Chicago. I remember the gaunt listlessness of the campus, because I arrived there the very day the ASUU strike began. But there was something else beneath the palimpsest of dust that covered the campus of Nsukka. It was decay that felt like a settled crust on the campus of Nigeria’s premier university. 

*ASUU leaders in a meeting 

I felt an out of body experience because I am a product of the Nigerian universities of the 1980s. The University of Jos of the 1980s, for instance, still had its Country-Club atmosphere in those years. It was what you might call a “party school.” But serious business went on there. The students were competitively selected for admissions; it was a very diverse group of students, including the presence of international students. Its faculty was equally diverse and international. Conduct and activities on campus was still cultured and mannered. University faculty still had their dignity, and carried themselves with dignified purpose.

Accommodation Racket At the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN)

By I. B. Nga

Since the commencement of this new academic session, several students of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), have been badly destablised by the very frustrating method deployed by the Student Affairs Department in the allocation of hostel accommodation to students. Worst hit are the final year students, many of whom have been left stranded. Instead of devoting time and energy to their academic work at this very critical and terminal stage of their stay at the university,   they are running from pillar to post trying to secure hostel accommodations, all to no avail.

 The computerised system should have made the process of hostel allocation very easy if it was managed by honest people. To obtain a hostel accommodation at UNN, one has to visit the UNN internet portal (http://unnportal.unn.edu.ng/), log in with one’s Student’s Identification Code and apply for a bed-space. If the student is allocated, he or she will print out an allocation confirmation slip and use it to go to the designated bank to pay for the accommodation.  

But from the very date the university reopened for this first semester, it was an uphill task for several students to even access the UNN portal online. When eventually, some of them succeeded and logged in to apply for bed spaces, the page kept giving out the following message: "All Rooms Have Been Allocated." But while many of the unallocated students remained stranded and distracted from their academic work which has since commenced in full force, those with “connections” always got privileged information as to the exact period the system would be activated by the university officials to start allocating again. And these would rush and log in to the portal to secure rooms for themselves, settle down and face their school work. But when the information eventually spreads and the other students start logging in also, the website would start again to say that "All Rooms Have Been Allocated." After sometime, it would begin to announce something different, namely, "Try Again Later." What a frustrating situation.

Now, despite these developments, there are still many rooms that are yet to be allocated at UNN. And from time to time, those with the "right connections" get informed when the portal would start allocating and would rush to secure rooms before information reaches other students who would only log in when it has stopped allocating. 

Not too long ago, there was a fire incident at one the hostels at the UNN and the building  is yet to be renovated as to be in use. The officials are hiding behind the modest shortage this has caused to perpetrate their nefarious activities. And so they create an artificial scarcity in order to give the accommodation to their preferred students – who probably may have greased their palms.