TELL IT

By Josef Omorotionmwan OUR sense of democracy may be warped. There is still a large group of Nigerian youths who are deprived of freedom to learn because of poverty or prejudice or the absence of adequate educational facilities. And as citizens of a democratic society whose moral premise is that each individual has a right to that education that will permit him to achieve his maximum growth as a person, our duty is to work for, and support, whatever measures of reconstruction we deem necessary to remove the social obstacles to freedom of learning. It is morally binding on us all to study these problems and proffer solutions to them. The world over, all universities worthy of the name are already doing so. It admits of open failure that more than 53 years of our nominal independence, we are still engaged at the level of the elemental politics of cut-off marks to our secondary and tertiary institutions of learning. Never has one had a better cause to doubt if the government is still maki...

By Ochereome Nnanna A  LITTLE over six years ago, Jigawa State was rated by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, as the poorest state in Nigeria. At a public lecture in Kaduna, former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Prof Charles Soludo, after reviewing the figures from across the North, reached the sad conclusion thus: “Poverty is still a Northern phenomenon”. I had the opportunity of touring the state in June 2007, paying particular attention to the rotten educational facilities and infrastructure. Six years later, after many postponements due to security uncertainties in the North, I returned to the state to assess the situation. I can comfortably report that Jigawa State is not only in a new world, it is also in a world of its own. It has almost completely overcome its infrastructural deficits, especially in the areas of roads, education, water supply and health. Though surrounded by terrorism flashpoint states such as Kano, Bauchi and Yobe, Boko Haram staged only one raid in t...