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By Douglas Anele Herd mentality is a necessary concomitant of primitivism. Evidence from psychology indicates that certain personality types are prone or easily susceptible to herd mentality and obsessive attachment to blood and ethnicity, irrespective of their educational and socio-economic background. It follows that a man (or woman) might be educated in some of the best universities, dresses in the most fashionable clothes, and generally projects an image as the epitome of cultivated elegance and, yet, remains stymied in ethnic atavism. Such a person is psychologically and spiritually immature and hollow. He is alienated from himself and instinctively, like an infant who depends on the security of his parents, seeks the comfort and emotional support that the group to which he belongs offers him.  His existential centre of gravity is outside himself, a pathetic condition that impels him to exaggerate the purported virtues of his ethnic group or race and simultaneously hyperbolises th...

By Douglas Anele Once again, another round of insensate indefinite strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has paralysed academic activities in federal and state universities nationwide. According to the union, the decision to go on strike stems from government's insincerity and lack of seriousness, which led to the non-implementation of some provisions of the 2011 agreement. Specifically, the issue concerns "earned allowances," that is, allowances meant for the excess workload by lecturers, which include teaching more students than the recommended number, supervision of post-graduate dissertations, and sundry administrative functions performed by lecturers. For me, President Goodluck Jonathan is a great disappointment to his former colleagues, considering the fact that as a former lecturer, he should have invested heavily and wisely in the educational sector. When military dictators were in power, they put a lot of money into defence because that is the...