Why Buhari must halt degeneration of universities

Dear President Buhari, Good morning sir! I pray you had a great night and woke up well with your family.

I am writing this as a stakeholder in the project Nigeria, which we must all salvage. My first prayer is that may this ever get to your knowledge. If it does, I also pray Allah to grant you the will to reflect and act on it.

We are going through a very difficult period and stage of national development. I share with you the pain of having to fight all fronts - Boko Haram, armed banditry, kidnapping, ethnic and community clashes, battered economy, huge youth unemployment, infrastructural deficit, extremely poor value of our currency, cattle rustling and the monumental poverty, diseases and starvation that is ravaging our land.

All these are going parallel with monumental corruption that has eaten deep into all facets of national lives. Your sincere and frantic efforts have failed to yield results beyond arrest and retrieve of items of theft. By implication, we have to change our ways and strategy. I know that you must be too troubled privately.

You must be carrying the burden as an enduring family head merely hiding his pains and worries from other members of the fold. I am pretty sure you don’t wish for worries and pains. Please, let your aides know that you don’t want and do not deserve to hear or have additional burdens. War is far more expensive than peace. Let us have peace.

I am not convinced that you seek to destroy our institutions of learning and governance even when ALL - MDAs are corrupted. We have to go to the roots of corruption and begin to chop it off until we get to the tap roots.

Sir, you will recall that since 1980s, public primary and secondary schools in Nigeria began to be and have been systematically destroyed. We should not mistake our higher institutions for a primary or secondary school. The same elite that killed these schools have perfected the plan to banish and destroy tertiary institutions in this great country. This is as the institutions have long been incapacitated to properly stand well among their equals across the world.

The university is universal and the engine room of development and human progress. That is why the university is unique and kept away from bureaucracy. Financial reform does not entail degrading the university. Your aides assume the university to either be a secondary or primary school. This is extremely dangerous and shows lack of what to do with the universities. All nations of the world develop and progress on the strength of the institutions of knowledge production and disemination. From indications, the issue of IPPIS is NOT a university issue as it is completely out of tone with university laws and practices. Sir, the word university connotes the universal nature of these institutions of high profile learning and research.

Yes, like all our MDAs and institutions, the universities have their peculiar issues of deprivation and corruption. IPPIS can not address the issues even in other MDAs.

Sir, those you appointed to manage the universities have been loud in saying that the IPPIS only cripples university management and administration. By implication, the IPPIS will further destroy your engine rooms of development and progress. It is pertinent you therefore listen to them as your shop floor managers.

Whoever presses you that the IPPIS is the answer to our endemic corruption, ask if the person can swear by whatever s/he believes in Qur’an, Bible, Sango or the idols of Arochukwu. They will scamper away as if they have come face to face with coronavirus. IPPIS is not corruption free and cannot prevent it. Rather, it merely centralises corruption.

Sir, I am very curious for two reasons. Your most exalted office found someone qualified to head an MDA - the appointee is responsible for any other thing except SALARIES? Why is the Ministry of Finance that should aid your understanding be averse to hearing other voices? We certainly need to reflect on this.

The struggles of ASUU is the life of the universities. The struggles, may have defects, but certainly patriotic. They are not starving themselves and families for mere pieces of gold. It is their belief in the project Nigeria.

For now Sir, you have too many problems to contend with. Adding more will be too much. It is not in our interest, barring the prevailing health emergency, that our institutions are closed. Closure of the tertiary institutions has grave dangers - youth restlessness, recruitment into anti social activities and desperations.

It is my sincere and humble opinion that you direct a return to status quo in the payment of salaries in the tertiary institutions, while you commission an exploration of more efficient and reliable system of payment without sacrificing the institutions and our most desired corruption free accounting system. You can do all these because you are the head of this house. Too many problems is not your desire.

The retrieved items of theft should be used to re-engineer our institutions. Make the institutions work without centralisation. The notion of follow up is corruption. If the accounting officers don’t follow up their appropriations to the ministry, if I don’t have to follow my water connection application to water board, if I don’t have to follow my request for leave to the establishment you would have greatly reduced corruption. State officers would have learnt to do their duties without being reminded or facilitated. Transparency and accountability would have been instituted without IPPIS.

Fellow citizens, kindly help share this until it possibly gets to the attention of our Dear President. Mohammed Bello Yunusa Executive Director, Socioeconomic and Environment Advocacy Centre, Zaria.