And Four Other Things…
Some people must be really disappointed and shocked that President Muhammadu Buhari is not dead yet. No matter their wishes, only the Giver and Taker of Life has the final say. The death wishers must be burning with bitterness that the “incapacitated” president has been holding meetings and signing agreements since his return. It felt good to me that he also met with APC and PDP leaders, thereby breaking the ice. But I chuckled at his statement that “opposition does not mean hostility, enmity or antagonism”. Really? APC came to power as one of the most hostile, adversarial and antagonistic opposition parties in our history. Irony.
So President Buhari came back to Nigeria after a 103-day medical leave in the UK and the rats prevented him from entering his office. Okay, they said it was not rats that did it — that the office only needed renovation after being in a state of disuse for over three months. I’m not in a position to make an informed comment since I have not seen the office, but I was out of Nigeria for nearly one year from 2014 to 2015 and my office was as fresh as I left it. Why? In my absence, it was being cleaned every day. Which is why I don’t buy the cat-and-mouse game from Aso Rock. There is something they are not telling us but, as an African, I suspect something too. Theories.
The so-called Arewa youth coalition has withdrawn the quit notice given to Igbo to leave northern Nigeria by October 1. We are supposed to be dancing, right? Do we know the danger we are plunging this country into when a clearly idiotic and illegal quit notice is given by some people from one part of the country to another because others are expressing their fundamental rights to free expression? I insist that NOBODY has any right to ask a Nigerian to quit a state or region. We are playing with fire. Those who issued the quit notice should be behind bars by now. Everybody has a right to agitate but nobody has a right to threaten genocide. Insane.
A lot of hell has been raised over the fixing of an all-time low baseline for entry into tertiary institutions. The minimum cut-off mark for university degree is now 120 out of 400 (it was a minimum of 200/400 in my time). For polytechnic, it is 100, colleges of education 100, and national innovative enterprise institution 110. Are we “going down low” to reflect the declining standards of education in Nigeria? In any case, I am one of those critics saying JAMB should stop handling admissions into higher institutions. JAMB could remain as a compulsory qualification test (like Toefl), but schools should determine their admission criteria and produce their own lists. Reform.