Get 100 Phds, save N800m: A letter to Arewa governors

IDear Arewa Governors, ’ M reluctant to use this column again to write ( criticize you’ll call it, I’m sure) to you of education in our region. However, that doesn’t mean I won’t do it, I’m just reluctant. Or, if you will, I’m ambivalent – of two minds. On the one hand is the little matter of insensitivity. One of you, after all, paid N80million to charter a plane to Saudi Arabia to perform this year’s Hajj – with 20 of his lackeys tagging along. That money, according to my plan below, can be used to sponsor over 200 PhDs in four years.

On the other, among you are those who, fortunately, have initiated impressive educational programmes. A ready is example is Kwankwaso’s “500 Postgraduates” i. e. the number of students the governor sent abroad to study for their master’s degrees. This is to say nothing of the over 20 tertiary and vocational institutions he created or the 100 girls his government sponsored to study medicine or his 100 pilots in training. Thus, some of you are working; but those are few and far between.

Yet, many readers would think none of you would listen or read about the plan of the almost costfree postgraduate degrees I’m trying to introduce to you. But I know some of you ( or your people) do read this column; indeed, I’ve been invited by a few of your colleagues due to my rants on this page – even though our conversations due to those calls led to naught.

However, even if none of you read this, I want individual readers to pay attention to the details I’m going to give below so that they can take benefits from the opportunity. No. No governor is needed to actualize the plan. I’m merely writing the governors because of their capacity to organize. It would be better to have, for example, the Niger State governor sponsoring 100 PhDs than the trickle effect of one Nda here and one Nda there. It would also be easier to centralize and evaluate the performance of the programme. Most importantly, you can use it to plan for the future – even though the future is not a place for which many of you plan.

This plan is simple – unless you choose to complicate it. Every state has started or is starting a university; to say nothing of the colleges of education, polytechnics, etc. Some of the departments in these institutions in the North are peopled by teachers from other regions of Nigeria. Not that this is a bad thing; but it can be: lecturers with PhDs are scarce now, and with private and state universities sprouting everywhere, these lecturers could choose to go back to their states – leaving us with nothing.

I know it costs a lot to mint one PhD but what if you don’t have to pay? What if there is a university which would pay the tuition fees of your PhD students and give them monthly stipend ( of N116, 000) to boot? Dear governors, would you be interested?

From my calculations, the studentship from this university ( tuition fee and monthly allowance) for a PhD student is worth N2 million per year. The studentship for a qualified candidate is good for four years. That totals N8 million per candidate. Send 100 students to this university and you save N800 million.

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Let me tell you more about this university. It’s rated 5- star and tier- 5 ( which means excellent) by its national government – these are the two measures of the quality of universities by the government. It’s ranked among the top 250 universities in Asia by QS. It also ranks relatively well in the world in the fields of engineering. The university was also adjudged first in the employability of its students in Malaysia. Finally, it’s among the top 15 in Malaysia.

Research Clusters

Since, PhD is a research degree, following are the university’s research clusters:

Civil Engineering ( Structures, Materials & Construction, Geotechnics & Highway, Water & Environmental Engineering); Computer and Information Sciences ( Intelligent Systems, Software Engineering / E- Commerce, Multimedia & Communication Systems); Mechanical Engineering ( Deep Water Technology, Advance Materials & Processes, Reliability & Asset Management, Hybrid Vehicles); Chemical Engineering ( Process System Engineering, Separation Process & Thermodynamics, Advanced Materials & Reaction Engineering, Environmental Engineering); Electrical & Electronics Engineering ( Intelligent Imaging, Communications, Automation & Control Systems, Pervasive Systems, Electronic Materials & Devices, Energy & Power); Management & Humanities ( Business & Management, Language and Communication, Culture &

That is perhaps the puzzle in the Paul Unongo’s example which people like the professor of law are failing to realize. One thing that is clear after reading through that work which I see as an epilogue, is that as distinguished as the professor may be in law, he suffers from acute shortage of the knowledge of history if he does not know that before the advent of British colonial domination and Lord Luggard’s ‘ gerrymandering’ communities, several of them that make up what he hates to be called the Northern region were associating very closely in various areas ranging from administration to commerce and trade.

More than a hundred years before the advent colonial rule, Sokoto jihad had reached as far as Ilorin to the south west. Speaking about the relationship between Kogi State and what he calls the True North, it is better that Professor Nwabueze has claimed that there was no relationship between his divisions forgetting that in the same paper he argued that even in his ‘ True North’ there are a large population of Christians apart from the huge population of Muslims in both Igala, Ibira and even Okun lands.

As for Benue, the Professor was clearly worried about the deep involvement of especially the Tiv leaders on matters relating to Northern region. For the benefit of those who are doubting, the peoples of these areas have always stood firm in the defense of whatever is seen as interest of the North. It is very clear in several fronts and I think that is what those who hate the term Northern Region are pained to hear.

I am optimistic that both Professor Nwabueze and all those who think like him will depart this Behavioural Sciences); Geosciences & Petroleum ( Enhanced Oil Recovery, Integrated Basin Analysis, Advanced Seismic Technology, Rock Physics & Reservoir Characterization, Unconventional Oil)

Postgraduate Offered

Programmes

And the following programmes it offers.

MSc and PhD in Mechanical, Chemical, Petroleum, Civil, Electrical and Electronics Engineering. MSc and PhD in Petroleum Geoscience, Information Technology, Social Science and Humanities and Management. MSc and PhD in Science ( Chemistry, Physics and Statistics). Finally it has MPhil in Management and Social Sciences.

As I started earlier, your governments do not have to pay anything. But if you feel charitable ( and it’s the only way this will qualify as sponsorship), you could pay the air tickets for the students. The last time I checked, a return ticket, economy class to Malaysia is about N250, 000 i. e. roughly N300, 000. If you’re paying for 100 students, that would be N30 million. You see, it’s far cheaper than the N80million your colleague paid for 20 people to go to Saudi.

This opportunity applies to only master’s degree and PhD, but the calculation is based on what a PhD student receives. Also, only students under 40 years with CGPA of 3.5 out 5 are qualified to apply.

Take action now to plant knowledge and charity that will last forever. Yours truly, Ibraheem Dooba, Ph. D.

are the world with the anger that the term Northern region persists and even after their children because despite the difficulties, people of any federal constituencies define their characters in common destinies and there is nothing anybody can do about it.

I am worried that people who should know are claiming ignorance and acting pedestrian. This is simply a product of hate and unwillingness to live in the concept and context of unity in diversity which to a large extent is the secret that has kept federal structures flourishing in other claims while we continue to wobble.

There can be any type of crisis in the Northern region which comprises of 19 states and the FCT but one thing that is certain is that at the end of the day, every one knows where he comes from. We may build alliances and disagree with one another on matters that may be real or mundane, the fact remains that there are serious fallacies in the historical sojourn which Professor Nwabueze wants Nigerians to take.

A serious tragedy the nation’s educational system is facing is that there seems not to be any system in place that ensures Professors are reproducing once they attain that rank. Most of them become lazy, apathetic to research and continue to live in ignorance and the rule in learning is that without refreshing, the tendency to unlearn is faster.

Professors must do research, mustn’t live in the euphoria of name and tittle while dumping ignorance on the society and in my view such a paper that was more historical than legal authored by Professor Nwabueze only exposed the weaknesses of some of these egg- heads and shows the danger that we all live in.