Prof Pat Utomi has said that the country is
experiencing a huge challenge of living in
denial about its problems.
He said there is a certain conceit by
Nigerians regarding the Nigerian condition
and the place of Nigeria in the world and
they think that Nigeria is too big to fail.
Utomi, the two times Nigeria Presidential
aspirant, who was the Guest Speaker at the
6th Pre-Convocation Lecture of the National
Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), in Abuja,
disclosed this during his lecture titled,
“Political economy of education: “Issues and
challenges of opening and distance learning
in Nigeria.”
According to him ” if we were not living in
denial, one of the things we would have
realised is that our country is in a rolling
civil war.”
He said many people are dying as a result
of violent death than any other country in
war situation.
“We are struggling with Boko Haram, crisis
in the north Central and in the South South,
we are dealing with all kinds of issues llike
militancy and so forth.
“More people die in Nigeria, a violent death
than many of the countries in war. What we
have in Nigeria is an evrgreen civil war.
” How are we going to make progress when
there’s so much violence everywhere?
“We have a zero-sub mindset. People are
struggling over things that they shouldn’t be
struggling over.”
Meanwhile, Utomi, who’s also the co-
founder, Lagos Business School, has called
on the federal government to prioritise
education and health for its citizenry.
He said education would help to ameliorate
the poverty of Nigerians.
In his speech, the Vice Chancellor,
NOUN,Prof Abdallah Adamu, warned that the National Universities Commission (NUC) will
shutdown any university that rejects degrees from students of the institution.
He said this while responding to a question raised by a student about non admission of NOUN nursing graduates by some unnamed
university in Nigeria at the 6th pre-
convocation lecture.
Adamu said NOUN degree had become
acceptable globally.
He said the NUC for a long time had
hindered the growth of tertiary education in
Nigeria through its regulations.
According to him, it took the commission
some time before it embraced private
universities.
The commission, he added, had refused to
adapt to the rapid change of education
globally.
“This is a conversation into which the NUC
has to be drawn. As guardians of the idea of
a university in Nigeria the NUC has been
traditionally slow to change. For the NUC a
university was 100 hectares of condominium
with many faculties and traditional teaching
methods.
“To be sure, it is changing but the pace has
been slow. It took it long to accept the idea
of private universities and even such
methods of pedagogy as the case study
method. But we must not blame the
leadership of the NUC alone,” he said.
Earlier in his response, the chairman of the
lecture and registrar of the Joint Admissions
and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is-
haq Oloyede, called on all institutions of the
federal government to respect the law.
“The Council of Legal Education is a
creation of the law. The National Youth
Service Corps is a creation of the law and
therefore NOUN is created by the law. If we
decide to be lawless there will be anarchy.
“If anybody disagrees with a law the best
place to go is the National Assembly not to
take the law into his own hands. I therefore
call on agencies of government to be law
makers rather than law breakers,” he said.
leadership.ng/news/567947/nigeria-is-living-
in-denial-over-its-challenges-pat-utomi
*Good morning house*
TUNMISE