Makerere University successfully tests electric car! Why Nigeria Cannot Emulate Makerere University!

Makerere University Successfully Tests Electric Car! Why Nigeria Cannot Emulate Makerere University!

I am impressed by Makerere's feat! I was just asking myself if this can happen in Nigeria. As a university teacher, I can say without mincing words that for this to happen in Nigeria, we will have to move to another planet. Nigerian lecturers are too concerned with riding jeep and using blackberry and I-Phone 4 than any life-changing research! We have the worst and most dysfunctional education system in the world. Some years ago, under Professor Segun Oke, at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso; one Muda achieved similar feat in Computer programming. Lautech celebrated him and he finally landed at Microsoft. Till date, Lautech cannot reproduce such feat simply because, Muda was a self-made student and not institution-made. University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, etc. have not recorded anything of Muda's caliber in the last 20 years and will not; i beg to be challenged, in the next 20 years. I am not a pessimist, but as an insider that daily witness and marvel at the madness going on in our university, I know that innovative research is far from us.

Let me illustrate this with a personal experience, Mope, as an undergraduate at the Redeemer's University, submitted a topic that bordered on a community in Yorubaland where two kings, one male and the other female, ruled simultaneously, as her B.A. History and International Relations Long-Essay. For me, it was one giant step, as it was not the general run of things that we see in the university system. Sadly, our professor saw a totally different thing. He openly canvassed that she and her fellow graduating students should go to the various libraries across Nigerian universities to look for already done projects to see what they can adapt. Mope's insistence almost cost her her degree. In the public university, the case is perhaps worse. Students of Olabisi Onabanjo University daily troop to UI to 'use the library', where they copied out entire theses and resubmited same under their names to their university for graduation. To another example, at Joseph Ayo Babalola University, only the poor student would fail. The system is that if a student fails a course or if he or she knew he would not perform well in an exams, all such student needs to do is to stay away from the exams and re-enroll for it in Summer Class, where no teaching was done for the entire one-month period, for 15, 000 naira per course. The least mark she or he can get at summer class is 40 or 50. Public universities in Nigeria are littered with teachers and administrators who are just marking time. Only a handful should be there. In the private school, the case is pathetic. In better climes, just a few of them should operate. A charade called university education in Nigeria cannot achieve such feat as Makerere just did. While those in the sciences will keep complaining of 'poorly-equipped laboratories' and their counterparts in engineering, who could not assemble a mere solar panel, despite that the rudimentary knowledge to do so is freely available on YouTube, would bore you with litany of why 'this and that won’t work'.

In the Humanities/Arts, the usual noise remains 'poorly-equipped libraries'. Yet, look around the university campuses and the number of exotic cars, especially SUVs, that you would see will shock you. Permit me to mention just two names, Professors Ayodele Olukoju of University of Lagos and Olawale Albert of University of Ibadan, are perhaps the few ones doing any meaningful researches in South West Nigeria today. Unfortunately, Prof. Olukoju has dumped University of Lagos for Caleb University as Vice-Chancellor, which is still part of the problem. Prof. Olukoju is perhaps one Nigerian professor that stayed at home and he is 'dusting' those hyper-hubris-driven American-based Nigerian professors, who had all the resources of this world to even be in the moon. Same goes for Prof. Isaac Albert. Others are almost everywhere taking adjunct positions, sometimes, in five universities at a time. How would they have time to read, let alone do researches and pioneer innovative research? In most Nigerian universities today, professors specialize in pushing away talents through frivolous excuses.

A friend who completed his PhD in University of Ibadan recently shocked me when he said "the external examiner from Unilorin was a bad man; he almost denied me the degree". When I probed further, what the professor from Ilorin queried was how a doctoral thesis on aberrant behaviours in Lagos could be done without any field work! For me, the fault is neither in the student nor the external examiner. It is with the professor/internal examiner in UI who, for me, is no better than a stalk illiterate. A young man, indeed, a very dear 'kid' friend of mine, studied Computer Science at Olabisi Onabanjo University. This young man cannot format a hard disk. He cannot load an Operating System on a computer. Anytime his computer has problem, not minding how minor this may be, it is either mine to fix it or a roadside 'engineer' who has no certificate of any sort!

Are these the people who are going to achieve the Makerere’s feat? Let’s call a spade a spade, Nigeria is a bad dream! The earlier we accept that, the better! A friend of mine, Obby Nelly 'Segun single handedly acculturated bacterial in an improvised biogas digester and power an entire four-bedroom flat with poultry waste! He is a secondary school teacher, not a university professor! Prof. Segun Oke, earlier mentioned, was the brain behind the cassava revolution that Obasanjo paraded before Nigerians for 8 years! He also has done jell-fuel with Cassava waste! Both cannot take out their invention beyond their homes because power generation is on the Exclusive List of the Nigerian constitution! So, cases of individuals who are doing well abound, but Nigerian universities cannot achieve Makerere's feat even if you empty World Bank for their use. Their priorities are different! They are not cerebral enough to know that SUVs and palatial homes, which they are financing with resources that they ought to vote on building libraries and sponsor projects, are all material things that would perish in one day. They are not cerebral enough to know that ideas, no matter how small, would live forever.

To my last example, Prof. J.F. Ade-Ajayi: he wrote more books and essays while in retirement than while he was in service. He built a library that could challenge University of Ibadan's Kenneth Dike Library anytime. How many such professors do we have in the system and what are their priorities? African Studies Center in Leiden, the Netherlands would not give as much as a paper to Nigerian professors because many have 'duped' them. Many other organizations have reported similar development. Please, do not see these examples as isolated cases, in fact, honest Nigerian university students and lecturers would tell you similar stories and, for me, these stories explain why Nigerian universities cannot rival Makerere. Currently, they are all madly rushing to put everything on the internet, even Joseph Ayo Babalola University that charges staff 18,000 and students 30,000 naira per annum for non-existing internet services, simply to curry 'better' university ranking! It is just stupid!

http://www.newvision.co.ug/news/18833-Makerere-University-successfully-tests-electric-car.html