Mr. Kayode J. Fakinlede, this discourse originated from the expressed anger of some of our learned Professors over what they assumed to be false claim to academic achievements by certain named Nigerians. These supposedly false claimants to academic achievements, hold no position in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies in Nigeria except one who is a mathematics lecturer in one of our Universities. The mathematics lecturer actually submitted a paper to a US-based Clay Mathematics Institute in which he believed to have solved the Riemann Hypothesis. Submission of the paper by the lecturer does not constitute false claim even if the US-based Clay Mathematics Institute are to consider his solution faulty. Should we accept that those named are guilty of false academic achievements, Nigeria as a country has not suffered any damage as a result of their false claims. On the contrary, I consider all our qualified academics in the Ministries, Departments and Agencies who have failed to deliver required products from their offices as holders of false academic degrees. After enumerating some of the products that Western educated Nigerians in Nigeria's MDA have failed to deliver, I concluded, as you rightly quoted, that 'even though they have been certified (or is it authenticated?) as experts by the white man in their respective fields..' You took exception to my conclusion, yet you narrated your early sojourn in America while searching for work and the employer asked, "What can you do?" You explained the employer's query thus, "He wanted to know what I was qualified todo. I had only a certificate telling him that I was eminently educated. However, he wanted to know if I could type, drive, operate a forklift, or something. I was not qualified for anything in the technologically built economic system. I was, therefore, thrown into the lowest rung of the economic ladder - as a messenger." If, according to your narration, your certificate had testified that you could type, drive or operate a forklift, the employer would have employed you direct and it would have been your responsibility to prove what your certificate attested to that you could do. If you failed to live up to what your certificate claimed you could do, you would be sacked in addition to being investigated if your certificate is genuine, borrowed or purchased. If you juxtapose what your American employer wanted to establish with your educational qualification, with that of Nigerian academics employed, appointed, selected or elected in various capacities in the MDAs you will see that they were given those jobs on the ground that their certificates certified them as being able to deliver what is required from their respective offices. A professor of electricity in charge of Nigeria's power supply with adequately funded budget that produces and generates constant darkness must certainly, according to the result, be a fake professor of electricity. Another example is that of Nigeria's four refineries designed with capacity to refine 445,000 barrel of crude oil per day. Nigeria's daily consumption of crude oil when refined per day is said to be 408,000 barrel per day which means an excess of 37,000 barrel per day and Nigerians will not need to sleep at the petrol station to buy petrol. Thus, if the refineries function as they should, the pump maximum price of petrol in Nigeria would be N45 per litre. If you don't know, Nigeria's Oil Industry and its subsidiaries are managed by Nigerians with sophisticated academic qualifications in chemical engineering and specialists in oil refineries. Those that claim possessions of knowledge of what we need to produce by virtue of their certificates have been given the chance to demonstrate their knowledge and resultant productions have been zero. The zero or negative production in all Nigeria's MDAs where academically qualified Nigerians are employed is total and as such, their qualifications should be regarded as fake.
A graduate from an American university or even from any country living in America, is not being asked to generate or distribute electricity for a country or asked to manufacture a pin - K.J. Fakinlede I don't think any American will, just because he/she is a graduate in English language, seek employment in a company where the main business is to generate and distribute electricity. Water should find its level in the jar. It is not question of asking the non-electricity educated American graduate to produce and distribute electricity, he /she should know that when a person that would carry baby on the back is required a person with hunch-back should not apply. America is not a country where people believe that big grammar on darkness will bring light!!
Americans have been building economies based on technology for at least two millennia. The modern industrial sector in America started with the arrival of the Europeans on American soil - K. J. Fakinlede
What today is known as USA is a child of Britain that outgrew his mother. Leo Huberman narrated how Industrial Revolution got to America thus, "From 1765 to 1789 a series of strict laws was passed by Parliament. The new machines, or plans or models of them, must not be exported from the country ... skilled men who worked the machines were not to leave England ... under penalty of a heavy fine and imprisonment. England alone was to benefit from the new machinery; England was to become the workshop of the world. ...//... To the United States secretly, in 1789, came Samuel Slater, formerly a worker in English factories. He carried plans of the new machinery - in his mind. At Pawtucket, Rhode Island, he set up the first complete mill for spinning yarn on the Arkwright plan; the machines he designed and constructed from memory. The Industrial Revolution was thus brought to America (p.146, We, the People -THE DRAMA OF AMERICA)." Up till today, even when there are patents to protect new technical inventions and scientific discoveries, there are often court litigations among Europeans and between Europeans and Americans over ownership of new inventions and discoveries. Besides they have industrial spies operating in each others country. When we see how they compete with one another over how to prey on us, we must think if the Western Education they give to us is with good intention and for our own good. When the US was planning to become an imperialist state after World War I, she allowed some Africans, especially from Ghana and Nigeria to study in American Universities. At the same time, Black Americans suffered discrimination at all levels of life, including rights to quality education. It was as Edgar Furness expressed it in the History of the poor, "Given education to the children of the lower class of the society would make them contemn those drudgeries for which they were born (p. 148)." In 1963, when the Governor of Alabama was blocking Black Americans from attending the same University as White Americans, in spite of the Supreme Court's decision that the discrimination was unconstitutional, Nigeria was invaded by the US government sponsored 'American Peace Corps' to teach in our schools. The purpose of giving Western Education to us, therefore, is to colonise us economically and mentally. In practice Western education converts us to trained dogs that always swerve tail in readiness to obey any command from our Western World masters no matter how dangerous the command is to our wellbeing..
With regard to your assertion that the 'Americans have been building economies based on technology for at least two millennia, I noticed that, in response to an undisclosed commentator, you have explained that you did not mean that it should take as long as two millennia before Nigeria can develop technologically. That stand would imply that those of us demanding technological and industrial development now are too in haste. If that interpretation of your view is correct, you are not the first to hold such view. When Nigeria's MDAs dominated by Nigerian Engineers, Scientists and Economic Gurus were blamed for lack of industrial and economic progress in 1980, their response was that Rome was not built in a day and Nigerians should not expect them to do in 20 years what took Europe 100 years to accomplish. If it is Rome the officials at Nigeria's MDAs want to build for Nigerians, the prototype is there for them to copy and moreover their academic qualifications are far more superior than the builders of Rome. By virtue of their academic qualifications, building Nigeria to a Rome should be faster.
There should be correlation between the quantities of certified Engineers, Scientists and Economics in a country and its industrial and economic development. Those that the gods will make slaves must first be disorganised. Nigerians are disorganised, they cannot organise even for a day, not to talk of future. In 1948, Britain seized many cows in Nigeria and transferred them to Britain. In spite of the fact that the climate was not conducive to nurturing and breeding cows, their veterinary and agricultural scientists, saw to it that the cows were acclimatised to become source of beef supplies and dairy products for the British people. All cows in Europe originated from Africa. In 2018, Nigeria's arm-chair veterinary and agricultural scientists are still at the age of preserving nomadic pastoralists and their constitutional rights to, indiscriminately, graze around the country. Spaghetti and Macaroni became Italian food and spread to the rest of Europe after Marco Polo took the wheat food with him from China to Italy in 1295. Similarly, Potato became a staple food in Europe, after Christopher Columbus took it from American Indians to Europe. I am not certain if Marco Polo or Christopher Columbus had any academic degree but they have impacted positively in the lives of the people of their countries and Europe. Somewhere else you said that Nigerians believe that Government should do/own everything. That is not true. Nigeria has privatised nearly all state's owned properties among which is electricity. You may wish to remember that privatisation of state's owned companies in the Western World commenced during the era of President Ronald Reagan of USA and Prime Minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher. The privatised companies were functioning and producing profitably. In Nigeria the state owned companies mal-functioned and it was believed that they would function better if they were privatised. Those who ran down the state owned companies bought them up during privatisation and are still running them in the same way as before privatisation, e.g. electricity: Generating Company of Nigeria (GENCO) and Distributing Company of Nigeria (DISCO). Here I have to repeat what I said earlier that if a person is employed and remunerated to generate and distribute electricity because his certificate portrays him as capable of performing that duty but at the end he failed to perform, the only reasonable conclusion must be that his certificate is fake or he is graduate from ISI EWU UNIVERSITY.
S. Kadiri
Skickat: den 15 januari 2018 03:17
Till: USA Africa Dialogue Series
Ämne: SV: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: REVISITING PROFESSOR CHRIS IMAFIDON'S CLAIM TO OXFORD PROFESSORSHIP
I sympathise with some of the issues raised by Mr. Kadri in this article. However, I take exception with the issue of the lack of performance of our Western educated Nigerians or Nigerians who have attended universities and obtained high degrees.
Having worked in American industries in various capacities for at least thirty years and in the industrial sector for close to four decades, I am in position to evaluate the issues bedeviling the industrial sector and the technological sector in Nigeria as a whole
The simple fact is that the European and by a logical extension, Americans have been building economies based on technology for at least two millenia. The modern industrial sector in America started with the arrival of the Europeans on American soil.
A graduate from an American university or even from any country living in America, is not being asked to generate and distribute electricity for a country of asked to manufacture even a pin. He is merely a cog and a minusule one in the wheel of an already smooth running electricity company, if he is employed there, or for that matter a supervsor in a company where pins are manufactured. That is the reason why, Nigerian graduates, coming to America, are able to fit effortlessly into the technologically advanced system.
"What can you do?" The employement agent asked me many years ago on my arrival to America. He wanted to know what I was qualified to do. I had only a certificate telling him that I was eminently educated. However, he wanted to know if I could type, drive, operate a forklift, or something. I was not qualified for anything in the technologically built economic system. I was therefore thrown into the lowest rung of the economic ladder – as a messenger.
Granted, I quickly climbed my way out of that position by taking advantage of the training and education system, I could imagine a Nigerian graduate from a Nigerian university being asked to go run a petroleum company or even manufacture a car. He does not have the qualification AND he does not exist within an economic system that would make gaining the experience possible. There is simply no technologically constructed economic system yet.
Now, Is that the reason why he cannot manufacture even a pin? Sadly, that is the reason. The technology involved in manufacturing a pin is not much far removed from that involved in manyfacturing a large airliner.
The process in achieveing a technologically oriented economy lies not in castigating our graduates. While teaching in a Nigerian technological university, I was able to empathize with many of our students and their lecturers. While these people do not lack in intelligence, they are definitely not equipped to become masters of industry. I also know that this is not just a case of importing the most modern equipment to teach the students. The simple fact is that there is no support system to make things happen yet.
We are most quick as Nigerians to blame things on government. Yes, our governments are much culpable in our development technologically. But their culpabilitity stems more from ignorance than wilfull malice. They simply do not know what to do.
African economies today are faced with more than a double whammy. The budding middle class, whom they managed to educate with meager resources are, like moths that are attracted by light, departing the continent in droves to the already built economies. And for most, there is no turning back. They can sympathize, empathize or 'feel' for their countries of origin, there is however nothing that can replace their actual presence in their countries, helping in the building of the economy. This understandably is a difficult proposition for most who have managed to escape the harsh realities of living in Africa.
Nevertheless, from now, it is incumbent on all of us to begin to figure out how we can develop our individual countries.The issue of perpetual analysis often lead to paralysis, considering the myriads of issues definable.
Enough of sending money home to build palaces that we will never live in but which are mainly aimed at stoking our egos. Enough of incessant analysis. We are beginning to speak English, French, Spanish etc. better that their native speakers. We compete and glorify on irrelevancies
Our main question, going forward must be 'HOW CAN I HELP IN MY AREA OF INTEREST?' That area is then defined by us and we start working at it. That is how the Europeans and Americans built the aforementioned technologially, industrially sophisticated economies we gravitate towards.
As a conclusion, I must confess, we talk too much!!
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