It takes a man who has risen to the highest of mountains to appreciate the lowest of valleys. Nigeria built ladders, got many to climb up, on merit, but we are losing that process daily now. A young lady told me here that they refused to give her graduate assistantship position she merited as the best in her class because the position, in a federal university, was reserved for the host university ethnic group. According to her, the HOD (head of department) substituted her name with the person who came 3rd!
She was evidently bitter for her nation. Who will not be? But looking at her case, the experience is the new Nigeria. At UNN, the indigenes want an indigenous professor to become the vice chancellor. In OAU Ile Ife, the same. Go to ABU, that repeats. Across the nation, we do not compete nationally but now ethnically. You just have to be the best in your ethnic group – and that is it.
Looking back I can see that things have changed badly – that ladder has been burnt, not even taken down. My greatest professional accomplishment was my HOD telling me that “Ekekwe, your job is waiting. We want you to stay back in FUTO and teach”. Sure, I declined but I was happy the offer was there. If FUTO had cut me out on any pretense of Ndubuisi being an Abian instead of an Imolite, forgiveness would be removed from my dictionary.
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Nigeria – you are destroying dreams as you burn ladders for young people. Why should we be scaling bad habits?
Nigeria – why are you leaving behind what made you great in the past? Why must you poison the minds of your future with shocks? When a nation does not believe in #merit in recruiting for those who teach, run its central bank, fix its roads, manage its water board, etc, everything will fade.
Comment on LinkedIn Feed
Comment 1: There should be a place for merit and a place for quota also called affirmative action in the US. This is how countries ensure everyone is given a chance.
My Response: What the US does is not the same as what Nigeria does. The US is fixing injustice against minorities through this affirmative action calibration. Nigeria is not using its system to fix any injustice but to shock citizens. Obama possibly got into Harvard through affirmative action but became 104th president of the Harvard Law Review.
That made him among the top 1% of his class in many ways. The US system was rigged against minorities since data has shown that even though minorities may need affirmative action to ENTER, they are never the last in most of the cases. The implication is that the “merit” system is questionable since it did not pick that Obama was well qualified ahead of his white peers.
Do not put what US does to what Nigeria does because there was no tribe that was discriminated against at scale over centuries in Nigeria like the way African Americans were.
Comment 2: It has always been the underlying and undertone factor in our country in every single aspect of living. This is said with emphasis: the. factor. affecting. every. single. aspect. of. living. in. our. Country.
Quite unfortunate, if you look at it from all angles.
The solution: we need to look inward as a people, and also as a country and question ourselves truly what do we want to achieve collectively? Ask ourselves those very uncomfortable questions , come up with solutions and back it up with actions which have immediate positive or negative consequences that must be followed through by law.
Again, emphasis here on: back it up with positive or negative consequences by law which must be followed through to the letter.
We know what to do as a country, we just don’t want to do it, yet.
Comment 3: Prof this is Nigeria reality and it’s so bad that every federal and state recruitment is done based on first, ethnicity and then your religion. You can hardly get anything on merit. A look at all revenue generating agencies will buttress this. Will Nigeria ever return to those past when merit is first?
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But how will the people argue for merits when mediocres far outnumber quality ones? It means that the majority have automatically disqualified themselves anyway.
It’s like asking ethically challenged creatures to put sound ethics as a requirement for office, or expecting morally bankrupt bunch to set moral codes. These things will be self-defeating, and nobody wants to build a system he/she will not qualify to benefit from.
Our expectations are too lofty for the primitive and debased mindset majority of us are still entrapped in, so we have to come a bit closer to reality.
Just look at your Attorney General, at least he is a great example of the dizzying paradoxes and self contradictions that have come to define this crime scene called Nigeria.
Everywhere you turn to, you are confronted with contradictions and absurdities that defeat the very essence of reason and excellence.
Strange people.