TERSEER UGBOR AND THE MISSING FACTS

 A well-structured economy will accommodate all, argues Victor C. ARIOLE

…Universities that work proactively in developing and sustaining international recruitment, networks, and strategies can expect their students to be more highly valued by multinational employers, who value a broadness of experience and intercultural awareness… Martins Oloja

 Terseer Ugbor, a graduate of Sociology and Anthropology from a tuition-free University of Abuja was explaining how he has travelled far and near, collecting facts on how best to institute and sustain students loan board and how it will institute discipline in admission process in Nigerian universities where 80% of the students are pursuing courses in the social sciences, like he did, which is not relevant to Nigerian economy. What is worse, he castigated the federal government for spending about N1 trillion annually in paying lecturers’ salary, claiming that infrastructure has been taken care of by TETfund; hence, only the students are left on their own, and hence his committee advocates 1% of all revenues earned by customs and other revenue generating organisations to populate the students loan’s fund so as to help students to be well-off in terms of managing their future. Another policy cul-de-sac like subsidy removal palliative.

I am very sure, a great Akokite like Maupe interviewing him on Channels “Hard Facts” would wonder if the Honourable is truly a representative of the poor masses in Benue who are hounded by people who are lacking in humanistic education; and whose agricultural endowment had been destroyed by lack of the basics – good background knowledge of Arts and Humanities that places human beings and their welfare as the greatest motivation that drives all knowledge and development, science inclusive.

What is more, Hon. Terseer fails to apply his knowledge of anthropology and sociology to detect why almost 80% of the pure science graduates are doing the works of graduates of Humanities; as, structurally, leaders like him fail to map out development plans that can sustain employability of pure science students for almost 30 years period upon which they could earn enough to develop entrepreneurial abilities alongside their science knowledge for further agro-industrial expansion that could make them more valuable for a state like Benue – the food basket of Nigeria.

Again, it has just been announced by Jeune Afrique that over $660 billion Diaspora remittance has been recorded in the world in 2023 and Africa’s share is about 15% with Nigeria taking up 39% of the Africa’s 15%. They are mostly the earnings of Nigerians well educated with subsidized lecturer’s pay in Nigeria, who are found worthy of employment in mostly service industries or hospitality industries in the West or even menial jobs that required well behaved candidates as Nigerians remain well behaved as a result of the Arts and Humanities’ education qualifications they have acquired and that make them behave well for employers to find them suitable and for them to be so loyal as to remit what all of us in Nigeria cannot put up as Nigeria’s annual budget, just N23 trillion compared to over $30 billion dollars amounting to over N30 trillion Diaspora remittance. Only United Kingdom recorded over 140,000 Nigerians who migrated since last year. They are mostly graduates of Humanities though some are medical science graduates.

In a planlessly structured economy like that of Nigeria, people like Hon Terseer should be made to lie low as they are not capable of understanding what it takes to face a larger world beyond that of Nigeria in which politicians just leach on collective wealth instead of the nation. The larger world is well structured and managed by IMF, WTO and IBRD. Nigeria is either seen as non-existent or at best marginal, outside the curve or non performing outlier on the outside left of the curve.

Nigerian lecturers and students are greatly on frustration lane carved by politicians like Terseer who only believes in what politicians can cart away from Nigeria while Nigerian universities are striving hard to produce both lecturers and graduates poachable by the larger world as mentioned by Martins Oloja above. They are poached by a better larger world because the economic structure there is well fashioned in capitalist mode – create a larger wealth than what is bequeathed to you. Nigerian politicians and legislators alike create structure and bills that chase away good Nigerians and drive away genuine foreign investors. Like the capitalist world knows, money goes where it is well treated.

The essence of loan to students is that they will find employment or create employment to pay back. That can only happen if the economy is structured to be sustainable for 30 years and above without which, both the lecturers and students could only aim for greener pastures outside Nigeria, and will lead to no loyalty to Nigeria, not to talk of repaying a loan that could amount to pittance and laughable when in a larger world that cherishes their input to their economy and are better rewarded for life than rewarded in a marginal or unstructured economy in which only politicians survive by leaching on the natural wealth of the nation.

Science courses’ students or Humanities courses’ students are not the issues as Hon. Terseer’s weak facts relate. The wheels are not to be reinvented. At first degree level all courses are approached in delivery patterns on historical basis, whether Science courses or Humanities’ courses; just few students could grow to understand the “thereafter” of the courses they are earning a degree in. Hence, at first degree level, it is basically strengthening the humanistic values of the individual – earning degree in knowledge and character.

The difference is the analytical approaches the students must bring to bear at the end of their degree programmes and it shows in their creative disposition at the point of searching for job or trying to be self-employed. Not necessarily as either Science or Humanities graduates. Scientific approach to gain insight for a knowledge production is not the same as reading a course in science. It still requires, like one Senator better than Terseer put it, provide platform for the graduates to observe some internship programmes; I think it is Senator Shuaib who said that.

With over 3,000 Universities in USA, with some paying their tenured professors above the $174,000 per annum a USA Senator earns, Nigerian adjunct lecturers there receive about $2000 for each course they teach and, as you know, some of them teach in almost five universities trying to get what to send back home which people like Hon. Terseers do not record as hard facts and which make mockery of the legislation process of Nigeria that allows the legislator to be paid higher than their colleagues elsewhere as they legislate or appropriate mere weak N23 trillion for a population of over 200 million people in the face of over N30 trillion sent home by Nigerians as a result of dedicated University system in Nigeria that makes available its products for international acceptability. Both Humanities and Science lecturers and graduates find their adequate level in a well- structured economy. Let Terseers Ugbor and his likes think out bills that could make Nigeria a well-structured economy not as it is now, as hand-to-mouth economy.

 Ariole is

Professor of French and Francophone Studies

University of Lagos.