Listen to me, Mr. President

By Aliyu Bello

Your excellency sir, being a citizen of Nigeria, a well wisher, and a person who wants the development and prosperity of Nigeria at large, I am writing to you, to advise you, correct you, and voice out my opinion on some certain issues I believe are of great importance to the development of Nigeria as our nation, and to Nigerians at large.

I am using these medium to lay down my opinion on certain issues because I do not have direct dialogue with you and direct access to you as an ordinary Nigerian, but to use my pen to write openly with the hope that the message gets to you.

One of the key issues I want to talk about here is the educational sector, especially the tertiary education. I believe they are basically two main things disturbing students at campus, and distracting their knowledge acquiring process in campus.

One of these two issues is the ENVIRONMENT. Our Nigerian universities lack conducive and comfortable environment for learning and even teaching, lacks basic infrastructures. During the dry season, a student upon arriving the entrance of a theater or a hall will be welcomed by heat and odour even at the door steps, no light, no proper ventilation, no fans much less of air conditioner. Upon arrival, a student will completely loose interest in the lecture. Some may decide to enter the class like that either because of the fair of attendance, or because he has high interest in learning. Even at that, they are two things involved:

1. Either he enters the class, listens to the lectures and understands it partially, or

2. Enters the class, listens or not listens to the lecture, and understands nothing.

Another student may just decide to skip the class, and do other things aside what he was supposed to do.

You can go into a class and find over 1500 students in the same venue, a venue designed for maybe 500 students, with no fans and proper ventilation. Some students sharing seats, others sitting on the floor, others on the stair ways blocking passage, others even covering the whole stage, giving the lecturer little or no space to demonstrate his points. In a situation like these, you can imagine how frustrated the class must be, how uncontrollable the class would be, how noisy the class would be, how hot the class would be, how suffocating the class would be, how eager both the lecturer and the students would be for the class to be over, how uncomfortable and unconducive the class must be, and many other things including majority of the students not getting the message.

The second issue disturbing students in campus is the problem of the concept ‘A LECTURER’. A student has a fear that a lecturer can fail him if I date the girl he loves, if I personal problem with a lecturer he would fail me in his course continuously, if I write my exams well, my proper might get lost by a lecturer, and I would automatically get an absent and repeat the course. A lecturer might just decide to fail me just because he doesn’t like me. A lecturer might decide to fail a girl just because she denied him something he wanted from her, and many other fears regarding a lecturer. These kind.of fears of what a lecturer can do to a student heads on also contribute in making a student not inject his full learning capacity. Lecturers have great influence on the pupils academic life. If a lecturer illegally fails a student, because of one reason or another, they can, have great effect on the academic life of the pupil.

A student should be free of the thought that a lecturer can fail him because of one thing or another just because he can, a student must be free of the thought that after writing an exam, his scripts may get lost, which guarantee’s him a fail in the course, which he might have probably passed excellently. A student can also be productive at maximum level and capacity when he is free of things like these, and studies at a comfortable and conducive environment.

The second issue am going to talk about is in form of an advice, a suggestion and an opinion. Instead of budgeting a lot of money to NYSC scheme, the FG should find a way, to provide entrepreneurial opportunities to corpers after spending their 3 weeks in camp, to be given the sum of maybe #1,000,000 loan with little interest.

Lets assume 200,000 students are enlisted in the NYSC program yearly. After their 3 weeks in Camp, you can decide to give them a loan of about a million naira each to the corpers, which by calculating the total amount will be about N200,000,000,000 (two hundred billion naira) yearly to empower youths on entrepreneurship. Mind you, each person must have a well designed business plan. Lets also assume 100,000 pupils failed in their business, and the other 100,000 succeeded in carrying out their business plan with the money. What these hundred thousand pupil can therefore do for Nigeria includes the following:

1. Provide job opportunities to at least 3-4 people each with that money, which will see about 300,000 – 400,000 Nigerians employed yearly through these scheme alone.

2. The money will be paid back to the government with interest.

3. Dependency on government offices and the the pressure for government to provide governmental works will be drastically reduced.

4. The welfare and the standard of living of Nigerians will be increased. Poverty will be drastically reduced. Joblessness will be eradicated leading to the minimization of drug abuse, robbery and other criminal activities in Nigeria.

5. According to analysis, each person is tied up with the responsibility of at least 10 people. His parents, siblings, children, Almjiri, and others. These means that with that money, each person will take care of the responsibilities of 10 people, which makes them 1,000,000 people in all, + the 400,000 employed making them 1,400,000 yearly.

6. Some benefactors of the program might succeed to the extent of opening a bigger factory, employing more people, boosting productivity to meet domestic needs and even export outside the country.

The 3rd issue I also want to talk about is the economy of Nigeria. Nigeria is a monoeconomy depending largely on the exportation of crude oil, whose price is dropping globally, and its affecting the Nigerian economy greatly. With this, they is dire need for diversification, and one of the key areas I believe to be given priority is the agricultural sector. Nigeria as a country is blessed with fertile land that is favourable for the production of mostly all kinds of things. Be it rice, maize, cocoa, rubber, cotton, groundnut, palm oil, fruits, vegetables etc. Nigeria first and foremost needs to depend on itself to feed its citizens, before thinking of even exporting.

The FG needs to boost local production, encourage local investments in the sector, provide little or no interest loan to farmers with easy access to the loan, provide with simplified tools and modern machinery for speed, accuracy, efficiency, high productivity, enhanced processing facilities, good storage system, proper packaging, good transportation system and provision of information to farmers and organizing training to farmers. People needs not be hungry hungry for them to think straight and positive, people need not to be hungry for them to do good and stop bad.

Lastly, I would want to advise these administration to be involving the masses in their decision making processes. The people needs to know what is happening, why is happening, how they can be engaged, the implications, prospects and objectives of a policy, and many others. They is really a poor communication system between the FG and the masses. The masses are confused and lost. They hear different things at the same time, and they are complaining about it. So I would like to advice the FG to improve on their communication system between them and the people of Nigeria.

I very much hope some of the few issues I raised and suggests would be put into considerations.

My name is Aliyu Bello, writing from Kano, out of my love for Nigeria as a patriot and a comrade.

#GodBlessNigeria