Inside Stuff With MARTINS OLOJA<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is his privilege to nominate anyone he likes. It is our right to examine the nominees and have our say. But as chief executive of the federation, he will have his way. In the same vein, it is still our responsibility as citizens to return our verdict on the quality of the cabinet this brand new senate will certainly clear tomorrow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The President of the \nSenate as a candidate, pledged that the senate he would preside over, \nwould not be a \u2018rubber-stamp\u2019. Indeed, he has set the tone for the kind \nof senate he will lead with the just-take-a-bow-and-go\u2019 standard that \nhas just been set. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I understand the president\u2019s men are smiling \n(not to the bank please) that Senator Bukola is not even in the senate \nto ask why portfolios were not attached to the nomination as demanded \nfour years ago \u2013 though without success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don\u2019t get it twisted, \nthis is a business-as-usual cabinet in the making \u2013 to take only the \ngoverning party\u2019s followers to the next level. This cabinet, like the \nlast one, cannot take the most populous black nation on earth to any \nglorious level. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there is nothing we can do about it now. \nAlan Paton, author of \u2018Cry the Beloved Country\u2019 counsels the aggrieved \nat such a time like this: \u201cwhen the storm threatens, , a man is afraid \nfor his house, But when the house is destroyed, there is something to \ndo. About a storm he can do nothing, but he can rebuild a house\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n President Buhari is like a storm here and so about him we can do \nnothing other than finding a way of rebuilding the nation from the \nrubble it is right now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just as a former Head of State, General \nAbdusalami Abubakar will be doing this week with a \u2018National Dialogue\u2019 \nin Minna, capital of Niger state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the National Assembly in \nAbuja were to be truly our people parliament, members would not have \nchosen to go on holiday at this time when a crisis of nationhood has hit\n the fan and country\u2019s leadership appears clueless. What manner of \nrepresentatives of the people would go on vacation and leave crisis \nmanagement to a slow leader in a time of emergency? But Paton said, we \ncan rebuild our house! Thank you General Abubabar for the \u2018Mission in \nMinna\u2019 for peace and reconciliation this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, I hope \nthat the Chairman of the Joint Session of the National Assembly, the \nPresident of the Senate, Senator Ahmed Ibrahim Lawan is aware of public \nperception of the Senate as a tragicomedy already. Is the senate \nleadership aware that trouble began for the upper house when it could \nnot screen well the first major nominee to it, the Chief Justice of the \nFederation? There was indeed some \u2018technical mediocrity\u2019 from the way \nthe CJN nominee then, Justice Ibrahim Tanko Muhammad contextualised \n\u2018technicality in law\u2019. Why were there no follow-up questions when the \nActing CJN who was being screened to be Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) \ncould not explain what \u201ctechnicality\u2019 in contrast to \u2018substance\u2019 means \nin law? The slipshod manner the current senate screening of the \nministerial nominees has been handled so far leaves a residue of sour \ntaste in the mouth. The foundation of the mediocre screening was failure\n of the senate to demand for attachment of portfolios to the nominees. \nThat failure aided the take-a-bow-and-go culture, which has been a \npublic relations tragedy for the senate and indeed the nation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No\n wonder last week Nigeria was among the low-middle income countries that\n were adjudged under-performing in the creation and utilisation of \ninnovations, according to the 2019 Global Innovation Index (GII) just \nreleased. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the shoddy senate screening was in progress on \nWednesday last week, the GII noted that Africa\u2019s largest economy \nperformed below expectations compared with the level of economic \ndevelopment in the country. Other underperformers in the low-middle \nincome group are Ghana, Zambia, El Salvador, Bolivia and Nicaragua. \nNigeria only moved up four places to 114 out of 129 countries ranked in \nthe 2019 GII from 118th position it attained in 2018. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile,\n the top three economies in terms of innovation in sub-Saharan Africa \nare South Africa, Kenya and Mauritius. As Nigeria was missing among the \ninnovation achievers in the continent, five countries, which emerged in \nterms of innovation relative to their level of development, from the \nsub-Saharan Africa are Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar.\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is why it is a sad commentary on Nigeria\u2019s affairs that \nthe powerhouse of innovation in a democracy, the parliament where \npolicies and programmes are made through legislations, has just created \nthe first two negative impressions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Indubitably, the first sector\n to reform as far as innovation is concerned is education. Only quality \nin education makes the difference (in innovation) you find in the North \nAmerica, Europe, Asia, (South Africa and Egypt) in Africa, etc. When \nlast did our national assembly organise any special sessions on funding \nof qualitative higher education? When did any budget defence sessions \nbecome rowdy over disagreement on education quality, the only known \nweapon of country and global competitiveness? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What else can \ntrigger innovation other than Research and Development\u2019s (R&D\u2019s) \nrobust funding? Does Nigeria\u2019s federal legislature have a functional \nlibrary where their researchers can dig deep and collect data on the \nparlous state of education at all levels in Nigeria? Will innovative \ntechnologies flow from the many ministries and agencies that the \npresident would want to fill with 43 ministerial nominees? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2017, there was a report that Google could not find well-equipped Computer Science Departments in any of the 170 universities in Nigeria and so had to take its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Centre to Ghana (with nine national public universities and three institutions in the Chartered private tertiary institutions category) where they found a university in Accra that could support it.
This is one setback that should set Nigeria\u2019s representatives in the federal legislature thinking \u2013 about the next level of innovation. Not the next level of celebration of mediocrity we find everywhere despite 170 universities. It will be useful if the national assembly in Nigeria is used to \u2018rubber-stamp\u2019 robust reform in education that will lead Nigeria, our Nigeria to be a centre of excellence in Research and Development. I have been writing here that we need better, and not more universities. Will there be redemption songs for Senator Lawan and Hon. Gbajabiamila\u2019s 9thAssembly Assembly? Only time will tell!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is his privilege to nominate anyone he likes. It is our right to examine the nominees and have our say. But as chief executive of the federation, he will have his way. In the same vein, it is still our responsibility as citizens to return our verdict on the quality of the cabinet this brand new senate will certainly clear tomorrow. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1329,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,173,58,6],"tags":[118,312],"class_list":["post-1328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-news-feature","category-opinion","category-politics","tag-cabinet","tag-martins-oloja"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shippingworld-ng.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shippingworld-ng.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shippingworld-ng.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shippingworld-ng.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shippingworld-ng.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/shippingworld-ng.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1331,"href":"https:\/\/shippingworld-ng.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shippingworld-ng.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shippingworld-ng.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shippingworld-ng.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shippingworld-ng.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}