Respected educationist, Prof Pat Utomi has explained why more people die in Nigeria than any other country of the world.
The erudite educationist said the reason might not be unconnected to the fact that Nigerians like struggling over things that shouldn’t be struggled for.
Utomi, a two times Nigeria Presidential aspirant, who was the Guest Speaker at the 6th Pre-Convocation Lecture of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), in Abuja, disclosed this in his lecture titled, “Political economy of education: “Issues and challenges of opening and distance learning in Nigeria.”
He believed that, “if we were not living in denial, one of the things we would have realised is that our country is in a rolling civil war.
“We are struggling with Boko Haram, crisis in the north Central and in the South South, we are dealing with all kinds of issues like militancy and so forth.
“More people die in Nigeria, a violent death than many of the countries in war. What we have in Nigeria is an evrgreen civil war.
“How are we going to make progress when there’s so much violence everywhere?
“We have a zero-sub mindset. People are struggling over things that they shouldn’t be struggling over.”
Meanwhile, Utomi, who is also the co-founder, Lagos Business School, has called on the federal government to prioritise education and health for its citizenry.
Meanwhile, Utomi, who is also the co-founder, Lagos Business School, has called on the federal government to prioritise education and health for its citizenry.
He stated this while responding to a question raised by a student about non admission of NOUN nursing graduates by some unnamed universities in Nigeria.
“This is a conversation into which the NUC has to be drawn. As guardians of the idea of a university in Nigeria the NUC has been traditionally slow to change. For the NUC a university was 100 hectares of condominium with many faculties and traditional teaching methods.
“To be sure, it is changing but the pace has been slow. It took it long to accept the idea of private universities and even such methods of pedagogy as the case study method. But we must not blame the leadership of the NUC alone,” he said.
Earlier in his response, the chairman of the lecture and registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, called on all institutions of the federal government to respect the law.
“The Council of Legal Education is a creation of the law. The National Youth Service Corps is a creation of the law and therefore NOUN is created by the law. If we decide to be lawless there will be anarchy.
“If anybody disagrees with a law the best place to go is the National Assembly not to take the law into his own hands. I therefore call on agencies of government to be law makers rather than law breakers,” he said.
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