
Former Education/Petroleum Minister, Professor Jubril Aminu
Professor Jubril Aminu, Nigeria’s former Education/Petroleum Minister, on loving and being patriotic about Nigeria:
Love for this country is just not there. People love their religion more than their country. I am from the North; people from the North are mad about the North but our leaders did not advise us to be as mad about our country. It is the same thing with the West and the East; their leaders did not advise them to be mad about Nigeria too. The people from the West love the West, but they were not thought to love their country, Nigeria. They were told to antagonise the federal government, because of the opposition stance. In my view, everything necessary should be done to get the people to love their country, Nigeria. Not in the fashion of what we see on the television every day, ‘We are Nigeria, we are one’….etc. Even children laugh at it. Invent real ways of making the people love Nigeria.
I remember this quote on patriotism from Mark Twain: “Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.” Continue reading…
Growing up in Nigeria, we are made to memorize the multiplication tables and state capitals and governors, and as I grew into my adolescent years, I could recall phone numbers, birthdays, heads of states and other mundane information as car registration numbers (plate numbers), etc. Then I moved to the US, got wired to the computer, now it appears my memory is failing. And I’m not alone. Continue reading…
I love data. Few months back I was ranting to a colleague that there is no reliable health data online about Nigeria; then I was looking though the scientific journals for the prevalence rate of hypertension and type II diabetes. But I could not find any recent data. Then I discovered NIGECS [http://www.nigerianlgaclassification.com/index.html"]. Continue reading…
Is Nigeria full of problems or opportunity rich? Until one start seeing the opportunities embedded in the national problems, any attempt to problem-solve is most likely to fail. Failure leads to stagnation and regression; exactly what we have in our hands in Nigeria at the moment. Continue reading…
Looking through the pictures below, I wonder what governance (the activity of governing) is if indicators such as simple and vital infrastructure like motorable roads are not available. Continue reading…
It is absurd that the Nigerian president asked Professor Babatunde Fafunwa to apologize over the failure of the 6-3-3-4 system introduced while he was the education minister. Does it really matter what education system we run in Nigeria? Continue reading…
Let’s hope out of the Abuja tragedy, agony and mangled wrecks comes a renewed vigor to turn around the worsening conditions in Nigeria. Continue reading…