AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF NIGERIA DR GOODLUCK EBELE JONATHAN(GCFR)-By Lord Princewill Emine Your excellency sir, i use this medium to appreciate God almighty who by His own making deemed it fit for you to be the president of this great nation. you will agree with me that your ascendancy to the highest political office of our country is not as a result of your hardwork and qualification but it was the immeasurable grace of God. Sir, you will agree with me also that the God who by His own making has placed you on the apex political office of this great black nation surely will expect that you write your name in the sands of time. Sir, i must confess that so far, you have indeed worked assiduously hard to transform this nation of ours by recruiting renowned men and women of intellectual sagacity to man the various agencies and parastatals of this nation. i thus applaud you for that. Again,you have shown your strong desire to ensure that security of lives and properties be the cardinal objective of your transformation agenda. little wonder then when you imposed a state of emergency in the North Eastern states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe. Your intent was to entrench a society, where value for human life and property will be seen as paramount to all and sundry. Your desire to revamp the economy of this nation that parades over 170million citizens made you to invest enormous resources on power. You believe like every well meaning Nigerian, that steady and constant power is the primary reason for economic revitalisation. I must confess that the sector has improved tremenduously within this period of your presidency and i know for sure that before 2015, we will beat our chest to say kudos to you and your team for giving Nigerians uninterrupted power supply. Your admnistration has re-introduced the long forgotten rail transport system. This is a no mean feat. This nation is proud of you. Sir, despite all these achievements, our educational system is dying very fast. You wont believe that your alma-mata(university of port harcourt) does not have enough lecture halls to accomodate the ever knowledge hungry students. The available halls are grossly dead traps. This is because most of them, donot have windows, enough seats, no fans to ensure a heat free lecture sessions. The most heartbreaking issue is the fact that most departments particularly, the department of Linguistics and Communication Studies use the convocation hall as lecture venue. Some departments even use under trees as lecture centres. Department like English studies, Foreign Language and Literature, do not have facilities for audio-visuals thus making students in the department to rely solely on their a many a time scarce lecturers all the time. Again, in University of Port Harcourt, students are required to pay for the accreditation of their departments. This is because such departments do not have adequate facilities to meet the requirements of NUC and as such risked been closed down. The more annoying thing is the fact that a department like Linguistics and Communcation studies do not have a functional radio house. How then can the students practice what they have learnt? In my department( History and Diplomatic Studies) we do not have enough lecturers, the available lecturers do not have office, they just hang about, again we do not have lecture halls of our own. Many a time we have had to shift lecture times. It is cancerous for a student to live in the hostel because when it rains, there are no roofs to prevent the rains from destroying the properties of the students. Generally speaking the hostels are overcrowded many a time. Giving the fact that you are an academic yourself, i therefore will not be wrong if i say that you are not a stranger to all i have said so far about our higher institutions of learning. Please Mr. President give attention to the pleas of over 20million Nigerian students who must stay at home because of the ongoing ASUU strike. Some students are already tempted to become nuisance to the society. Will you blame them if they do? You will agree with me that it is a moral sin, for a student who is supposed to spend 4years in school to spend 5-7 years instead. Moreso when it is no fault of his. -Lord Princewill Emine
Posted on: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 09:06:57 +0000
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