The Rock Project is an initiative launched by Larry Jones-Esan of the London Academy for Higher Education and association of reputable British and international academia, seeking to improve lives through emotional literacy programme.

The present socio - economic conditions such as gang crime in the UK and around the world, and aspirations of many young people presents a challenge that can only be tackled through emotional literacy.

There is a need to develop emotional literacy  amongst individuals, communities and societies at all levels. This intrinsic training programme will impact different groups at personal level and foster social interactions

How it Works

The Rock project will provide a training opportunity to cater for communities, institutions, businesses and individuals at different levels.

The vision of this project is to serve as emotional literacy centre that will impact the local community and equip individuals to face emotional challenges

Contact Larry Jones for more information

READ

“SO LONG as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain,” wrote Helen Keller. Keller certainly understood emotional pain. At the age of 19 months, an illness left her totally blind and deaf. But a compassionate teacher taught Helen to read and write in Braille and, later, to speak.

Keller’s teacher, Ann Sullivan, knew only too well the frustration of fighting a physical disability. She herself was nearly blind. But Ann patiently devised a way to communicate with Helen by “spelling out” letters on Helen’s hand. Inspired by the empathy of her teacher, Helen decided to dedicate her own life to helping the blind and the deaf. Having overcome her own disability at great effort, she felt for those who were in similar circumstances. She wanted to help them.

You have likely observed that in this selfish world, it is easy to ’shut the door of one’s tender compassions’ and ignore the needs of others.

By developing your emotional literacy and becoming aware of others needs you start to fill fufill in you daily life.

Do you need help developing your emotions. Give call or send me an email. larry@lahe.org.uk.

Emotional literacy „can tackle gang culture?. (2007, February 16). Manchester Evening News.

Dr Larry Jones of the London Academy of Higher Education advocated the importance

of emotional literacy in tackling gang culture. According to him, teaching children to control

their emotions could stop us from creating a society of gangster. Emotional literacy program

educates children on how to raise their self-esteem and withstand peer pressure and the

dominance of gangs. Dr Jones mentioned that the root cause of the problems lies in the emotions

and hence an education of the emotions is crucial.

Many children who are involved in gangs are underachievers and feel that they are not

good enough. They need to know that there are other people who have felt like them and have

overcome it. The media is also glamorizing guns as good things. All the talk about extending

prison sentences have made some children want to go to prison as they believed that they would

be cared for in prisons. Nowadays, when people talk about self-defense or jealousy, it is not

about drugs but over small issues like boyfriend or girlfriend matters. Dr Jones mentioned that

we need to change the way we look at life; we need to teach the young that they do not need to

fight to be a man and there is no need to use a gun or knife.

Emotional literacy has its benefits; among others, the reduction of crime rates, fewer

dysfunctional families and economic development.

The conference scheduled to be held at East Ham Town Hall, Barking Road London E6 has been organized by the London Academy for Higher Education based in Stratford, East London ( the new Olympic Village ). Dr. Larry Jones, CEO/Director of Studies of the London Academy for Higher Education said: ‘Education is not merely preparation for life; education is life itself.

I am hoping that this conference will reach out to black and minority ethnic communities on the whole area of Emotional Literacy.’ Several diplomatic envoys are also expected at the conference.

There will be cultural displays, an educational exhibition and cultural entertainment with a dance troupe from Africa entertaining the audience.

For further particulars please contact:

DR.LARRY JONES
London Academy for High Education
Mobile: 07782301413

PR Marketing
London Academy for HIgher Education
Ibex House
1C Maryland Park
Stratford
London E15 1HB.

Tel:02085349941
Fax:02085349974

prmarketing@lahe.org.uk
www.lahe.org.uk

Dr Jones-Esan said managing emotions was key
The event addressing ways teenagers can raise their self-esteem and become “emotionally literate” began with a minute’s silence to remember the three youths shot dead in south London in recent weeks.
Conference organiser Dr Larry Jones-Esan, head of the London Academy for Higher Education in Stratford, said youngsters who carried weapons had an “imbalance” that could be addressed.
“They are angry inside and we need to find out why they are angry,” he said.
‘Crucial’ education
The government has been encouraging schools in England to adopt emotional literacy teachings into the curriculum.

Believe it or not, some children would like to go to prison because they believe they would be cared for

Dr Larry Jones-Esan
The Academy runs a 12-week programme designed to help teenagers tackle peer pressure that might see them join gangs.
“As children move on from education to adulthood they need to have an understanding of how to manage emotions,” Dr Jones-Esan said.

“Emotions are powerful, and education of the emotions is crucial. How many children are underachievers, and are out there today, feeling they’re not good enough?

“But they need to know that there are other people who have felt like that, and overcome it.”
A breakdown of family relationships was cited as a “huge cause” of problems.
But Dr Jones-Esan said suggestions that tougher sentences could be handed out to 17-21 year-olds convicted of possessing guns might not be effective as some children were “happier to be in jail than with their parents”.

He said: “There is talk of extending prison sentences - but, believe it or not, some children would like to go to prison because they believe they would be cared for in prison.”
Computer games

The conference was told that emotional literacy could lead to reductions in criminal behaviour and drug abuse, better educational and career achievement.
Dr Jones-Esan said causes of “uncontrollable emotional outbursts” included insecurity, falling into the wrong company and choice of entertainment.

Larry Jones-Esan said communities were left feeling disenfranchised and dis-empowered with no hope in sight.
He suggested computer games and television “indirectly” taught children about violence.
“Guns are being promoted as good things, shooting is being glamorised on television and film house,” he said.

“We have actually created a society of gangsters because role models for children are not there any more.”
He said: “We need to change the way we look at life, to teach young one that you don’t need to fight to be a man, there’s no need for you to use a gun or a knife.”
Larry Jones-Esan further told delegates that young people in minority ethnic communities feel particularly disenfranchised and dis-empowered.

“The events of the last few weeks have put into sharp focus the need for emotional literacy and the need to work with young people from black and minority ethnic communities,” he said.
Larry Jones-Esan said emotional literacy schemes could also help people with disabilities who were being failed by the education system and living a life of hopelessness both in developing and develop world.

By Larry Jones-Esan

Hi once again good people. The foundation of this title was my recent experience during my visit to Nigeria. It has been the fast growing trends in the workplace to have everyone address each other by first names. Under the pressure of wanting to conform to the laissez-faire American way of doing things which is now in fashion, a particularly visible aspect of the American culture has been appropriated and transplanted into the Nigerian workplace scenery.

In France, you do not say “tu” (”you” singular) to a superior or someone you are not on familiar terms with. You use the plural form of “you” which is “vous”. In Germany, you do not use the familiar singular pronoun “du” until you have been specifically invited to do so. Until then, you use the more formal “sie”. And we think white men don’t have respect?! They do! And how they show it depend on their peculiar upbringing and culture. How Nigerians show theirs depends equally on how they are brought up to perceive reality and conform to it. How do you convince an authentic Yoruba man (a tribe in Nigeria) that you have any regard for him when you insist on “first-naming” him even though he is your superior; and that without his consent? Even if he accepts it intellectually, his internal syntax or personal protocol will rebel against this blatant affront to his cultural values. The sort of reaction he will display in consequence may be overt or covert; in either case, it will most probably be detrimental to the interpersonal relationships of those concerned and ultimately to the organization.

Disgruntled personnel “don`t complain” because to do that will be incurring the wrath of the “piper`s payer” as those that pay the piper call the tune; yet, organization cannot imagine the cost of the inter-personal conflicts they have given birth to which frustrates true synergy and team related work. I know some of Nigerian have the foreign exposure (or should I say foreign hypnotism) to manage new realities and this is okay. I do too. However, if I prefer to be addressed by my first name as CEO, age notwithstanding, then that is what I need for my personal peace, creativity and balance; it is a privilege I have chosen to extend to the people around me. It will however be wrong to force these personal preferences on every other person within the organization simply because you are TOP MANAGEMENT! I think this is a wrong leadership model and an oppressive and tyrannical display of emotional imbalance.

When it comes to fostering cohesion, synergy and teaming, there can be no greater limitation than that which comes from not allowing team members to be part of a decision that will govern the way they work or live. As long as there are employees who feel abused and caged by our unethical policies and procedures, the system is incomplete.

London Academy for Higher Education, Stratford, London

on 29th March 2007 on the occasion of 25th Convocation Ceremony of the
University of Ado-Ekiti.

Organized by V C Professor I .O Orubulye.

I congratulate the following distinguished guests:

l The Vice- Chancellor
l The Deputy Vice- Chancellor
l The Registrar, The Bursar
l The University Librarian
l Dean of Faculties
l Other Principal Officers of the University
l All Academic and non Academic Staff
l Students, All guests
l Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen

PREAMBLE

I thank you most sincerely for giving me the singular honour of delivering this very important lecture at this time in the history of educational development process in Nigeria.

Let me seize this opportunity to pay tribute to all those who have served this university meritoriously since 1982/83 to date, since it was established as Obafemi Awolowo University by the civilian administration of old Ondo state headed by the Late Chief Adekunle Ajasin, and later changed to Ondo State University in 1984 and now University of Ado-ekiti.

I am quite proud of the great strides that have been reported by the administration of the incumbent VC and the board of Governors. More grease to your elbows!

Ladies and gentlemen, although I am living abroad, my heart and soul is with Nigeria, and whatever I will say now will be solely in the interest of education in our great country. Let me bring to your notice incredible fact which has not done justice to our international image.

The time of truth has come. If you are genuinely concerned about your chosen profession, the quality of your degrees, quality of teachers and quality of our universities, the products of our universities, and the reputation of this country, you must be worried and indeed ashamed that the quality of our university is so poor to the extent that none of our universities was ranked amongst the first 5,000 in the world.

This can easily be verified by simply logging unto the internet and confirm the ‘latest World University rankings’! [http://www.webometrics.info/top100_continent.asp?cont=Africa]

Do you know also, that no Nigerian university is ranked among the first 40 in Africa? Obafemi Awolowo University, the highest ranking University in Nigeria is ranked number 44 in Africa and 5,834 in the world, while University of Ibadan, Nigeria’s premier university is ranked number 66 in Africa and 6,809 in the world.

With this current ranking, several universities based in South Africa, as well as other African countries that are not as endowed as Nigeria in financial and human resources (like Zimbabwe, Botswana, Senegal, Sudan, Burkina Faso, Namibia, and even Rwanda and Somalia!) are ranked ahead of Nigeria. Even the Polytechnic of Namibia is ranked number 32 in Africa!

Only 4 Nigerian Universities were ranked among the top 100 in Africa as follows
This shameful statistics contrasts badly with the position in the 70s when Nigerian schools attracted the best brains from Europe and the USA. That was the time our own UCH (i.e. the University College Hospital, Ibadan was ranked among the best 5 in the commonwealth. That is now history. But how did we get to where we find ourselves today?

I have summarised the problems as stated below:

The problem of JAMB admitting poor students.
The Quality of Students Produced from Secondary School
The scrapping of HSC/A-Levels
Human Resource scarcity. In other words, brain drain.
Indiscipline. i.e. reported cases of unethical practices of teachers
Incessant strikes
Funding constraints

My lecture today shall be concentrating on ways of finding means of encouraging Public-Private sector partnership in funding education in Nigeria.

UNIVERSITY FUNDING IN NIGERIA BEFORE 1999

Before the advent of democracy in 1999, Nigeria was governed continuously by the military for 15 years i.e. 1984 to 1999.

The period can best be described as ‘the period of locust, caterpillar and cankerworms’ as far as education is concerned. The military governments were budgeting up to 40% for defence at the expense of education.

Mind you, this was a period when Nigeria was at peace, not war!

The period was typified by mass exodus of Nigeria’s best brains in the academics. Most of the Universities Human Resources that were trained in the best universities in the UK and the USA in the 1960’s and 1970’s via government scholarships, were forced to relocate back to the western world where their talents are better appreciated and rewarded.

Any lecturer whose views are considered too radical were sacked. A good example is the case of Professor Patrick Wilmot, a Jamaican, Yale-trained expert in the field of sociology at the Ahmadu Bello University who was forcibly abducted by the Nigerian Police and deported to the UK in 1988 by the General Ibrahim Babangida government because his views were considered radical.

No wonder that Prof. Phillip Emeagwali, a Nigerian referred to by the CNN as ‘the father of the internet’ said in one of his speeches that ‘one-third of any amount spent by the developing country on education is actually being spent to subsidise the western world’.

The unenviable legacies inherited by the Obasanjo’s civilian government in May 1999 include the following:

Unpaid pensions and gratuities for retired university staff which run into several billions of Naira.

Shortage of highly skilled manpower required in the university system.

Irregular academic sessions due to incessant strikes.

salaries and other remuneration paid to lecturers and professors, which do not compare favourably with what their colleagues earn elsewhere;

Hostels which are in pitiable conditions.

College buildings including lecture rooms and offices which need refurbishment;

Libraries which are poorly equipped and are in need of modern books and equipment;

Laboratory equipment which are obsolete and are calling for modernisation;

Campus roads which are in state of disrepair.

Electricity, though a national problem (which students do not accept) which is in short supply. Generators which need replacement; and

Water supply which in most cases is inadequate.

Having regard to the factual situation in our universities, it is no wonder that non of our universities qualified to be placed in the first 6,000 universities in the world!!

The question we must ask ourselves is “why have things gone so bad”?

The answer is that the 26 Federal Universities and 26 State Universities are creations of the government and are funded by the government. In fact, many state universities are not much better than secondary schools and compared unfavourably with Olashore International Secondary School. The bitter truth, which the populists did not want to hear, is that Nigeria remains one of the few countries where by and large education is funded by the government.

Nigeria present a classical study in over dependence on government for the provision of virtually everything. Total dependence on government for the provision of everything has not, is not and will never solve our problems.

Nigerian have been made to believe that all they have to do is to sit a home, produce children and donate them to the government to nurture, maintain, train and educate. Nigerians want free medical treatment, subsidised food, good roads, cheap electricity, free water, free education etc.

With the huge damage done to all sectors of the economy by the military and the need to revive each and every sector simultaneously, it will be unreasonable to expect that government would pump all its resources to our University education alone.

Time has come when Nigeria must face the reality of its economic and financial circumstances and do what others elsewhere do to propel their universities to institutions of national relevance, capable of fulfilling their national aspirations.

Recently, the 13 OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries reviewed Higher Education funding. It concluded as follows:

Tuition fees are becoming the international rule and not the exception. Eight of the 13 OECD main competitor countries analysed in this paper charge tuition fees of some sort. All of these eight bar Netherlands vary their fees to some extent.

In Canada, tuition fees are paid and they are on the rise. In Australia, differential fees are paid on the basis of income. For Japan, with effect from 2000, state universities would be allowed to have greater autonomy and, more importantly, they have freedom to set their own tuition fee levels, and national Universities fees are set at £2,700. In China, fees are set according to market conditions taking into account both costs and demand.

In America, fees at public and private institutions are rising by an average of 14.1 per cent from 2002 - 2003 to 2003 - 2004 at public institutions. Overall, the spilt is between public universities - which charge around $5,000 - $15,000 (£2,900 - £8,600) per year depending on location, type and length of course; and private universities where fees can be as high as $30,000 (£17,300) per year.

In England, fees in universities is now £6,000 per year i.e. N750, 000. [At London Academy for Higher Education, we charge far less than the quoted figure for excellent service]

In Nigeria, there were wide protests that the N90 hostel fee charged since 1985 should not be increased. The Committee of Registrars of Nigerian Universities had sent a memo to government on this matter in 1996.

The first of the solution then proposed was to request universities to provide a professional accounting that would show what it costs exactly to provide its services.

This means that it will be possible to determine what it costs to educate a medical student at the University of Ado-Ekiti. Now if the government says anyone who goes for Law undergraduate programme needs not pay, what it means is that the government is disbursing to the university exactly what it costs the university to provide the service for each student. Otherwise, both government and University authorities are engaged in a murderous game of make-belief for the training of Lawyers.

The Registrars’ suggested solutions in 1996 are still valid today and are based on the following principles:

Parents who can pay fees should be made to pay instead of declaring a tuition free university policy, which do not match with commensurate financial backing;

no student who qualifies for admission should be denied higher education merely by his/her inability to pay fees;

all tiers of government from Local Council to Federal Government should be part of the fee-paying process;

the private sector should be allowed to be part of the scheme.

Guidelines suggested by the Registrars for the implementation of these principles are as follows.

The Federal Government may provide Scholarships on merit to say 30 per cent of those who properly gain admission to the university, to cover 100 per cent of tuition. Tuition will of course be different from institution to institution as indicated above. Additional loans may be granted to cover a proportion of other cost of living and books, while parents or guardians take care of the rest, which will be minimal;

again, scholarships may be granted up to 75 per cent of tuition for the next 30 per cent on merit. And additional loans may be granted to cover another segment of the cost of living and books.

state government should also follow suit by granting scholarships and loans according to their own criteria to cover the remaining 40 per cent of the population of admitted students from their states.

local councils may grant scholarships and loans to indigenous students from their local council communities. Local authorities are best at determining criteria for indigence and membership of a local council.

the Federal Government may again grant scholarships and loans to those from disadvantaged areas who have not been adequately covered by point 1-4 above.

universities themselves may grant scholarships based on their own criteria.

These suggestions deserve urgent attention. Unless the funding of federal and state universities is properly and frontally addressed, the education sector is doomed.

It is significant to note that foreign students coming to Nigeria prefer private universities to federal or state universities. The obvious reasons include the fact that the university calendar is scrupulously adhered to, there is greater discipline among teachers and students.

THE WAY FORWARD: PUBLIC- PRIVATE SECTOR PARTNERSHIP IN FUNDING UNIVERSITY EDUCATION

Nigerians of today believe only in receiving but not in giving. Nigerians believe only in give me, give me, give me but will never like to part with anything.

The Europeans and Americans believe in the philosophy of give and take in the establishment and funding of universities. Most universities were founded through gifts and endowments. Most are funded by philanthropists, the Alumni, the community and endowment. Members of the community also donate heavily or through wills which come in form of shares, buildings, or money to universities. This was how the great universities in medieval era were founded and funded. Harvard University and Cambridge University, which are rated as numbers one and two in the latest ranking in the world were not founded by government and do not depend for its administration on government funding.

In Harvard University, Endowment fund was valued at $22.6 billion at the end of January 2005 whereas Nigeria’s external reserve is only $40 billion.

During the fiscal year 2005 the Harvard University income totalled $2,228,200,000. The breakdown of the income of the university that year is as follows:

l Student income - 23 per cent
l Endowment income distributed - 28 per cent
l Income from other investments - 5 per cent
l Current use-gifts - 7 per cent
l Other operating income - 14 per cent
l Sponsored research support - 23 per cent

l PRIVATE FUNDING OF RESEARCH GRANTS

This is an area in which Nigerian Public Limited Companies have performed so poorly over the years. Nigerian companies rarely fund research and development programmes whose results are designed to benefit themselves.

The country has been suffering the negative effects of irregular power supplies for several years now, whereas smaller African countries like Ghana have been able to surmount the problem.

These and many more problems can be overcome by spending on research to find local solutions to national problems.

No wonder we are always importing technologies!

What is research funding?

Research funding is a term generally covering any funding for scientific research, in the areas of both “hard” science and technology, and social science. The term often connotes funding obtained through a competitive process, in which potential research projects are evaluated and only the most promising receive funding. Such processes, which are run by government, corporations or foundations, allocate scarce funds. Total research funding in most developed countries is between 1.5% and 3% of GDP; Sweden is the only country to exceed 4%. What is research funding policy in Nigeria of today?

The past century leading to the new millennium has brought about unprecedented growth and development in technological terms to the world. As a result of this, unparalleled advancements have been achieved in all spheres of life.

We have seen computers changing the world’s outlook with the advent of the internet; we have seen missions to space to conduct indispensable experiments aimed at solving the world’s problems in a broad range of fields such as medicine, and so on.

Communication for example, is so easy that discussing business with somebody in New York takes a matter of seconds. Only fifty years ago those who predicted this were laughed at and seen as mad dreamers, well we know today they were oh so right.

While we marvel at the virtues of technological development, the reality though is that Africa is unfortunately and gradually being left behind by the advancing wave of this development.

In Nigeria, for example, scientists, technologists and engineers are not venturing into the academic ranks while key researchers in these areas are expected to retire in no time. To put this into perspective, let us take a look at the following statistics: corporate bodies in South Africa spends 0.7% of GDP on Research and Development in 2005. In the EU expenditure is at 2%; 2.8% in the USA and 3% in Japan (http://europa.eu.int/en/record/white/c93700/ch4_1.html).

The number of researchers per 1000 of the working population is 0.00 (Nigeria); 0.71 (South Africa); 4.84 (Australia); 0.3 (Malaysia); 2.77 (South Korea). In the developed world there are 4 out of every 1 000 of the working population in the EU; 8 in the USA and 9 in Japan. The question then is what should Nigeria do to boost its technological research and development strategies?

In line with the recent Federal government reform programmes of encouraging private sector-led economy, it is indisputable that this trend can only be reversed by a government policy or initiative which will compel Nigerian Public Limited Companies to set aside a certain percentage of the annual profits to fund research and development programmes in our universities. This fund should be allowable for tax purposes.

At the end of the day, it is the larger society, including these companies that will reap the benefits which will accrue in the following forms:

Tax holidays; since corporate spending on research and developments are usually allowed for tax purposes.

Growth of the Nigerian economy as new products and processes that can be adapted to our peculiar environment will be developed.

As a result of home-developed products and processes, scarce foreign exchange spent on acquiring foreign technologies will be saved.

Our universities will be the major beneficiary as the best brains in the world will be attracted to, and retained by our schools.

To the companies, research and development spendings is an investment and they reap bountifully when developed products are successfully marketed.

As the Government has recorded some level of success in the administration of the annual proceed of the 2% education tax levied on companies, I am sure that a similar initiative on research and development will power our drive for growth and development.
Privately-funded research is more efficient

Findings in the USA has shown that privately-funded research is more effecient than Government-funded research. An often-quoted example used to illustrate the difference in efficiency between government-funded and privately funded research projects is the quest of mapping the human genome.

The U.S. government was funding such a mission, called the Human Genome Project, while at the same time the quest was being pursued separately with private venture capital by Celera Genomics. Celera Genomics used a newer, albeit riskier technique and proceeded at a faster pace and at a fraction of the cost of the tax-funded project (approximately $3 billion of taxpayer dollars versus about $300 million of private funding). Some Human Genome Project researchers claimed Celera’s method of genome sequencing “would not work,” however that project eventually adopted some of Celera’s methods.

It is indisputable that this trend can be reversed in this great continent if we invest in focused research and technological developmental strategies. Such (research and technological development) has the potential to bring growth to (not only Nigeria, but) Africa’s economy, decrease unemployment levels and strengthen its competitiveness to the rest of the world. This can only be achieved if there is cooperation between governments, industry and universities.

Fortunately, there is a general recognition of this, for example in South Africa, President Mbeki has suggested that “…we have to exert maximum effort to train the necessary numbers of our people in all the fields required for the development, running and management of modern economies. This again must be a national effort in which we should consider the necessary expenditures not as a cost but as an investment in our future” (S.A.’s National Research and Development Strategy, 2002).

Further, he pointed out “… we have to ensure that as many of our people as possible master modern technologies and integrate them in their social activities, including education, delivery of services and economic activity. This relates in particular to communication and information technology.”

To accomplish these it is necessary that government and industry should work in unison with universities in ensuring that essential funding and support are provided.

Clearly, well trained effective scientists, engineers and technologists could effectively be produced by universities in this region. This however, requires that universities collaborate in many spheres. For example, sharing resources (equipment and faculty); avoiding duplication which may be a source of unnecessary competition, and so on.

A number of factors need to be considered though. Government and industry need to invest meaningfully in what universities are engaged in. Clearly defined national goals that spell out each component’s (Government, Industry and Universities) role in the attainment of technological advancement have to be drawn. With obstacles such as these taken care of, it will be much easier for universities to structure collaborative strategies to ensure technological development in Nigeria, and Africa as a whole.

It is important therefore that universities in this region should be provided with a conducive environment in which to operate.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

From this discourse, the following are the salient points to be noted:
the quality of our education has been seriously battered through the admission of poor materials;
the question of the performance or non-performance of JAMB is just one aspect of the myriad of problems confronting our education system;

the quality of the products of our secondary school students seeking admission and/or admitted to our universities is very low;

there is the imperative need to address quickly and decisively our education system from primary level to tertiary level; the entire education curriculum in elementary and secondary schools must be revisited, improved upon in line with modern trends and reality of our time;

formal training of teachers should be emphasised particularly for elementary and secondary schools; higher school certificate awarding institutions (basic studies) should be revived while emphasis should henceforth be on direct entry to universities through possession of HSC thereby obviating the need to take JAMB examination.

Salaries and emoluments of teachers, lecturers and professors should be enhanced for optimal performance.

Discipline should not only be observed but enforced in all ramifications;
the trend all over the world, including USA, England, China, Japan, Australia is to allow universities to charge fees while government continues to provide a percentage of the university expenses;
the question of funding has to be addressed frankly and honestly without any iota of sentiments, political or otherwise;

We would be deceiving ourselves and inflicting an avoidable havoc on our educational system should we believe that government can do and should fund all the expenses of our federal and state universities;

The practice all over the world is now co-operative funding involving all organs an stakeholders;
students with exceptional academic performances whether from rich or poor homes are entitled to full scholarship;

the children of the poor should not be denied university education. They are entitled to one form of assistance or the other including free tuition, bursary, scholarship or loan as is practised in civilised countries.

fees payable should be graduated. In other words, the parents of rich students should pay full university fees, students from average homes would pay less while students with poor background should not pay fees;
alumni and endowment and contributions from big companies should play more prominent role as practised in civilised countries;

SUGGESTIONS

My humble suggestion is that the Honourable Minister should invite each university including Alumni and Parents, Teachers Association (PTA) to submit papers on Education reform to a Committee of stakeholders appointed by her. Our university should immediately set up a committee to draft proposals to be submitted to the Honourable Minister.
Some of the areas crying for reform, which should be addressed, include:

Primary and secondary schools curriculum;
training of teachers;

The need for re-introduction of Higher School Certificate (HSC)/A levels;

HSC as direct entry for admission;

Amendment outright proscription of JAMB law;

Amendment of University Act;

Strikes;

Education as essential service;

Co-operative funding of universities;

Independence of private universities and issue of standard;

Government in conjunction with other stakeholders should consider the idea of a 10-year development plan

Funding of the university system should be liberalised with corporate bodies and parents playing more important roles.

Education Tax fund Act should be amended by compelling corporate bodies to fund research and development work in our universities.

APPENDIX 1:

Higher Education Funding Council for England summary of 2006-07 grant tables

APPENDIX 2:

http://www.webometrics.info/top100_continent.asp?cont=africa

APPENDIX 1

Higher Education Funding Council for England summary of 2006-07 grant tables

Thank you for your attention

By Larry Jones-Esan - Director of Studies

London Academy for Higher Education

The first set of philosophers that could be said to have anticipated determinism were the Ancient Greek atomists Leucippus and Democritus. Socrates and Plato in their theory of immortality of the soul also advocated it. According to Leucippus and Democritus, all processes in the world were due to the mechanical interplay of atoms. This theory was not so much supported in their time. Socrates through his disciple, Plato theorized with the myth of Er, the son of Odysseus that an individual soul chooses his destiny at the pre-embodied state.

The concept of Ayanmo (destiny or fate) a popular belief among the Yoruba speaking people in the sub-sahara Africa is strikingly parallel to the foregoing Western conception of desterminism. Roughly speaking, the myth of Ayanmo translates ori-inu (inner head) which is the unconscious element in the human body that explains the choice of whatever a person becomes. In some respect, ayanmo/ori concept seems to picture Freudian ‘unconscious’.
Both the Western and African conceptions of determinism as we shall see in this paper concur that the principal consequence of determinism is the entailment that all future events have already been determined and will necessarily happen.

It can also be argued that both cultures associate determinism with, and rely upon, the ideas of materialism and causality.
Unfortunately, the two belief system about determinism is fundamentally vitiated by a seeming contradiction that man is a responsible moral agent. The concepts of punishment and moral responsibility are natural to man. Man naturally desires freedom to choose by preference. Added to this is the fact that intelligence sets man apart from animals and robots. This very point makes the concept of determinism to suffer some internal tension as man’s existential significance sounds contradictory to the Western and African assumptions of determinism.

Worse still is the African, particularly, the Yoruba strong conviction that sacrifice can alter or obviate the choice of one’s destiny (Gbadebo Dosumu, 1949). These problems almost reduce the concept of determinism to mere absurdity, thereby making it indeterminable. These problems form the thrust of this paper.

Determinism In Western and African Thought
The idea that man and in fact the entire universe is a deterministic system has been espoused in both Western and African thought system. The theory of atomism traceable to Leucippus and Democritus (Russell, 1975, pp 82ff) and in fact, as later expounded by Newtonian physics depicts that the physical matter of the universe operate in fixed, knowable laws. Indeed, man and the entire universe obey the cosmic law of flux and are subject to laws external to them or outside their control. The atoms constitute the smallest particles that form the constituents of any solid body.

According to Leucippus (Russell, p. 87), the full solid or body or matter requires emptiness in order to safeguard movement and multiplicity. Solid bodies fill the vacuum through a mechanical movement outside their control. The atoms that constitute matters are called ‘forms’, ‘natures’, ‘beings’ or the “un-cuttables”. These entities (atoms) have the Eleatic properties of eternity (in time), infinity of number, indestructibility and non-generability in their relation to the qualities, to which they are effectively not susceptible. Man is nothing but a mass of atoms.

In reality, the atomists opine that everything is atoms. Nature itself is merely a perennial and causal play of atoms. The basis of the teaching of Leucippus and Democritus is the deterministic principle that “nothing happens without reason, but everything happens through a reason of necessity and the principle of universal causality” (D. Composta, 1998, p. 87). The earth rests at the center of the universe and does not fall because it is causally and necessarily so determined. Russell (1975, p. 83) sums up the atomists’ argument in the following words:
“… everything is composed of atoms, which are physically, but not geometrically, indivisible; that between the atoms there is empty space; that atoms are indestructible; that they always have been, and always will be, in motion … and their movements are determined outside them”
What we can infer from the foregoing is that the movement of atoms and any matter (Emphasis mine) are determined as they float in motion unconsciously without the ability to control their own movement. This explains man’s action too, since man is an aggregate of atomic particles, his behaviour and actions are not subject to his own personal determination, whims and caprices.

From another perspective, Socrates, a contemporary of Leucippus and Democritus also taught through Plato that the soul of man makes unconscious choice in the pre-existence, at the disembodied state before birth. This thesis is the central theme of his theory of “immortality of the soul”. In many of his Dialogues (Gorgias, Phaedrus, Phaedo) Plato elucidates the destiny of the soul before and after death. Plato’s myth of Er, the son of Odysseus or Armenius explains the procedure through which man’s existence or what he would become is determined by the choice he makes for his next cycle of life. Er died in a battle but his body did not decay several days after his death. His soul sojourned to the supersensible realm where he was made to see how the cycle of life of man is determined by the activities of the three daughters of Necessity, namely, Lauchesis, Clotho and Atropos. Because of its relevance what Er witnessed can be better explained in the words of Plato as follows:

Er saw the soul that had been Orpheus, selecting the life of a swan, because from hatred of the tribe of women, owing to his death at their hands, it was unwilling to be conceived and born of a woman. He saw the soul of Thamyras choosing the life of a nightingale, and he saw a swan changing to the choice of the life of man, and similarly other musical animals. The soul that drew the twentieth lot choose the life of a lion; it was the soul of Ajax, the son of Telemia, which, because it remembered the adjudication of the arms of Achilles, was unwilling to become a man, the next, the soul of Agamemnon, likewise from hatred of the human race because of its sufferings, substituted the life of an eagle. Drawing one of the middle lots the soul of Atlanta caught sight of the great honours attached to an athlete’s life and could not pass them by but snatched at them.

After her, he said, lie the soul of Epeus, the son of Panopeus, entering into the nature of an arts and crafts woman. Far off in the rear he saw the soul of the buffoon Thersites clothing itself in the body of an ape. And it fell out that the soul of Odysseus drew the last lot of all and came to make its choice, and from memory of its former toils having flung away ambition, went about for a long time in quest of the life of an ordinary citizen who minded his own business, and with difficulty found it lying in some corner disregarded by the others… and in like manner, the unjust into wild creatures, the just transformed to tame, and there was every kind of mixture and combination.” (Plato, 1964, Bk x).

The passage adds that after making a choice, an individual soul is made to drink from the water of forgetfulness. This is to zeal or prevent man from knowing what has been determined for him by the lot he has chosen.
Essentially, Plato’s theory attributes the choice of human action to his own choice of the lot or luck that had already been determined for him. In that wise, man is free to choose yet, his existence has already been determined by the choice of his lot; implying that man’s lot or choice of what he becomes in the next life stands outside him because he cannot in anyway influence the lot that had already been decided for him.

It seems difficult to reconcile the sentence: ‘man is free to choose from any lot’ and the entailment: the lot of a man determines whatever he will become in life. Since man is ignorant of the content of his lot, then man does not operate within the modicum of free-choice, meaning that ‘man’ is not a party to his own destiny since it has been determined for him.
Closely related to the Western thought is the Yoruba myth of Ayanmo/Akunleyan determinism, a myth that is usually associated with a verse of the Odu-Ifa literature among the Yoruba. Ipin (allotment) translates Ayanmo or destiny in Yoruba thought. Ayanmo concept derives from Odu, Ika-Ofun. This has been published by Gbadebo Dosumu. As reported by Olufemi Morakinyo (1983, p. 69), I quote this verse of Odu:

Akunleyan eda
Oun ladayeba;
A d’aye tan, oju nkan gbogbo wa
Sugbon eda na ko see pada lo yan omiran;
A fi etutu lo ku.
What was choosen kneeling down,
Is what we find on arrival in this world,
On arrival in this world, we become too impatient,
(too much in a hurry to achieve our potentials)
But it is impossible to go back and choose another;
To prevent deterioration of things is the only course of action left.

This verse explains the act of choice by man of his own “ori” which is necessitated by bending or kneeling down. The choice of ‘ori’ that is made at this point is significant for an individual’s choice of later life. It also explains that once a choice has been made, it becomes irrevocable. As earlier published by Wande Abimbola (1975, pp. 178 – 207), the myth of Ayanmo like the myth of “Eri” argues that before coming to this life (aye) from heaven (orun) an individual has the privilege of choosing an “ori” from the store-house of Ajala, an appointed servant of Olodumare (God) who is sadled with the responsibility of building “ori”. No individual is competent to know the content of “ori” he has choosen. It is Ajala, a senior orisa (deity) who knows all and he moulds ori daily as that is his main assignment. It is evident from the myth of Ayanmo/ “ipin” that the choice of an individual’s ori plays critical role in the series of events in each person’s life.

The following features seem to be common to both the Western and African conception of determinism, albeit: that the foundation for many of the events that would occur in an individual life has already been laid before him; that an individual is responsible for the choice of his own destiny and once a choice has been made, it is irrevocably zealed. It is pertinent to ask at this juncture – is man a free moral agent? Since his actions have been determined can it be said that man is a responsible being? If man is not responsible for his actions, what is the relevance of the concept of ‘responsibility’, ‘punishment’ and ‘reward’? Such questions would continue to swell if we consider the implications of the concept of determinism in both Western and African thought as espoused in this paper. However, of more challenging and indeterminable is the puzzle of determining determinism within the context of the very nature of man.

Naturally, certain traits of man makes the very concept of determinism preposterous and absurd. Without recourse to the theory of ‘free-will’ or ‘incompatibilism’, ‘man’ seems to be naturally endowed with freedom in his nature as an intelligent existent. To have such natural capacity is to act freely and to have what it takes to act freely. Consequently, what a man does is up to himself. He has a plurality of alternatives and he determines which course of action to pursue. If this argument holds, then, determinism in whatever version is false as it contradicts the very essence of man. The danger of emphasizing determinism in any thought system is a repudiation of chance events and of course, indeterminism. The determinists’ argument is strictly that everything has a cause, and something happening uncaused to them is impossible. My claim boils down to this fact, namely, if the future was imbedded in the past, no new information would be introduced into the world and man would not be classified as being capable of any creative or imaginative thought.

As a matter of fact, the discovery of Edward Lorenz (1961) of the theory of ‘chaos’ and ‘probability’ serves as a logical polemic against Newtonian physics in considering the behaviour of atomic systems. In what follows, I consider it relevant to assess determinism from the point of the theory of ‘chaos’ and ‘probability’.

Determinism, Chaos and Probability
The word ‘chaos’ according to Houghton (Houghton, 1994, p. 77) is used as a technical term to describe a system whose behaviour is extremely “dependent on the initial conditions from which the system started – so dependent in fact, that after a short time it becomes essentially unpredictable. The point Houghton seems to make by his claim can better be understood by the illustration with a ‘simple pendulum’. For example, for a bob swinging around in a circle at the end of a string, the frequency of a natural oscillation (the frequency with which the bob swings when allow to swing freely) is given by a simple expression, namely, that the behaviour of the pendulum is regular and predictable and not dependent on the precise way the driving force is applied. But at other periods close to resonance (when the forcing frequency equals the natural frequency of oscillation), the pedullum behaves in a chaotic way; it is then extremely sensitive to minute variations in the driving force.

Suppose that at some stage of the motion very precise details are available of the motion of the bob and the forcing motion, can the bob subsequent motion be predicted? To begin with, there would be good correspondence between predictability and observation. But as time goes on, the predictability and the observation will diverge, the time before substantial divergence occurs being called the predictability horizon. If the initial conditions are more accurately defined, the predictability horizon will move away. Roughly speaking, the predictability horizon increases proportionally to the number of decimal places in the definition of the initial conditions.
It is instructive to note here that the foregoing allusion to the theory of chaos has serious implications for determinism, particularly, Newtonian determinism. If quantum mechanics is also included in our description of events, as soon as the specification of the initial conditions required for prediction involves details, say, of the movement of individual electrons, the Heisenberg (1989, p. 220) ‘uncertainty principle’ becomes relevant. We come up against an inability not only in practice but in principle to specify with adequate precision the initial conditions. This means that prediction of the future behaviour of very many large scale systems, even for a relatively short time ahead, also becomes impossible in principle.

In sum, it has been argued that chaos and probability play a large part in our modern scientific description, be it in physics or biology, and our daily lives are filled with chance occurrences. We are bombarded with statistics about the probabilities of being born with various defects, of particular sorts of crimes, of death from various causes and so forth. In fact, Richard Dawkins’ hunch strengthens the above claim that chance processes have provided a firm basis for Darwinian evolution (Dawkins, 1986, p. 78). In a similar vein, Donald Mackay (1978, pp 110 – 117) and Arthur Peacocks (1979, pp. 74 – 79) submit that chance and probability, although properly part of a scientific description, are not causes of events any more than any other scientific descriptions or laws can be said to have causal properties. Chaos too does not make things happen.

It can be safely concluded that the scientist’s capacity to predict the future is very much more limited than we think.
The theory of chaos, I consider to be a reasonable interpolation to our discussion of the indeterminacy of determinism as the theory provides a mechanism that allows for free will within a world seems to be governed by deterministic laws. Thus, inherent in determinism itself is freedom that cannot be detarched from it. And more importantly, it can be said that there are events which do not correspond with determinism and therefore have no cause. The point is in contradistinction to the determinist’s assumption that every event, including human cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences since no mysterious miracles or wholly random events occur. But this is not the case. Taken at face value, determinism is saying that man is an irresponsible moral agent.

Conclusion
Among philosophers and psychologists even across cultures, determinism is a re-current topic and has faced a spate of criticisms. Debates about this subject-matter will remain open-ended. It is expedient to add that indeterminism is a fundamental quality of nature. As the existentialist philosophers would argue, man finds himself thrown into this world, and throughout his life, is nothing else but what he makes of himself. As his destiny lies in his hands, he is free to live his life in whatever way he chooses (Satre, J. P. 1948). This very nature of man is incompatible with the central teaching of determinism, whatever its form. Therefore, Western and African conceptions of determinism is beset by the problem of reconciling the nature and essence of man with the central theme of determinism.
References

Abimbola, W., Ifa, An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus, Ibadan O. U. . 1976.
Composta, D. History of Ancient Philosophy, Urbania University Press, Vatican, Italy, 1988.

Dawkins, R. The Blind Watchmaker, Longman, London, 1986.

Dosunmu, G. (C. 1949) Typescript, n. d.

Gleick, J., Chaos Heinemann, London, 1988.
Houghton, J. Global Warning: The Complete Briefing, Lion Publishing, London, 1994.

Lozenz, E. N. The Essence of Chaos, University of Washington Press, 1993.
Mackay, D. Science, Chance and Providence, Oxford University Press, London, 1978.

Makinde, M. A. “Immortality of The Soul and The Yoruba Theory of Seven Heavens” in Journal of Cultures and Ideas, Vol. 1., No. 1., Dec. 1983.
Morakinyo, O. A. Methodological Consideration of Cross-Cultural Research: The Problems and Implications of Ethnographic Translation (African J. Behav. Sc. 1:P 41 – 49.

Plato, The Republic, Book x. See also F. M. Conford: The Republic of Plato, New York, Oxford University Press, 1966.

Russell, B. History of Western Philosophy, George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1975.
Satre, J. P. Existentialism and Humanism (Translated with Introduction by Philip Mairet) London, Methuen Ltd., 1978, First Published in English in 1948.
Tritton, D. “Chaos in The Swing of Pendulum” in New Scientists, Lion Publ., London, 1986.

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