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This is the transcript of a post written for The ScoopNG. Read the original post here.

As I make my ten-minute walk to work every morning, I usually pass by a couple of kids en route to school. Nothing particularly horrifying about a bunch of kids walking to school though. Except that some of these ones I pass by juggle various contraptions like stools and chairs along with their school bags.

The first time I noticed it, I quickly assumed that there was some sort of event at their school. Or that it was probably Arts and Crafts Day at school. Then I saw a repeat of the same scenario the next day. When it became apparent that it was a routine event, I decided to go and check out the school with my friend on our way back from work.

The school wasn’t far off – only a street away. The site was humbling and depressing.

Buildings in various stages of completion (and varying degrees of quick retrogression) sprawled across a dusty and forlorn landscape passed off as the citadel of learning for these kids. There are no chairs for the pupils to seat on and there are no black (or any other type) boards in the class rooms. The rooms offer almost no protection from the elements and grossly fall short as a place fit for disseminating and assimilating knowledge.

One thing was plain: these pupils didn’t stand any chance at getting the required level of education to make them stand out in life. If that doesn’t startle you just yet, maybe this next bit would help put things in perspective: the location in question is not a village; it’s a capital city — Abakiliki, the Ebonyi state capital.

A few weeks ago, the Good Governance team led by the Minister of Information, Mr. Labaran Maku, visited this city and conducted scheduled tours of various government establishments, while commissioning a few projects with a view to assessing the score card of the present government administration in the state. Preparations to receive the minister were top notch stuff.

Two days before the team was scheduled to visit my company, a flat screen TV appeared in the lobby, faulty ACs were fixed, the sidewalk was painted and polishing was done on various areas in a bid to impress. Dancers were hired and a reception party was thrown to receive the team.

While the fanfare lasted, I couldn’t keep my mind from those school kids – most of them sitting on dirty floors in a dingy, unkempt room that passed off as their classrooms. They were only about 1000 yards away and their plight wasn’t even going to be factored into the parameters used to assess the government saddled with the responsibility of ensuring they had befitting schools to attend.

The ritual involved in assessing a government’s administration without factoring in the input/opinions of the governed is practically a charade at best. This is not to say we shouldn’t have such a thing as a tour of the States by a set aside Good Governance team. Just that there ought to be a mechanism in place to check how well the projects embarked upon by various state governments affect their citizens. It should be much more than the perfunctory commissioning of facilities/projects and the luncheons. There’s got to be a way to get feelers from the people on how well the government is impacting their lives.

When teachers grade students in school, they don’t just grade them on their favourite subjects but on the entire work load for the session. And no matter how great a student fares in their favourite subjects, they don’t get to move to the next level if they lose points on the other required subjects.

Maybe the Good Governance team could do one better by also having to check, besides the projects brought to its attention, that other vital amenities/services are being taken care of by the governments they’re assessing.

After the scheduled tour of my company was done, the Minister and his team left and headed right on to the next state on the schedule. Obviously, the assessment of the government of this state would be nothing short of a pass mark. As I walked the path back home later that day I saw a couple of school kids returning from school. I couldn’t help but think that they’d been ripped off and that they, along with the many other citizens of their state who don’t get a fair deal from their government, would never be heard.

This is the transcript for a post written for The ScoopNG. Read the original post here.

Tuesday morning, December 23, 2008, was like any other morning. Ezeugo* was preparing to have breakfast before heading out to work. He had heated some water and made tea. He planned to take it with the bread he’d brought with him the previous day from Owerri, Imo State, his home town, to Afikpo, Ebonyi state where he resided and ran a shop.

On observation, he discovered that the seal of the bread had been broken and it seemed like some rodent had managed to pilfer some crumbs off of the loaf. He did what the average Nigerian would do: he chopped off the parts nearest to the area the rodent had bitten off and proceeded to have his breakfast. After that he went out to work. It was holiday season and business was good.

At dusk on Christmas day, after sufficient partying and merry making, he headed home to rest. That’s when he noticed his body temperature had started to rise and that he felt rather exhausted. He figured it could be either one of two things: he either was fatigued from all the ensuing stress of the holiday season or he was coming up with malaria fever. The fever was more likely, he thought. He proceeded to purchase Paracetamol from the Pharmacy down the street to help relieve him. He wasn’t better by the next morning; he was weaker and hotter. That’s when he proceeded to the nearby clinic. Two nurses tended to him and, when his condition continued to deteriorate quickly, they referred him to the General Hospital, Afikpo. The General Hospital was being manned at the time by a doctor undergoing his National Youth Service.

The moment Ezeugo entered the General Hospital and the doctor took one quick look at him, he knew whatever it was that ailed this patient, the hospital didn’t have the required personnel and/or equipments to handle it. He had a hunch it was something more sinister than malaria fever and thus dispatched him to the General Hospital, Abakaliki, where he was certain the patient would get better care.

At the General Hospital, Abakaliki, Ezeugo was admitted and his attending physician administered treatments to help keep him stable. Nobody knew what it was exactly that ailed him. Some very bad strain of fever was at the top of the guess list though.

A few days later, while Ezeugo was fighting to cling on to life, his doctor started to get sick. Another doctor had to pitch in to watch over them both. Not long after that, the second doctor got sick too. Because the patient was the priority (and probably because doctors are wont to delay their own treatment when they get sick), he got more attention and thus, better treatment. It was after the first attending suddenly died and the second was in the throes of death that it became clear that there was an epidemic in the hospital. Whatever Ezeugo had, it was not a fever they’d handled before. They filed a report to the Federal Ministry of Health (F.M.O.H.), Abuja and asked for help.

When the FMOH team arrived from Abuja, they quickly checked the patient’s charts and proceeded to get an accurate history by doing a back trace through every stop the patient had made enroute to Abakaliki. Shocking discoveries were made during the investigations. The two nurses at the clinic and the Pharmacist Ezeugo had initially contacted at Afikpo had mysteriously passed away.

Meanwhile, Ezeugo had been transferred to The Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital, Irrua, Edo State, where they had a Human Virology centre. Tests revealed that he had Lassa fever and after a series of questioning, the patient revealed the story about the bread he’d eaten. The connection was made: Lassa fever from rat pee. It was a cool diagnosis but one made after two doctors, two nurses and a local pharmacist had paid a steep price.

Lassa fever was first observed in 1969 in the Nigerian town of Lassa in Borno State. Its primary [animal] host is the Natal Multimammate Mouse (Mastomys natalensis), which exists in abundance in most of Sub-Saharan Africa. The rodents are usually hunted and cooked by the locals and serves as a protein source. The virus is usually transmitted via the urine or feces of the animal when they access stored food in peoples’ houses or even in store houses.

According to a statement by the World Health Organization on the prevalence of the disease in Nigeria, “… Person-to-person transmission occurs through direct contact with sick patients in both community and health care settings. Those at greatest risk are those living in rural areas where Mastomys are found. Health care workers are at risk if adequate infection control practices are not maintained.” In the first quarter of 2012 alone, 623 suspected cases, including 70 deaths in 19 of the 36 states were reported by the Nigerian F.M.O.H to the W.H.O. as of March 22. That is nothing short of an epidemic, if you ask me.

The cases are likely to have increased towards the latter part of the year as various states experienced flooding issues. This would have resulted in the mouse in question, along with other animals of course, being displaced. Some would probably have found their way into people’s homes in search of food and shelter thereby increasing the risk of infection for the human occupants.

The diagnosis for Lassa fever isn’t much different from that of the regular malaria fever. The symptoms include diarrhoea, vomiting, cough, headache, sore throat, nausea, etc – very much like the ones associated with malaria fever, (although other more markedly different symptoms occur in some few cases) except that it’ll refuse to be tamed by the usual drugs that are used to combat malaria. Many doctors are likely to miss it – and that fact isn’t as much a slight on their competence as it is on the general awareness level regarding the infection. The most efficient way to combat the disease at the moment is early administration of the Ribavarin injection or tablets. The drug is relatively expensive and not readily accessible.

The problem with Lassa is that you can hardly do anything about the pathogen carrier (eliminating the rats is practically impossible). And unlike aids, the slightest contact with an infected person increases your chances of contracting it, as the virus is present in all body fluids.

The F.M.O.H. is currently carrying out an awareness campaign regarding an outbreak of the disease and is supplying Ribavarin drugs and injections to the General Hospitals across the states. However, the problem of relative ignorance still persists in rural communities where the risk factors are higher. The awareness campaign has to be intensified and taken deep into the hinterlands as most of our foods are cultivated, stored and comes from there. Let’s say, for example, an infected bag of garri is bought at Oba Market in Benin, Edo State (which may have come from any village in the state) and transported to Lagos. Okay, you already know where I’m going with this.

If we’re to stem the tide of this epidemic, all hands are going to have to be on deck. People will have to store their foods better, and report immediately to the hospitals for treatment as soon as they notice feverish symptoms, instead of self medicating, as the majority of us are prone to do. The government, through the F.M.O.H., should ensure that efforts are increased to ensure that Ribavarin is supplied to more hospitals and maybe work out a partnership with corporations in the health sector to help leverage on the price of the drug. Most importantly, the awareness campaign is everyone’s responsibility. If you know about the disease and how to prevent it and your neighbor doesn’t, it’s your duty to educate them. It just might save your life.

*name has been changed for confidentiality sake.

This is the transcript for a post written for The ScoopNG. Read the original post here.

If there’s anything the strides taken in the last fifty years as regards stretching the boundaries of innovation by hatching and harnessing creative ideas to make the world a better place has taught us, it is that the orthodox set up – quiet, pristine and adequately equipped laboratories – we’ve built over the centuries to foster such ideas don’t necessarily reserve the prerogative.

In fact, as is increasingly the case in the last decade, garages and dorm rooms are gradually taking the shine off of laboratories and formal institutional ambiences when it comes to harnessing technological ideas. It’s not to say that formal institutions and laboratories are losing their relevance with respect to the reasons for which they were set up; it just means the rules have changed in recent times. Unless, of course, you’re doing stem cell research or working on chemistry/biomedical research for which the rules will most likely never wane. But most of the notable inventions that have shaped the world in recent years all started in the founders’ garage or dorm rooms –places least likely expected to be conducive for such work.

But what is it with garages and dorm rooms that seem to unlock creativity in today’s innovators in spite of the attendant chaos? Is there some link –however subtle or bizarre- between inspiration and disorder?

The structure of science is built on rules. So are its laboratories. There’s a way to act in a lab. There are various etiquette to functioning inside a lab and these rules are rigid. They have to be because they’ve been proven to ensure optimum safety and minimal errors while working inside them. But could it be that the very system on which our labs are based may be a limiting factor in itself with respect to stretching the limits of innovation today?

One thing is certain, though. Today’s innovators are younger, less patient and certainly more eager to circumvent the rules to achieve their results. Speed is an ever increasing variable, and the resilience that used to be associated with sitting at a lab while painstakingly following a sequence of set rules while you work can easily spiral into frustration. In a lab, the rules that ensure safety and due process while anticipating optimum results can also restrict you in that they can keep you from striking out. And a mind that is beleaguered by a constant prompting to not break the rules would barely have the nimbleness required to break into deeper levels of thought. And for minds less susceptible to the parameters of perfection, a pattern of chaos could do much good.

Poets, writers and artists usually talk about having to go to very serene or picturesque sceneries to draw inspiration for their art. We cannot dispute the fact that such places evoke eerie feelings that tend to heighten one’s creative powers. But I think much needs to be said about the insight that can come from observing chaos. Some of the most beautiful concepts can come to you (as has been my case) from taking a ride in a bus, amidst a game, movie or news program, or observing people and proceedings at a party, rally or at church, even.

Our minds keep finding a useful pattern in chaos and use it as springboard for new ideas. But we’re almost always trapped in the pastimes to notice.
All the best ideas have not been hatched. All the coolest concepts haven’t been completely harnessed. And if the world is to benefit from an ever increasing influx of good ideas we have to, while constantly reviewing the systems that make our labs and formal institutions work to ensure a steady outpour of ideas, learn to pay mind to the fickle insight that can seldom ignite from the embers of chaos. Besides, there’s far more people than there are labs to work in. And there aren’t nearly enough readily accessible beatific sceneries to inspire us all.
We may need more garages, it seems. Chaos is useful.

This is the transcript for a post written for The ScoopNG. Read the original post here.

Every summer, when schools go on break, there’s a set of students who don’t go home to have fun and generally try to put anything school-related on the back burner. For them, the onslaught of learning continues, except this time it won’t be in the classrooms. It would be at a company or any other establishment where they’re to supposedly learn how to practically apply some of what they’d been learning in school and also learn useful skills that’ll be relevant after they graduate. This is the Industrial Training part of university education. This is how higher education works. Students gets trained both by the academia and the industry related to their program – a mix that ensures the students garner intrinsic values that becomes useful to them and the country in general.

The role of companies in the training our undergrads has been grossly understated. In fact, their indifference smacks of a case of shooting oneself in the foot. Well-trained graduates usually make for quality employees, and therefore robust, more productive companies. It appears our corporations are rather more willing to play the waiting game. Little wonder why most companies have to retrain their employees for a period after hiring them.

Of course it seems rather more pragmatic to train an employee that you’re certain will serve your company with the skills you gift him with instead of investing that money on a pool of students who may never work for you. This is why companies would rather wait till the students graduate and then hire a handful before training them. But what are the odds that an employee you trained won’t change jobs in the future – taking all that training/experience with them?

Many undergrads today don’t get a wholesome industrial training experience. Some miss out on the experience altogether (because a: they don’t get companies that’ll absorb them, b: they see it as a waste of time and find means to fill their reports anyway). It also has to be said that there are students who find the experience enjoyable and rewarding. We need to work out a way to make the experience more wholesome and rewarding that students (and employers alike) would look towards it with eagerness.

Companies need to take more responsibility for the training of students in preparing them for the realities of work outside of school. It’s not enough to just build laboratories or commission classrooms with your corporate name on the plaque (these are great contributions, no less); there has to be some form of working relationship between the faculty board at our schools and the board over at the companies that will have a bearing upon the development of our students.

What if we had more companies launching programs that will afford students an opportunity to show case intellectual and innovative potential by making them work on projects that buttress the lessons they learn in class? What if companies actually had varying stakes in the school system where they get a chance at poaching some of the best students depending on their various stakes in enhancing learning at a faculty? What if we had actual courses that are taken (at least fortnightly) not by a lecturer but by a company representative? There has to be a way for schools and companies to work out all the modalities for these to be possible.

What if, instead of blithely issuing out letter-headed IT letters, Course Advisers actually went out of their way to recommend students to companies for IT programs? That would probably help bridge the gap for students who’d have probably found it difficult to secure placements.

And corporations need to take IT students more seriously instead of just passing them off as untrained personnel there to take up space. They’d also do better by taking the time to train these students and overcome the rather selfish urge to not do so out of the consideration that they may not gain the students back as their employees. It has to be emphasized that companies aren’t obligated to pay IT students. But they’re obligated to train them. They have to play their part in ensuring a robust and thorough academic process is properly tempered with adequate industrial training. That is how our schools will work to produce the better graduates our country/economy is in dire need of.

This is the transcript of a post written for The ScoopNG. You can read the original post here

Youths obey the clarion call

Let us lift our nation high

Under the sun or the rain

With dedication and selflessness

Nigeria’s ours, Nigeria we serve.

The first time I heard and learned that anthem I was standing on a bare parchment of grass that made up for a field at the epicenter of an otherwise intimidating forest. It was 5 am and it was dark and chilly. The night before had been unpleasant for all two thousand of us standing out there that morning. Many hardly had any sleep. Those who did would admit to having had way better nights.

Standing there that morning, huddling together to fight off the blistering cold and wincing (some of us reacted with subtle disgust) at the barking orders of very eager soldiers, some official was trying to teach us the lines to the anthem. We weren’t exactly brimming with the desire to learn it, apparently.

Given the ambient conditions/scenarios, if I didn’t know any better I’d have assumed we were all doing time at a correctional facility, stripped of any sense of dignity left for us to cling on to. Except that I couldn’t recall the crime. It wasn’t jail. It was the Orientation Course/Camp of the National Youth Service scheme.

Two thousand youths with various college degrees, it was first like the first day at school all over again, only that this time we already suspected we wouldn’t enjoy our stay. It didn’t matter though. We were obeying the clarion call.

No, this is not another story about the NYSC Orientation camp. The stories have already become so over-told to the point they now elicit mythical reverie. The appraisal of the entire scheme so as to ascertain its relevance, purpose and the challenges bedeviling it is far more interesting.

Why NYSC?

The National Youth Service Corps was created in 1973 by President Gowon’s government primarily to foster national unity (especially as the country was in dire need of that after just having ended a blistering civil war) by sending college graduates on a mandatory one-year period of national service at another state/region different from theirs, where they’d be attached to an establishment for that period.

Apparently, it was intended that this cross-pollination would result in people learning about and experiencing other cultures and ethnicities other than their own and therefore engender a sense of kinship propped up on service.

The ideology behind the scheme is cute, albeit puerile, at best, but the failure to holistically factor in many other variables such as how to ensure a vibrant economy, an engaging technology, security and strengthening of the existing parastatals are carefully propped upon the shoulders of these teeming, eager and well “educated” youths – factors that matter just as much as unity to a developing country, more so, one that had just survived a war – makes the logic flawed, I think.

At the inauguration of the scheme, Nigeria’s economy was on stilts and much was wrong with us in many respects. But the timing was almost perfect to rebuild with an influx of graduates who, arguably, were recipients of a better higher educational system than the one in place today. The government of the day was too focused on sending the graduates off on a quest to stamp a sense of unity on our collective conscience that they most likely ignored the purpose (or the core usefulness) of higher education to a nation altogether.

Postings were almost always arbitrary; with less regard for the disciplines the graduates had spent most of their time in college studying (This may also be due to the fact that the ratio of available, proper establishments to graduates was inadequate, to begin with). So, what we had was lots of people getting posted to new territories and stuck with jobs for which they had virtually no interest or training. They were stuck in limbo, career-wise. Of course some people did (and still do) get posted rightly but the margin for error in arbitrary posting is unacceptable.

Because humans are mainly sociable creatures, inter-ethnic interactions (which, though a basis for the much needed unity, isn’t necessarily the same thing as unity) occurred because of the scheme, of course. The only problem was that the aspirations and dreams of a generation of graduates who, if properly harnessed, could have helped build a stronger nation in every respect were made to come second to one of the natural by-product of human interactions: unity.

It would have been better to ensure people got posted to places that would afford them the chance to feed their ambitions, learn, contribute and serve, while at the same time fulfilling the national unity project. We would have been a much better and stronger country for it.

Is NYSC Still Relevant Today?

Along with nearly every fabric of our national life, the NYSC scheme has devolved into an institution so handicapped that it can’t possibly achieve its original purpose. The system is fraught with so much arbitrariness.

The staggering figures of those who attempt to influence their postings are a pointer to the fact that the integrity of the system is largely compromised. The problems of security (in some parts of the country), inadequate welfare of Corp members, etc, are an all too frequent part of the tale of the scheme today.

But it is not totally useless, one could argue. It’s not a perfect system but it serves some purpose. It affords many graduates entry level job opportunities that could pass of as internships, depending on which establishment they get attached to.

The relevance of NYSC is a much debated topic lately. Some have called for it to be scrapped, citing the aforementioned problems and another candid point that it’s been hijacked by corrupt officials out there to enrich themselves.

I don’t think scrapping it is absolutely necessary though. I just think we need to re assess and remodel the entire system to make it more effective. A friend of mine actually suggests that the scheme be made optional so that graduates can either opt to participate or not. Yes, there’d be people who’d be willing to serve while others would botch it. This may help reduce the strain on the system and make for better logistics.

Whatever side of the argument you’re on, one thing’s for sure: The NYSC scheme needs to be addressed and its many issues sorted out. We’re talking about the first year after school in the lives of university graduates here. It could be the difference between having a class of disoriented employees or an ivigorated work force to drive our economy.