A few hours ago, I’d suggested merging some federal universities in Nigeria to reduce administrative cost on the construct that Nigeria does not have the financial capacity to inject more funds beyond what it currently offers. In my thesis, the Big Merge is a way out unless we want to ask students to pay. Unfortunately, I still vote for  education subsidy  as that is the only thing the poor citizens get from the nation. If you remove subsidies, economic mobility will dry up as not many families can afford to send their kids to universities.

So if the public schools cannot increase tuition, what can we do? Follow the University of California system as I have noted. I visited Rwanda from Carnegie Mellon University. I met the minister of education. Rwanda was setting up University of Rwanda (UR) which was a university after the country merged about seven universities/institutes including the National University of Rwanda. Prof Ogwu was the rector of Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST); I met Prof Ogwu when he was a professor in University of Paisley (Scotland); Ifeoma, my wife, studied in his school. Today, another Nigerian Prof Egiebor is the vice chancellor of UR; he was in my master’s degree committee at Tuskegee University. Most of the players around this are Nigerians!

Where am I going? Rwanda has tapped some Nigerians to fix its educational system. Yes, the strategic execution has many Nigerian elements. And the results are amazing even at the pre-university level. In Rwanda today, many private schools are struggling as parents pull their kids out of expensive private primary and secondary schools since the public ones are just as good. If that is the case, why waste money?

ASUU and the Nigerian government know what to do. But they are playing games. We can increase enrollment by 20% while cutting administrative costs by close to 37%. Of course, how do you expect professors to go LEAN when the national assembly/presidency remains FAT?  That is the reason you cannot merge some federal universities to reduce administrative costs!

In Southeast, FUTO can be the engineering campus for UNN with no Vice Chancellor, pro chancellor, etc but just a Dean or provost. The Fed Agriculture Umudike becomes the Agric School of UNN. Like in the California system which Rwanda copied, you end up having just two vice chancellors who will run all the federal universities in SE. You save costs on cars, housing, etc and those will go into real learning. Interestingly, like in the California system, you increase enrollment. Think about it, if Amazon has one CFO (chief financial officer) to serve more than 1 million workers, why should each university have a bursar when 1-2 can handle per geopolitical region?

Beyond Replacing ASUU with CONUA, Fixing Nigeria’s University System Must Follow This Path

The 1% sees the world as a playground. Elon Musk is having his moment. He makes transactions involving billions of US dollars seem like nkwobi payments at Peoples Club of Aba. They did not want him. Then, they wanted him. He ran out and now he is back. Let me note that by the time he is done with Twitter, all the sellers will feel bad: “He told investors before he changed his mind on the deal, that by 2025, he could move the company to 500 million daily users, generating $13.2 billion in revenue.” 

Yes, who remembers that he was fined for bragging about  finding buyers for Tesla at a valuation of $70 billion. In just a few years, he took that business to $1 trillion. Today, those “buyers”  would be wishing they actually bought Tesla at  $70 billion.

But Twitter is not Tesla – and that is a big problem Mr Musk must deal with. This is a product which has many enemies and fans. When he wanted to buy, some politicians went after him. He abandoned the idea, and lawyers went after him. 

The good news is that Twitter has a strong moat and cannot easily be disintermediated. But how to make money from it will require Musk-level transformation. I have abandoned my account because Twitter is a very challenging product to use. But Musk can ELONgate that product vision and make it easier for more people to use.

Elon Musk and Twitter tussle over the acquisition of the social media platform took a new turn on Monday evening, after the Tesla CEO said he would proceed with the deal at the original price of $54.20, potentially avoiding going into a legal battle.

The new deal proposed by Musk, which was first reported by Bloomberg, would allow him to honor the original agreement it had with Twitter in April, according to people familiar with the development who spoke in anonymity. In a tweet on Tuesday evening, he said buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app – a hint that he is proceeding with the deal.