At Tekedia Institute, we admire those doing amazing things. Joshua Chukwu is a teacher in Ogun State, Nigeria, where he works to educate the next generation of our continent. Joshua received a full scholarship from the Institute, and is sharing a capstone, a critical part of his learning, with the public. His work is titled “The Impact of Covid-19 On Rural Education in Nigeria: The Role of Private Sectors”. You can download it here. 

CONCLUSION:

The covid’19 pandemic has revealed the dearth in Nigeria’s education system, most especially rural education. Children in rural education account for over 60% of the school children in Nigeria. If education at the grass root is not given maximum attention it becomes difficult for any developmental strides to be recorded. The role of private sectors in making up for the lapse of government and ensuring that children in low-income communities continue to learn cannot be overemphasized. The private sectors through various NGOs continue to do so much for rural education in Nigeria. More private sectors need to come on board and join in providing support for children in low-income communities to continue to learn.

Capstones are like university themed final year projects’ within Tekedia Mini-MBA but delivered via our Certificate program. Most times, members work on company related assignments with guidance from our Faculty. 

Many companies including Symplifix have turned their capstones into ventures, raising millions of naira in the process. One is an assistant to the governor of Anambra state. It is a powerful tool: you take time, think over the business, and design a framework based on all that you have learnt, to advance the company. Then send it to your boss; promotions follow, most times!

Congrats Joshua, and thanks for approving for it to be shared publicly. Teachers always share!

Good People, just a note that Tekedia Institute General Scholarship Fund continues to do well. At the moment, we are directing general scholarships to professionals working in orphanages, NGOs serving those with physical challenges and teachers (pre-K, primary and secondary) in rural parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Just ask your principal or head of the NGO to write our team. Our team will do some verifications.

(For private scholarships, they are directed based on donors’ instructions.)

I want to thank the donors including the person who wired N400,000 this morning with instruction “anonymous”. We copied loud and clear. Take this as our Thank You since we cannot even write to you.

Meanwhile, registration continues for Tekedia Mini-MBA (Feb 8 – May 3, 2021): online, self-paced, $140 (or N50,000 naira). Click and register by tomorrow for early benefits.

War is evil and do not pray for it for your enemy. As I continue reading New York Times archives to understand Nigeria in the 1960s, I see pictures that push me to ask “What happened to Nigeria? How did we miss it as a nation?” You read of bravery and uncommon creativity. Stories of the palm oil, rubber, etc yield-improving innovations.

On Biafra war, the story of how a recruiter would go to workshops, recruit young men and put them in weapons development programs, and within months those men will create extremely sophisticated tools for warfare will put a chill. In most cases, none of the men had entered a secondary school as it was a luxury then.

They used pencils and created maps with young people, usually below 23, leading ambushes, carrying the mortar, trekking miles from the factory to installation! The women used local herbs to make food last longer before spoiling!

They innovated on silos, irrigation, etc, building better ways to preserve groundnuts. The kola nuts and cocoa flourished. They created local vaccines, etc. Practically, Nigeria was like the America we admire today.

What happened? Where are the children of these Nigerians? Did crude oil take our brains?

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I was in a hotel in Kampala fourteen months ago. I saw his picture with the inscription General Yoweri Museveni. Yes, the Ugandan President is also a general! They said he has “won” the recent presidential election, and will keep an office he assumed in January 1986. While you may be offended by that outcome in the age of Facebook, remember that Paul Biya of Cameroon has been in the presidential palace since 1982. Paul Kagame of Rwanda is also there, since April 2000.

Those things do not look right. But look deeper. The fact is this: in a world that is becoming more democratic, it is easier to have such outliers, simply because no military general will dream of a coup as it is certain that the world will reject it. So, the only playbook is this: do a jamboree of an election, and with that hold on to power.  The United Nations will issue its press release. The AU, US, EU, etc will do their versions. And after 7 days, the world moves on. You keep the palace.

That was what happened in the United States before Twitter and Big Tech decided to “act” government and “regulators” by banning politicians, disconnecting corrosive websites, etc. Largely, in a world which is attaining a steady state of liberal democracy*, the orthodox democratic institutions are evidently unable to deal with outliers. U.S. institutions struggled to manage Trump’s statements because they were not designed for outliers like Donald J Trump. 

Likewise, African Union, UN, etc, cannot change the course of Uganda because they are not designed for such. That explains why Museveni, Biya and Kagame will continue to hold power, since from all angles they are running democratic states, and the institutions have no processes to curtail their ambitions.

Bobi Wine lost before the voting; he simply provided a cover for the “democratic” dictator to continue his records.  His country will need a “Twitter effect” to normalize the equilibrium. If not, another player will continue and juice the party for Museveni. Interestingly, the Twitter Effect may not come from governments!

*This is what Liberal Democracy means which some of these countries may claim they are practicing as there are elections in the process.

 It is characterised by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, a market economy with private property, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people. To define the system in practice, liberal democracies often draw upon a constitution, either codified (such as in the United States) or uncodified (such as in the United Kingdom), to delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social contract. After a period of sustained expansion throughout the 20th century, liberal democracy became the predominant political system in the world (wikipedia)