Arsenal has parted ways with Coach Unai Emery, the club announced in a statement. But the development has opened a void that the club will not fill in a hurry.

The past five weeks have been the worst in the coaching career of Unai Emery. The Spaniard who left French giant PSG to replace former Arsenal manager, Arsene Wenger, has been under intense pressure to do better.

Arsenal has struggled for years in both domestic and European leagues, a great cause of worry for their passionate fans who yearn for the glorious old days.

Though revered, Arsene Wenger took a bow when it was obvious that his tactics and style weren’t going to deliver the needed result. Emery stepped into the shoes, but they certainly appeared too big for him.

The Gunners have not won any match since the 24th of October, a situation that instigated the #EmeryOut hashtag, and the subsequent booing at the Emirate Stadium following last Saturday’s 2-2 draw with Southampton.

Emery knew his days were numbered, but was hoping for a miracle to save his career. Thursday night’s 2-1 defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt killed whatever was left of his hope. That’s a run of seven games without a win.

Arsenal have only won four of their 13 league games which places them at eight on the table, just below the underdogs, Sheffield United and Burnley.

On Friday morning, Arsenal issued a statement. Speaking on behalf of Arsenal board and our owners Kroenke Sports & Entertainment, Josh Kroenke said:

“Our most sincere thanks go to Unai and his colleague s who were unrelenting in their efforts to get the club back to competing at the level we all expect and demand. We wish Unai and his team nothing but future success.

“The decision has been taken due to results and performances not being at the level required. We have asked Freddie Ljunberg to take responsibility for the first team as interim head coach. We have full confidence in Freddie to take us forward.

“The search for a new head coach is underway and we will make a further announcement when that process is complete.”

Arsenal’s struggle dated back to the days of Wenger, especially the 2016/17 season when they failed to book a spot for the Champions League. It wasn’t something the North London club was proud of, so Emery was hired to change that.

But he didn’t only fail to qualify the Gunners for Champions League, he also failed to bring the Europa League home, the closest Arsenal did get to a major trophy in years. Arsenal lost the Europa League final to London rivals, Chelsea, dashing the hope of millions of fans around the world.

But the search continues for those who will wear the cap. Apart from Ljunberg who has been appointed to coach the club in interim capacity, other names are being mentioned also: Man City coach Pep Guardiola, former Arsenal player Mikel Arteta, and the recently sacked coach of Tottenham Hotspur, Mauricio Pochettino.

The long season beams with uncertainties, and surprises are an integral part of it. Big names no longer guarantee winnings, just as it’s evident with Jose Mourinho and Manchester United.

Great coaches are highly priced, Arsenal is notorious of its close-fistedness, and that keeps Guardiola out of the possible successors. Pochettino has similar trophyless record like Emery, hiring him will make little or no difference.

Arteta has little or no experience to compete with the big fish, though Lampard is an evidence that you can’t rule everyone out. So the search is likely to extend beyond English shores, unless Ljunberg turn things around to convince the fans that he has what it takes to lead the club to the expected result.

Arsenal will be facing Norwich this weekend and that would be Freddie’s first test. If he scales it, and takes on the subsequent games with the same mentality, he may have a chance. If not, Arsenal will have to update the list of its potential coaches to include Nunu Espirito, Allegri, Ancelotti, Rafa Benitez and Eddie Howe.

The hunt for Emery’s successor is as always, a difficult decision, but whoever succeeds him will have a big shoe to step into.

‘’Three million children are out of school in the North of the country but there is not enough funding for schools and teachers. Digital Innovation can help us think beyond the conventional ways to solve this problem’’ H.R.M Mallam Muhammadu Sanusi II  Former CBN Governor and Emir of Kano while speaking during the 25th Nigerian Economic Summit Group held recently.

There are over 3 million Almajiri children studying in Koranic schools across Northern Nigeria who need to be absorbed into the formal education sector.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan established special schools for the Almajiri to get Western education integrated with their Islamic education.

Currently there are about 10.5 million school aged children out of primary school in Nigeria with a sizable majority found in the northern region. The girl child isn’t encouraged to be educated unlike her peers in the southern region due to cultural and religious beliefs. Disparity has seen the South lead the North with a literacy level of 67 percent to 34 percent.

The Governors of the region over the past 20 years since the return of democracy received grants to develop the basic education sector with little or nothing to show for it, as they have the worst results among all the states of the federation in National and Continental Examinations. The major problems affecting basic education in the North include poor quality of learning facilities, teachers , number of pupils per class and efficiency of learning supervision to achieve positive outcomes.

Former Governor Kashim Shettima of Borno State established over 40 state of the art mega schools to cater for orphans who lost their parents as a result of the decade-long Boko Haram insurgency which has wrecked the socio economic development of the state. Among such schools is the Aisha Buhari Integrated School for Fulani named after the First Lady, a primary school with 24 classrooms and 40 preschool which runs morning and afternoon sessions with free bus rides to convey the Fulani children to school from their homes. They are served breakfast and lunch as a means of encouraging them to attend school. It is equipped with eco-friendly cooking stoves which can cook for as much as 300 people at once, a water chiller with power provided by a 33 KVA generator and solar energy.

Another strategic intervention is The Northern Education Initiative Plus Project which commenced in October 2015 with funding support from the United States Agency For International Development, a five year project aimed at strengthening the ability of Bauchi and Sokoto States to provide increased access to basic education, especially for girls and Out Of School Children, and to significantly improve learning outcomes for more than one million school aged children and youths. It employs a holistic approach addressing a broad range of critical factors that affect learning, teaching, systems management, parental participation and community engagement. The project strategy focuses on strengthening the technical and administrative capacity, commitment and accountability of federal, state and local government authorities to provide effective English and mother tongue based early grade reading, teaching and learning to its pupils. Also to deliver literacy, numeracy and life skills to out of school children and youths and whenever possible onboard them to formal educational institutions.

The project provides innovative cost effective ICT solutions for facilitating mobile money payments for learning facilitators, improve coaching and mentoring systems for teachers/learning facilitators and maintains an efficient teaching and learning materials supply chain, helps in capacity development for local education authorities to plan, budget and administer schools, support and supervise teachers, deliver high quality teaching learning materials and mobilize community involvement for increased enrolment and to improve learning outcomes. 

It is training and equipping Colleges of Education to include early grade reading concepts, techniques, practices and materials in their curriculum, while playing a key role within the education sector to promote the EGR policy and research. It constantly monitors program activity and assesses its delivery and results against established targets and milestones to improve project outcomes. The initiative is expected to demonstrate significant improvement in EGR for approximately one million children in schools and over 400,000 out of school children attending some 11,000 non formal learning centers, adolescent girls learning centers and youth learning centers.

There is a nexus between the high insecurity in the Northern Region and poor human capital development. The current Emir of Kano Mallam Muhammadu, Sanusi II a strong champion for girl child  and quality education in the Northern region, has spoken of the need for its political class and philanthropists to invest in education.

A redesign is urgently needed to scale access to quality education in the region as funding for schools and teachers is not enough. Utilization of technology can help in fixing this friction. Basic education teachers in the various states of the region should be trained on modern digital tools which are being used to deliver quality education across the globe. With Artificial Intelligence tutors, the Almajiri and other millions of educationally disadvantaged children can learn subjects in English and Hausa Languages to improve their understanding through customized tablets while Augmented Reality can be used in helping them understand the sciences.

Lagos based CoCreation Hub recently established an Education Technology Centre of Excellence at Tai Solarin College of Education to transform learning outcomes in public educational institutions across Nigeria in line with 21st Century standards. The Governors of the Northern Region and other zones across the country should partner with the Centre of Excellence to transform their educational deficiencies to create globally competitive youths for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

It seems the world is not yet ready for female bosses. As painful as this might sound, it is true. A lot of people may associate this mindset to illiteracy, but even in the world of academics, women bosses are still discriminated. I believe this prejudice is a global thing because all over the world, women are being encouraged to come out and take up managerial and leadership positions.

The truth is workers, both males and females, are not comfortable working with female bosses. Any time you say your boss is a woman, you will hear comments like, “How are you managing her?” “Nawa, sorry o.” “Hmmm, woman, just be careful” and things like that. In the same vein, people express their displeasure when they learn that they are about to have a female boss. Even children’s movies exhibit female bosses as “horror” to work with.

Maybe there is something female bosses aren’t doing well. Or maybe it is just an unfounded prejudice that emanated from a lifelong culture that sees women as “difficult” and “weak”. Whether they are true or false, the complaints against female bosses need to be looked into.

1. Female bosses are rude.

One man said the problem he had with his female boss was that she talks to him disrespectfully. When I asked him if his male bosses were like that, he said that they (his male bosses) were his fellow men and therefore can’t be rude to him.

It’s true that women easily lose their temper and talk without holding back, but describing female bosses as rude is quite out of line. If you truly notice, people take criticisms from male bosses better than they do from their female counterparts. The reason for this may be difficult to ascertain, unless one attributes it to the male supremacy “theory”.

Kindly note that women also think female bosses are rude. One woman went as far as saying that her female boss was rude to a male subordinate because she barked out orders at him forgetting that “he was a man”. This behaviour wouldn’t have been found offensive if it was done by a man. This clearly shows that the premise that female bosses are rude is unfounded.

However, women need to work on their emotions and manner of approach while addressing colleagues and subordinates. They should not feel that their authorities were being undermined each time their decisions were challenged. They should understand that their managerial positions require lots of negative and positive feedback from their colleagues, subordinates and customers. If they remember all these, they will address people without harsh words.

2. Female bosses are inconsiderate and rigid.

This is the major reason a lot of people don’t want female bosses. And truth be said, female bosses are rigid in the way they manage their offices. Once they say something, they don’t bend it. Their words are rules, and they must be obeyed to the letter.

Honestly, male bosses are more easy-going and flexible than their female counterparts. You can easily walk into the office of a male boss, discuss issues with him, and have it sorted out there and then. But for a female boss, well, you will have to say your prayers before knocking on her door. And if she is not in a welcoming mood, you’ll have to go back and wait for her mood to get better. And by the time you managed to go in, you will spend hours explaining why you needed to go against the stipulated rules. She might still not grant your request by the end of the day.

In a nutshell, female bosses need to relax their holds on the plough. They need to be flexible in carrying out their duties. They should remember that their subordinates are humans and not machines, which means that the law has to be bent every now and then to accommodate some of their challenges and differences.

3. Female bosses are easily biased.

One thing I noticed about female bosses is that if they trust you, they trust you with their lives; and if they don’t trust you, nothing can change their minds towards you. They hardly erase the impressions they have about people.

Another problem here is that they also act based on gossips. If someone tells them something about you, instead of treating it as gossip, they employ it in their decision making.

The consequence of biased bosses is that they treat some people well and treat others badly. They are partial in their treatment of their employees and subordinates. They encourage factions and cliques in offices and they don’t hide their feelings towards their “enemy” groups.

Of course, male bosses are also partial in their dealings with people. So it will be wrong to say that because women easily get biased, they are the only ones guilty of partiality.

4. Female bosses lack knowledge.

I hear this a lot and I can’t help wondering why people think this is true. Maybe why people assume this is because women are always ready to ask questions and seek directions from their colleagues and subordinates. It is improper to assume that because someone asks questions, he or she lacks knowledge.

However, I think it is high time women started sounding assertive while dealing with their subordinates. A lot of women that have learnt this skill are treated as goddess in their offices. But those that “mother” everyone are seen as empty.