Interested article by the former governor of Abia State on the state of education in Nigeria. Thoughts?

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http://educationviews.org/fostering-a-foundation-for-farming-restarting-agribusiness-as-usual/

We as Nigerians have always taken great pride in finding creative, cross-sectoral solutions to the challenges that we may face as we stride towards prosperity, often tackling issues that seemingly overlap with one another.

For example, it is clear that subscribing to a broader-based educational curriculum is necessary for us in preparing students for life after school, requiring significant change to the current design at the state and federal levels.

Nigeria is also a bountiful nation, rich in resources and entrepreneurial opportunity. Yet with our population swelling year on year and with rural areas ever urbanizing as industry unwaveringly builds, it is clear that our country is increasingly becoming far too dependent on imported goods available to be produced at home. This, much like the disillusionment found in academia leading to our inevitable ‘brain drain’ (where wealthy Nigerians often send their children to Ghana for their studies or abroad to the western world), serves to be a dangerous precedent growing year on year.

With both agricultural and educative curriculum reform on the table, it is obvious that we need effective solutions at both ends that will ultimately provide a working, adaptive infrastructure for children, families and businesses.

I believe it is possible to both inspire the next generation of students to further their academic careers towards their chosen skill-set and at the same time dramatically redefine the unindustrialized outputs of our country.

Though the international community often centers their strategic investment prospects on our capacity to procure crude oil, one must look to both our future generations and concurrently the rural, arable areas where they reside in to not only foster the capitalist spirit but also to build a diversified economy, accomplished ourselves from within.

The Nigerian Central Bank has famously stated that farming accounts for 41% of the national GDP. If one looks to history, we have regularly been and indeed our affiliated companies such as Bende Export Import Limited ( continue to serve Nigeria as one of her largest exporters of non-oil commodities (including sesame seeds, cassava, cocoa) in the world. Nearly 60% of our 170 million strong are purported to be in the farming industry as it stands today. We have a budding generation of students, keen to set out across the earth, potentially after receiving a viable post-secondary education at home. Many will hold a feeling of commitment to country and wish to give back, themselves playing a role in restructuring our nation for a new geopolitical era.

So why has our country failed to reach its desired heights in agribusiness? Moreover, how can we not only curb this shift in importation in lieu of abundance, but how can we ‘reset’ the infrastructure while revitalizing our academic curriculum, having the two function with an unprecedented degree of synchronicity like one cohesively ‘well-oiled’ machine?

In the proper context, Nigeria does not face these problems alone. Less than 2% of our continent’s students are studying agriculture. With 648 million mobile phone users in Africa, telecommunication from ‘root to fruit’, from procurement to manufacture to wholesale is still of serious concern. As we reshape our cities, we find we use less and less of our continent’s arable land. This dilemma is one that we as Nigerians can break and perhaps no more efficiently than done so by ourselves.

I broadened my own educational horizons while personally establishing our corporate profile by channeling an industrialist spirit in to sizably open opportunities, much like the potential of African agribusiness today. Our companies also encourage educational reform and through corporate social responsibility programs, seek to nurture the entrepreneurial spirits of tomorrow amidst a rising Africa.

Government initiatives to promote these opportunities tactically and regionally, partnered with an educational curriculum emphasizing a focus on crop development, agricultural technology and facilitating potential internships with established farming organizations are but a few low-cost, low-risk yet high yield alternatives to what is today a rather dated federal framework at both the educational and agricultural tiers.

Appropriate Nigerian civic institutions and indeed the international community can and should play a stepped-up role in providing these alternative programs in order to encourage attention and activity from our growing youth demographic. I commend the Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA) for example, a non-governmental organization working with farmers from across the continent and most recently expanding their scope in Nigeria, for their commitment to fortify activities and approaches in farm management. Today they are also opening doorways at the mid-career level through newly-crafted courses at leading national universities.

Keen businessmen and women, Nigerians ultimately understand and in tandem with innovative initiatives will help teach that profitability is essential for sustained production. Only with energy and effort, perhaps in unlikely yet malleable soil, can one achieve success.

Together, we look to teach important life lessons and rouse our next generation of farmers to adhere to ethical best practices. We will strengthen the correlation between an academic career and a professional one while at the same time taking measured but dedicated steps towards not just agribusiness prosperity but indeed restoring a Nigerian pattern of global stewardship and ‘supply’ for the foreseeable future.

The author is the former Governor of Abia State, Nigeria and Principal of SLOK Group Nigeria

The former governor of Abia State speaks in the British parliament. Any thoughts?

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Ndigbo and the reassurance of Kalu’s speech in the British House of Commons

It was the despair that Ndigbo suffer in the hands of the authorities in Nigeria that Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu, a former governor of Abia State describes the Igbo as third rate citizens in the Nigerian project.

Kalu is of the thinking that rather than the Igbo will be respected as other major ethnic groups in Nigeria enjoy, Ndigbo are relegated to the background in the proposal of things in Nigeria.

http://www.orjikalumediacenter.com/ndigbo-and-the-reassurance-of-kalus-speech-in-the-british-house-of-commons-2/

Compelling piece on the former governor of Abia State. Any thoughts?

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Nigeria's Savior? - Editorial Feature By Leo Cendrowicz in Huffington Post

Orji Uzor Kalu's pitch as peace broker could yet propel him to Nigeria's presidency. However, the former state governor will struggle to be heard above the chaos consuming the country.

Nigeria is Africa's eternal prospect. Twice as populous as any other African country, it is an emerging economy with fantastic oil and gas reserves. It has natural resources as varied as cocoa, uranium and rubber, as well as skilled, low cost labour. But much of this remains mere potential. Conflict and corruption have cut into the country's core, draining its credibility in the eyes of outsiders. Businesses are reluctant to invest, and western governments advise against travel to Nigeria.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/leo-cendrowicz/orji-uzor-kalu-nigerias-savior_b_3131941.html

Thoughts on this piece?

Boko Haram and the case for amnesty

FRENCH poet, Victor Hugo, once stated that, “amnesty is as good for those who give it as for those who receive it. It has the admirable quality of bestowing mercy on both sides.”

Indeed, as much as we have witnessed broad steps taken by Nigerian President, Goodluck Jonathan, towards embracing this noble ideology and attempting to understand our would-be adversaries, Boko Haram, we must truly incentivise and steward talks as best we can — perhaps, on their terms — in order to bring about lasting peace and reconciliation.

Nigerians are facing many challenges, perpetual stumbling blocks hindering a smooth transition to prosperity and geopolitical competition. Yet, there is none as blaringly obvious as the complacency our national leadership has emanated while our citizens routinely put their lives in jeopardy simply walking to school, attending church or checking in at work.

The threat of domestic terrorism (in-part spearheaded by Boko Haram) looms large and weighs heavy on our consciousness. In fact, Nobel-prize winner, Wole Soyinka, remarked no more than a week ago that Nigeria is on the verge of a ‘potential civil war.’

At present, we have nowhere collectively to neither hide nor turn to but government, looking to accountable leadership to provide a lasting solution. But there are questions lingering in the air, on strategic execution rather than simple theorisation.

One must, nonetheless, commend the federal institutions for standing steadfast in a commitment to restore peace and attempting to quell international criticism while nations encourage their citizens and with them their businesses to ‘escape’ from Nigeria.

We must continue to applaud the Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) for suggesting that offering a reprieve to members of Boko Haram remains an important option in order to right the insurgency in the North, a plague systematically destroying the region’s socio-economic fabric.

However, as I have remarked over the course of the last weeks and, indeed, months across the globe, we must be willing to dialogue directly one-to-one and moreover seek alternative solutions under an umbrella of amnesty should the broad theoretical suggestion not take flight in practice (as the notion has thus far been unilaterally rejected by Boko Haram spokesmen).

We must make a concerted effort in order to return our national reputation to its lost glory, as a bright light emanating throughout West Africa, beaconing international integration.

As I and separately MURIC have suggested, one viable option remains that a dedicated civilian-based initiative be implemented, supplementing or perhaps replacing military exercises in the Boko Haram entanglement.

Much like the hiring of outside counsel in a civil matter (an advocacy role I have aimed to secure for the last year), negotiations should be held from spokesman to spokesman, in a manner that befits all parties involved.

Indeed, our officers are no safer than our families in dealing with those we do not fully understand, as we learn of 12 souls now missing after an attack by the armed Movement for Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), perhaps in-part due to such a call for amnesty being promoted while concurrently exercising combative operations.

We must refresh our own appreciation of the ramifications of unchecked intimidation. Continued violence not only plagues the lives of our citizens in-country but promotes instability and a lack of infrastructural confidence to communities in the Diaspora and our colleagues on the global stage.

Infighting, as this truly is, perpetually erodes Nigeria’s aspirations of joining the echelon of the BRICS and pigeonholes us in a vicious cycle of violence begetting poverty and poverty begetting violence once more.

We must work closely with our international colleagues, as this is not simply ‘our problem’ anymore. We are a symbol of African economic power and potential. With the help of our trusted investors and trade partners, we have in front of us an opportunity to sustainably develop our nation above and beyond the wildest dreams of our children.

Ultimately, we must settle our differences in the interest of a unified, national healing and mutual prosperity, whether coming to such a binding resolution is the drive of a governmental committee, executive leadership or achieved from a single actor speaking on behalf of his people.

Though the threat to our fiscal trajectory remains a sincere concern, the human toll has penetrated our bureaucracy and elevated the urgency in ending our veritable self-implosion.

Though it is in our hands to create tangible change, we must be willing to break the barriers of old and seek innovative answers to solving the challenges of our new Nigerian century.

• Kalu was a Governor of Abia State.

http://www.ngrguardiannews.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=118450:boko-haram-and-the-case-for-amnesty&catid=73:policy-a-politics&Itemid=607

Former Governor Orji Kalu's has issued a proposal to open a dialogue with Boko Haram to ensure peace in the country. Any thoughts?


http://theeagleonline.com.ng/news/kalu-offers-to-dialogue-with-boko-haram-on-behalf-of-government/

Former Governor Orji Kalu's has issued a proposal to open a dialogue with Boko Haram to ensure peace in the country. Any thoughts?


http://theeagleonline.com.ng/news/kalu-offers-to-dialogue-with-boko-haram-on-behalf-of-government/

Does anyone here have any thoughts about former Governor Orji Kalu's proposal to open a dialogue with Boko Haram to ensure peace in the country? Do you think that the initiative will be successful?


http://theeagleonline.com.ng/news/kalu-offers-to-dialogue-with-boko-haram-on-behalf-of-government/

Does anyone here have any thoughts about former Governor Orji Kalu's proposal to open a dialogue with Boko Haram to ensure peace in the country? Do you think that the initiative will be successful?


http://theeagleonline.com.ng/news/kalu-offers-to-dialogue-with-boko-haram-on-behalf-of-government/

Any thoughts about former Governor Orji Kalu's proposal to open a dialogue with Boko Haram to ensure peace in the country?


http://theeagleonline.com.ng/news/kalu-offers-to-dialogue-with-boko-haram-on-behalf-of-government/

I have the highest hopes for Nigeria as a hub for entrepreneurship and for transparent government initiatives in the 21st century. This article was published last week on CNN, and I see that it has been re-posted here several times already. I think that the G37 is a spectacular concept, and this is exactly the direction in which the country needs to be headed. But I am interested in hearing from Nigerian citizens. What are your thoughts? What are your ideas in terms of reforming the country? What do you think about the G37?

Dreaming of a new Nigerian century

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/03/07/dreaming-of-a-new-nigerian-century/