By ‘Sola Fagorusi
If you are yet to hear about the fierce debacle concerning the secondary school certificate of the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, then chances are that you are not politically trendy. The bigger picture is about Nigeria – a country where institutions do not have memory. A country where it will amount to a tough task to present all the records of the late Nnamdi Azikiwe without any exception.
This is not the first time the memory of our institutions will be put to test. More recently, on January 10, 2015, Saturday Punch ran a strange story about Pa Jacob Kehinde Babajide. The pension of the 90 year old grandfather was stopped abruptly in 2010. When he complained to the Pension office, he was told that the only solution lies in his provision his first appointment which he got about 64 years ago from the now defunct Post and Telegrams under the Ministry of Communications on July 10, 1950 when he was first employed. The octogenarian is definitely still in shock at the side of the coin he is getting after serving the country for decades. If institutions functioned properly, an email from the pensioning institution to the Ministry of Communication that houses the Nigeria Postal Service activities will unearth claims of the old man’s previous service. This in turn will only be possible if institutions properly keep record and preferably have now processed hard copy documents into easily retrievable soft copy format.
Another story in this light is that of the former speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Oladimeji Bankole which gripped the Nigerian public space in 2007. The report then was that the speaker skipped the mandatory one-year National Youth Service that all Nigerian graduates below the age of 30 were expected to observe. Two things however turned the tide in favour of the then speaker. One; a colleague of his who served with him made public a picture they took together on camp and two; he made public his certificate of discharge. This was before Nigerians began to patronise twitter et alia in droves.
Today, General Mohammadu Buhari is the victim of the failure of our institutions. Tomorrow, it may be anyone of us. President Goodluck Jonathan, his co-contestant is also being rightly asked to show evidence that his Ph.D. programme was concluded. I disagree totally with Nigerians who think Buhari should not be questioned on the grounds that he had contested three times and his secondary school certificate was no issue then. I equally find it puzzling that Mr. President’s thesis is not in public space. I will come to that later.
The lesson herein for us as a nation, is to draw from the digital system that has made it possible for institutions in the United States where Buhari had his training to reply with concise details and even with documents that are several decades old. The United States Army War College has corresponded clearly that the retired general earned a diploma from the institution. The siddon look approach, apologies to the Late Bola Ige, of the Independent National Electoral Commission is in order. Section 31, sub-sections 3 to 5 of the Electoral Act plainly stipulates the time frame for claims and objections. Buhari’s antagonists failed to use this window to register complaints. President Jonathan’s political foe would also need to go to bed since the same window is closed and shut down conversations on the authenticity of his highest post-graduate degree. Also, that the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate responded in accordance with the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 and section 40 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 is something our legislators should also look into in the coming legislative year to ensure we do not spend national time seeking answers to questions whose answers should be easily retrievable.
Politics is in particular an interesting game, whoever is not ready for scrutiny should not bother joining the fray. During my service year in the northern part of the country, I recall the clairvoyance of a director with the NYSC who had requested to have all the corps members serving with the state office of the body to create time on a daily basis and begin the digitisation of the records of all corps members that had served in the state since inception. We never made good progress with the task until I passed out. It was an auxiliary assignment and other tasks overshadowed it. It was however a brilliant idea.
Back to the issues, social media has truly enriched the discussions from the two warring camps. Presidential candidates are being asked tough questions on social networks and they are responding with press conferences. Issues that ordinarily traditional media may choose to keep off the mainstream are being debated fiercely in cyber space and by extension on the street. The cartoons, the caricatures, the jokes, songs and infographs around the issues are proofs that Nigerians are creative and maybe in full truth we are undoubtedly the happiest people on earth since we are professionals at making jokes of all issues.
Apart of the institutional memory we will build by making conscious effort to digitise our records, researchers and scholars in Nigeria would be one of the biggest beneficiaries. It is almost an impossible task to research on Nigeria’s past in various fields. Where for instance does one get access to defunct Newspaper publications? Digitising Nigeria’s past which may currently be scattered in various Nigerian homes is a solution in this light. Maybe, one of the fourteen candidates contesting for the presidency needs to throw solutions around problems like these into his or her manifesto. It is certain to resonate with a section of the electorate. It will rank in the same spectrum as ‘free Wi-Fi’ which some candidates in Lagos State are already promising their electorates. And maybe it will also taste better for our cerebral buds to know that the manifestos are no longer about issues like good roads, water and the basic necessities.
Back to President Jonathan’s Ph.D., I think it is time that the National University Commission fixes issues around thesis research records. It would not be out of place to have all universities archive titles of their research work and abstract in a space on the NUC’s website for anyone to view.
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‘Sola Fagorusi is a social entrepreneur and a prized freelance writer with a bias for youth and rural development. He started off as a youth staff with Action Health Incorporated in 2001. The Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife alumnus currently manages the programmes of OneLife Initiative, Nigeria. ‘Sola is a DESPLAY Africa (Africa’s foremost and most consistent annual youth democracy academy) fellow and has been on its faculty since 2011. Keenly interested in governance and pan-Africanism, he volunteers as online editor of YouthHub Africa; a cyber-community for young Africans involved in social change. He believes in the efficacy of oratory and writing as tools to drive developmental engagements. As a freelance writer, he spares time to pen thoughts on contemporary societal issues and is a weekly columnist with Nigeria’s most read daily ? Punch Newspaper. His training and capacity cuts across democracy and governance, leadership, micro-enterprise, ICT4D, SRH, value chains, development communication and policy issues. He tweets @SolaFagro and blogs at www.kadunaboy.com
