THE FRAME

By  Tahir Ibrahim Tahir  (Talban Bauchi)  28/1/2022 The subsidy debate has brought to the fore, the sordid reality that successive governments since 1999, have failed the Nigerian people, in doing away with this highly corruptive channel of providing PMS (petroleum motor spirit) through imports. For over 20 years, the monumental fritting away of our foreign exchange by this monster has been left unchecked and unhindered. At some point, it was estimated that our daily consumption level was 35 million litres. This has since multiplied to 50 million litres and going by the figures of our fuel importation bills, we are well over 70 million litres per day. The Nigeria customs service had brought to our attention that most of the service stations near our borders were just conduit pipes to smuggling subsidised fuel to our neighbouring countries. There is an additional 150 Naira per little or even more, to be made when trucks of PMS are smuggled out of the country. S...

By  Prof. Jibrin Ibrahim January 14, 2022 Last week, I attended a Convening on Higher Education in Africa, organised by Professor Toyin Falola of the University of Texas at Austin. The conference held at Babcock University and focused on the theme of the impact of private universities on public universities in Africa. Participants were drawn from university faculty, Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), education regulators, founders, donors, students, and independent researchers from Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, and Nigeria. It was an exciting debate on the complex relationship between the public and private sectors in higher education. The original argument for the establishment of private universities was to create more access for students but the reality today is that the private sector has not substantially increased access. In addition, private universities have not really recruited and trained their own faculty, they poaches from the public sector f...