Browsing: Viewpoint

The world is today treated unceasingly to horrendous pictures of African youth killed, maimed, robbed and enslaved in several North Africa and Middle Eastern countries, and also dead on the high seas, while struggling to reach Europe, in a desperate search for jobs and better lives. Yet Africa where they run away from, is ironically the world’s richest in natural resources like arable land, water and minerals. I will not dwell in statistics here as mine is not an academic paper nor is it a policy statement. Plenty of data on Africa—wrong and right—is widely available everywhere on these issues. What is missing is what should be radically done and why it hasn’t been done to curb this human suffering? That’s what I’m attempting to dissect here as an African who closely watches these matters as a science journalist and a policy advocate. If Africa is today the continent with the “highest, largest, widest, deepest, hugest, most this, most that,” in terms of wealth and potential, why should it be the poorest, to necessitate its young and most precious resource (the human being) dare the worst of conditions along the Sahara Desert, across the seas, taken advantage of and fleeced off by rackets of human smugglers, to be humiliated, degraded and enslaved by would-be employers?

No one is in doubt on the belief that Social Media has transformed the society from the traditional way of ya communication and brought about revolutionized approach to media use. It has opened up fresh hopes from which the people raise their (dis)agreements, share their feelings and perceptions, and, in some cases, unmask falsehoods. Social media platforms such as the Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and the likes, have allowed people to create, share and exchange information, ideas and more importantly pictures and videos over various networks and platforms at their disposal. However, the gap is yet to be filled because a significant number of youths that interact on social media platforms, know little or nothing about the legal framework that guide the upright use and the consequences of its misuse.

The recent issuance of a raft of presidential directives in succession: banning of rice-growing in wetlands; banning the burning and trade in charcoal, and the most recent ban on importation of and trade in mivumba (second-and clothes), are in my humble view, not well-timed and needed certain solid steps before issuance. For they unfortunately—hopefully unintendedly—target almost the same low social-class of people in our society.

The current Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman is no doubt an excellent educationist who has towed that line many years ago. A veteran in the law profession and who has bagged the rank of the Senior Advocates of Nigerian (SAN). A former chancellor and a pioneer Director of law schools in many parts of the country. This man is an idea of governance that the current government is fortunate to have.