Category Archives: Education
Nigeria: LASU lecturers declare indefinite strike over high fees
LAGOS—ACADEMIC Staff Union of Universities, Lagos State University, LASU, Ojo, branch yesterday, declared a total and indefinite strike over what it described as failure of the state government to meet its three core demands.
At a briefing, ASUU Chairman, Dr. Idris Adekunle, said having exhausted one year of dialogue and consultations with relevant stakeholders without headway, the union decided to call out its members on a total, comprehensive and indefinite industrial action.
Idris, flanked by other executives of ASUU, said the three core issues to be addressed before members could return to work were the reversal of the high LASU tuition regime from N348, 750 to a maximum N50, 000 across board; repeal of the no vacancy, no promotion policy of the institution’s administration and the implementation of the universities (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Amendment) Act, 2012, which would see academic staff in the professorial cadre retire at age 70 instead of 65, in the university.
According to him, “The union met at different times with the university administration, the governing council, the Pro-Chancellor, the Chancellor, the Ad-hoc committee on the LASU crisis, the Parents’ Forum, Oba of Lagos, Oba Rilwanu Akiolu, Oba Babatunde Akran of Badagry, and Oba Jubrilu Rufai, the Olojo of Ojo, among other eminent personalities in the state, without resolving the core issues at stake.”
“The union this year declared a trade dispute with an initial 21 day ultimatum effective from March 24 which expired April 13 and another 14-day ultimatum which expired April 29″.
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NIGERIA: ASUU Issues Seven-day Final Ultimatum to LASU
LASU lecturers to embark on ‘total’ strike, April 29
The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Lagos State University (LASU), Ojo Chapter, on Thursday threatened to go on strike at the expiration of another 14-day ultimatum it declared on April 15.
Dr Adesola Nasir, ASUU South-West Zonal Coordinator, said the ultimatum was effective from April 15.
“The 14-day ultimatum trade dispute had been issued to accord the management an opportunity to address the demands of the union.
“ASUU would be holding its National Executive Council (NEC) meeting at the expiration of the ultimatum and ASUU-LASU will embark on a full scale strike, if its demands are not met,” he said.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that ASUU- LASU had, on March 25, declared a 21- day ultimatum trade dispute, following the non-implementation of some agreements reached with its management over 12 months ago.
Nasir said that ASUU, at the National level, had intervened to resolve the brewing crisis in the university through dialogue with the management.
He, however, said that the issue was being handled with levity by the institution’s authorities.
“The national level had tried to arrest the trouble that is about to erupt at LASU.
“But the university authority says there are lots of demands they cannot resolve, except with the aid of the state government,” he said.
Nasir said the university authority had not met the demands of the lecturers but chose to engage in propaganda against the union.
He said the union, as a conscience of the nation, would not allow the hike in fees in the institution to remain.
“Student enrolment drops yearly due to the hike in fees, ranging from N197, 000 to N350 000.
“The annual enrolment in 2011/2012 before the increment was 3,052, but has dropped to 1,119 in the 2013/2014 admission,” he said.
According to Nasir, the `no vacancy no promotion’ policy was also yet to be addressed by the management, adding that such policy would stagnate the progress of staff.
“The management, saying that promotion was ongoing, was economically far with the truth.
“Those who are due and qualified for promotion, there is no vacancy for them, and are not promoted,” he said.
He noted that ASUU-LASU may be denied the over N2 billion Needs Assessment intervention fund, because the available facilities had been under-utilised.
“LASU is far behind the recommended National University Commission (NUC) carrying capacity for universities, as available facilities are under-utilised.
“The university has at least 6,000 carrying capacity, but is now carrying 1, 500,” the official said.
Nasir advised the authorities to implement the 2012 University Miscellaneous Provision (Amendment) Act by the Federal Government, to discontinue the continuous retirement of staff in the professorial cadre.
He urged the management, governing council and the government to do the needful in the matter, so that peace and industrial harmony could be restored in the university.
Meanwhile, the authorities of the institution had on April 14 urged the union to embrace peace, as efforts were being made to meet their demands.
The management had, in a statement signed by the Public Relations Officer, Mr Kayode Sutton, said that there were only three demands, out of the initial 20 of the union that had not been met.
According to the statement, the government has dealt with the issue of salary arrears by paying its part, while the university has also been paying its own part.
“The schedule of paying the balance has already been announced and will be honoured,’’ the statement said.
The management, in the statement, also refuted the claim that it was operating a “no vacancy no promotion policy.”
It also said that the government had been in discussion with the students on the issue of school fees, and that it should not be a basis for grounding activities at the institution
Decalage: Exploring the Gap Between Africans and African Americans
How long had you been thinking about writing Decalage?
I have always been interested in developing my own work, and throughout the years have presented small versions of original work. The idea for Decalage came last summer as I was wrapping up an off-Broadway show I was acting in. I drafted the early versions of the script in September.
How did you come up with the name of the play
The name, Decalage, is a French word that has no direct translation in English. It can mean “gap,” “wedge,” “jet lag,” etc. Professor of Comparative Literature at Columbia, Professor Brent Hayes Edwards, employs the term to theorize about social relations within African Diasporas. The metaphor of Decalage as a tool for understanding Diaspora fit in perfectly with my concept for the piece.
Did you show the initial drafts to anyone, if so, who saw them and what was the feedback?Yes. I had a writing circle that I met with every Thursday. I would write a draft and have those in the circle read the script aloud. Then they’d offer feedback or I would tweak some lines based on what I was hearing. With writing a play, it is essential to hear the language out loud. This writing circle was comprised of four people: Randolph Carr, Imani Brown, Bryant Brown, and Kwasi Adi Dako.
Would you have changed anything about the play?
I don’t if I would’ve changed anything about the play. Since I envisioned it as a one act play there were a lot of narratives I didn’t include. I would’ve liked to find a way to address gender and racial violence more fully. There have been some great bloggers writing articles about the role that gender plays in the public’s eagerness to mobilize around certain cases. And, at what point I thought about making creating the play around that idea- a female student of color shot and killed by police.
Do you follow the arts scene in Kenya, if so, what are your thoughts?
I follow the arts scene in Kenya, nominally. The music scene is very exciting with artists like Miriam Chemmoss and Eric Wainaina. I recently discovered the work of Kenyan Director, Wanuri Kahiu, whose science fiction short film, Pumzi, is incredible. There are some exciting voices in Kenya, and as a Kenyan living in the diaspora I am more committed than ever to [engage] with those voices.
Any new projects you are working on?
Yes. I am primarily an actor, so there is always another project in development. I am currently in rehearsals for an Off-Broadway play titled “The Rivals.” In terms of work that I am developing, I am currently working to tour Decalage to different universities in the fall and next spring. Additionally, I am developing a dance-centered musical on the history of hip-hop and freestyle dance in New York.
As an actor, my dream is to be on Broadway and to act in film and television; to have my original work produced globally; to move into producing and have my own production company; to be an artist with influence both in New York on Broadway and in California with film and television
NECO Releases 2013 Nov/Dec Examination Results
The Registrar of NECO, Prof. Promise Okpalla, who announced this in Minna, said that out of 51,759 who sat for the examination 31, 201 candidates scored credits in Mathematics.
According to reports monitored by the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Okpalla said 28,113 candidates, representing 48.7 per cent of the candidates scored credit in English Language.
He said that Zamfara recorded the highest cases of malpractice in the examination, with 6.14 per cent and was followed by Imo with 5.28 per cent.
The registrar said that there had been improvement in NECO results in the last three years.
He attributed it to its collaboration with stakeholders and security agents, especially the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.
Okpalla said that the council fared well in the conduct of the examination in spite of challenges it faced, and called for sustained cooperation from the public and stakeholders.
He said Zamfara and Imo topped the list of states with the high cases of malpractice, the Federal Capital Territory and Bayelsa recorded zero per cent in cases examination malpractice.
He stressed that the council had maintained zero-tolerance for examination malpractice “through the adoption of effective quality control measures.â€
In his contribution, Chairman of NECO Board, Dr Paddy Njoku, commended the council for the painstaking manner it was conducting its activities.
Njoku urged every stakeholder in the education sector not to rest on his oars until cases of examination malpractice in the country were reduced.
Castle of Knowlegde – Robert Record (c. 1510 – 1558)
This essay gives a brief account of a passage from Robert Record’s The Ground of Artes. Following a few biographical details, we locate Record’s work relative to various mathematical traditions, comment on his work more generally and then move to consider the passage itself.Born in Tenby, South Wales, Record earned his B.A. at Oxford in 1531 and, perhaps after teaching and further study there, his M.D. at Cambridge in 1545. Record went on to be an eminent medical doctor in London, and may even have been doctor to Edward VI and/or Mary I. From 1549, Record occupied important positions as controller of the Bristol mint and then as general surveyor of mines and monies in Ireland. In 1558, convicted of libel against Sir William Herbert, Record died in prison after failing to pay a fine of £1000.[1] Convinced of the usefulness of mathematical knowledge and with a desire to spread that knowledge as widely as possible, Record became a key figure in the vernacular tradition, being one of the first to write mathematical works in English. Record also belongs to the humanist and practical traditions. While his works “emphasized reason over authority,”[2] they are not concerned with rigorously proving new theorems, but primarily with teaching useful mathematical techniques to his readers.
Record wrote four mathematical textbooks, The Ground of Artes (1543) on arithmetic, The Pathway to Knowledge (1551) on geometry, The Castle of Knowledge (1556) on astronomy and The Whetstone of Witte (1557) on algebra.[3] The use of the vernacular, along with his engaging style made Record’s works unprecedentedly popular; The Ground of Artes went through some fifty printings, the last being in 1699, over 150 years after the book’s first appearance.Excepting The Pathway to Knowledge, these textbooks took the form of dialogues between scholar and master. Rather than using technical terms borrowed from other languages, Record invented his own, adapting words from ordinary English. While few of Record’s terms are now in use, the modern equals sign “=” is derived from that appearing in The Whetstone of Witte.
The passage for discussion brings out further themes from Record’s work. That passage comes from the 1552 edition of The Ground of Artes, and is reproduced under the heading “A Discussion of Sheep” at SB 9.A1(c), pp. 278-9. Interestingly, the passage is absent from some editions of the book, such as the 1660 version. The passage opens as the scholar asks how many sheep may be kept on a 7000-acre farm if law requires that there be one acre of arable land for every 10 sheep, and one acre of pasture for every 4 sheep. The master returns the question to the scholar, who proceeds to his answer by the method of double false position, a method used by Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci) in Liber Abbaci (1202), and which probably came to Europe together with the Hindu-Arabic number system.[4] This method, whose general validity is easily demonstrated, simplifies calculation by (initially) avoiding the use of fractions and may be used to solve any linear problem in one unknown. Furthermore, since any differentiable function approximately linear over sufficiently small intervals, the method can also be used to find approximate solutions to non-linear problems. The method of double false position requires that two ‘guesses’ be made, from which the correct answer is then deduced. The student makes guesses of 500 and 1000 sheep, and writing these numbers down, calculates that to keep this many sheep a farmer would need only 175 and 350 acres respectively. Noting that these figures are ‘out’ by some 6825 and 6650 acres, the scholar produces the following diagram.
Multiplying the numbers joined by lines, the scholar then takes the lesser product from the greater. The result, 3500000, is divided by 175, the difference between the two errors. This gives 20000, the maximum number of sheep that may be kept on a 7000-acre farm. The scholar goes on to claim that under such laws many men might keep this many sheep, since many possess so much land. In reply, the master states that an area of 7000 acres is “in compas above 48 ¾ miles”. While it is unclear how this last figure is derived (and therefore what is meant by ‘in compas’) the master clearly intends the figure to make apparent just how much land is 7000 acres, and on those grounds how unlikely it is that many men possess so much land.
Delaying the return to mathematics, the scholar comments that modern farmers possess far more sheep than did the shepherds that “the Egyptians did grudg so much against,” and that breeding has made them so fierce that “none can withstande them but the lyon”. Typically for Record, the point is not only humorously made, it is also politically loaded. Here he is objecting to the enclosure of the common land for the use of the landowner, a practice that prevented the poor from living off the land and led to ‘Kett’s rebellion’ in 1549. The passage closes with an editorial note stating that the master went on to explain an easier way to solve the problem. This was probably the method of (single) false position, used by Egyptian mathematicians as early as 1800 bc.[5] Here we need to make only one initial guess, and we make it carefully to avoid the use of fractions. Since the imagined laws require that farmers keep no more than 10 sheep per acre of arable land, and 4 sheep per acre of pasture, we take the lowest common multiple of 10 and 4, namely 20. By an appropriate scaling, we quickly see that since 20 sheep require 7 acres of land, on 7000 acres we may keep 20000 sheep, which agrees with our previous answer.Written in the vernacular, in dialogue form, and using examples carefully chosen for maximum impact, Record’s textbooks were (and are) a pleasure to read. The unprecedented popularity of those textbooks was well deserved.
Notes
[1]For a more detailed account, see J.J. O’Connor and E.F. Robertson, “Robert Recorde” The MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive <http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Recorde.html> Accessed 17th May 2003.
[2] SB from the editors’ introduction to 9.A, p. 276.
[3] He also wrote a medical treatise The Urinal of Physick (1547).
[4] The method can also be found in the ancient (1st century?) Chinese text Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art <http://www.math.sfu.ca/histmath/China/1stCenturyAD/NineChapIntro.html> Accessed 19th May 2003.
[5] For example see Problem 25 of the Rhind papyrus, SB 1.D2(a), p. 16.
VCs: Why Nigerian Universities Are Uncompetitive
ASUU Strike: Army to Hold Education Summit to Tackle Anomalies in the Sector
This is coming as policemen in Kano State prevented members of the Bayero University Kano (BUK) chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), from carrying out a peaceful protest organised to educate the public on why the union would not call off its four-month-old strike, unless and until their demands were met.
Addressing journalists in Lagos, on the forthcoming education summit billed to hold on November 4 to 8, in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Commander of the NAEC, Brigadier General Sunday Adebayo, expressed concern over the standard of education in the country, stating that the Nigerian Army, as an integral part of the larger society, cannot claim to be unaware of the problems confronting the education sector.
Tagged: 'Education Sector Development in Nigeria: Tackling Contemporary Challenges', Adebayo said the Governor of Akwa Ibom, Godswill Akpabio; the Chief of Army Staff, Lieutenant General Azubuike Ihejirika and Education Minister, Nyesom Wike are among guests that will grace the occasion.
“It is a fact that the quality of the contribution made by a person is dependent on the quality of education the person possesses. Graduates from the university get enlisted into the Nigerian Army. It is the quality of education they received that they will contribute to the authority.
“The ultimate aim of the summit would be to compile these series of lectures into a book that will serve both as a reference material and a veritable guide for education stakeholders.
“Topics such as rethinking security education in a world of asymmetric warfare; an appraisal of the 6-3-3-4 Nigerian education system for global competitiveness; emotional intelligence: an emerging trend in educational management; as well as quality assurance in the Nigerian education system: matters arising, are among issues to be treated,” Adebayo said.
Meanwhile, the police, which stopped the planned protest in BUK were said to have been armed with tear gas canisters and stationed at the main gate of the BUK to prevent the aggrieved lecturers from staging the protest.
Notwithstanding this, the lecturers still carried some placards, which read: ‘Universities must be revitalised’; ‘ASUU will not give up without adequate funding’; ‘Development is a mirage and ‘It is government that must pay of university education, not the common man".
Speaking against the backdrop of the protest, the Chairman of BUK ASUU chapter, Dr. Mahmud Lawan, said neither the threat to lives and safety of ASUU officials nor the attempt to destroy the ASUU Secretariat by sponsored thugs would distract the struggle of the union to achieve the objective behind the lingering strike.
Lawan therefore added that the union would remain resolute and committed in support of its national leadership to ensure the revival of the deplorable university system in the country.
According to him, the motive behind their struggle was to educate the public on the cause of the strike, linking it to the refusal of the federal government to implement agreement entered into with ASUU.
However the rowdy situation later led to serious arguments between the union members numbering hundreds and the police over the right to protest.