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At the end of last month World University Ranking
placed the University of Ilorin 5484th in the world and 55th in Africa
out of a total of 20,000 institutions of higher learning worldwide. The
study was conducted by Webometrics, an initiative of the public
research body called Cybermetrics Lab and based in Spain. In its
previous reports, no Nigerian university has ever been rated among the
first five thousand best in the world.

So, it is a marginal improvement that the
University of Ilorin has shown up on the radar this year. Obafemi
Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, comes second in Nigeria and placed 5756th
in the world and 61st in Africa. It is followed by University of Jos,
University of Lagos, University of Benin, University of Ibadan, and
University of Nigeria Nsukka. They are in the following order 66th,
68th, 77th, 79th, 99th positions in Africa and 5882nd, 5936th, 6324th,
6425th and 7170th in the world.

This system of ranking began in 2004 and results are published twice a year in January and July.

This new ranking may be looked at as positive because in its February rankings we are at 6340th position globally.

The University of Lagos, which ranked 6340th in
February moved up to the 5936th but slipped to the fourth position
among Nigerian universities.

According to the rankings, Africa has only one
university among the first 500 and only five among the first one
thousand in the world. The University of Cape Town, South Africa, which
leads the pack in Africa is ranked 340th in the world! The three other
leaders on the continent are also in South Africa. They are
Stellenbosch University, University of Pretoria, and University of the
Witwatersrand. The three best in the world are Harvard University,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University,
respectively.

The criteria used by Webometrics to arrive at its
rankings may not have been very scientific. However, we agree in
principle with some of its results and rankings. It is nothing too
surprising that a country like Nigeria with over 100 private and public
universities was not able to make the first 500 leading universities in
the world, even though we pride ourselves as the ‘giant of Africa’.

What this report has done is to allow us do a
critical examination of our standards and our mode of training of
students in our higher institutions. The question the Ministry of
Education and the officials of the National Universities Commission
should ask themselves is: what sort of education are we giving our
youth and what future are we preparing them for? As this newspaper has
always emphasised there is a critical need to look inwards and to cast
sober reflection the role our universities are supposed to play in
national development and how much of that they are actually doing.

In the eighties Professor Wole Soyinka and a few
others had suggested the closure of our universities for a period of
one year to allow for a sort of cleansing that would refocus them. This
might have been too harsh, rather like cutting off the head to cure a
headache, but the situation does call for some extreme measures to
address the glaring weaknesses in our education system.

How do we prepare our graduates so that they can
fit seamlessly into a world that has become globalised, and transcends
land and physical borders? There is an urgent need to reshape and
rethink university administration in the country. Increase in quantity
over the years has not brought satisfaction or quality. There are not
enough university places to accommodate the need, and the quality can
be judged by the rankings shown.

What we have at present may call for a concerted approach and active
steps to set off a tsunami in the education sector that will sweep away
the debris and tailor it to our goals for the future.

At the beginning of
his much, much, much discussed visit to ‘The View,’ Barack Obama
squished himself into a long, low banquette where the five women who
converse on the program were seated.

“These couches were made for these little people,” he complained mildly.

I cannot tell you
how happy this moment made me. During the presidential campaign,
whenever Obama was sharing a stage with Hillary Clinton,the seating
arrangement always seemed to involve high stools. He draped his tall,
lanky frame over his stool gracefully. Clinton, who would have looked
like a middle-aged schoolgirl doing detention if she perched up there,
opted to stand and be uncomfortable.

On behalf of all
the short women of America I say – go for it, women of ‘The View.’ I’m
sure you did not want to cause the president of the United States any
distress, but he was so totally due.

“For the first time
in American history, a sitting president is visiting a daytime talk
show – us,” Whoopi Goldberg said proudly. The only real innovation was
the hour of the day. ‘The View’ isn’t any less serious than ‘The David
Letterman Show,’ where the president has guested. It’s not as if he
volunteered to have himself shut up in the ‘Big Brother’ house, or sent
Joe Biden to play wooden spoons on ‘America’s Got Talent.’

The dissolution of
the boundary between entertainment and politics is old news. Now we’re
dissolving the boundary between reality and entertainment. Or perhaps
reality and reality. I was reminded of this when Obama was gently
grilled by the lone Republican on ‘The View,’ Elisabeth Hasselbeck, who
came to the show after a stint on ‘Survivor,’ where she lasted 39 days
in the Australian Outback despite a crippling inability to catch fish.

‘Survivor’ is a
first-generation reality show, in which everything is actually supposed
to be real, except for the unseen production crew and copious editing.
Now, some of the most talked-about shows on television are programs
like ‘Real Housewives’ and ‘Jersey Shore,’ that capture real people
going about their real lives – except the producers arrange things so
that the real lives are much more interesting than they are in reality.

‘Jersey Shore’ is
basically Mario Cuomo’s nightmare. It stars a bunch of young people who
call themselves “guidos” and “guidettes” and live out every dreadful
Italian-American stereotype in beach houses provided by the producers.
On ‘The View,’ Obama claimed he had never heard of the show’s breakout
star, Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi. But it turned out that he once made a
joke about Snooki, listing her and House Minority Leader John Boehner
as the top victims of the administration’s plan to help pay for the
health bill with a tanning salon tax.

Snooki, whose hard
partying got her hauled off to the pokey Friday, has added the
president’s line to her own repertoire. “I don’t go tanning-tanning
anymore because Obama put a 10 percent tax on tanning,” she said in
this week’s episode. “McCain would never put a 10 percent tax on
tanning. Because he’s pale and would probably want to be tan.”

She was interviewed
recently on the website The Daily Beast by Meghan McCain, daughter of
John, who asked her how she felt when she received a Twitter message
from the Arizona senator, confirming his strong opposition to taxing
tanning beds.

“So that was pretty awesome and I’m really happy that he actually knows who I am,” Snooki said.

We may be moving
beyond actors running for office, into a new era with candidates who
became TV stars by playing artificially enhanced versions of
themselves. In Wisconsin, the seat of retiring House Appropriations
Chairman David Obey could be taken by a local Republican district
attorney named Sean Duffy. His prior claims to fame include a stint on
the reality show ‘Real World Boston.’ His wife, Rachel, was a star of
‘Real World San Francisco.’ They found love in the spinoff.

Now, Rachel
sometimes sits in for Elisabeth Hasselbeck on ‘The View.’ In his
pre-presidency, Obama made a guest appearance on the wrestling show
“Raw” during the 2008 primaries and mimicked one of the stars, Dwayne
“The Rock” Johnson. Like everybody in the pseudosport, Johnson was part
of a scripted soap opera in which he played a wrestler named Dwayne
“The Rock” Johnson. Among the other characters were the philandering
league owner, Vince McMahon, played by owner Vince McMahon, and his
long-suffering wife, Linda.

Linda McMahon is now running for the U.S. Senate. Dwayne Johnson is an actor who recently starred as the tooth fairy. Really.

And, of course,
Barack Obama became president and appeared this week on ‘The View.’
There, he denied knowing the identity of Snooki, who plays a woman
named Snooki on ‘Jersey Shore,’ where she recently criticized his
revenue sources for health care reform.

Compared to this, ‘Inception’ is a simple tale of people who enjoy napping.

© 2010 New York Times News Service

Between playing
‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ as a Stingerweb Internet Development
software installed on my laptop and as a game show presented by Frank
Edoho on Nigeria’s NTA (Nigerian Television Authority) one learns to
differentiate between illusion and reality in using what one knows to
get what one wants.

In a country where
there is an increasing tendency for citizens to plug for easy ways of
becoming wealthy, ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ could be viewed as a
performance on the “minding” of money, where what separates one from
wealth and poverty is implicitly theorized as developing a more
accommodating attitude to risk-taking.

The name of the game with its interrogative sentence, implicitly suggests that becoming a millionaire is a personal choice.

Like the
irredeemable weekly pools players on Nigeria’s Poverty Street, someone
playing ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ as a computer game is already
in another world where it remains “just a little extra effort” for them
to strike it big. Theorized implicitly as a gamble, becoming a
millionaire engages a different kind of thinking for those who believe
that there is always an element of chance or luck in escaping from
poverty in this world.

Presenter Frank
Edoho’s show on NTA exposes the player who makes desperate efforts to
surmount the obstacle of questions and the questioner’s tactics to get
to the reward. It is not easy to be on Edoho’s “hot seat” defending
one’s integrity as a “knower”.

The “hot seat”
perhaps reflects the mental state of the guest on trial before a
television studio audience and the millions of viewers that include
professional colleagues, relatives, friends, and even enemies. By
extension, this “hot seat” is shared by those whom the guest elects to
phone for assistance in providing the required answer. To furnish the
wrong answer is not just to reduce the chances of winning but also to
ruin one’s reputation as an informed “helper.” The contestants and
their friends thus share the experience of hypertension on the “hot
seat”.

Frank Edoho,
frankly speaking, is not always “Mr. Hypertension,” not when he is
acting as a sympathetic host, sometimes calling for cold water for the
guest, or granting the guest a lifeline. Commercial breaks are
inevitable in this kind of TV game show, forthe sponsors, MTN, must
sell. But the timing of the breaks very clearly signifies that they are
also the means through which Frank plays his part of the game of
“helping” his guests and his audience on behalf of the sponsors.

When anticipation
is very high for the gatekeeper to reveal or confirm the answer,
especially when the guest’s answer is correct, he helps us to enjoy it,
creating and heightening the suspense by deferring the announcement of
the answer till after the commercial break. Frank is frankly a player
who knows on which side to play, how to play, and when to play.

When Frank comes
suddenly to confirm the answer as correct, does he not sometimes
mischievously announce the wrong answer as correct and then quickly
corrects himself? Frank’s tactical error and tactical self-repair is
someone’s terror and great despair! Some players sometimes do confess
that they are petrified. Yet, the presenter’s friendliness and
remarkable sense of humour also help in trying to repair his guests’
nerves in this quest for mega bucks.

Frank indeed plays
two roles at the same time: he is the sympathetic reward giver and the
reluctant gatekeeper who has to hold on tight to the reward and do
everything possible to dribble the guest. Part of the test for the
guest is the demonstration of an ability to avoid deception and
maintain confidence. The game is not just about money but about
confidence building and psychological maturity in the pursuit of one’s
material needs.

Isn’t it telling
that, in the set in the studio, the “hot seat” is built in such a way
that the legs of the guests (as well as those of the host) do not touch
the ground, conveying the precariousness of the situation? One that
sits with legs not touching the ground while looking for big money
needs to be on guard, symbolically.

At a time when the
assumption that one does not need brains to become a millionaire has
almost ruined the attention to education and the pursuit of the culture
of industry. ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ ought to be viewed as a
symbolic statement about getting rich through acquisition of knowledge
and psychological stability.

Playing ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ from a Stingerweb software
on a computer and living the illusion of winning in US dollars are
obviously not as attractive as being Frank Edoho’s petrified guest. The
truth is that some thousands of naira in hand are worth millions of US
dollars in the imaginary computer bush. Even if the naira has become
local wallpaper that lacks power compared to the US dollar, its real
game value rises for Nigerian players looking out for the secret to
survival.

Odds are that you
probably missed it. With all the noise being made about the president’s
faulty plane, the rise of the falconets and the welcomed restoration of
DSTV’s football rights, it’s easy to understand why the story would be
ignored. And yet it was there. Sandwiched between the larger tales of
significant occurrences was this tiny news insert. Half way across the
world, the presidential aspiration of a person was about to be
announced and his name was Wyclef Jean. Yes, “The” Wyclef Jean The idea
of a musician running for president does tend to give reason for a
silent chuckle. Of all the possible professions on which an aspiration
for a nation’s presidency can be mounted, music seems to be the least
likely of candidates. It takes a lot to run a nation. People would no
more expect a musician as a likely presidential candidate than they
would the pastor of a church. And yet, as insane as the proposition
might seem there is certain merit behind the possibility.

Wyclef’s loyalty
to his country is not disputed. He has already served as an ambassador
for his nation and donates thousands of dollars by way of scholarships
and foundation grants to people who require these. Even though, Wyclef
Jean is undoubtedly a multimillionaire superstar, he has rarely failed
to identify with his nation. He has instead constantly sought to find
the different ways through which he can contribute to its development —
something that very few of our media stars can boast of.

I am not much of a
fan of Nollywood. The only time I pause to watch a movie from its
stables is when I decide that I am sorely in need of a good dose of
depression. As this urge rarely surfaces, my periods in front of a
Nollywood movie are blessedly rare and short. However, despite my
unpatriotic dislike for the products of our national cinema, even I
cannot fail to acknowledge the influence that Nigerian media stars have
had on our country.

I find it hard to
single out a singular musician or movie star who would make a possible
candidate for a political position. D’banj never did let us in on what
the “koko” meant, but I somehow doubt that his revelation would involve
a concrete plan for improving the nation. MI would find it difficult
meeting the heights of the political system and Tuface would probably
get shot again by unknown gunmen after his first five hours in office.
The efforts of individuals, such as the musical legend who also goes by
the name of Pastor Chris, have only managed to further enhance the
growing inefficiencies of media icons in today’s politics. When Fela
died many years ago, it is likely he took with him the status of the
last Nigerian media icon who sought to improve the country’s image
through his celebrity status.

Amongst the young
members of the Nigerian media circle, it’s almost impossible to find an
individual who has offered as much contribution to the country as
Wyclef has for his nation. If I was to pick a cabinet, I would probably
pick Lagbaja as possible president because I want to believe that
beneath that impenetrable mask is a billionaire with a Harvard business
degree. It is undoubtedly a far stretch but that is where we currently
are. For good measure, Julius Agwu would probably be a fitting choice
for the minister of power and steel. If Nigeria is going to continue to
make a mockery of those establishments as she has for the last three
decades, then she might as well secure the assistance of a comedian.
They’re better at making jokes and have the uncanny ability to draw out
attention to the lighter side of darker topics.

In the weeks to
come, a lot more attention will be paid to Wyclef Jean’s bid for the
position of president. Many are already leaning towards this
possibility. He is well loved by the people of his country and he
certainly has the ear of world organisations. With the right cabinet
supporting him, he just might be able to lead the damaged nation into
newer lights. He might, however, need to make a few changes or two in
order to improve his chances.

Chelsea Clinton isn’t the first presidential
daughter who has tried to keep private the details of her wedding day.
“I feel that marriage vows are sacred, and I hope that mine will be
spared the hurly-burly attending a news event,” Margaret Truman said
before her 1956 nuptials in Missouri. At least she and the groom,
Clifton Daniel, consented to a press conference with 50 reporters.

But Clinton, 30, was silent in every way except one. Her dress told a lot.

Designed by Vera Wang, the strapless dress
consisted of a number of yards of ivory silk organza that had been
lightly gathered, with tulle pleated diagonally on the bodice. The
dress was finished with a silvery embroidered waistband, not unlike the
dresses with dark sashes that Wang showed in a bridal collection this
year.

It was a flattering dress on a woman with pretty
shoulders and a small waist, but it wasn’t an especially high-styled
choice. Wang also made the dress for Ivanka Trump’s wedding last year,
and its tight lace bodice and elbow-length sleeves, somewhat based on
the severe style of Grace Kelly’s bridal dress, reflected a
sophisticated taste.

In a similar vein, one also thinks of the
radically simple dress that Narciso Rodriguez did for Carolyn
Bessette’s marriage to John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1996. The success of that
dress – one of the most widely copied at the time – was all based on
its refined cut. And Bessette, who worked for Calvin Klein, probably
expected that it would have an impact.

Clinton’s dress, on the other hand, suggested a
completely different relationship with fashion – even, perhaps, an
ambivalent one. Her metamorphosis from a gawky, studious teenager to an
accomplished, self-assured young woman who prefers straight hair to
curly seemed to happen almost overnight, like the discovery, suddenly,
that she had a voice and was indeed, as Politico said in 2008, “a
significant surrogate” and not merely a “silent symbol.”

Still, we don’t really know anything about
Clinton’s style, and in a way her pretty dress, with its modestly
embellished waist and romantic layers, reflects a woman whose focus
isn’t directed in that way, and maybe isn’t that vain.

Before Saturday’s wedding in Rhinebeck, N.Y.,
there was a lot of speculation about who designed the dress – Wang or
Oscar de la Renta. A number of websites favored de la Renta, on the
grounds that he makes clothes for Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton and designed Jenna Bush’s sleeveless lace wedding dress in
2008. De la Renta also occasionally plays host to Clinton’s parents at
his home in the Dominican Republic.

But Clinton seems her own boss, and one way to
create a distinct experience is to have a separate dressmaker. Her
mother’s dark fuchsia dress was made by de la Renta.

Apart from Tricia Nixon Cox, who married in 1971
in the White House Rose Garden in a stunning Priscilla of Boston gown,
with “400 guests and 600 journalists,” according to a news report, the
daughters of American presidents are not attention-grabbers.

Amy Carter, wed in 1996, wore a 1920s dress, as
well as her glasses, and walked on a carpet of pine straw and magnolia
petals. Truman wore a fitted dress of beige Venetian silk, by the Roman
designer Micol Fontana.

White didn’t suit her, she said. Caroline Kennedy
wore a dropped-waist gown, by Carolina Herrera, sentimentally
embroidered with shamrocks.

Unlike Bush and many young brides nowadays,
Clinton wore her hair up, scraped away from her face in a somewhat
grand chignon. Bush, who wed at her parents’ ranch in Crawford, Texas,
and said she wanted everything to have an “organic” feel, also skipped
the veil.

Clinton’s wedding was black tie, therefore more
formal, but the sleek updo also betrayed the Clinton women’s
complicated hair history. Her minimal jewelry – a small bracelet,
earrings – seemed closer to her personality.

But that is just a guess. The tab for such a dress
would also be pure guesswork. Twenty thousand dollars? Perhaps. (Wang
said in an e-mail that she was not permitted to speak about the bride
or the details of her dress.) For the reception, Clinton changed into
an ivory silk tulle Grecian dress with a crisscross back and a black
grosgrain belt. Her bridesmaids each wore a strapless gown in lavender
chiffon with a plum-colored bow.

© 2010 New York Times News Service

Nigeria celebrates five decades of existence as
an independent state on October 1, 2010. Its first chance to show whether the
next fifty years will be an improvement of its first fifty years will come in
early 2011 when Federal and state presidential, gubernatorial, and
parliamentary elections will be held. All of us know what is wrong in Nigeria:
the tremendous venality of public officials and politicians, for one; the
maddening maze of inefficient state monopolies over large swathes of the
Nigerian economy for another. How for do?

To help me figure that out, I have been thinking
about the traits of Nigeria which were evident at its birth to determine what
can be expected realistically from Nigeria over the next five decades. Let me
start with that most notorious of allegedly Nigerian traits-a thirst for
corruption. The American journalist-John Gunther-visited Nigeria and the Gold
Coast in the mid-1950s.

His impressions were recorded in a book entitled
“Inside Africa” that was published in 1955. Despite the limitations of relying
on a visitor’s perceptions of a country, Mr. Gunther’s observations are useful
as a record of the common views of that pre-independence era.

Listen to Mr. Gunther’s commentary on corruption
in Nigeria and the Gold Coast.

“It was in Lagos that we first began to hear
about the worst thing in Nigeria, corruption. A tip or gift is known as dash,
and “dashing” exists almost everywhere. This phenomenon is probably unavoidable
in any community like Nigeria, convulsed as it is by the most violent
fermentations, and where people thrown up from the bottom suddenly find themselves
able to exert power through money.

Nevertheless, it is regrettable…A boy in a
hospital will have to “dash” the nurse a penny to get a bedpan. Horrible, of
course.

” … Corruption is another characteristic [in
the Gold Coast], although I had the feeling that Accra was not so sensationally
corrupt as communities in Nigeria…. We asked several prominent Gold Coasters
what they thought the country needed most. Answers: (1) More honesty in the
public service. Abolition of corruption”.

In a manner reminiscent of babies born with the
HIV/AIDS virus today, Nigeria and Ghana were born with the “corruption” virus.
Like HIV/AIDS, it has spread and mutated over the years into a horrible
debilitating disease sapping our polity and economy. It is time for us to admit
that our leaders and politicians are a reflection of us. As we change, so do
they. Not the other way!

If we want a sober and honest Nigerian
administration, the quiet majority of ordinary people must show first, by their
deeds, that they will accept nothing less from Nigerian politicians. In a way,
Nigerian attitudes towards corruption and incompetent government remind me of
St. Augustine’s cry to God: “Give me chastity; but not yet.”

In the same vein, Nigerians want a prudent
government, but only tomorrow.

Permit a small example. Nigeria’s political class
proposes to spend 17 billion naira to celebrate five decades of independence.
Outrage has been expressed in several quarters. But, is there a movement to boycott
all celebrations or commence hunger strikes to stop such palpable profligacy?
Nothing of the sort! Rather, mere bombastic words of sound and fury signifying
something, but we know not what! Can it be a surprise that President Jonathan has
not objected to this wanton waste of public funds? Why should he when

Nigerians are unwilling to endure pain for a
modest celebration, befitting Nigeria’s mediocre experience of independence to
date?

There is an old saying that Nigeria is a place
where the best is impossible but where the worst never happens. There can be no
doubt that its first 50 years of existence have confirmed the truth of that
saying. The road ahead is to turn Nigeria into a country where the best is
possible.

The journey on that road should start at the
level of daily life-the states.

Reformers must build their vision of Nigeria at
its best, state by state. It is an arduous mission that will take the better
part of two decades. Lagos State seems a good place for reformers to create a
microcosm of the new Nigeria. It has an independent tax base, a vigorous
economy, a large population and a respected reformer as governor. Other states
which should be targeted now to show the benefits of reform are Plateau State, Kano
State, and Rivers State.

The road to a resplendent Nigerian centenary
celebration starts in the Nigerian states.