Prof. Uche Nnadozie: To stop strikes in varsities, public officers’

Prof. Uche Nnadozie, Head of Department, Public Administration and Local Government, University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) was a one-time Director of the National Orientation Agency (NOA) in Enugu and Anambra States. In this interview with CHIKA ABANOBI, he said the strike by the Academic Staff Union of the Universities (ASUU), which is now in its sixth month, as well as what he described as the government’s ‘lackadaisical’ attitude towards the resolution of the crisis. is symptomatic of all that is wrong with politics, governance, public policies and public administration in Nigeria and Africa. He also stated why the National Orientation Agency (NOA) is no longer functioning as it should.

You wrote a journal article some years ago, in which you gave reasons why there is poverty in Africa. Why are we this poor, so poor that we cannot feed ourselves?

There are two major reasons: one is external and the other is internal. The external is the Western powers continuing with what they did during the colonial period in a different but more sophisticated form. They do this through the exploitation of our mineral resources. The Western powers are the people sulking us dry. They are vampires. Whether you like it or not, they are the people funding and instigating internal crises in many African countries. That’s why you see a lot of strives and civil wars in most African countries. We have a lot of minerals in Africa. In fact, there is nothing you mention that is not in Africa – gold, diamond, bauxite, crude oil, bitumen – name it. Nigeria has zinc, gold, platinum, limestone and crude oil. There is no state that does not have minerals in Nigeria, a mineral they can exploit. Quote me. These attacks that happened in Niger State and, I think, in Zamfara State are as a result of mineral exploitation by Western powers. The people are sometimes annoyed with those nationals because they come and use them and pay them a pittance. That is about the external. The internal one is even worse. It has to do with our leaders conniving with Western powers to impoverish us.

Still on poverty, there is this general belief that poverty has to do with demonic forces and all that. That’s why you see a lot of our people rushing to churches to cast them out. How true is that belief going by the result of your research?

Religion, politics and public policies are major problems we have as a people. Like Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah said, Nigeria got independence at the same time as its contemporaries like Singapore. But while others went for industrialisation, to build and help their economy, Nigerians went to pray. At the end of the day, we are still backward. I can say that we are even more religious than the people who brought the two major religions to us.

Do you think that our devotion cannot help to bring us out of the poverty?

I lost an uncle. He refused a blood transfusion because he said it is against his religion. So you can imagine that kind of thing. While I am not against praying to God or something like that, most of us are gullible. The problem is not religion but our gullibility. We are not educated or sophisticated enough to know where to draw the line, to know where one thing ends and another thing begins. We take things at their face value. We believe that our economic problems can be solved simply by sitting at home and praying and shouting.

You also believe that politics has underdeveloped Africa including Nigeria. What do you mean?

Politics has underdeveloped Africa because many well-known entrepreneurs who have industries and things to do used to abandon it. This is because the efforts they put into their company is a hundred times more than they put into politics. But at the end of the day, they make double money or even triple profit. So people abandon their lucrative businesses for politics. You know the implication. Our politicians will not contribute much to the economy. Rather, they sap and loot it. They mess it up. So, the productive sectors are unattended to. Look at the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). It has been on strike for the past six months. What did the government of the day do? At first, it tried to stifle us. It believes that starving us of our salaries will make us succumb. But they didn’t understand us. We refused to succumb. So, this is how politics under-develops us. The same thing goes for public policies. They are directed towards the wrong areas, not towards the productive sectors where the economy will benefit. If there is any problem in the polity, the politicians will solve it if their interests are there. But if their interest is not there, they would be dillydallying. That’s why we wanted to ban public officers from sending their kids abroad for education. But they killed the bill. If that had been done, they would have had an interest in making sure we don’t go on strike or resolve it as soon as we do.

You also believe that the bureaucratic step-up of the civil service leads to underdevelopment. How?

It does because the set-up is such that it is fraught with a lot of bottlenecks that stifle development and progress. It has to do with who to see and who not to see, who to sign a paper and who not to sign and a lot of processes you have to go through before a task or project that is supposed to be for the good of everyone can be executed. Oftentimes, it is because you didn’t see the right people or you did but the man chose to sit on it because you didn’t give him his cut.

You were a one-time public administrator as State Director of the National Orientation Agency (NOA) for Enugu and Anambra states. How did you feel when you saw a big gap between what you taught in the lecture room and how things were being done outside?

I agree with you that when you leave the four walls of the university, it is a different ball game. But as a Director at NOA, I find my job made easier because I was conscious of the fact that I needed to practise what I taught. This is because my students were alive and I knew that when I finished, I would still go back to the university. There would be questions from my students and colleagues. So, I was conscious of that. But some of us enter politics or government and disappear and don’t come back into academics. But I was very conscious of the fact that I had to practise what I taught. Otherwise, you become a fake prophet who does not practise what he preaches. My background helped me to survive.

Do you think we still need the National Orientation Agency today in our country?

Yes

How?

We need NOA because it is now that the agency has more work of mobilisation and sensitisation to do. Nigeria is in a terrible state of nationhood. You have youths who are restless. There are issues like drugs, cultism, terrorism and so forth. These are issues the government should be addressing. They are typical and topical issues that cannot be avoided. But you have politicians who are, more or less, serving their own interests. Because they are in charge of the agency and its structure and funding, they don’t allow its personnel to do their work. When we were there, the government was funding us very well, both federal and state. And we were going into the local governments to do our work. In fact, we had functional offices in all the local government areas. But now politicians have hijacked the job because there are areas where the job of the agency and that of political parties coalesce. One of the areas is the mobilisation of citizens to go out and participate and vote. It is one of the duties of political parties to mobilise people to go out and register and vote. But the way they do it is not the same way that a neutral body like the NOA would have done it. So, because of it, they had tried to sideline the agency and do not allow them to do their work. I pity them.