Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem:
If you need further prove of the madness of Nigeria's president, there you have it. He wants every Nigerian to study Computer Science in a country with computer ratio of 1 to hundreds of thousands; undergraduates in computer science learn only from books; and this computer literate president has no emails or internet access in his own office! His government also
discourages importation of computers through prohibitive tariffs that charges even donated
computers like new ones.
I should know all about this because I am chair of a Charity, PADEAP, whose core activities include
popularising access to ICTs in Africa. We send computers, free of charge to schools and community groups. In the past three years we have sent more than 2000 computers to three countries in Africa: Uganda, Ghana and Nigeria. Guess where we have had the worst
problem about clearing: Obasanjo's Bangalore.
Maybe one should not blame Obasanjo too much . After all his ambition as a kid in Owu was to be a motor mechanic (as he told one of his hagiographers). To have become President of Africa's most populous country twice from such humble ambition one can understand why he thinks he is Mr -know-All of Nigeria and the General career adviser to all and sundry.
Thats why he can talk of computer science in a country ran on voodoo economics in perpetual darkness from the National Electric Power Authority , NEPA (which
Nigerians know as NEVER EXPECT POWER ALWAYS).
How I wish I was one of the people he chided as being miseducated. I would have told him to his face to go get some education first. Maybe he should borrow a leaf from Gowon's books after he is forced to leave office in 2007 to go back to school.