Why More People Will Die in Nigeria - Prof. Pat Utomi

Respected educationist, Professor Pat Utomi has explained why more people will die in Nigeria than any other country of the world.

Prof. Pat Utomi

 

While speaking as a guest speaker at the 6th Pre-Convocation Lecture of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), in Abuja, Nigerian professor of political economy, Patrick Okedinachi Utomi a.k.a Pat Utomi, explained why more people will die in Nigeria than any other country of the world.

 

The 2-time Nigeria Presidential aspirant, who made the disclosure in‎ his lecture titled, “Political economy of education: “Issues and challenges of opening and distance learning in Nigeria”,  said the reason might not be unconnected to the fact that Nigerians like struggling over things that shouldn’t be struggled for.

 

He believed that, “if we were not living in denial, one of the things we would have realised is that our country is in a rolling civil war.‎‎

“We are struggling with Boko Haram, crisis in the north Central and in the South South, we are dealing with all kinds of issues like militancy and so forth.

“More people will die in Nigeria, a violent death than many of the countries in war.‎ What we have in Nigeria is an evergreen civil war.

“How are we going to make progress when there’s so much violence everywhere? We have a zero-sub mindset. People are struggling over things that they shouldn’t be struggling over.”

 

Meanwhile, Utomi, who is also the co-founder, Lagos Business School, has called on the federal government to prioritise education and health for its citizenry.

 

He stated this while responding to a question raised by a student about non admission of NOUN nursing graduates by some unnamed universities in Nigeria.

 

“This is a conversation into which the NUC has to be drawn. As guardians of the idea of a university in Nigeria the NUC has been traditionally slow to change. For the NUC a university was 100 hectares of condominium with many faculties and traditional teaching methods.

“To be sure, it is changing but the pace has been slow. It took it long to accept the idea of private universities and even such methods of pedagogy as the case study method. But we must not blame the leadership of the NUC alone,” he said.