NIGERIA: Lecturers slam Harvard training deal

An agreement struck between Harvard University and the Governors' Forum in Nigeria for the world-leading US university to teach governors of states in African the fundamentals of good governance has been rejected by lecturers. They described the agreement as wasteful and unproductive, called for its cancellation and suggested governance training take place at home.

The Ilorin-based secretariat of the Governors' Forum, a statutory body of elected governors of Nigeria's 36 states, recently announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Harvard to teach the political leaders good governance at its campus in the US, with assistance from the American government.

The project will be handled by Harvard's John F Kennedy School of Government, which is renowned for its capacity-building courses for public and private sector leaders.

The apparent aim is to improve service delivery in Nigeria. Governors and their aides will periodically receive lectures on leadership, education, economic management and other issues related to increasing the dividend of democracy for the electorate. The project starts in October and ends in 2011 - the year of general elections during which governors will face the people.

Director of the programme on Intrastate Conflict, Professor Robert Rotberg, and manager of the programme Katie Naeve signed the memorandum for Harvard, along with Bukola Saraki, Governor of Kwara State, and Asishana Okauru, the Forum's Director General.

There were immediate reactions to the project from academics, who objected to the principles of good governance in Nigeria being taught to a segment of the country's ruling class by a foreign university in a foreign land.

However well experienced the American lecturers are on good governance, they cannot be better versed than their Nigerian counterparts on the topic of good governance in Nigeria, argued Ibrahim Isah, a lecturer at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria.

"It is well known in academic circles in US that most of these American experts were classmates in American universities with some of their Nigerian colleagues on this subject matter. It is disheartening to learn that Nigerian political leaders neglect these brilliant Nigerians trained in American universities and run after their American counterparts."

Isah produced the names of books on good governance written by Nigerians academics trained in American universities, and said the books were used as reference materials for postgraduate students in US universities.

A political science lecturer at the University of Benin, Sunday Okpewo, worried about such subject matter being contracted out to a foreign university. He argued that no matter the intellectual depth on good governance of a foreign university, it could not possess full expertise on good governance in another country.

"For the sake of argument, will the American government sponsor a university in Nigeria to organise a workshop on drug wars along the US-Mexican border? How could the Nigerian university carry out such a workshop when American universities are well equipped with human and material resources to handle such subject matter?" said Okpewho.

Casmir Igbokwe, a columnist with a national daily, The Punch, argued the deal was a subtle indictment on leadership of Nigeria. Igbokwe wrote, "It means that they, the leaders, have failed to provide quality education to their people. They could have gone to the University of Lagos, University of Benin or even the University of Maiduguri to learn leadership skills. But they cannot go to such places because Nigerian schools lack the requisite facilities that will make learning worthwhile for their excellences."

In an editorial, The Punch advanced several reasons for rejecting the agreement and concluded: "The Governors' Forum therefore needs to rethink its deal with Harvard. It is utterly undesirable and portrays the governors as idle and frivolous. Let them curb corruption and re-orientate themselves for selfless service to Nigerians".