By Okey Ikechukwu

Notwithstanding the fact that the Federal Government has provided some details about a $150 billion Samoa Deal it signed recently, Christian and Muslim organizations and supporters of indigenous culture and traditions are up in arms. Their query is why the Federal Government should sign an agreement with clauses that require underdeveloped and developing nations to support LGBTQ rights as a condition for receiving financial and other forms of support.

This very provision of the Samoa agreement looks very much like a reincarnation of Biden’s Presidential Memorandum released shortly after he took office. In that Memo, he threatened to sanction countries which were still reluctant to make laws to promote, accommodate and expand the rights and privileges of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex (LGBTQI+) people. With the specific provisions on gay rights in the Samoa Deal, and given Biden’s antecedents, it is easy to see why many are asking why sexual orientation should be part of the condition for financial and other support. Is this an underhand way of bringing back something that our National Assembly has outlawed?

The controversial agreement was signed at the Organisation of African, Caribbean, and Pacific States (OACPS) Secretariat in Brussels, Belgium on June 28. Details of the agreement indicate that the partnership is between the EU and its Member States, on one hand, and the members of the OACPS on the other. Negotiations on the agreement began in 2018, as a tangential engagement at the 73rd United Nations General Assembly. Then it was signed in Apia, Samoa, on the 15th of November 2018 by all 27 EU Member states and 47 of the 79 OACPS Member states.

The African Regional Protocol on this matter consists of two parts, namely: (1) The Framework for Cooperation, and (2) Areas of Cooperation, containing Inclusive and Sustainable Economic Growth and much more. The government has since said, in response to the uproar, that the signing was done after extensive reviews and consultations by the Interministerial Committee, convened by the Federal Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning (FMBEP) in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and Federal Ministry of Justice (FMOJ).

It says that (1) None of the 103 Articles and Provisions of the Agreement contravenes the 1999 Constitution as amended or laws of Nigeria, and other extant Laws, (2) Nigeria’s endorsement was accompanied by a Statement of Declaration, indicating that any provision that is inconsistent with the laws of Nigeria shall be invalid. This is what the government has to say on the issue of same sex marriage: “,,, there is an existing legislation against same sex relationship in Nigeria enacted in 2014. It is necessary to assure Nigerians that the President Bola Tinubu Administration, being a rule-based government, will not enter into any international agreement that will be detrimental to the interest of the country and its citizens”.

Fair enough, but let us recalibrate, in order to maintain perspective and thus be extra vigilant. Everything about human relations, and even the actual essence of a human being, coming from the US during and after the Obama administration is open to question for me. This very matter, as well as the antics of the current US government to drive it down our throat, came up for scrutiny on this page on February 22, 2021. That was shortly after Biden became president and gave clear indications about some of the ways in which he would further globalize the LGBT project. Take a read.

“America is back,” said Biden about a week ago (second week of February 2021). But which America, and whose America, is back? The answer to the question was given the aforementioned Presidential Memorandum, wherein he promised hell to non-compliant developing nations. That Memorandum was all about a worldwide plan to strengthen the protection of LGBTQI+ rights, in such a way that it would be taken for granted that humanity must now collectively drive a new global priority under this umbrella of rights.

Should all mankind tremble and fall in line because an American president has announced that his country would roll out sanctions against other countries which do not subscribe to America’s preferred values? Can he even do that in US states which are yet to fall in line in this regard? Can he do anything about the legislative federalist orientation of the American State, despite a respected Supreme Court?

What warrants Biden’s presumption? By what universal standard was Nigeria classified a “homophobic” country; as was done under Obama, because of the country’s anti-gay law? Surely a US president who was Vice President when the Nigerian anti-gay law was passed, despite great pressures from the Obama government where he was Vice President, would be out to “call Nigeria to order?”

The article continued: “So, watch out! The drama is only just beginning. With Nigeria deemed an anti-LGBTQI+ country, Biden’s threat of “…financial sanctions, visa restrictions, and other sanctions” targeted at “…foreign governments” that “restrict the rights of LGBTQI+ persons…” applies here.

When Biden says: “The United States belongs at the forefront of this struggle – speaking out and standing strong for our most dearly held values”, does he consider that “our most dearly held values” in Nigeria are not American values? Since when did America start speaking for all climes? When Biden speaks of “…enforcing freedoms and promoting tolerance,” does he consider that he is the President of the US, rather than the earth? Does he even look at the overall impact of the US on “rights” with regards to global peace, climate change and morality? Less than two months into the Biden presidency, what are we seeing and what do the things we are seeing portend?

On November 23, 2020, this column carried a piece with the title “Biden and the Global Gender Crisis.” That article observed as follows: “The Obama Government threatened Nigeria with official sanctions, when the National Assembly passed a law against same-sex marriage. The Obama government also refused to sell arms to Nigeria to fight Boko Haram. It also discouraged other countries from selling arms to Nigeria; even as thousands were being slaughtered every day. The argument, then, was that the Nigerian government was not respecting the human rights of the terrorists! …The Obama Presidency stood out in its promotion of gay relationships under the LGTBQ+ movement.”

The same piece raised the following questions: “Why are world leaders, especially of the nations classified as “developed,” desperate to “level humanity” and deny any core values? Why are many “globally significant” individuals working towards the globalization of all manner of lifestyles and a values pyramid with a controlling few at the top holding sway with skewed values? Why are most world figures speaking of freedoms and rights, but not of knowledge and true humanity? Why are they talking of making people happy but saying nothing about the true meaning of happiness?” Does Biden’s Presidential Memorandum, wherein he seeks to “… further repair our (America’s) moral leadership…” which also seeks to “reinvigorate our (America’s) leadership on the LGBTQI+ issues internationally…” not showcase a national megalomania that verges on the incomprehensible?

My Exclusive Commentary of December 5, 2020, in the Houston-based USAfrica, titled “Will Biden Impose Alternative Lifestyles on Africans?” spoke of the “dangers” of a Biden presidency for non-enthusiasts of gay marriage and anti-gay advocacy. The publication began thus: “On January 2021, upon being sworn in as president of the United States, Joe Biden will begin to reconnect with many “globally significant” individuals towards the globalization of new (alternative) lifestyles and values pyramid. ‘The Return of all the freedom enjoyed under Barrack Obama’ is already the mantra of many who are cheering the November 2020 election of Joe Biden as president. The Obama administration – where Biden served as vice president for eight years, 2009 to 2017 – threatened Nigeria with sanctions for passing a law against same-sex marriage. That presidency diligently promoted the same sex agenda and Gay relationships with the LGBTQ+ movement and created a new world for the exercise of those ‘rights’ when in 2016, Donald trump barged in bared teeth and all.”

Continuing, the write-up in question said: “I believe that the Biden Presidency, itself a reincarnation of the Obama Presidency, will still use soft and strong tactics to deny any core values. They will speak of freedoms and rights, but not of knowledge and true humanity. They will speak of making people happy, but say little about the true meaning of happiness… Welcome to a world that will provide much funding and orchestrated media support for every endeavour that promotes and protects all manner of rights, without asking whether the rights in question add positive values to our humanity.” No matter how innocuous and uncoordinated it might seem, it is all well planned and well-choreographed.

Speaking in predictive terms, and this is being confirmed as I write, the article under reference here noted as follows: “Biden is likely to drive the growing insistence that LGBTQI+ be allowed in the military service of many nations. He will catalyze the progressive inclusion of LGBTQI+ history and themes in public education, as well as the deliberate projection of new identities and lifestyles that encourage heterosexuals to go into homosexual relationships…

His plan to seek and obtain special treatment for homosexuals and interfere with gender distinctions, which are all in line with the LGBTQI+ campaign spelt out in Marshal Kirk and Hunter Madsen’s 1987 Essay, “The Overhauling of Straight America,” is well known. This work, which urged Gays to project themselves in ways that would make the world to think of them as normal people who prefer to do certain things differently, was updated years later, in the book “After the Ball: How America will Conquer its Fear of Gays in the 90s.” The latter work mapped out a public relations strategy for the movement. And it is working.” Yes, it is!

Which is why, as I said in the USAfrica article: “Oklahoma Senator, Tom Coburn, in 2004, saw the gay movement as a more pressing danger than terrorism. In 2005, James Dobson, Director of Focus on the Family, described the homosexual agenda as including “universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, discrediting of scriptures that condemn homosexuality, muzzling of the clergy and Christian media, granting of special privileges and rights in the law, overturning laws prohibiting paedophilia, indoctrinating children and future generations through public education, and securing all the legal benefits of marriage for any two or more people who claim to have homosexual tendencies.” Watch out for those tactics. Wait a minute, they are already here with us!

The concerns raised in the aforementioned USAfrica article include the following: “Can someone wake up one day, declare himself a camel, and demand that we accept his new identity and allow him to graze in the public park; or in his neighbour’s garden? Was the Obama Presidency guided by a fundamental distortion of the very concepts of human nature and human freedom? Does a redefinition of what it means to be human, and of what “gender” means, not also mean a redefinition of the notion of “human” rights and new notions of right and wrong, etc.?

By Ibe Ikwechegh

At no stage in Nigeria’s history has the judiciary witnessed such high level of constant and sustained bombardment as has been at this time.

Very recently a very senior Judge of the Federal High Court, Abdullahi Liman faced the worst type of excoriation and castigation for assuming jurisdiction in a matter, the crusaders believed was outside of his jurisdiction. Last week had a publication on the online news of Vanguard and that of Premium Times among others and titled ‘Abdullahi Liman, and the making of a judicial scandal…’ The story was that the judge entertained a Fundamental Rights  matter which had the effect of nullifying the re-appointment of Muhammadu Sanusi II as the 16th Emir of Kano.

It is said that Liman made it clear in his ruling that the orders do not affect the validity of the Kano Emirates (Repeal) Bill 2014 which was passed by the Kano State House of Assembly. But the orders, nonetheless, were perceived as having an effect and indeed had an effect on the issue of the offices of the Emir of Kano. The critics further asserted that the judge delivered a 22 paged ruling purporting to nullify every step taken by the Kano State government under the Kano State Emirate Council (Repeal) Law assented to by the Governor on 23 May 2024. Part of what was emphasized as the grouse with this order of Liman was that it was made virtually and that his court does not have jurisdiction in chieftaincy matters.

In all of these narratives there is no word mentioned on the illegality of virtual orders of the Federal High Court. We know that from covid 19 times, many courts adopted the rules permitting judges to hear cases virtually. Nothing in all of the objections has clearly asserted that virtual hearing was no longer part of the procedure of Liman’s court, nor has it been clearly shown that the rules dictated what must be the limits of the Judges geographic location at any such virtual proceedings. Therefore, when it is simply stated that the Judge was not present in court, it may seem that it is to offer through the powers of suggestion to the public that virtual proceedings were not permissible in our courts and such an assertion must be less than ingenuous.

The criticisms seem to suggest also that if we consider a judgment of the court to have been tainted with any vice, then we should go ahead to disregard it. It was the highly respected Lord Denning in a case called Macfoy v. UAC Ltd that once said that “if an act is void, then it is in law a nullity…there is no need for an order of the court to set it aside…” Yet this prosaic statement of Denning has been roundly rejected, both in England and in Nigeria. An English case of Isaacs v. Robertson in 1984 said that Dennings statement was made per-incuriam, a nice latin word used by judges to say that something was ‘made in neglect’. Yes, indeed because Denning made the statement in neglect of a 1846 case called Chuck v. Cremer where a then English Lord, Lord Cottenham had said that if a party knows of an order  “…whether null, invalid, irregular cannot be permitted to disobey it..”

Here in Nigeria, our courts adopted the same approach. Our dear Supreme Court in a 1993 case called Rossek v. African Continental Bank Ltd enjoins us to obey decisions of courts and treat them as binding upon us until the courts say otherwise. One of the Justices of that court said ‘to hold otherwise is to clothe a party …with the discretion to decide, in his wisdom, that the judgment is invalid… an invitation to anarchy’. Does this not make sense?

And again, to put it out to the public that there was no jurisdiction of the Federal High Court in Chieftaincy matters was stating a correct statement of law in a context that misleads the reading public to conclude that the proceedings were a chieftaincy claim for which the Federal High Court indeed had no jurisdiction.   

Personal jurisdiction and subject matter jurisdiction are known to be the two main factors that give courts anywhere the powers to sit over cases. The court’s power over the persons or entities who were parties in the case has not been called to question. And so, the problem was not with the in-personam jurisdiction of Mr. Justice Liman. Therefore, what must have been left to debate was his subject matter jurisdiction. And yet the subject matter in that case for all that we know was a fundamental right application.

Our courts have said it time and time again that what determines subject matter of the case is never the effect of the decision but the claims that is presented to it. It is indeed the specific kind of claim that has been brought to the court, presided over by Liman that determines the jurisdiction and not the effect which the claim may have. A claim, for instance, that a legislation violates a fundamental right under the constitution does not translate to anything else merely because the said law deals with a subject matter that is outside the jurisdiction of a court. The requirement that a court have subject matter jurisdiction simply means that the court can only assume power over a claim which it has authority to hear under the law.

Unlike the High court of our states, the law limited the subject matter jurisdiction of the Federal High Court and that is why lawyers say it is not a court of general jurisdiction. For that reason, whenever they approach the Federal High Court, they do not approach it with the same general presumption as they do with the state courts, because they know that the law has limited that court’s jurisdiction to specific matters. This is no lecture to the judges of that court; they know this too well and know the limits of their jurisdiction. If the subject matter of the case before Mr. Justice Liman were a fundamental Rights claim, which is agreeably within his jurisdiction, what difference then would it make that incidental to the claim is a chieftaincy matter? Judges have always used as a best indication of their subject matter, the complaint and the claims as providing the strongest indication of the subject matter and not the appendage issues. The statute under which a claim is made is also another strong indication.

We do not deny altogether that the effect which a judgment would have may be an indication of subject matter jurisdiction but it is not always so. Judges still interrogate with these effects on a case-by-case basis and there has never been any martinet rule on this.

Doubtlessly, as one must expect in real life situations, there come times when a case before a court of limited jurisdiction such as Justice Liman’s court may be so intertwined with other subject matters which are not within its jurisdiction. Such situations can present real dilemma to a judge.  In a certain appeal case in the early 2000s, dealing with the jurisdiction of the Federal High Court and which involved oil spillage, Justice Aboyi Ikongbeh had asked what would be the outcome if an oil company stored a tank with two compartments, one holding oil and the other holding water and it falls mixing both water and oil and spilling unto the plaintiff’s farm. Then he asked what court in such circumstance would have jurisdiction and whether the plaintiff would carry the burden of ascertaining the damage caused by the oil and take that to the Federal High Court and that caused by the water and reserve it for the State High Court under the tort of Rylands v. Flethcer. As dramatic as this poser may have seemed, it underscores the dilemma which judges sometimes face in jurisdictional problems where the subject matters are interwoven.

Other legal systems, such as the United States have evolved solutions to these types of problems by creating supplemental jurisdiction for federal courts which allows them to hear claims for which it would not have had subject matter jurisdiction if they arose out of a common nucleus of operative facts as the one in which they have jurisdiction.

I do not here mean to suggest that Mr Justice Liman was actually faced with intertwined subject matter situation nor that he had any dilemma in the Fundamental Right Case that confronted him and I can’t find one, but just to say that even if it was such an occasion, he does, like all other of our judges, deserve support and guidance from the depth of the resources which we may have as lawyers and scholars. Our duty should be to help and not to castigate.

The truth remains that excessive criticism of our judges and their decisions may not have yielded much benefit to the system.  Those who criticize court’s decisions unduly do more harm to society by fostering suspicion and lack of confidence in judicial process. They think, perhaps in good faith, that they serve as watch dog for inappropriate judicial behaviour but they indeed hurt society’s psyche and trust in the legal system. And they serve to ominously intimidate judges and cajole them to decide with the greatest trepidation and anxiety.

Independence of the judiciary would be greatly undermined, if each individual man and woman who sits on the bench must after clearing that his or her decision passes the legal test, further self sensor to be sure it will not draw to him or to her any personal attack. A judiciary is not independent if it cannot freely decide cases without first being sure that its decision would be appreciated by the more vocal pundits, ever ready to pick holes with their decisions, howsoever industrious it may be, but as long as it does not fit into the most usual mould to which the society have been accustomed.

Even if the Liman decision seemed unfamiliar, yet unusual and iconoclastic decisions have never been a taboo in a common law system.  And so, while we critique such decisions, we must be fair to insert for public enlightenment, stories like the Mareva injunction which were not jurisdiction conferred by parliament but which was created out of expediency in in the United kingdom’s case of Mareva Compania Naviera S.A. v. International Bulk Carriers S.A.  That the English court developed this form of interim injunction which prevents a defendant to an action from dealing with or dissipating its assets so as to frustrate a potential judgment has today become widely recognised in all civilized legal systems and yet no charge was ever made on that 1975 court in England for absence of a clear black and white letter law, conferring such an enormous jurisdiction. No doubt the court laid claim to the 100year old Judicature Act of 1873 giving courts power to grant interlocutory orders where it appears just or convenient. Nevertheless, that is so general in terms for bright line jurisdictional purposes. Today Mareva is in the English Civil Procedure Rules 1998 titled as Freezing Order. So much thanks to the ingenuity of the Judges in the Mareva Case.

A departure from the mould of what we imagine to be the law was not limited to England alone, it was part of the judicial method in Nigeria and continued even after independence. Judges recognised their unique roles as common law judges and implicit in common law tradition was not only to be bound by precedent but to extend it, where it is expedient.

As far back as in 1898, when Cole v. Cole was decided, the law was that the inheritance of the estate of a person who, though subject to customary law but contracts marriage under the Marriage Ordinance will be governed by section 36(1) of the Ordinance. Cole was subject to customary law but did marry under the Ordinance rather contracted a “Christian Marriage” in Sierra Leone where he domiciled. Even though his marriage was not under the Act, Justice Griffitt said he would base his decision on “broad grounds which will cover all cases of native persons in Lagos who have since 1876 contracted Christian marriages outside the colony”. Reasoning that a man who had married in the Christian way clothes his offsprings with a status unknown to native law said that it will be contrary to the principles of justice to decide his inheritance according to such Native Law and therefore held that English Law would apply. There is no record that the Protectorate of Lagos was agog with agitation for Griffith’s head for assuming a jurisdiction with which he had not been specifically clad by the Marriage Ordinance. And yet Cole’s case became a principle in Nigeria’s law of intestacy.

In 1957, Sir Mbanefo as a High Court judge in Ikeanyi v Adighogu, ordered annual tributes by customary tenants for the first time without clear cut jurisdiction in that behalf. It is today part of our land law.

We do not propose that judges may act without jurisdiction, that will be whimsical. But we must always in all sense of decency approach judgments and orders of the court with an unbiased view and a presumption that even if a judge was mistaken, that he was so mistaken in good faith and that his decision, strange as they may be, must have been a product of his conscientious effort to do justice. We must believe that judges do their best in good faith to do justice and that must involve interpreting their jurisdictional powers. Should they be mistaken, we must be comforted that at any rate, the system also has the appellate process as its own internal mechanism for checkmating any infusion of adverse judicial opinions.

In other words, that the judiciary is sufficiently self cleansing. And that we must balance the benefits, if any, of our vitriolic criticisms against the harm they do to the public faith in the judiciary. And when we must publicly criticise courts’ decisions, we must be fair enough to present to the public a cocktail of views on the issue and not just the views which we favour. For all judicial methods that judges adopt, there are many theories supportive of them. To be able to advance alternative theories and perspectives to a legal situation is to me the glory of academia. If there is any discipline in which there is no one answer to a situation, the law is one ready example.

The effort here has not been to do a eulogy for judges nor to justify any particular judgment which may have come under the bombardment of critics nor to provide any exoneration. The effort is to invite a deeper reflection on the new but inimical culture of subjecting decisions of the courts to undue censure and disparagement with the apprehension of the greater harm that inheres in it.

Chief Ibe Ikwechegh

Lawyer and Author

JUNE 2024. Festivity was in the air. Professors and students, staff and high class visitors were in attendance. The highlight was a first class dinner. Africa’s book factory, Professor Toyin Falola, flew into the country to deliver the farewell lecture. It was all in honour of Professor Abd-Rasheed Na’Allah, out-going Vice Chancellor of the University of Abuja, UNIABUJA. But, trust spoilers.

They are never far away from festivities. As the wining and dining went on with fine speeches seeing off the VC at month end, students of the university were lamenting the N500 daily they pay to charge their cell phones. It was the second week the university had been plunged into darkness. It was not that the university is new to power outages, but this particular one had lengthened to pay farewell to Professor Na’Allah.

 UNIABUJA claims it is “the model University in Nigeria (and) a pride of Nigerians and in the provision of higher education”. I am amazed it achieved these and attained such lofty heights while enveloped in darkness.

UNIABUJA students are quite measured: they can live under any condition. But not so the students of the University of Benin, UNIBEN. Confronted with the same circumstances, they took to the streets, blocking the busy Benin-Ore Highway to protest weeks of electricity cut. The students were two weeks away from their examinations, yet had no electricity to study after lectures. They demanded a 24-hour electricity supply. The authorities could not meet the demand, so they shut down the university.

While professors in other countries are professing and advancing the frontiers of knowledge, their counterparts in the Ahmadu Bello University, ABU, are lamenting the lack of electricity to do basic work. So, 40 of them signed a petition last week asking the Visitor, President Bola Tinubu, to intervene given the centrality of electricity supply to the operations of the university. They stated what appears to be the obvious. That a university with an average total annual budgetary overhead grant of N150 million, cannot pay an electricity bill of N3.6 billion. The egg heads calculated that if the bill were to be transferred to the 50,000 students of the institution, charges would need to be hiked by over 500 per cent.

The professors suggested alternatives. Government could pay for the cost of electricity as part of its overhead grant or, use its 49 per cent shareholding in the electricity companies to direct them to supply universities uninterrupted power supply in exchange for tax credits. A third suggestion is to mandate the electricity companies to introduce a dedicated social tariff band with rates the universities can afford.

The government’s response is uncertain, but I assume that the university still has many moons to go: producing first class materials without the benefit of electricity supply. Is it for nothing our national anthem proclaims ‘Nigeria, we hail thee’?

The University College Hospital, Ibadan, founded in 1952, is the pioneer teaching hospital in the country. Its 1,000 beds makes it one of the biggest hospitals in the country.

The legendary UCH proclaims, like Ozymandias: “We are the flagship tertiary healthcare institution in Nigeria, offering world-class Training, Research and Services.” It even has a Department of Nuclear Medicine, that branch involved in the use of radioactive substances in the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, including nuclear imaging. Short of witchcraft, how can the UCH perform all these, including blood storage and endless operations, with power outages and even conscious power disconnections? The Ibadan Electricity Distribution Company had for several days, disconnected UCH from the electricity system for owing N400 million.

Six years ago, the College of Medicine, University of Lagos, Idi-Araba decided to check power cuts by imposing an N11,000 electricity levy on each student. When the students refused to pay, the tertiary health institution reduced power supply to four hours daily. But mass protests led the authorities to seek other ways of reducing the power outages.

The first generation University of Nigeria, UNN, was by 2018 producing about 10,000 first degree graduates and 3,000 higher degrees. But its power outages were between 48 and 120 hours weekly. Sometimes, power cuts lasted a whole week. So, small or micro generators began to pollute the campus.

The Federal University Kashere, FUK, Gombe State is in an area with sweltering temperatures. So, the authorities supply the hostels two hours of electricity daily. The students in most cases pay commercial centres to charge their phones and laptops.

But these power cuts to universities, lasting weeks at a stretch, is like child’s play when compared to the case of the Kaduna State University, KASU. The Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, branch Chairperson, Peter Adamu, who made a diagnostic analysis, said the situation, like advancing cancer, had gone from intermittent and epileptic to a total blackout. It became so bad that the Kafanchan campus had no electricity supply for over seven months! Adamu described the atmosphere in the university: “There is a feeling of pessimism, hopelessness, despair, despondency and dissent premonition that if the management of the university did not redouble their efforts, the end to this ugly situation might not be palatable.”

The miracle is that KASU, which is like a patient on life support, is still breathing and giving birth to new graduates and post- graduates!

Power failures, I must say, is not just a disease of public universities, the private ones also suffer it. For instance, the students of the American University of Nigeria, AUN, on April 24, 2024 staged peaceful demonstrations against persistent power cuts. To assuage the students anger, school authorities gave an assurance of a minimum five-hour power supply daily until public power supply is restored. They also shifted the commencement of examinations and, agreed to halt regular teaching to give the students more time to study.

Anybody who does not believe academics, staff and students can perform miracles, should visit Nigerian universities.

Electricity is central to the operation of universities, polytechnics and technical institutions. It is necessary for the running or functioning of equipment. It is fundamental to learning, industrialisation and development. So, running tertiary institutions with little, epileptic or no electricity, is nothing short of the miraculous . But it is not a lesson other institutions outside Nigeria want to learn from or experiment.

Do our universities deserve what they are getting having failed to find solutions to the country’s problems, including electricity generation and distribution? Or, does the country deserve the universities it has for not providing even the most basic needs like electricity? On the other hand, do they deserve themselves? But this is no time to trade blames. Rather, it is the time to put our hands on the plough and let there be light.