Corin Solarin on Nigeria, Education and Religion

Dr. Tai Solarin's first child and daughter, Corin Solarin, who came back to Nigeria permanently last year after spending 42 years in America expressed her views to "The Nation" newspaper last week Sunday, while remembering the death of his illustrious father 16 years ago.

According to Corin, Nigeria has not really achieved the democracy his father lived and died for. “We have a long way to go. We are still backward. We are no longer the country rated the best in Africa, for we lack many things and we are no longer the giant of Africa.

“We don’t have electricity and all our ability to develop cannot work without power supply. Education is affected, for the quality of our graduates is dropping. No job for people and crime rate is high, among other problems,” she observed.

Unknown to many distant observers of the Solarins, the nuclear family is a kaleidoscope of faiths. While the late Tai was a confirmed atheist, his now 86-year-old wife, Sheila, is an agnostic. Tunde is a deist while Corin says “I am a Christian. I go to church in America. I believe in God and in Jesus Christ’s teachings, but not so with my parents.”

“They have their own lives to live and I have mine to live too. I cannot preach Christ to them, for they have their own beliefs. The church I attend is in America. My parents who did not believe God are godlier than many of those who go to church every day. My parents’ behaviour cannot be faulted. They were nice and good to people. They do a great deal than those who go to church every day.”  

Professor Niyi Osundare on Professor Attahiru Jega and Dr. Tai Solarin

The 2011 election is already being rigged even before it ever takes place. 


How much power and control can Professor Attahiru Jega have over these government appointees?


The situation Jega is in reminds me very much of my encounter with our immortal Tai Solarin when he was given the post of Chairman of the People’s Bank. I went to him and said "Uncle Tai what is this I am hearing? Those who gave you this Greek gift are trying to destroy you and those who believe in you. Please don’t let them.” He said “Well, I’ve always been for the people. This is an opportunity to serve them." A man of good faith, he meant well. I asked if he trusted the ones asking him to serve the people; how much of the people’s friends are they really? “We know you as a man of integrity,” I told him. But what happens to a sole man of integrity who finds himself in a moral desert? This question pops back into focus as I consider the Jega appointment. I shudder when I remember that Nigeria’s moral roadside is littered with a crowd of “rubbished” professors.


Nigeria has an uncanny way of rubbishing good men and women. In fact, it’s as if this country is a cesspool and whoever is the leader will look at somebody whose clothe is still clean and do everything to drag that person into the mess. You have to have a lot of courage and integrity to be able to say no. I’m afraid, Jega is being put in a position in which he cannot exercise full power, a situation that he cannot control. How will he control the security agents who collude in the snatching of ballot boxes?


We have seen so many instances. These agents are bribeable and easily corruptible. What about the wizards of the computer room who manipulate poll figures and conduct virtual elections? What about pervasive pressures from the ruling party bent on turning Nigeria into a one-party state?


What pains me is that professors have been used to clean up the mess so many times. I think Jega would be about the fifth professor to serve as boss of the electoral commission. The only professor that has left the place untarnished is Professor Eme Awa and he ran away when he saw that he was being subjected to undue pressure. They harassed him, they intimidated him but he told them “I’m an old man; I want to go to my grave with the clean name that I’m noted for. Take your position.” They took their position. Whom did they give it to? It was another professor: Humphrey Nwosu. You remember what he did with it.


Now we have another professor as INEC chair. Professors are not trained to handle political thugs. Professors are not trained to superintend over corrupted electoral officers. How would Jega be able to do this? How many hands does Jega have? How many fingers are in each hand? How many heads stand on his shoulders? How many eyes does he have? The people who should be his eyes in the country, he does not have control over because they were not appointed by him. He has a gargantuan task ahead of him.


Only one election has succeeded in this country: the one of June 12, 1993. All the other elections were designed to fail. June 12 was designed to fail but it became a spirit as it were. It refused to die; it refused to fail. Because it refused to fail, Babangida and his clique killed it; they killed something about this country. Nigeria has not really recovered from June 12.


What about option A4 that succeeded so well on June 12, 1993? I was here, going from one polling station to another. I saw women with babies on their backs, singing, waving their ballot papers. That was democracy about to unfold. Nigeria was poised for progress. Babangida and his clique killed that dream. As I said before in another forum, if this were a true country, people like Babangida would be in jail for crime against humanity and the Nigerian dream. No crime could have been greater than that. He was responsible for the deaths of so many Nigerians, including those that were killed during the June 12 riot. But now he wants to rule again. Such unspeakable abomination!


Comrade Jega will need a miracle to succeed in this task. And I am no believer in miracles.

Superior And Inferior Educational Systems?

"For a republican country to build special schools whatsoever negates the idea of republicanism, sentencing the nation’s students to terms of superior and inferior educational mints. It is a cheat to want to unite a country by keeping in one school hand-picked students by whatever method of selection.


Build not only 72 but a thousand unity schools, ten thousand unity schools, a million unity schools with better teachers, better equipment, better teaching facilities, leaving the others as colourless state schools, and you have destroyed the core of federalism in the nation.

Republicanism stands for egalitarianism. Anything that prevents a member of a republic from benefiting from what any other republican member benefits from is corruption.

The greatest hindrance to realizing a true republic is the injection of anomalies like unity schools, model schools, command schools, air force schools for girls into the nation’s educational system. They should all go."

TAI SOLARIN IN A NUTSHELL: IMMORTAL QUOTES OF TAI SOLARIN

Private Schools To Rescue.

"It is lamentable that Nigeria of today, instead of getting its children given education free, universal and compulsory, is further re-establishing private schools and thus taking us back decades from what should be actually happening in Nigeria."

TAI SOLARIN IN A NUTSHELL: IMMORTAL QUOTES OF TAI SOLARIN

Presenting “Tai Solarin In A Nutshell”.

The much-awaited public presentation of the book “Tai Solarin in a Nutshell: Immortal Quotes of Tai Solarin” took place today at Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria, during the 5th Tai Solarin Annual National Memorial Lecture delivered by Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu, OFR, Nigeria’s former Minister of Finance under the chairmanship of Professor Oye Ibidapo-Obe,OFR, in the presence of the 85-year-old Mrs. Sheila Solarin, MFR.


The 106 + xvii pages book co-edited by the Chairman of Tai Solarin Organisation, Mr. Akinbayo A. Adenubi, mni, and yours sincerely is a compendium of 152 inspirational, edifying and critical quotes of immortal Tai. The sometimes witty but encyclopaedic commentaries of the scholarly humanist on national and global issues are as relevant today as they were when first penned by him decades ago.


Published by Tai Solarin Organisation with a foreword by one of our Patrons and former Vice-Chancellor of University of Benin, Professor Mrs. Grace Alele-Williams, “Tai Solarin in a Nutshell: Immortal Quotes of Tai Solarin” was reviewed by Nigerian Tribune of 8 September 2009. 


If you need a copy or many copies of this book and other books by and on Tai Solarin, feel free to make your request here on this blog and you will be glad you did.

Tai & Sheila: The Quintessential Couple.

Today is 14 September 2009. On the 14th of September 1951, Tai and Sheila became husband and wife.

15 Years On: His Great Legacy Lives On.

Monday 27 July 2009 marked 15 years after the demise of the legendary educationist and human rights activist, Dr. Tai Solarin. To this end, the Tai Solarin Organisation is inviting the Nigeria's former Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Dr. Kalu Idika Kalu, OFR, to deliver its 5th Annual National Tai Solarin Memorial Lecture entitled "Education, Merit and the Corrosion of Social Balance: The Nigerian Case Study" on Thursday 24 September 2009 at the Bankers' House, Adeola Hopewell Street, Victoria Island, Lagos, at 11 a.m. prompt.


The Special Guest of Honour is 85-year-old Mrs. Sheila Solarin, MFR, while the former Vice-Chancellor of University of Lagos, Professor Oye Ibidapo-Obe, OFR, will be the Chairman of the memorial lecture.