University access without qualified teachers?

By ‘Soga Sofola

 THERE has been and there will always be, in the nearest future, the question of the number of placements for university admission of qualified students in Nigeria. Various statistics have been given on the admission/application ratio, based on JAMB cut-off of 200 or thereabout (out of 400 marks). One such figure is that at the last exercise (2008/2009 session), about 153,000 out of 1,050,000 “qualified students representing about 15 per cent only, gained admission into the universities. The number admitted is based on the carrying capacity of the universities and this is based on the number of lecturers which then determines the lecturer: student ratio, which in turn determines the admission number. These are standard criteria that are used to fix admission quotas in the universities. In an attempt to address this low transition rate for several students to universities, there has been the clamour for the establishment of more universities. So far there has been a high increase in the number of Universities which now number about 95 made up of 27 Federal universities, 34 state universities and 34 private universities as at the NUC release of February, 2009. Since then a couple more have been registered. Ordinarily, this scenario of increased number of universities is expected to have impacted positively on the transition rate of students into the universities. It is therefore obvious that more universities will need to be established. The question however is that what human resources/academic teachers does the system have to carry out this task of increase in students’ intake. The answer is that the system is grossly inadequate to cater for this exercise, especially if our goal is the production of adequately trained students, and not the present output of ‘quarter’ baked graduates. The entire university system has about 28,000 academic staff, running about 3000 approved programmes with over one million cumulative number of students. Of the academic staff, quite a number do not have the qualification that is required to be a university lecturer i.e. Ph.D degree. The unfortunate implication of this is that the few available Ph.D lecturers who are the ones that are de facto university teachers, are now being put in charge of a disproportionately large number of students, further reducing the quality of graduates that are being produced. The import of this is that the call for more universities, though desirable, cannot address adequately the training needs of the students and hence National development as expected of graduate/university education. This is amply illustrated in the NUC Book on “Labour Expectation of Nigerian Graduates” which describes the inadequacies of graduates produced within the local system vis-ˆ-vis their foreign counterparts. This is mainly because the adequate number of qualified teachers/lecturers is not being trained to man the system. It is like buying more aircraft without the adequate number of pilots to fly them. There is no way that the desirable expansion for access to university education can succeed until the issue of adequate human resources is seriously addressed. It is therefore imperative that a “Marshall Plan” for the production of Ph.Ds must be embarked upon. This can be achieved – e.g. through local and foreign production. Local production of Ph.Ds should be scaled up by supporting institutions that train Doctorate students particularly the first and second generation state and Federal Universities. As of now the quantity produced is low compared with national needs. The reasons are not far fetched and these are due mainly to inadequate funding, inadequate/obsolete equipment for researches as well as low quantum of research-oriented supervisors among others. These observations have resulted from decades’ long neglect and short-sightedness in making adequate plans for university expansion vis-ˆ-vis the roll out of more secondary schools in the wake of the 6-3-3-4 (or new 9-3-4) systems and the attendant production of more secondary schools leavers. This has also been compounded by the less than enthusiastic willingness of school leavers to attend other higher institutions like polytechnics and colleges of education. The country must therefore be prepared to commit funds to training by making available funding to the trainers i.e. Ph.D supervisor. This should be like, for instance, each time you train a Ph.D graduate you get a personnel grant as honorarium, for this. Most universities in Europe and the USA provide research grants to train graduate students which include personnel grants/honoraria for the supervisor/advisor. If this is done some experienced researchers can be encouraged to take on more Ph.D supervision. Secondly, in our laboratories, most of the equipment are either obsolete or inadequate. There is no way that quality research can be carried out under these conditions. The proposed “Marshall Plan” must include massive investments in modernisation of research equipment and if these are done, the output and quality of Ph.D graduants will be increased. Even then, this local intervention will still be inadequate in terms of the number produced. To obviate this, there must also be complimentary training of doctorate students in overseas institutions, paid for by the government. One suggestion is to set out a sizeable proportion of ETF funds towards this support. This is now being done but must be expanded and be well structured. In addition, Post-graduate students must be supported with funds during their training programme so that the best students, who should undertake graduate programmes, are retained rather than being lured into more lucrative but inappropriate jobs such as First Class Graduates, Doctors or Engineers ending up in banks and oil companies. The long grammar of all this presentation is to emphasise once again that we cannot qualitatively expand university access without the production of the teachers, with Ph.D’s, who will run the programmes. Another area that should be looked into is to do an audit of polytechnics and convert the ones with some acceptable standard of competence into universities. This was carried out in the United Kingdom in the 90s when several polytechnics became universities and so were able to increase undergraduate intake. This idea was to be put in place in this country during the period of one of the past Ministers of Education (to involve, for example, Yaba College of Technology and Kaduna Polytechnic), but this could not be achieved as the idea ended with the short term of the Madam Minister. However in carrying out this conversion, these polytechnics can be assisted by expanding Ph.D enrolment of their current staff as well as employing additional staff with Doctoral status so as to tap into this doable suggestion. In conclusion, we cannot increase university intake despite the large number of universities, because we do not have enough qualified manpower to do so, period!

Sofola is Professor of Physiology, College of Medicine, UNILAG and Currently Acting Vice-Chancellor, Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago-Iwoye

How do we reverse the brain drain?

TESTIMONIALS   I read with tears in my eyes the brain drain article, Oh good lord! Gboyega   I was in the car and my heart shed tears for the revelations before me. Tope Ayedun, Lagos, Nigeria   I have never came across a such speech concentrated on solving the problem of Africa. Aster Sagai (born in Eritrea), London, England   Your article is the most inspirational document I have ever come across my whole life. Born in Ghana, living in Minnesota   I am of the view that the issues raised in this speech should form the basis of discussion and brainstorming at the next Federal Executive Council meeting in Abuja, Segun Kukoyi, Lagos, Nigeria   I was marvelled not about the content on its own but the way and manner the note was delivered. Adisa,Saheed Adedeji.   Sir, I must say that your speech on that faithful day have enable me rediscover myself, and also reminds me that Africa has great potentials that can make Africa rise to its glory…. Sunday Isoni   Truly a powerful speech that brings to reality the truth and the actual effect of brain drain …. Wallace Ngugi, Nairobi, Kenya   We need more people like you to look up to and speak and advice on the way forward. Chibuzo Amaefule. Forthcoming Speech: Can offshore outsourcing reverse brain drain from Africa? Book Emeagwali for your conference. Complete booking form or Contact Booking Secretary 800-673-6737 (US/Canada) 443-850-0850 (Outside US)

Keynote speech by Philip Emeagwali at the Pan African Conference on Brain Drain, Elsah, Illinois on October 24, 2003. Bengali and German translations provided by High I.Q. for Humanity. French translation by Abdoulaye CAMARA of AfricaMaat. Thank you for the pleasant introduction as well as for inviting me to share my thoughts on turning “brain drain” into “brain gain.” For 10 million African-born emigrants, the word “home” is synonymous with the United States, Britain or other country outside of Africa. Personally, I have lived continuously in the United States for the past 30 years. My last visit to Africa was 17 years ago. On the day I left Nigeria, I felt sad because I was leaving my family behind. I believed I would return eight years later, probably marry an Igbo girl, and then spend the rest of my life in Nigeria. But 25 years ago, I fell in love with an American girl, married her three years later, and became eligible to sponsor a Green Card visa for my 35 closest relatives, including my parents and all my siblings, nieces and nephews. The story of how I brought 35 people to the United States exemplifies how 10 million skilled people have emigrated out of Africa during the past 30 years. We came to the United States on student visas and then changed our status to become permanent residents and then naturalized citizens. Our new citizenship status helped us sponsor relatives, and also inspired our friends to immigrate here. Ten million Africans now constitute an invisible nation that resides outside Africa. Although invisible, it is a nation as populous as Angola, Malawi, Zambia or Zimbabwe. If it were to be a nation with distinct borders, it would have an income roughly equivalent to Africa’s gross domestic product. Although the African Union does not recognize the African Diaspora as a nation, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acknowledges its economic importance. The IMF estimates the African Diaspora now constitutes the biggest group of foreign investors in Africa. Take for example Western Union. It estimates that it is not atypical for an immigrant to wire $300 per month to relatives in Africa. If you assume that most Africans living outside Africa send money each month and you do the math, you will agree with the IMF that the African Diaspora is indeed the largest foreign investor in Africa. What few realize is that Africans who immigrate to the United States contribute 40 times more wealth to the American than to the African economy. According to the United Nations, an African professional working in the United States contributes about $150,000 per year to the U.S. economy. Again, if you do the math, you will realize that the African professional remitting $300 per month to Africa is contributing 40 times more to the United States economy than to the African one. On a relative scale, that means for every $300 per month a professional African sends home, that person contributes $12,000 per month to the U.S. economy.     Emeagwali at the Pan African Conference Delivering the keynote speech [Principia College (prin.edu), Elsah, Illinois, October 24, 2003]   Of course, the issue more important than facts and figures is eliminating poverty in Africa, not merely reducing it by sending money to relatives. Money alone cannot eliminate poverty in Africa, because even one million dollars is a number with no intrinsic value. Real wealth cannot be measured by money, yet we often confuse money with wealth. Under the status quo, Africa would still remain poor even if we were to send all the money in the world there. Ask someone who is ill what “wealth” means, and you will get a very different answer than from most other people. If you were HIV-positive, you would gladly exchange one million dollars to become HIV-negative. When you give your money to your doctor, that physician helps you convert your money into health – or rather, wealth. Money cannot teach your children. Teachers can. Money cannot bring electricity to your home. Engineers can. Money cannot cure sick people. Doctors can. Because it is only a nation’s human capital that can be converted into real wealth, that human capital is much more valuable than its financial capital. A few years ago, Zambia had 1,600 medical doctors. Today, Zambia has only 400 medical doctors. Kenya retains only 10% of the nurses and doctors trained there. A similar story is told from South Africa to Ghana. I also speak from my family experiences. After contributing 25 years to Nigerian society as a nurse, my father retired on a $25-per-month pension. By comparison, my four sisters each earn $25 per hour as nurses in the United States. If my father had had the opportunity my sisters did, he certainly would have immigrated to the United States as a young nurse. The “brain drain” explains, in part, why affluent Africans fly to London for their medical treatments. Furthermore, because a significant percentage of African doctors and nurses practice in U.S. hospitals, we can reasonably conclude that African medical schools are de facto serving the American people, not Africa. A recent World Bank survey shows that African universities are exporting a large percentage of their graduating manpower to the United States. In a given year, the World Bank estimates that 70,000 skilled Africans immigrate to Europe and the United States. While these 70,000 skilled Africans are fleeing the continent in search of employment and decent wages, 100,000 skilled expatriates who are paid wages higher than the prevailing rate in Europe are hired to replace them. In Nigeria, the petroleum industry hires about 1,000 skilled expatriates, even though we can find similar skills within the African Diaspora. Instead of developing its own manpower resources, Nigeria prefers to contract out its oil exploration despite the staggeringly high price of having to concede 40% of its profits to foreign oil companies. In a pre-independence day editorial, the Vanguard (Nigeria) queried: “Why would the optimism of 1960 give way to the despair of 2000?” My answer is this: Nigeria achieved political independence in 1960, but by the year 2000 had not yet achieved technological independence. During colonial rule, Nigeria retained only 50% of the profits from oil derived from its own territory. Four decades after this colonial rule ended, the New York Times (December 22, 2002) wrote that “40 percent of the oil revenue goes to Chevron, [and] 60 percent to the [Nigerian] government.” As a point of comparison, the United States would never permit a Nigerian oil company to retain 40% of the profits from a Texas oilfield. Our African homelands have paid an extraordinary price for their lack of domestic technological knowledge. Because of that lack of knowledge, since it gained independence in 1960, Nigeria has relinquished 40% of its oilfields and $200 billion to American and European stockholders. Because of that lack of knowledge, Nigeria exports crude petroleum, only to import refined petroleum. Because of that lack of knowledge, Africa exports raw steel, only to import cars that are essentially steel products. Knowledge is the engine that drives economic growth, and Africa cannot eliminate poverty without first increasing and nurturing its intellectual capital. Reversing the “brain drain” will increase Africa’s intellectual capital while also increasing its wealth in many, many different ways. Can the “brain drain” be reversed? My answer is: yes. But in order for it to happen, we must try something different. At this point, I want to inject a new idea into this dialogue. For my idea to work, it requires that we tap the talents and skills of the African Diaspora. It requires that we create one million high-tech jobs in Africa. It requires that we move one million high-tech jobs from the United States to Africa. I know you are wondering: How can we move one million jobs from the United States to Africa? It can be done. In fact, by the year 2015 the U.S. Department of Labor expects to lose an estimated 3.3 million call center jobs to developing nations. In this area, what we as Africans need to do is develop a strategic plan – one that will persuade multinational companies that it will be more profitable to move their call centers to nations in Africa instead of India. These high-tech jobs include those in call centers, customer service and help desks – all of which are suitable for unemployed university graduates. The reason these jobs could now emerge in Africa is that recent technological advances such as the Internet and mobile telephones now make it practical, cheaper and otherwise advantageous to move these services to developing nations, where lower wages prevail. If Africa succeeds in capturing one million of these high-tech jobs, they could provide more revenues than all the African oilfields. These “greener pastures” would lure back talent and, in turn, create a reverse “brain drain.” Again, we have a rare and unique window of opportunity to convert projected American job losses into Africa’s job gain, and thus change the “brain drain” to “brain gain.” However, aggressive action must be taken before this window of opportunity closes. India is a formidable competitor. Therefore, we need to determine the cost savings realized by outsourcing call center jobs to Africa instead of India. That cost saving will be used as a selling point to corporations interested in outsourcing jobs. A typical call center employee might be a housewife using a laptop computer and a cell phone to work from her home. As night settles and her children go to bed, she could place a phone call to Los Angeles, which is 10 hours behind her time zone. An American answers her call and she says, “Good morning, this is Zakiya.” Using a standard, rehearsed script, she tries to sell an American product. Now that USA-to-Africa telephone calls are as low as 6 cents per minute, it is economically feasible for a telephone sales person to reside in Anglophone Africa while virtually employed in the United States, and – this is important – paying income taxes only to her country in Africa. I will give one more example of how thousands of call center jobs can be created in Africa. It is well known that U.S. companies often give up on collecting outstanding account balances of less than $50 each. The reason is that it often costs $60 in American labor to recover that $50. By comparison, I believe it would cost only $10 in African labor (including the 6 cents per minute phone call) to collect an outstanding balance of $50. ShareThis Earlier, the organizers of this Pan African Conference gave me a note containing eleven questions. The first was: Do skilled Africans have the moral obligation to remain and work in Africa? I believe those with skills should be encouraged and rewarded to stay, work, and raise their families in Africa. When that happens, a large middle class will be created, thereby reducing the conditions that give rise to civil war and corruption. Then, a true revitalization and renaissance will occur. The second question was: Should skilled African emigrants be compelled to return to Africa? I believe controlling emigration will be very difficult. Instead, I recommend the United Nations impose a “brain gain tax” upon those nations benefiting from the “brain drain.” Each year, the United States creates a brain drain by issuing 135,000 H1-B visas to “outstanding researchers” and persons with “extraordinary ability.” The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS), working in tangent with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), could be required to credit one month’s salary, each year, to the country of birth of each immigrant. Already, the IRS allows U.S. taxpayers to make voluntary contributions to election funds. Similarly, it could allow immigrants to voluntarily pay taxes to their country of birth, instead of to the United States. The third question was: Why don’t we encourage unemployed Africans to seek employment abroad? Put differently, if all the nurses and doctors in Africa were to win the U.S. visa lottery, who will operate our hospitals? If we encourage 8 million talented Africans to emigrate, what will we encourage their remaining 800 million brothers and sisters to do? The fourth question was: Should we blame the African Diaspora for Africa’s problems? Yes, the Diaspora should be blamed in part, because the absence it’s created has diminished the continent’s intellectual capital and thus created the vacuum enabling dictators and corruption to flourish. The likes of Idi Amin, Jean-Bedel Bokassa and Mobutu Sese Seko would not be able to declare themselves president-for-life of nations who have a large, educated middle class. The fifth question was: Should we not blame Africa’s leaders for siphoning money from Africa’s treasuries? It becomes a vicious circle: the flight of intellectual capital increases the flight of financial capital which in turn increases again the flight of intellectual capital. Leadership is a collective process, and “brain drain” reduces the collective brainpower needed to fight corruption and mismanagement. For example, the leadership of the Central Bank of Nigeria did not call a news conference after Sani Abacha stole $3 billion dollars from it. The bank’s Governor-General did not go on a hunger strike. He did not report the robbery to the police. He did not file a lawsuit. Had they the intellectual manpower to counter corruption, the results would have been very different. The sixth question was: Is it possible to achieve an African renaissance? Because by definition, a renaissance is the revival and flowering of the arts, literature and sciences, it must be preceded by a growth in the continent’s intellectual capital, or the collective knowledge of the people. The best African musicians live in France. The top African writers live in the United States or Britain. The soccer superstars live in Europe. It will be impossible to achieve a renaissance without the contributions of the talented. The seventh question was: For how long has the “brain drain” problem existed? A common misconception is that the African “brain drain” started 40 years ago. In reality, it actually began ten times that long. Four hundred years ago, most people of African descent lived in Africa. Today, one in five of African descent live in the Americas. Therefore, measured in numbers, the largest “brain drain” resulted from the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Contrary to what people believed, Africa experienced a brain gain during the first half of the 20th century. Schools, hospitals and banks were built by the British colonialists. These institutions were the visible manifestations of brain gain. At the end of colonial rule, skilled Europeans fled the continent. Skilled Africans started fleeing the continent in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. The result was the widespread rise of despotic rulers. The eighth question was: Is “brain drain” a form of modern slavery? By the end of the 21st century, people will have different sensibilities and will describe it as modern day slavery. In the 19th century, which was an Agricultural Age, the U.S. economy needed strong hands to pick cotton, and the young and sturdy were forced into slavery. In the 21st century, which is an Information Age, the U.S. economy needs persons with “extraordinary ability” and the best and brightest are lured with Green Card visas. Africans who are illiterate or HIV-positive are automatically denied American visas. The ninth question was: Do you believe that the “brain drain” can be reversed? As I stated earlier, “brain drain” is a complex and multidimensional problem that can be reversed into “brain gain.” India is now reversing its “brain drain,” and turning it into “brain gain;” I believe Africa can do the same. But unless we reverse it, the dream of an African renaissance will remain an elusive one. The tenth question was: Can we blame globalization as a cause of brain drain? Globalization began 400 years ago with the trans-Atlantic slave trade that brought the ancestors of 200 million Africans now living in the Americas. It has accelerated because the Internet and cell phone now enable you to communicate instantaneously with any person on the globe. Overall, globalization is a force that is denationalizing the wealth of developing nations. Economists have confirmed that the rich nations are getting richer while the poor ones are getting poorer. We also know that the globalization process is increasing the foreign debts of developing nations, accelerating the flight of financial and intellectual capital to western nations. The economics of offshoring will force multinational corporations to outsource to developing nations where lower wages prevail. To remain competitive and profitable, companies will be forced to reduce costs by hiring five-dollars-an-hour computer programmers living in Third World countries and lay off expensive American programmers that demand $50 an hour. In the long term, offshoring will reverse the flight of financial and intellectual capital from western nations to the Third World. The eleventh question was: Why have I lived in the United States for 30 continuous years? Africa has bitten at my soul since I left. My roots are still in Africa. My house is filled with Africana – food, paintings, music, and clothes – to remind me of Africa. I long to visit the motherland, but I must confess that when Africa called me to return home, I couldn’t answer that call. The reason is that I work on creating new knowledge that could be used to redesign supercomputers. The most powerful supercomputers cost $120 million each and Nigeria could not afford to buy one for me. I created the knowledge that the power of thousands of processors can be harnessed; this knowledge, in turn, inspired the reinvention of vector supercomputers into massively parallel supercomputers. New knowledge must precede new technological products and the supercomputer of today will become the personal computer of tomorrow. And so to answer your question: even though I reside in the U.S. the knowledge that I created is now materializing into better personal computers purchased by Africans. Finally, millions of high-tech jobs can be performed from Africa, but may instead be lost to India. We must identify the millions of jobs that will be more profitable when transferred from the United States to Africa. Doing so will enable us to create a brain drain from the United States and convert it to a brain gain for Africa. Thank you again.     Emeagwali delivering the keynote speech at the Pan African Conference Emeagwali won the 1989 Gordon Bell Prize, which has been called “supercomputing’s Nobel Prize,” for inventing a formula that allows computers to perform their fastest computations – a discovery that inspired the reinvention of supercomputers. He was extolled by then U.S. President Bill Clinton as “one of the great minds of the Information Age” and described by CNN as “a Father of the Internet;” he is the most searched-for scientist on the Internet.

Knowledge Work Across Borders: A Reflection

By Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie

I RETURNED to the USA recently after a three-week trip to Nigeria to launch my new book on Ben Enwonwu in Lagos. International travel wears you down over time, and I am reaching that stage where every trip seems to take more and more out of me. Clear signs include a longer recovery time from jet lag (the nine hours difference between Pacific Coast US time and Nigerian time now takes me more than two weeks to readjust to, whereas in the past I was up and running in no more than four days), more urgent backlog to take care of upon my return (and this a supreme irony, that the more professionally accomplished one becomes, the more work there is to do), and more importantly, a greater sense of psychological dissonance occasioned by the rapid mental shift from one system of operational protocols to another, between two social and economic systems as disparate as Nigeria and the USA.

This last one is becoming much harder, since I am actually two different persons in both countries. In the USA where I live and work, I am an increasingly accomplished professional presence in my field, with a growing global reputation.

In Nigeria, my home country, I am a very well known person and national authority on arts and cultural affairs, which means I am often in meetings with different individuals and arts organizations. All these add up to a hectic schedule of 16-hour workdays and over time, this kind of focus exacts a toll on body and mind.

I live and work in the USA as an art historian at the University of California Santa Barbara. I was in Nigeria mainly to launch my new book (Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist. Rochester, NY: The University of Rochester Press, 2008). I received very good national coverage of this event in print, TV and Internet media, most of which noted my ongoing involvement in art and cultural affairs of Nigeria. A Nigerian book launch (and any other Nigerian social affair for that matter) is a particular type of event.

Mine unfolded quite nicely and was very well organized by the Ben Enwonwu Foundation, which, through its director, Mr. Oliver Enwonwu, oversaw all aspects of the event. Although we both grossly underestimated the turnout for the event, the much larger turnout was well managed within the small confines of the Goethe Institut’s Lagos headquarters in Victoria Island. Wall to wall coverage of the event began to appear in the national newspapers three weeks before the date and weeks after.

The audience and media were very much interested in my book for its exhaustive analysis of Ben Enwonwu’s art and career. The artist is very well regarded in Nigeria and many reporters suggested that the book provides a template for future detailed analysis of modern and contemporary Nigerian artists. A lot of these articles, written in the peculiar Victorian English common to Nigerian journalism, contained worrisome misquotes and slightly off-kilter facts, which in themselves reflect an ongoing need for better craftsmanship among Nigerian journalists. In saying this, I do not mean to criticize the journalists who were kind enough to show up and interview me for their stories. In this they were very diligent: translating their interviews and composing selected quotes and citations into error-free reports seem to be the problem.

I HAVE been reflecting on the aftermath of this event, mainly on the subject of distributing my books in Nigeria, which has taken up all my time since I returned from Nigeria. I flew on Delta Airlines to Lagos from the USA. However, due to Delta Airlines’ luggage restriction on travel to Nigeria, I was unable to travel with enough books for the book launch. My publishers, the University of Rochester Press, also requested that I purchase every copy of my book intended for this launch (an expensive upfront cost that I ultimately had to assume) but carrying them to Nigeria became a problem.

In the summer of 2008, Delta Airlines imposed an arbitrary restriction on luggage allowance to Nigeria during last year’s hike in oil prices. I was highly critical of this move at that time mainly because it seemed to unduly single out Lagos among a few other Caribbean countries (five or six in all) for these restrictions. Oil was trading at $147 a barrel at its height in summer 2008 but is now trading for $49 a barrel, a price difference of $98 lower in favor of the airlines.

Despite this tectonic price shift, Delta Airlines has so far not rescinded its restriction. Given that the Lagos route is a highly lucrative route, it seemed to me quite problematic that Delta’s restriction on luggage has not been reviewed or rescinded since then, especially since the price of air tickets on international travel doesn’t seem to have gone down along with the price of oil. Summer travel on Delta is pricing at $2300 for economy class seats and even at this high cost, they won’t let you carry additional luggage even if you offer to pay for it. In addition, the airline often forces Lagos-bound passengers to check their carry-on luggage in Atlanta, thus imposing what is in effect an additional fee of $80-150 on already expensive ticket costs.

I bring up this issue to reaffirm my ongoing criticism of the inequities of access to international borders that afflicts African travelers (I did an extensive seven-part analysis of the major issues titled “Borders and Access” in a series of postings to my blog from November 2007: see aachronym.blogspot.com/2007/10/borders-and-access-or-lack-of-access-to.html).

International travel to Africa continues to be very difficult in terms of travel costs and scheduling. In this case, I was struck with a double dose of difficulty getting my books to Nigeria by the high cost of carrying excess luggage and the overly restrictive luggage rules of Delta Airlines. I’ve flown this airline to Lagos on previous four trips from December 2007, my most recent trip in March being my fifth flight on the same route. I’m now investigating other options but none seems immediately viable.

Travel to Lagos from the West Coast of the USA (Los Angeles in this instance) is quite onerous and the Delta route is, ironically, the most direct: the outbound flight gets you into Lagos from Los Angeles in 17 hours and inbound to the USA in 19 hours if you manage your Atlanta layover judiciously. Europe connections range from the tedious (British Airways runs 21 hours outbound and 26 inbound on the fastest flights through Heathrow airport) to the ridiculous (Virgin Atlantic logs 27 hours outbound and 40 hours inbound for the longest layover times I’ve yet seen while paradoxically charging one of the most expensive ticket prices–$3600 and above for a round-trip ticket).

I had decided to stop flying through Europe because of their racist attitudes to African travelers and I am now reviewing the option of flying Ethiopian Airlines and other routes to Nigeria to offset Delta’s restriction on luggage.

Given how expensive it is to travel to Lagos in the first place, I think travelers should be able to take when they need within reason, especially if they are willing to pay for it. I have seen people fly horses and cars from the USA to Europe on the kinds of big jets that fly to Lagos (Boeing 747s and 767s; Airbus A340s, etc) and don’t see any reason why a Nigerian flying with two extra suitcases should be forced to dump their luggage in an airport just to make their flight. And I have observed this happen on both ends of the trip, at Los Angeles and Atlanta airports, and at Lagos. In a supposedly free market, you are really marginal if you aren’t allowed access to specific services even when you are able to pay for them.

I have spoken to many Nigerians suffering through various discomforts on the Lagos route, asking how they feel about restrictions that severely limit their choices of what to take with them on their trips. They are often livid but almost immediately start blaming the Nigerian government for allowing its citizens to be treated in such a shabby manner in their international travels. I agree that the Nigerian government has not done enough to protect its citizens on international travel (let’s leave aside the oft repeated indictment of Nigeria for poor leadership and the demonization of Nigerians in the Western media) but I think this criticism misses the point.

The transaction between Lagos passengers and Delta Airlines is an economic one and it is governed by well-established legal rules in the USA that forbid discrimination on racial or national grounds. Now, I’m not a lawyer but I think a case can me made that Delta and other airlines that fly to Africa from Europe engage in routine behavior that systematic discriminates against passengers on this route. Start with the fact that Delta flies exactly the same very old airplane, a Boeing 767-300, designated Delta 57 outbound – on the Atlanta to Lagos route and struggles to provide decent service on these flights (the old jet, bless its heart, flies quite well, the pilots are top notch and the crew works very hard). Add the arbitrary luggage restriction and the large numbers of complaints of really bad treatment of Nigerians by foreign airlines over the past year alone and you could conceivably put together a good class action lawsuit.

It falls to Lagos-bound Nigerian passengers, especially those who live in the USA as American citizens, to defend their rights under this process of economic transaction but I don’t expect to see this kind of proactive passenger reaction from our people anytime soon: you see, the other notable trait of Nigerians (and black peoples in general) is that they are very good at working against their own self interests. More than anything, I think this is what ensures the persistence of a black underclass in the global economy for a long time to come, and dear reader, you can quote me on this.

TO return to the topic at hand: while Delta frustrated my effort to get enough books to Lagos for the book launch, things proved similarly difficult with my publishers. Let me state upfront that I think my publishers did a fantastic job with publishing the book and distributing it in the Western world. All commentators point out that the book is very well produced – it is in fact a beautiful book. It is also well presented for sale by Internet vendors such as on Amazon.com and the University of Rochester Press’s online catalog. One can order the book from their websites and many other places online. The problem is that Amazon.com does not honor orders from Nigeria or if they do, it takes 12 weeks to ship the product to Lagos. I may be wrong here but I haven’t yet met anyone in Lagos who successfully placed an order on Amazon.com.

I know that most Internet vendors automatically reject credit cards issued in Nigeria, and often reject orders placed for delivery to Nigeria even when you pay for them with credit cards issued elsewhere. This means that even those prospective buyers in Nigeria who wanted to purchase my book online couldn’t do so. At the launch, I was besieged by people, who wanted to buy copies of my book (at the last count, the purchase list contains over 120 orders) and I had to explain to them that copies of the book were simply not yet available for sale in Nigeria. I had tried to arrange orders to ship copies of the book to Lagos since January but was unable to do so because the cost of shipping is more often two or three times higher than the actual cost of the books themselves.

For example, I mailed a FEDEX package to Lagos recently containing 18 sheets of paper, letters sent to invite several people for my upcoming Nollywood Foundation Convention in Los Angeles in June 2009. It cost me $107 to send the package for delivery in ten days. Consider relative to this example, what it will cost to send 50kgs worth of hardcover books on the same schedule. The price is considerably less to ship by sea but that takes from anywhere from 12-18 weeks for delivery.

As at this posting, I am still trying frantically to get additional copies of my book shipped to Lagos so that they can be distributed in Nigeria. My publishers have been very cooperative in this process but our combined efforts have only recently identified an economically viable means to accomplish this goal. I give my publishers a lot of credit in that regard, since they also are interested in selling as many copies of the book as possible, but given the difficulties I have encountered in this regard, I have had to ask the hard question of whether they had any plans at all for selling my books in Nigeria, given that ordering the books through the usual commercial and Internet channels is not really an option for most Nigerians.

IT is thus apparent that there is a real and significant economic cost associated with living in a country like Nigeria, which is an added cost not often factored into economic analyses involving the country. This added cost is part of a “poverty market” economics that actually penalizes Africans for living in Africa and penalizes African Diaspora peoples for living in ghettoes in the West by either a lack of access to much needed services or access to such services at extraordinarily high costs to the consumers. That this issue equally affects academics is not often taken into consideration in analysis of how knowledge about Africa is produced and consumed.

My experiences as an international scholar reveal to me that African knowledge has become another raw material produced in Africa, processed or refined in the West and resold to Africans at exorbitant costs if they are allowed to buy it at all. We are used to speaking of natural resources in this manner-oil and gas, cocoa, gold, diamonds, and many other items. I have been a harsh critic of this unequal access to and use of African knowledge for most of my professional career but it is only in the past few years that I have started to engage it as a quantifiable phenomenon, with shocking discoveries.

The lack of distribution of my books in Nigeria follows a standard trajectory where research done on Nigerian subjects by international scholars over the past five decades are rarely disseminated in Nigeria when such research is published. I personally know about hundreds of books published on Nigerian subjects that have never been distributed in Nigeria, which means that the Nigerians communities who often form the subject of such research do not event get a chance to see how the knowledge they impart to foreign scholars are packaged and presented in academic contexts. This effectively turns such knowledge into easily exploitable raw material and literally transfers its capital from its Nigerian producers to the scholar who now owns that knowledge by virtue of publishing it abroad.

The fact that this process impacts most aspects of African life is not yet properly taken into consideration in our analysis of the causes of African underdevelopment, which continue to subscribe to pseudo-scientific economic theories. The biggest issue is how this situation undermines our traditional understanding of economics, that given adequate demand for a commodity, supply always rises to meet demand. This is not always the case where African demand for products and services are concerned and its impact is often insidious but very real.

IN my speech to the audience during my book launch, I reiterated that my work on Enwonwu is part of a larger project to identify, document and preserve significant aspects of African knowledge especially in the area of Arts and Culture. In the information age, density of knowledge in any sector is fungible and if one does not lay claim to that knowledge that belongs to us, someone more enterprising will claim it, repackage it and resell it to us at exorbitant costs. I consider my scholarship and professional research as part of the urgently needed stewardship of African cultural knowledge, which I think is a grossly underserved in Nigeria’s political engagements.

At its most basic, we should be very worried if significant research on an important artist like Ben Enwonwu produced by a Nigerian scholar based abroad is not even available for use by a Nigerian audience simply because there are no mechanisms for delivering the book to a Nigerian audience. It is very important that the nation starts to focus on these issues. We have spent the last 100 years suffering the very real impact of colonially induced underdevelopment aided by our own inept management of viable natural and cultural resources. We must learn how to gain and manage greater access to various forms of knowledge (especially those produced from research carried out in Nigeria) if we do not want to spend the next 100 years repeating the mistakes of the past century.

 

• Prof. Ogbechie is Associate Prof. of Art History at the University of California Santa Barbara, and Founder/Director of Aachron Knowledge Systems (www.aachron.com).