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Why Arts and Humanities Students Still Need Mathematics

I remember my first encounter with numbers. It was interesting and because in Junior Secondary School, our mathematics teacher in JSS Akko made the subject come alive. He was patient, imaginative, and deeply human. He showed us that mathematics was not just about numbers, but it was about patterns, relationships, and reasoning. But by the time we moved to Senior Secondary School, the story changed. With poor teaching and growing fear, mathematics became a nightmare. We ran from the subject, we skipped classes and hated the teacher by implication hated the subject. That memory came back yesterday when the Federal Government announced that Mathematics will no longer be a compulsory subject for students in the arts and humanities seeking admission into Nigerian universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education. Many students will rejoice. But I am worried, because this decision quietly erodes something far more precious than numbers - our ability to think. Mathematics is not about fi...
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Skills, Degrees, and the Dangerous Shortcut

Recently, our colleague Dr. Hamisu Adamu Dandajeh shared a troubling story of a young man whose decision has become a kind of parable for our age. A mechanical engineering student with a perfect 4.79 grade point average trying to pack his books, to leave the university, and enrolled in a short ICT training course. These were the kinds of stories that some of our social media influencers would have celebrated a few years ago as a hero of the new order — a bold proof that “skills, not degrees” is the smarter path. His story would have been shared again and again, to show a courageous young man who took the risk to free himself from the shackles of formal education system. As unbelievable as it may sound, this singular act by this first class student raises a troubling question. Can a region like northern Nigeria, already staggering under the weight of failing schools, broken hospitals, insecurity and a fraying civic infrastructure, afford to treat education as optional? I recently told a...
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Is Jounalism advocacy? A short reply to Abdullahi O Haruna Haruspice

All journalism is advocacy. The only question is—for whom? Journalists can’t and will never serve as neutral "umpire". Truth is that in our 100 and 200 level media training we were taught that reporting involves being a neutral arbiter, reporting the "two sides of a story without judging". The concept of objectivity, fairness and balance were taught like articles of faith.  But after 300 and 400 level in the university we come to realise the fallacy of that thinking. It is a thinking entrenched in normative ideal — one that critical media studies deconstructed as theoretically flawed and practically unsustainable. Through critical epistemology, political economy, and ideological critique we come to understand the myth of neutrality and the umpire fallacy.  It presupposes an Archimedean point outside ideology, power, and social relations—a fantasy long dismantled by scholars from Stuart Hall to Noam Chomsky. The very act of “selecting” which "two sides" to ...
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Is Choosing Education a Failure?

In today’s Nigeria, saying you want to study education is almost an admission of failure. It’s no longer a noble pursuit, but a fallback for those who "couldn’t get something better." Admission trends at universities tell the story - education courses have become some of the least competitive, and even among those enrolled, a troubling majority landed there by accident not choice. This is a reflection of a deeper rot in our national values. A society that sees no honour in training teachers is a society that has written off its own future. Yet we pretend to be surprised when public schools crumble and the next generation flounders. The truth is, we’ve devalued education at its roots by neglecting the very people who make it happen. Just this morning, I came across a Facebook thread where friends were discussing the risks of building a life in Nigeria’s public universities. One remarked that if you choose to teach in a Nigerian university, you must first secure your own oxygen...
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When Travellers Become Targets

The deliberate targeting and murder of innocent travellers on Nigerian roads, unprovoked, unarmed, and unaware signals the descent of our national conscience into a state of decay. Over the years this criminal activity has become normalised especially in Plateau and Benue State. The killing of innocent travellers from Ningi, Bauchi State on the dangerous Riyom axis is still fresh in the minds of the families of the victims. These travellers were waylaid, murdered, and burned with their vehicle. Then in 2018 a group of Berom youth in Du community in Jos South local government ambushed and killed General Idris Alkali, a retired Army general passing through the area. His case is still being dragged in court. In 2021, Muslims travellers from Ikare, Ondo State returning from an Islamic religious event organised by Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi’s home in Bauchi, were similarly attacked and after the attacked, 26 innocent travellers were lynched by these ethni-militias in Rukuba area of Jos city. To t...
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June 12: Our New Democracy Day

Today is June 12, a date stamped in the memory of Nigeria’s democratic journey, not just as a calendar memorial, but as a symbol of what proponents of the day see as a day of deferred justice and recurring betrayal. I still recall my fierce argument in 1993, as a young student in Bauchi, with a close friend, an ardent supporter of Bashir Tofa and the National Republican Convention (NRC). I was aligned with the Social Democratic Party (SDP), drawn to the progressive promise of the leadership of the party and MKO Abiola, who we felt represented the ideals of the party. I was too young to vote, but I was politically conscious. We saw it not just as a matter of political affiliation, but a generational choice between the suffocating status quo and the faint stirrings of national rebirth. After Abiola’s victory, my friend told me bluntly “They won’t hand power to him.” I asked why. He had no logical answer, only a quiet certainty rooted in Nigeria’s political DNA. He was right. The June 12 ...
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Professor Abubakar Roko and Nigeria’s Broken Promises

In 2017, some self-appointed prophets of the Nigerian economy the #AljanunKasuwa as we call them, declared or was it a prediction [?], that private universities would dominate higher education by 2022. They were wrong — not because public universities thrived, but because they collapsed differently. Their collapse was not from market competition, but under the crushing weight of elite indifference, broken leadership, and a state that no longer invests in its people. Today, the Nigerian public university is not just underfunded, but a symbolic of a much deeper national failure. The collapse of the social protection scheme if at all it existed. To be a worker in Nigeria is to live without guarantees. There is no reliable health insurance. Salaries come late — if at all they come, they last only a day and cannot cater for family needs. Pensions are a cruel joke. To teach, nurse, be a journalist, or even serve as a civil servant is to walk a tightrope between duty and destitution. We are ...
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