A Nigerian professor, Augustine Nwabara who is said to be on sabbatical at the University of Ghana, Legon was caught in a leaked video in what is best described as inciting the Nigerian media and community in Ghana to take up strategies that would expose Ghana’s bad image when it comes to the treatments being meted out to Nigerian.
At a meeting held in Ghana, the English language Professor said the best way to tackle the bad image that Ghana is creating for Nigeria is to use the media in telling the bad stories of Ghana through series of documentaries adding that Ghana is as bad as them.
Outlining some of the strategies, the professor said “We’re highly skilled and highly talented and blessed people but many at the time we lack strategy, Nigerians tend to lack strategy. You can have good skills, if you don’t know how to let people know it, it is there; dies, like having a factory full of items in the warehouse. If you don’t advertise it remains in the warehouse”.
“They have harassed us a lot, I know that… What I’m saying is we need strategies. I’ll suggest something which the embassy can think about; I know they know which they can do immediately at the Nigerians community. There is a bad image for Nigeria; we can take it back through the press. We can reverse it. We have powerful Nigerian media stations, channels broadcast all over the world, there’s active online social media, the plot in Nigeria. Let them come here and run documentaries of the experiences of Nigerians and blast it all over the world. In three days Ghana would respond”.
According to the professor who says he is a media person and has expertise in how it works, there is no absolute truth in the media and that the truth is only at how it is presented.
These are some of his words:
“I have been a media person, you cannot be here and suffering. Let the leaders get our media persons to come here to cover what has been happening. Go to the student community, go to the business community, go to everywhere; come to the embassy. Go and confront the officials with the information, air it, within one week I can tell you part of worse happening. I’m sorry to say it but this is within us, the present government in Ghana came on the grounds of Nigeria bashing. I’ve listened to things some of their top leaders have said all over the world in major places. We did not take it back, if we take it back they will sit up, so media strategy one”.
“Use their own media; but you know something, I’ve been a pressman, there is no absolute truth in the media. The truth is truth as it is presented. Let us use our own media and get back to them. Let us see life cases, let our media with this story say we want to go to their prisons to see Nigerians, of course, they will turn you back, you broadcast it. And by the time you’re through run series of documentaries on Nigerians relations and sir we’ll take history”,
For him, there is a long-standing rivary between Ghana and Nigeria from Kwame Nkrumah era. According to him, Nigeria should have been the first to gain independence and that it was a Nigeria media man in Ghana that inspired and mentored Kwame Nkrumah to go his a university he has attended in the USA.
“That rivalry has been there because we don’t tell them the truth. They don’t know, historically there is that rivalry. Its sibling rivalry but the truth is that it’s a rivalry between an elder brother and a younger brother. It’s the rivalry all over Africa”.
“Let’s take back our image, let’s take them on step by step in very subtle forms not frontal, not open”.
On education in Ghana and Nigeria:
The professor said degrees awarded by Ghanaian universities are 80% inferior to those awarded by Nigeria universities.
According to him, in 2011/2012 he was on sabbatical at the Department of English at the University of Ghana and can say for a fact that “Nigeria community takes care of about 65% of its budget. A Nigeria student pays a minimum or average of ten thousand United State dollars (10,000USD)”
“…our people will come here and pay $10,000 but they will not pay N20,000 in the University of Lagos… What an average student pays in the University of Lagos in one session to get a degree in English is N12,000. Ghanaians are there paying N12,000… if you ask Nigerians to donate N50,000 naira every year to contribute to that university they will riot but the same Nigerians will come here and pay $10,000 for something 80% inferior to Nigeria.”
The seems peeved English language professor is worried about the treatment meted out to Nigerians in Ghana and of the view that he won’t pay the amount Ghanaian universities charge foreign students for his child to earn a degree.
“I won’t pay 10% of that sum for my child to get a degree in a Ghanaian university, I am in the system I know the quality of education we receive here is 80% inferior to what is in Nigeria. I can tell you authoritatively. You can quote me anywhere” he added.
He further noted that Ghana doesn’t have needed human resource capacity to make a university that can produce a quality degree to the standard of that of Nigeria.
“No Ghanaian degree is 20% up to the quality of a Nigerian degree. All our federal universities are better than any universities here. What makes a university, it’s not buildings, it’s not trees, it’s the quality of staff that will recycle and produce others they don’t have it,” he said.
Watch the video:
