Only 18,667 out of the over 1.6 million candidates who applied for this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, are seeking admission to the nation’s private universities…
PUNCH, April 29, 2014. p 49.
This is the concluding part of this article. The first part was published last Thursday.

AS students are fleeing from the zone, instructors, lecturers, tutors, administrators, bursars, games masters, etc, are also moving away — leaving whole departments of institutions without teachers.

A reader/friend who just returned to Lagos, after securing an appointment with a school, after spending over twenty years in the North-East where he had a house, as well as a thriving business, abandoned everything when his wife and children were slaughtered in a church attack. That he failed to drop everything and flee when other tutors were leaving two years ago, was his major regret.

Now, he has neither wife nor children to inherit all he accumulated. Furthermore, he cannot even imagine returning to the place. Every night brings with it nightmares regarding his failure to act when lives could have been saved. He had miscalculated and under-estimated the staying power of Boko Haram.

Incidentally, he was teaching economics. He actually read political science, but started with economics. He was asked to change on account of the mathematics in economics. But, he could handle economics at secondary school level. He was the only tutor in several local government areas around who could teach economics. Consequently, few of the students in the area applied to read the subject at university level. That, to me, is the tragedy.

We had elected or appointed several thousand people, all over Nigeria, engaging in economic activities, making decisions affecting our economy – without a simple understanding of what they are doing to our nation’s economy.

Let me close by telling a true story. In 1974, shortly after returning to Nigeria, it occurred to me that I might want to teach at secondary school level. I approached the Lagos State School Management Board and my application was accepted. Then it was time for posting. The officer in charge looked at my application form and saw Igbobi College.

So, he said, “You want Igbobi College, don’t you?” “No,” I said, because I knew Igbobi College had Economics tutors. I asked for a school without an Economics teacher and ended up with Ansarudeen School, Falolu Road, Surulere, which had very few graduate teachers. I ended up teaching Economics, Government, and even English Literature.

Until my arrival, no student had ever received a Credit in Economics, because there was no one to teach it.
About six months ago, I was at WAKA CLUB 1945 in Lagos, when a middle aged man came and prostrated in front of me. I later found that he was a retired banker. He identified himself as one of my five pupils at the High School, in 1974/75, who took Economics at WAEC. Three, including himself, received upper Credits –without “expo”; one became an Assistant Professor.  So, who will teach Economics in the North-East?