vision and strength aun

8/3/2019 Vision and Strength Aun

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VISION AND STRENGTH

American University Nigeria

By

John Barnett, President

Barnett Holding Company

Washington, DCAbuja, FCT

Republic of Nigeria

There is peace, tranquility, and stability in Yola, the capital city of Adamawa State which issituated in northeast Nigeria. Yola presents a stark contrast to the daily violence currently being

experienced in areas of the restive north of Nigeria, and I proffer that American UniversityNigeria AUN with its integrated education system which allows students to matriculate from

pre-primary school to a college degree is a major contributor to that contrast. In fact, if BokoHaram means, western education is sin, then American University Nigeria is its very

antithesis.

During the recent crisis in the country, AUN started the Adamawa Peace Council with prominentMuslim and Christian leaders, business people, senior police and security and other academics.

Within 48 hours of being formed, members of the Council held an hour TV/radio program that iscredited with helping to calm fears and nerves in an area of the country that was under a state of

emergency.

The former Vice-President of Nigeria, Atiku Abubukar, started AUN. He was orphaned at a veryyoung age but had the fortune of having several Peace Corps teachers. They taught him to think

independently and were a great contrast to British teachers who had run the educational systemin Nigeria during colonial times. In fact Mr. Abubukar recently won the first ever Harris

Wofford Global Citizen Award for starting AUN.

AUN welcomes students from throughout Nigeria and Africa to a modern, wireless campus

whose faculty is staffed with professionals from around the world, but primarily from America.About 20% of its tuition is used for scholarships-for students from every geographic region ofthe country. AUN is primarily responsible for making Yola a city with one of the largest the

concentration of Americans in Nigeria.

AUN is a model that works against the fundamentalist extremism currently being fomented byBoko Haram in northern Nigeria; a model which should be encouraged to expand and replicated

throughout Nigeria to foster peace through sound high quality education.


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The true genius of AUN is that it is teaching an American-style education and is inclusive of pre-

primary, secondary and high school education all incorporated on its vast university campus. Theschools are all self contained environments complete with boarding facilities, cafeterias, sport

facilities and entertainment areas all developed on separate compounds within the campus. A

student can go from kindergarten to a college degree within the AUN education system; this isthe first private education system in the whole of Africa, which allows for such matriculation.AUN has recently started a school for poor rural children on the farm of its Chairman, Ahmed

Joda. The school will focus on new methods of entrepreneurship and agriculture and will be freeof charge. All AUN students will tutor at the school. The farm products-such as cheese and

vegetables, will be used in the AUN cafeteria.

Like all major university towns in the U.S. its sometimes hard to delineate the campusboundaries to that of the surrounding local business community, as they all meld together to form

a symbiotic education and economic system, think the University of Texas UT in Austin; suchis the case for AUN. AUN has transformed Yola into a true university town with all the

vibrancy, excitement, and hope for transformation through education. AUN is both the engine ofgrowth in Yola and surrounding towns and through its community service and peace-making

efforts is showing a new model for development. What is Austin without UT, similarly what isYola without AUN? They are both bastions of education that have come to define and be defined

by their host cities. But, AUN is much more in that it has come to represent the triumph of ahigh quality education over the malevolent and deafening roar of incessant bombings which have

become the hallmark of Boko Haram to convey their misguided message that western educationis sin. AUN is a mighty barrier that is preventing the incursion of this corrosive, damnable and

false message into the minds of Nigerias future leaders.

AUN is a massive ongoing project with the need to steadily grow campus infrastructure with

new buildings and facilities, as well as recruit new staff and faculty for an ever growing studentbody; all this in a region not only replete with daily violence but also a very crippling epileptic

power supply. Its difficult for the average American to truly embrace and appreciate what Mr.Abubukar has accomplished in Yola; after all university towns are quite common throughout the

U.S., but to have one in northern Nigeria, directly challenging Boko Haram ideals, by extollingand imbuing in students and generations to come the values and virtues of a high quality U.S.

style education is worthy of the highest commendations and support from the U.S. government.

AUN is a monumental accomplishment and should be a required visit for all U.S. dignitariesvisiting Nigeria. It is the first university in the world whose stated mission is to be a

development university improving the lives of people in the community and country. Its Boardof Trustees reflects that commitment. Members include Bishop Tutu, the former head of the

National Science Foundation in the US and President of Tulane (AUNs primary academicpartner in the US), Dr. Eamon Kelly, David Macrae, the current European Union Ambassador to

Nigeria, the former US Ambassador to Nigeria, John Campbell, and many more prominentNigerian and American individuals.


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AUN is positively transforming all levels of education and it is worth emphasizing the following:

y AUN is the first university in the world whose stated mission is to be a developmentuniversity, contributing to the improvement of our community and country

y AUN requires community service for all of our students. This is common in the US but afirst for Nigeria. Our students are training primary school teachers how to use computers,prisoners how to read, and women how to write business plans. They paint schools, build

football fields and teach first aid.

y AUNs Board is very diverse-with people like Bishop Tutu, the EU Ambassador to Nigeria, the former Chair of NSF and President of Tulane, (Eamon Kelly) Americanexperts in agriculture (Dr. Earl Kellogg) and higher education and very prominent

Nigerian business people.

y AUN will begin graduate programs in three areas of need this year: internationaldevelopment and health (with Tulane University-their primary American academicpartner), an MBA with a focus on entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship and an

MS in wireless and telecommunication

y AUN is the first university to offer an academic program in social entrepreneurshipy About 15-20% of AUNS tuition income goes to scholarship both for needy students and

for high merit. Every semester a Presidential scholarship (full tuition, room and board)

goes to a student from each geographic region of the country. AUN is a very diversecampus with students from around the country and want to increase that diversity.

The U.S. government should work hand in hand with AUN as well as Mr. Abubukar for further

transformation through education in Nigeria. I say we help AUN extend its reach to areas likeMaiduguri, which is the Boko Haram heartland, (only a few hundred miles away), as well as

areas of the South also struggling with crippling poverty. This would send a concise and focusedmessage that the way forward for civil society, peace and economic stability in the north is

through a high quality education for all its citizens.

I have witnessed the atrocities of military intervention, both in the Niger Delta and northernNigeria, to address what are fundamentally socio-economic issues. A military solution, in both

case, have only inflamed the citizenry and galvanized the indigenes toward more extreme

militant actions.

A military option is simply not viable or sustainable in Nigeria; it will only produce more

widows, female heads of households in U.S. parlance, walking the streets of Abuja begging foralms to feed and clothed themselves and their homeless children. The death of just one Islamic

man could leave four widows or arguably more and several children dependent upon a socialwelfare system that is largely nonexistent in Nigeria. A case in point is the hundreds of


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thousands widows currently in Iraq who suffer daily primarily due to the lost of husbands in thewar.

Do the math and I think you will agree that a military option should be shelved for a more

comprehensive solution with education as its foundation.

Through the establishment of AUN there exists a strategic platform that is working to transformthe lives of Nigerians, regardless of religion, ethnicity, income, tribe, gender or nationality. This

high quality education platform should serve as the stable foundation on which to build peacefulsolutions to the problems and issues that trouble northern Nigeria, indeed the Nigerian Nation.

Nigeria is a complex nation of many tribes and tongues struggling over the past fifty one years to

function as an amalgamated unified democratic republic. But there has been no trueamalgamation of the Nigeria body, as an amalgam requires the constants be applied equally for

the desired outcome. The reverse has happened in Nigeria in that the only constant has beeninequality which has resulted in factures throughout Nigeria and created a type of Nigerian

Balkanization of its politics, people, places and procedures. I dont use the termBalkanization lightly; these growing fractures along ethnic and tribal lines are becoming

unstable and could rapidly deteriorate into an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.

In view of the growing Balkanization of Nigeria the U.S. should give very seriousconsideration on how to tweak its foreign policy to leverage the success of AUN, as well as to

support the influence, strength and vision of our friends in the region, especially AtikuAbubukar, the acknowledged leader of the North and close friend of the US, to engender peace,

tranquility and stability in Nigeria. The Peace Corps acknowledged his contributions in itspresentation of the Harris Wofford Global Citizen Award last October: No private businessman

in Africa has worked harder for democracy or contributed more to the progress of highereducation than Atiku Abubukar.

I have a few opinions on the form of those foreign policy tweaks which I will discuss when

making my rounds on Capitol Hill upon returning to Washington, DC.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr. John Barnett formed Barnett Holding Company BHC as an investment vehicle for Barnett

Exploration & Development Company and Barnett Land & Cattle Company. Mr. Barnett acts as

principle investment advisor for the BHC, as well as a number of other firms conducting

business in Sub Saharan Africa.

vision and strength aun

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