Dr Christiana Fwenji Zumyil Re-Appointed Acting Provost College of Education Pankshin

RENEWAL OF APPOINTMENT . The College community is hereby notified that the Federal Government through the office of the Hon. Minister of Education has approved the reapportionment of  Dr Mrs Christiana Fwenji Zumyil as Acting Provost Federal College of Education Pankshin, for another period of six(6) months. Her reapportionment takes effect from 8th December, 2023 pending the conclusion of the process for the appointment of a substantive Provost when a Council is in place. A letter to that effect signed by the Permanent Secretary Federal Ministry of Education Mr Andrew, David Adejo wishes the Acting Provost well in the discharge of her duties. By this development, Staff and Students are to note and as always continue to pray for the success of our dear Acting Provost in office. Signed: Istifanus Kyakmut, Mnipr For: Registrar.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN THE NEW YEAR

(Modest Thoughts with Ayuba, Yilgak'ha, January 4, 2024; 08116181263)
As individuals, organizations, or nations, we are cumulative products of the past we cannot excuse ourselves from today. We came into this new year, 2024 with what, in accounting, is called "balance brought forward" from the year ended, 2023. Balance brought forward in any accounting balance sheet has two sides. One is assets and, the other is liabilities. In any functional system, assets are to be improved upon while liabilities are to be minimised by all legitimate means. Relating this analogy to humans, assets are cherishable virtues and liabilities are demeaning vices that define a person's personality.
This prose was prompted by a WhatsApp post that I saw on the second day of January this new year which reads: "2025 is just 11 months and 29 days away. What have you achieved so far this year?" The author of the post is conscious of the need for achievements right from the beginning of the new year and, was not just ready to wait for the second day or first week, first month, first quarter, second or half of the year to pass before demanding for a review of the year from his expected readers. What an ambitious way and manner to start a new year. If we can track how much we have achieved with our lives daily this year and always, then, there can be no limit to what we will achieve with our personal, corporate, or national lives.
Ideally,  life on earth is meant to be eventful. Rachael Cusk in her novel, "Transit" which was published in 2016 wrote that "what the planets offer is nothing less than the chance to regain faith in the grandeur of humans: how much more dignity and honor, how much kindness and responsibility and respect, would we bring to our dealings with one another if we believed that every one of us has a cosmic importance? ... I of all people could see the implications for improvements in world peace and prosperity, not to mention the revolution in the enhanced concept of fate could bring about in the personal side of things." This is a profound seminal text that could stimulate any potentially progressive and productive person into wholesome thinking, especially, at the beginning of a year like this one!
It is unfortunate that, against the lofty demand for purposeful and productive living, many people organizations, or nations have lost bearing in life and are battling and, are battling to regain their steps and to find hope in what lies ahead - the big picture. But let's name it in specific terms, what actually, is the big picture? The big picture in every given circumstance is a sense of developing a life of higher productivity and positive impact in society through learning and collaboration with quality people who are capable of enhancing our productivity net worth. In other words, it is about standing out or making a clear and significant difference in your life and the lives of people around you. 
The focus is on practical achievements. Becoming a great achiever, in every given circumstance, has a lot to do with our personality quotient which encompasses our purposes, values (motivations), and mannerisms. On issues of individual or corporate personality, the statement was attributed to American activist, Eleanor Roosevelt, who said: "Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." In other words, human beings can be grouped into three categories of personalities: Great minds, average minds, and small minds. This exposition is a discussion that primarily revolves around these three vibe categories towards setting a new agenda for those who are desirous and committed to making a difference in the year 2024. Call it the 2024 declaration, if you like. For the sake of emphasis, the 2024 declaration is an agenda for teachable people who desire to achieve great feats in the new year that has just begun!
*Great Minds Described*
Great minds are people who painstakingly understudy systems and make something phenomenal out of them. They are great innovators and inventors like Thomas Edison, Isaac Newton, Aristotle, Karl Mark, Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, etc. What comes to your mind when these names are mentioned? Through the power of creative thinking, these people initiate great ideas that continually transform the world in the most spectacular ways, especially, in their respective fields of endeavor.
Ideas, they say, rule the world. They are unlimited products of imagination that can be processed to facilitate innovations that are capable of expanding the frontiers of human progress or civilization. Civilization has to do with values and systems that measure human success or attainments in science, technology, and, the art of survival in any given society. Ideas are intangible virtues that bring about value addition or value creation processes. These generating processes are the anchors of the production of every product or service that society consumes. It takes critical thinkers to challenge any existing status quo with the view to improving or changing it - add what needs to be added or subtract what needs to be subtracted toward producing the best of systems, methods, or processes of doing things. In other words, through critical thinking skills, the world can be transformed for the better!
It is important to note that the task of transforming the world is not child's play but the product of deep and coherent thinking that is sustained by due diligence and determination. Nicholi Michaville wrote that 'there is nothing as difficult as the task of introducing a new order of things'. This implies that having a lofty idea is not enough but how to translate it into a functional reality. Indeed, it is always a difficult process to create something unique or new but, the fact a process is difficult does not mean it is impossible to be consummated. No, there are no impossibilities with sustained effort in learning through time. With time, chance, and conscious endeavor, a seemingly impossible task could become, not only possible but very easy to be executed by determined people. Difficult tasks are possible tasks, a great thinker will tell you. Nelson Mandela of blessed memory puts it this way: "It always seems impossible until it's done"!
Great minds (thinkers) are adventurous people who dare to try great things. Robert Kennedy tries to make a clear distinction between them and average minds (mediocres) when he says, "Some men see things as they are, and say why. I dream of things that never were, and say why not." The former are mediocre; the latter which, in this case, is himself, is a great mind or great achiever. Great thinkers, therefore, are not average minds (mediocre) but doers of great things we crave to become in the new year or sustain, going forward!
*Average Minds x-rayed*
Average minds were said to be people who discuss events. They are spectators and free riders in the world of inventions. This means that average minds are fans, not inventors. They know what they want but cannot make it for themselves - they are merely conspicuous consumers.
Average minds marvel at the attainments of great minds. They are captivated by the innovations and inventions of others but do not attempt to invent anything on their own. Average minds lazily waste their time in cinema houses watching movies or are always rushing to stadiums to watch sports. They are comedy mania, not an attempt to initiate and develop something that others can patronize at a price. The good news, however, is that average minds can be reachable, and resetting their minds to try inventing things they love patronizing or discussing could make a difference over time.
*Small Minds analysed*
Small minds are those whose vibe is to lazily criticize others. The difference between average minds and small minds is that while the former know what they want; the latter are not even sure what they want in life. They invent nothing but criticize everything just for the sake of it.
Small minds are hardly teachable. They follow their instincts and, will not mind rocking the board when things do not go their way. They can easily be recruited to do anything with a plate of stew (food). Small minds make moves but do not know if their actions have consequences or not. They are given to mood swings and can fall for anything. Small minds are busy bodies, gossip, and recruiters of haters of other people who do not care if the world should progress or go up in flames. They are the illiterates and semi-illiterates who can easily be manipulated, brainwashed, and/or indoctrinated with toxic ideologies or mentalities. They have no mind of their own but willing tools for carrying out dishonorable roles.
Small minds are people who are at cross-purpose with progressive ideas that could liberate them. These are caught in the web of "Stockholm syndrome". That is, they can fight dirty in defense of their oppressors. They are like a chained dog who does not believe it can be free again. Therefore, small minds are fated savages and destitute who perceive poverty as a virtue or act of God. To them, all wealth is a crime and, therefore, they are comfortable living in what is called a "dynasty of poverty". Dynasty of poverty means the vicious cycle of poverty or transgenerational poverty which stubbornly has been sustained amongst and across generations of people!
*Driving the Message Home*
Nigeria is extravagantly rich both in human and material resources. However, the country's human resources are its greatest resource or asset because it is the human beings that can mobilize and manipulate material resources to generate goods and services for any country. Given Nigeria's abundant blessing in natural resources, therefore, the problem of the country cannot be situated within the context of a deficit in material resources but the quality of the human capital to optimally (effectively and efficiently) harness these resources towards the welfare benefit of the people. Low quality of human development in the lives of the country's over 200 million people has continued to manifest in the areas of escalating abject and multidimensional poverty amongst over 63% of the citizens; jobless working age bracket of the population; docile followership that hardly checkmates the excesses of the ruling class amongst others.
Because the leadership of the country is generated from the poorly underdeveloped human population, it is equally deficient in the quality of thinking and service required to make the nation great. This is, perhaps, the best explanation that can be given for the 'fantastically corrupt' status the country has assumed. Corruption was said to be plundering Nigeria to around 60% of Nigeria's national wealth based on the submission of the late Chinua Achebe in his book "The Problem with Nigeria" which was published in 1983. Institutional corruption is so bizarre in this country that even a toddler can feel that something is, fundamentally, wrong with our governance and administrative systems. There is hardly any day passing without corruption making news headlines in the country. There are so many state-managerial leakages and, worst still, insecurity tends to overwhelm the country against the constitutional/primary responsibility of government which is to guarantee the welfare and safeguard the lives and properties of the citizenry!
Part of the hypothesis of this discourse is that no nation can excel or develop beyond the level of mental and moral development of its leaders. The seemingly glaring correlation between leadership failure and underdevelopment in Nigeria has continued to confirm and validate this hypothesis. No wonder, Achebe of Blessed again asserted that "the trouble with Nigeria is simply a failure of leadership …The Nigerian problem is the unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to the responsibility, to the challenge of personal examples which are the hallmarks of true leadership." Since this assertion was made in 1983, nothing whatsoever has proven it wrong. This means that the Nigerian leadership problem is a protracted one that needs concentrated attention to reverse.
*Conclusion*
This is just the beginning of a new year that has come on a clean slate, an open cheque for the living to plan and make a difference. The year promises to be eventful. Therefore, we are expected to fill in the details responsibly. Through conscious endeavor, every person can make a difference and, together we can create the future the future we want to see. However, there is nothing fruitful that can be achieved with the mentality of average or small minds. Be a great mind and doer of things; not a fan or 'professional' critic.
Theodore Roosevelt has these words to say about critics: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither knows victory nor defeat." Be positive. Do not make a profession out of criticism and be constructive if you must criticize. Constructive criticism is when observed acts of wrongdoing are backed by practical solutions to remedy the situation!
Though not easy, it is important to know that anybody can decamp from the camp of average minds and small minds to the camp of great minds but this cannot happen by wishful thinking but deliberate effort. If you are a great mind, stay there but do not live under the illusion that you cannot drift. Change is a constant, says Greek philosopher, Heraclitus. However, if you must change, change in the direction of improvement; not drift into infamy. Happy New Year and best wishes to all determined people who aspire to make a difference this year and always!

VICTORY BY GRACE

Compliment of the season. Christmas has come and gone but the new year is around the corner. I wish you well, as you round-off the old year and wish you well as you start the new one. 

Many had what our life's dreams are but, today, they have gone six feet down the ground or battling terminal illnesses. Many, also, wish to be like us but are, sadly, gone too or innocently confined to bondages imposed on upon them by their fellow men. Yet, despite all the travails of life, we made it. We are alive!, glory be to God.

Because God lives, we can face tomorrow with hope of victory and, the promise of success in all that we do, going forward. This is the confidence I am starting the new one with when we crossover; what about you? 

Let us step into the new year with faith and confidence to conquer our worst/greatest fears. Let us go there and win; not because we are strong or swift or smart or better than anyone but because the grace of God almighty is richly dwelling upon us and those we always share our lives with. 

There is power in collaboration. If our graces will not take us through, that of our genuine collaborators will make it up for us because we draw from the same source - God who is our sufficiency!

Congratulations in advance for all the victories that await us. Whatever we could not win in the year ended could not have been of praise to God, otherwise, we could have won all (Modest Thoughts with Ayuba, Yilgak'ha, December 31, 2023)