Ojogbon Globalization

Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome, Ph.D. Brooklyn College, CUNY Department of Political Science Presented at the Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, Washington, D.C. December 5-8, 2002. Work in progress. Please do not quote. Introduction Most analyses of higher education in Nigeria explain the history, causes of decline and strategies for revival by focusing upon the inadequacy of government funding, the abandonment of the Universities and even Nigeria by the intelligentsia and the students that are most financially able to do so, the obvious infrastructural decay, falling academic standards, and the politicization of education. The recent negotiation of a loan between the Federal Government of Nigeria and the World Bank to revitalize Nigerian higher education must be viewed in the context not only of lost autonomy today, but as another phase in the intrusion of the phenomenon of globalization in the political economy of higher education in Nigeria. This paper will argue that nei...

Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome, Ph.D. Department of Political Science Brooklyn College, CUNY "Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters." "This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you hav...

Monograph Globalization, Feminism and Power: An African Perspective Ibadan, Nigeria: Published by John Archers for Programme on Ethnic and Federal Studies (PEFS), 2003 Mojúbàolú Olúfúnké Okome Brooklyn College, CUNY Introduction: African Women, Gender, and Globalization This is a brand new century. It is an exciting new day. In order to stimulate the flows of new and different, critical, and timely intellectual ideas, I suggest that we look both to the past and future. From the past, we can consider the record of victories won, gains made, and challenges that continue to move us to action. In the future lies the possibility of making change through the inspirational force of ideas, the mobilizational impetus of action that points out the shortcomings of the past and present, and provides worthwhile alternatives. I have tremendous optimism for the future, but would like to point to the dangers of the unwarranted cosmopolitanism of African women scholars and acti...