Adeola Aderounmu

If an uneducated man or woman decides to add Dr. or Prof. as a prefix to his or her name, then there is something wrong.
In Nigeria several institutions of higher education are fond of awarding reckless and useless titles to politicians. The reason is because the politicians pay hugely for these nonsense awards. So it is either the higher institutions are selling them or the politicians and fraudulently rich people are buying them.

Titles are somewhat meaningless.

What is relevant is the role that a person performs in his or her environment (environment with a broad meaning).

When people who have not business with a particular title begin carry the title, then they make a mess of the real intention of such titles.

The most annoying of these titles in Nigeria today is the one that Mrs. Jonathan is carrying around. First it was Dame.

Many people have questioned this colonial mentality but she hasn’t seen any reason to remove the slave-tag on her name.

It is crazy when the public relation outfit of the Jonathans wants people off the back of the first family that inherit the illegality of Late Yar Adua. Let them put that house in order because they cannot continue to represent Nigeria in bad light and expect us to keep quiet. What is Dame?

As long as that slave-tag remains, this criticism will continue. The only option is for Patience to leave the spotlight and retire to her village.

It will shock Nigerians that she also has the title of Dr. which is not also been gradually slotted beside the Dame.

The trend on a national scale is worrying. There are several thousands of people in public services who carry different academic tags that have totally rubbished the essence of the academic pursuits in our dying Ivory Towers.

Those who want to uplift Nigeria and those who want to help Nigeria to rise again must not in any way accept or perpetrate fraud of whatever sort.

Wrong title tags to names are examples of fraud no matter how they are obtained. We must promote sincerity and honesty in public domains and no individual or group of individual should go around fooling people. It worsens the bad image that Nigeria already has. Let’s clear all forms and all types of fraud. Let’s start from the top and work it done.

aderounmu@gmail.com