…UNILORIN to re-brand as global varsity – VC***
At a street corner in eastern Caracas, Rosa Elena stepped from her car and started picking handfuls of leaves from a modest tree growing at the roadside.
“This is neem,” she said. “It’s high in sugar and great in a tea.”
Her interest was more than academic: Rosa Elena is diabetic, and when the lights went out in Venezuela last Thursday, she began to worry that the blackout would ruin her insulin supply, which must be kept refrigerated.
Since then she has been making rounds of the city, stockpiling neem leaves, which some people believe can be used to control diabetes.
As a crippling blackout drags into a sixth day, Venezuelans are being forced to improvise solutions for a crisis which is affecting every aspect of daily life.
Although there is intermittent power in the capital, some neighbourhoods have been in the dark since last week, and schools and businesses will remain closed on Tuesday.
Food has rotted in refrigerators, hospitals have struggled to keep equipment operating, and people gather on streetcorners to pick up patchy telephone signals.
At Residencias Karina, an apartment complex in the southeastern municipality of Baruta – the power was still off on Monday evening, and residents had come together to share expertise and survival tactics.
One elderly resident has lent his generator to the operation, with cables running up the side of the red brick building into a flat where neighbours charge their phones. To stop the device overheating or getting rained out, they have fashioned a cover out of cardboard and tarpaulin.
In ordinary times, petrol is practically free in Venezuela, due to government subsidies. But power-cuts have put many pumps out of action, and fuel is hard to come by. It is illegal to fill jerry cans at petrol stations, so people are often forced to resort to the black market to obtain fuel for generators.
“The government calls it contraband – we call it survival,” said Carolina, one resident who preferred not to give her surname for fear of reprisals.
Another neighbour, Pedro Martínez, was once a farmer in the country’s vast western plains, and has brought his own unique skillset to the team.
“I’m a campesino,” he said. “I don’t know about phones and I can live without them. But I do know how to salt meat.” Martínez has been turning the residents’ supplies of beef into jerky, so food supplies can last longer. “The chicken and the fish people had is already rotten,” he said.
Late on Sunday night, the housing complex was rocked by a string of explosions after an electrical substation caught fire in circumstances which remain unexplained.
“It sounded like a plane taking off,” said Carolina, as the stench of burnt plastic drifted across from the smoldering power plant.
The explosion added to a sense of desperation in a neighbourhood that had already seen outbreaks of looting. Residents have mounted lookouts to warn of the government security forces and paramilitary gangs called colectivos, who they fear will take down their jerry-rigged infrastructure.
“It’s like Jumanji here,” Martínez said. “Except instead of elephants and lions running around it’s the national guard and colectivos.”
Residents have started pumping water from a well behind the front gate, and taking turns to carry supplies to elderly neighbours on higher floors.
Water is in short supply across the city: at a pharmacy in the upmarket commercial neighbourhood of Las Mercedes, the queue for bottled water stretched for several blocks – longer than the line outside some petrol stations.
Moisés de Lima, a homeowner and new father, loaded gallon bottles of water into his car. He was stockpiling in expectation of a prolonged crisis.
“We are in a wartime economy now,” de Lima said, his voice trembling with anger. “This is what this government has done to us, and it has the nerve to just make excuses and play the blame game.”
On Monday night Maduro made a conspiratorial televised address to the nation, claiming the power cut was part of a “daemonic” plot dreamed up in the White House by US president Donald Trump in a bid to plunge Venezuela into chaos and justify a military invasion and occupation.
Most locals, however, are convinced the cause is years of under-investment, mismanagement and corruption.
“Chavistas have been in power for 20 years and we have had 20 years of energy crises,” said de Lima, who paid for his water in dollars, which swiftly became the de facto currency as cashpoints and card-readers went out of action. “After 20 years, you can’t blame other people for your problems.”
Outside La Carlota military airbase near the centre of the city, locals had descended on a tap outside a local police station, bringing empty bottles, jugs and tubs.
Waiting in line was Jeancary Lugo, a business administrator, who was dismayed by the efforts of some store-keepers to profit from the crisis.
“On Friday, I bought a bag of ice from a store for 1.5 dollars. Yesterday they wanted eight dollars,” she complained. “There’s a lot of solidarity here but there’s also people taking advantage. I feel like they are [trying to] rob us.”
Across the road, dozens of national guardsmen lined up, with riot shields and gas-masks at the ready.
“Is this what Venezuela deserves?” one person in line shouted at a police officer by the stationhouse.
The officer shrugged. “In the command centre there’s no water either, and electricity comes and goes. We’re are all suffering the same,” he said.
In the meantime, the Vice-Chancellor, University of Ilorin, Prof. Sulyman Abdulkareem, says the institution plans to re-brand into global University through employment of more foreign nationals.
Abdulkareem disclosed this on Tuesday while speaking at the interactive session and get-together with international staff organised by the Centre for International Education (CIE).
The vice-chancellor said that the university management would continue to do its best to inspire and motivate all staff, particularly, international scholars, in accordance with the Federal Government’s commitment to manpower development.
“I foresee a time when the rate of foreign nationals coming to work in this University will become huge just as our staff in foreign universities abroad will also become very huge,” he said.
Abdulkareem, who was represented by the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Management Services), Prof. Bolaji Sule, said that the contributions of international staff to the growth of the University have never gone unnoticed.
He said: “we are not unmindful of the sacrifices you are making for your career in this University that has grown to become a pride of Nigeria and Africa”.
The VC said that the University has international staff members as scholars from African countries such as Ghana, Congo, Egypt and Asian countries like Sri Lanka working side by side their Nigerian colleagues to keep the University’s flag flying.
“More of these nationals will be employed in years to come to further strengthen our brand as a global University.
“I see coming generations of the current international scholars, their biological and academic children, coming back into our midst settling down here, marrying our people, working and retiring here,” the Vice-Chancellor said.
He disclosed that the University has enjoyed working with the international staff, and the administration cherished their presence.
According to him, the institution will continue to do all that is required to keep them and encourage more foreign nationals to work with the University.
He believed that by so doing, they are building international understanding, cross-cultural relationship and safer and peaceful world.
The vice-chancellor, who also charged the international staff to play their role, added that every opportunity comes with its own challenges and working in the University of Ilorin is not an exception.
The vice-chancellor advised the scholars that in discussing their experiences about the University and the Nigerian nation, they should “show more understanding and maturity.
He urged them to be “appreciative of the little the University and the nation can afford, live within the law and pray for a better clime so that their own coming generations who choose to stay back may inherit good legacies”.
Abdulkareem said that the nation is at peace despite terrorists’ agenda and Unilorin is perhaps the fastest growing University in Africa with more than 18 years of unbroken academic calendar.
He explained that as the University students are increasing, so also the academic programmes creating more opportunities for foreign nationals to study and work in the University.
Prof. Felicia Olasehinde-Williams, Director of the Centre for International Education, commended the VC for the efforts geared towards improving the number of foreign scholars in the institution.
Additional report from Guardian UK
