A renowned academic and professor Veterinary Medicine at the University of Ibadan, Victor Anosa, on Thursday, unveiled his autobiography, “Destined for the Ivory Tower,” where he lamented the post-retirement poverty of workers, especially professors.
Speaking at the launch held at the Welcome Centre, Ikeja, Lagos, Prof Anosa said the book details the sorry state of many retirees due to the meagre, irregular pensions that they receive.
Noting that many retired professors earned monthly pensions of between N200,000 and N300,000, he said many of them relied on their children to be able to survive the “poverty of retirement.”
“Finally, my book discusses the important issue of post-retirement poverty of workers including professors and indeed all Nigerians due to the meagre pensions paid to retirees, which may be irregular, or not be paid at all.
“With monthly pensions of N200,000 to N300,000 from PENCOM – for which workers must appreciate President Obasanjo because it is regular, and half-bread is better than nothing.
“Today, I hear my professor colleagues, who are financially illiterate, say that their children are helping them survive the poverty of retirement – after 35 to 40 years of service to a most ungrateful and unthinking nation that disdains her geniuses and celebrates mediocrity,” Anosa said.
He lampooned what he called a “most ungrateful and unthinking nation that disdains her geniuses and celebrates mediocrity.
Anosa this is epitomised by the fact that the monthly pay of lecturers is not up to the wardrobe allowance of the nation’s legislators.
“A check last Monday revealed that a professor in a federal university in Nigeria today gets a monthly salary of N560,000 which I guess is less than the monthly wardrobe allowance of our legislators, most of who do not qualify to stand before university students.
“A nation that pays her brightest people less than the wardrobe allowance of her legislators is led by unwise leaders,” Anosa added.
He said the consequence of poor pay for lecturers is continuous brain drain in the universities whereby those teaching are those who graduated with second-class lower and third-class degrees.
“The universities where I worked full time for 51 years are the hardest hit and have suffered and are still suffering massive external brain drain to metropolitan universities and even to African universities.
“There has also been a more disastrous internal brain drain from the universities in which our bright graduates with first and second upper degrees, who normally returned to earn their PhDs and became lecturers and later professors have since the nineties flocked to jobs outside the universities in banks etc. Their places were taken by lower-grade graduates with second-class and even third-class degrees. This has diminished the quality of our lecturers and professors and our graduates,” the author said.
The veterinary pathology professor explained that he wrote the book to encourage people to plan their finances during their working lives so that they can easily cope with their retirement years.
“The book will be useful to students in secondary schools and universities, as well as their parents, to optimise the full realisation of their God-given potential. Workers will also get useful insights into the strategic planning of their finances during their working life to build up investments for their retirement.
“In 2009, a year before my retirement, the university assembled prospective retirees at Trenchard Hall and lectured us about retirement. I said to them that they should have told us about the inevitability of retirement and its great challenges much earlier.
“Intuitively, and by contacts with a few colleagues, I started thinking and planning for retirement by my mid-career and taking appropriate actions by investing in company shares – unfortunately crashed disastrously in 2008 – and later on real estate initially on a one-year-one-block approach,” he stated.
In his review of the book, Dr Marcel Mbamalu, who is Editor-in-chief of Prime Business Africa, said Anosa’s life journey promotes the values of hard work, humility, resilience and how young people can navigate socioeconomic challenges.
The reviewer also described the book as a cultural chronicle, a spiritual journey, an intellectual biography, and a communal odyssey intended to inspire and inform particularly the young generation.
Chairman of the occasion, Prof Oyewale Tomori, who is a globally acclaimed virologist, remarked that the author was always a person of class, leaving his mark, standing out among his peers and excelling in tasks.
The 300-page book takes readers through Anosa’s early years schooling at Enuogwugwu Central School, Ojoto, in the 1950s, his years in the village, his experiences during the Nigerian Civil War and his academic sojourn within and outside Nigeria.
The book offers insights into Nigeria, pre and post-independence, the evolution of the nation’s education system and the personal sacrifices behind his scholarly success.
The list of personalities that attended the event also included Igwe Gerald Mbamalu, who was the Royal Father of the day; Prof S.I. B. Cadmus of the University of Ibadan; a real estate developer, Chief Kennedy Okonkwo.
