NOBODY IS BEING DEPRIVED: A RESPONSE TO DR. PETER ADWOK OTTO

It is always better to research into matters before reaching uninformed conclusion. Dr. Peter Adwok Otto’s piece smacks of political bad faith. As a lecturer in the faculty of medicine, Upper Nile University, and one time its Dean, he should have known better about administrative matter before using them as instruments for political mileage i.e. for agitation and/or incitement.

A response to this may boomerang on him as one of the people resisting the transfer to Malakal of the faculty of medicine, whose intake this year in Khartoum I have frozen.

There is a presidential decree (20/2002) to transfer the Southern Sudan based universities of Juba, Bahr el Ghazal and Upper Nile back to their locations in Juba, Wau and Malakal respectively. While there could have been reasonable grounds for non implementation of this decree then nevertheless the signing of the CPA 2005 rendered the situation in Southern Sudan more amendable to the transfer of these universities. Why have the universities or some of their colleges remained in Khartoum?

Dr. Peter Adwok Otto believes and I quote “This is a part of the failure of the GOSS during the last five years which should have relocated the three mother universities in the south so as to phase out these universities in the north”, which is completely nonsensical. This is because while the CPA provides that higher education is shared competency between GNU and GOSS nevertheless the mandate for overseeing, managing financially academically and administratively the universities lies with the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research and the National Council for Higher Education. The decision therefore to freeze the admission into the colleges of the Southern Sudan based universities still operating in Khartoum comes within my responsibility and this can’t be reversed by whoever Dr. Peter Adwok Otto has in mind.

But the most interesting aspect about Dr. Peter Adwok Otto writing is that he is like fisherman who fishes so carelessly that he hits his own leg with the spear. The real obstacle, to the colleges of medicine in the three universities moving to their locations in the south, are the teaching staff in these colleges. Many of them are involved in part time private businesses here in Khartoum that they have take the colleges hostages to their selfish personal interests. So Dr. Peter Adwok Otto is loud about depriving potential southern students not out of patriotism but out of concerns for personal financial gains.

For example, Bahr el Ghazal University has a campus in Wau which has the necessary physical infrastructure that can carry the whole university. I have ordered recruitment of foreign academic staff if the Sudanese don’t want to relocate to Wau. What else can I do if the person appointed to run this university is reluctant to take action?

The expansion in higher education reflected in the large numbers of universities was deliberate from a policy point of view. These universities are supposed to contribute to the social, economic and cultural development of the communities in which they are situated. This means that these universities are not fulfilling the objectives for which they were founded. So why continue admit students in Khartoum for universities which are supposed to be in Southern Sudan? This has nothing to do with the referendum on self determination. Their repatriation is simply overdue necessitating a radical decision like the one I had taken.

It is worth mentioning here that the continued stay of these colleges in Khartoum is a negative economic factor. Dr. Peter Adwok Otto and all the other academic staff of these colleges deprive the markets in and economies of Malakal, Juba and Wau because they transfer back to Khartoum their monthly incomes which should have been spent in these towns.

This is enough for now.

Peter Adwok Nyaba