Thread by @cchukudebelu

I think the collapse of research in Nigerian universities in the wake of the IMF/SAP era is one of the biggest tragedies in our history.

Western funding/academics now dominated research, and research topics were determined by Western, not local interests.

At one point, you had to write something about HIV/AIDS to get research funding, or act a subordinate to some Western researcher.

Oil and gas companies determined the direction of research, they were only interested in limiting their liability for oil spills/environmental issues

The Niger Delta Militancy triggered an inflow of research dollars, as the US still depended heavily on Nigerian crude (this was before the advent of Shale Oil and Gas).

Along came 9/11 and Boko Haram, and millions of dollars went into funding research into "radicalization".

As a rule of thumb, if the Pentagon/National Security Establishment or USAID/International Development Community was interested in your research project, it got funded.

But these two communities have very limited interests - and we can see the results today.

Nigerian politicians also got into the game, they realized that key research funders were more interested in certain regions of Nigeria then other regions - so this was just extra ammunition for Nigeria's endless ethno-religious power struggles.

Today, we can see the limits of that approach over the past four decades. We have foreign scholars who lack a holistic understanding of Nigeria as "Nigeria experts" - and the entire nation is on fire, and we don't have enough research to actually understand what is going on.