Olufunso Owasanoye is an educationist, child’s rights advocate and Executive Director of Human Development Initiatives (HDI), a non-governmental organisation whose existence has spanned two decades and championed a good number of projects in the areas of children and women rights, accountability and transparency in education supported by international partners like Mac Arthur Foundation. In this interview with Daniel Adeleye, she speaks on the rising figure of out of school children in Nigeria, amongst other issues. Excerpts.
The increased rate of out of school children in Nigeria is becoming worrisome; what’s your take on this?
I think we should first talk about the causes; first, there are some sets of people who are ignorant, they don’t believe in education. In the course of our work, we went for advocacy rally in a market and we met a child during school hours who was selling with her mother. We asked the mother why she was with her in the market instead of being in school. The woman replied that the child has been in school before, but when they said she should bring N500 but she didn’t have the money.
She then said that even those who graduated from the university don’t get jobs. I think that is ignorance. Another cause is dysfunctional family; when there are issues at home, especially low income or indigent families, you see the children run into the streets. Maybe there are issues between the father and the mother or the child living with the relatives and not well cared for. One of the children we currently support in our NGO used to live under Oshodi Bridge, but to the glory of God, we have helped him and, today, he is a university undergraduate. I know the country is trying to eradicate mass illiteracy and government is doing a lot in this regard, but a lot more needs to be done especially in the area of awareness creation about education which is still low. Insurgency-ravaged zones of the country are definitely having many children out of school. And of course some schools are over-populated. There are situations of over-crowded classrooms where furniture meant for six students get about eight or more students sitting on it. The focus of many is on money; they don’t appreciate the value of education, they fail to realise that education is an important yardstick to make the money. Once this false belief is inculcated in the children, they will join the bandwagon and agree that there is actually nothing important about education. So we need to have more infrastructures and a very robust conducive learning environment. In some cases, teachers’ presentations of subject matter are often not encouraging; some have academic difficulty, transition from one state or local government to another, among so many other factors. With these situations prevailing, children may feel that what’s the use of going to school? Often times too, when the parent is so poor, children are starved and yet have to trek long distances to get to school, such a child would definitely prefer staying at home. In places where there are structures, the attitudes of teachers towards the child are also an important factor. Sometimes there are situations or family issues at home and a child looks up to the teachers for succour but the teacher is not there. Without doubt, there are several factors contending with children; there are hormonal changes in their bodies, there is the distraction of social media, negative peer pressure and the exposure of internet, especially for teenagers. Most of them are in a confused stage. So positive parenting skills and positive input in schools in terms of conducive environment is required.
Now how would you react to the state of education in the country?
It’s part of what I’ve said earlier, government is trying especially Lagos State but more efforts are needed. There must be increase in education budget and monitoring of utilisation of funds. And also private sector needs to come in and help concerning this situation. For instance, from reports and some schools visited, there are some dilapidated buildings, non-equipped laboratories, teachers are not motivated, and recruitment of some unqualified teachers, students’ orientation on cheating has increased, silent malpractices taking place in schools, favouritism, and teacher’s absenteeism. One of my friends said there was a time she was telling the students that, WAEC exam was coming soon and they had to read, the student just got up and said, ‘but we’ve paid to attend special lesson, they will help us.’
All these things are still going on in some schools which will eventually jeopardise the future of our children. Unless they do businesses of their own there is no way they can really fit into the society or compete in the labour market because they just passed through school but the school didn’t pass through them; they don’t have so much to offer. So it’s back again to the learning environment and the need to put more money into research.
The curriculum also needs to be revamped; enough of theory without adequate practical. Government should do more on the learning environment; put more funds into education, training for teachers to know the real subject matter. And not just teachers who want to be teachers because there are no other jobs, it must be teachers that have passion to teach from the heart, not from the head. So if these and other things are put in place, I am not saying everything can be a hundred percent perfect, but we will see some improvement. And again awareness and sensitisation of parents especially the ones that are not lettered and the indigent among them to know the real benefits of education because it’s what they know that will become their norms.
What experience informed HDI’s pilot study on quiet corruption in public education institutions in Lagos State?
Well HDI is an NGO and our vision is to strengthen vulnerable humans in the society and the most vulnerable are the children. So we see all sorts of things which of course informed us that quiet corruption is pervasive, less visible, attract little or no attention and have grave consequence on the system in areas of school drop-out, poor quality of graduates and high unemployment rate.
For instance, when a student tells you that a teacher sells snacks and it’s only those that buy the snacks that will get additional marks. What do you want others that don’t have money for snacks to do? Or a Mathematics teacher that says to his female student, “your body is your mark”. Children, especially those who have no cordial relationship with their parents, may be unable to tell their parents and so will fall because of that singular reason. Also what about situations of teachers not coming for classes; students bribing gate man in the school when they are late and other different cases that are silent? We have a culture of silence that goes unnoticed. What about the handouts in the higher institutions, where a lecturer will clearly tell his students: ‘if you don’t buy all my textbooks/handouts you can’t come to my class.’ These and more are instances of quiet corruption going on in schools. Corruption is big on its own, which we all know but this quiet one is prevalent that if you don’t look deep enough you won’t notice it. The research is just a pilot study in Lagos State where we just did baseline survey. Stakeholders in the sector were interviewed and you listened to their comments, which showed that quiet corruption is a very huge problem that affects students negatively and needs to be curtailed.
Tell us more about your organisation
HDI is a non-governmental organisation that has been in existence for over twenty years. We have done a lot of projects in the areas of children and women rights, accountability and transparency in education supported by international partners. We give free legal services and counselling to widows helping them to obtain letters of administration. Annually, we do what’s called health screening for widows, we get volunteer doctors and other medical personnel, from state and local governments. Pharmaceutical companies give us free drugs and we also give health talk just to encourage the widows. We also do empowerment programmes. There are some women, after the demise of their husbands, who have nothing to fall back on. Some have issues with their in-laws, they need the skills to make themselves reliant. In the area of education, we give assembly talks in different schools and on different topics on request, mentoring and counselling. We’ve trained principals and vice-principals; we have a day out with adolescents. We also train the teachers, especially school counsellors so that students will be able to open up to them about any issue. On good governance in education, we monitor UBE education projects in collaboration with Lagos State SUBEB. We have a scholarship scheme called HDI Education Trust Fund for widows’ children, orphans and children living with disabilities in public schools from nursery to university level. We believe that this is what we can do to support the government to bring children from the streets into classrooms.
What do you consider the most challenging issue facing your organisation in carrying out these functions mentioned above?
First is funding and secondly to have immediate response from those on the supply side and to have full collaboration. They are trying though, especially in the area of education, the chairman of SUBEB in Lagos State has been so wonderful. What actually informed the scholarship scheme we are giving to the children of the widows is that a widow came to our office, looking for a cleaning job and I saw her with a girl who was supposed to be in school that morning. And I asked the woman who the girl was. She said she’s her daughter and I asked again why she was not in school and they looked at themselves and the woman replied that the girl’s uniform was torn and they live on the money she realises from doing cleaning jobs. The house rent was due and all their things scattered in a church where they sleep. The girl’s sandals were cut and she wore slippers and her tattered uniform to school for about three weeks before she stopped going to school because there was no money to change the uniform. And how much was the money, just N2, 700?
What are the lessons you have learnt about life?
Don’t live for yourself alone, live for other people. In it you get satisfaction. As a Christian, it’s wrong living for oneself alone. Life itself is about living for other people and it’s not only about money, it could be just a word of encouragement, it could be just your greeting or smile. If you have the opportunity of giving money, fine; but if there’s none, your words of encouragement sometimes go a long way.
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