Mr. Adolphus Abraham is the Group Head, Education of Sterling Bank Plc. In this interview with our reporter, Abraham highlights the various challenges in the education sector and what Sterling Bank is doing to remedy the situation
How would you describe the state of education in Nigeria at the moment and what do you consider the major challenges facing the sector?
To put it succinctly, I would say that the industry is decrepit and at the same time, emerging. Decrepit when you consider the challenges but emerging when you look at private participation and the volume of investment being made.
One is dearth of Infrastructure! There are also the challenges of systemic decay of values, dearth of manpower, obsolete learning methodology, unnecessary bottlenecks for new entrants, misplaced priority on the part of industry players, lack of continuity and consistency of policy, weak regulation and control, extinction of skills training for players and weak financial system to adequately support the sector. Indeed, government should increase the budgetary allocation to the education sector to enable it attain the 26 per cent set by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
Take budgetary allocation to education between 2010 till date for instance. In 2010, the budget was N234bn. It was 306bn in 2011 but in 2014 and 2015 it jumped to N493bn and N492bn respectively. These figures seem interesting but when you compare them to the budget size, you will be shocked to see that we contribute less to education on a yearly basis. In 2014, allocation to education accounted for 10 per cent of the total budget, while in 2015 it dropped to 6.2 per cent due to the disproportionate income in budget allocated to the sector.
So where does the problem lie?
Beyond government, there is a need for urgent intervention in the education sector by private sector operators because government cannot do it all alone. This is why we have decided as a bank to focus on the sector. Sterling Bank’s intervention in the sector will help ameliorate some of the challenges.
Over the years, youth unemployment has remained one of the daunting challenges in Nigeria. Recent statistics shows that over 25 million youths in the country are unemployed. This abysmal statistic is linked to, among others, the issue of employability. Where jobs abound, the lack of competence to handle them arises. This problem can be attributed to the declining quality of education. This necessitated our foray into education as we too suffered the lack of employable graduates. We hope that not only do we contribute to reducing unemployment in white collar jobs but also to developing businesses for Nigerians.
I would also urge that ‘capacity building’ be given conscious effort by concerned stake holders to develop themselves, imbibe the right attitude and paradigm shift in their value system. There is also the problem of service delivery which I should have mentioned earlier. Stake holders should be conscious of the manner with which they deliver service and the quality. Customers in this sphere are open to alternatives, both locally and internationally to satisfy their appetite for education. Consumers of educational facilities should also hold administrators accountable and demand quality.
Recently your bank set up what it called ‘One Education’ desk or group as the case may be. Why did you venture into this business despite the enormous challenges?
The involvement of Sterling Bank in the education sector is very strategic in the sense that our position is based on the outcome of various research conducted by the bank to determine the state of education in the country and areas that would require immediate intervention. There are two sides to education, the academic and the business sides. Most often, we concentrate on the academic side at the expense of the business. Our idea is to use the business orientation to drive the quality and delivery of academics. We have designed models to achieve this. It is not straitjacket. Every project has its own solution and this is driven by a thorough understanding of the problem or issue. Understanding the problem and adopting the appropriate solution is where we have strength as a bank.
Let me say here that the federal and even state governments are doing their best to improve the sector. But government by its structure does not have the capacity to achieve the desired result. Don’t forget that government has a lot of other things to attend to. So it is our intention to introduce a unique model to support the various institutions including government to drive the quality and delivery of academics.
What do you have to offer the sector?
What we want to achieve for now is to make necessary impact by focusing on technology, content and personnel/ participants in the sector.
It is worthy of note that Sterling Bank is the first and only bank to publish two books on financial literacy for kids and teenagers which we distributed free to these set of children nationwide during the Global Financial Literacy Week two years ago. The second edition of the books was distributed to children during last year’s Financial Literacy Week and also this year nationwide. There is a need for institutions to promote financial literacy among students which would provide the foundation to understand the use and management of money ensure the child’s long-term financial security and equip them with the ability to make informed and effective financial judgments.
This is what we are doing at Sterling Bank. We take each group, either students or teachers and provide solutions that make their lives richer.
Secondly, to help education providers manage cost and quality, we have built partnerships with technology providers for the sector. These partners are equipped to provide educational content, payment system, inventory management, security management etc. at lower costs than the schools are currently spending.
Lastly, we have not left out the value chain. We are also determined to support publishers, bookshops, importers of educational materials, contractors, consultants to educational outfits to mention a few. Our package for the industry is holistic.
What specifically have you been able to achieve so far?
The One Education Group initiative is less than two years old. We have had to run a pilot to fully understand the business and the responsibility expected of us. So, in the few months of existence we can conveniently outline our achievements;
They include: adoption of a public school for mentoring and infrastructural upgrade. We are going to be doing this annually. Every year, we will adopt a school. This year it was Ireti High School in Ikoyi and we have trained their teachers on financial literacy and a renovation of their Home Economics laboratory is ongoing.
Second, we have established Financial Literacy Clubs in schools for free. Combined population of students is in excess of 10,000. We are signing on more schools this month as we build capacity of the trainers. Currently, all resources are sourced in-house.
Third, we have deployed school management system and payment gateway for free to schools. We shall deploy more as we receive applications. The benefit of a web pay system cannot be overemphasised. They range from completeness and accountability of collections to proper documentation and quality service delivery in schools. It cost so much to deploy but we are giving it to schools for free!
We have also partnered with one of our technical service providers to train over 1000 children during the last summer break on coding and computer skills. We are looking forward to owning a coding competition franchise.
