Fifty days to the swearing in of President-elect Muhammadu Buhari, teachers, students and other stakeholders have sent him a wish list, report KOFOWOROLA BELO-OSAGIE, ADEGUNLE OLUGBAMILA, OLUWATOYIN ADELEYE, and JANE CHIJIOKE.
There is urgent need to sanitise the education sector, teachers, students and other stakeholders have said. And they are giving the task to President-elect Muhammadu Buhari, who will be sworn-in on May 29.
According to them, the change that the leadership of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has promised should happen in the education sector too. They identified areas he should examine to effect changes.
Address academic corruption
As the President-elect has promised to tackle corruption, the stakeholders are saying the cleansing should extend to the school system as well. Dr Ahmed Rufai of the Faculty of Education, Sokoto State University, described academics as more corrupt than politicians. He said the government should endeavour to rid the education system of undedicated teachers who cannot defend their qualifications.
He said: “Nigerians are more concerned about economic corruption but the incoming government should also beam its searchlight into academic corruption. Because the system is corrupt, it has spiraled into the academia so much that our colleagues now behave worse than politicians.
“I for example, have taught in about four universities so I see these things occur virtually everywhere I have taught. Many of our colleagues in the university system are sub standard and that also tells on the quality of output of our students. Issues like sex abuse, poor quality of research, lecturers’ apathy to work; lateness and what have you are all over there.
“Unfortunately, there is poor or no monitoring mechanism in the system. That is why a lecturer can choose not to come to class or worse still where he even comes spend time on frivolities instead of the teaching and research for which he was employed.”
Currently, Rufai said the length of time academics spend in the system does not necessarily translate to quality experience.
“Many of our professors today have questionable rise to their professorship. Many a time, they are moved up not because of the amount of their academic contributions into the system but because many have stayed up to 25 or 30 years and the system feels they should be compensated for being in the system for so long so as to save their face.
“The very good ones are in the minority and others like them would rather work in the industry because they cannot stand the rot in the system,” he said.
A student, Judith Daniels agrees with Rufai. For her, if lecturers are made to stop selling handouts, then Buhari would have achieved something significant.
“I want the government to set up a panel that will checkmate lecturers mandating students to buy handouts. Handouts should not be compulsory, not all of us can afford a number of handouts which they sell to us,” he said.
For Pascal Ukezu, a graduate of Abia State University, the handout issue, which is a money spinner for lecturers, is a blight on the system.
“If you do not buy handouts, there is no Continuous Assessment (CA) grade recorded for you. Some lecturers do not even give tests. Your handout is your CA so if you do not buy, you do not have any grade.
“Lecturers get at least N200,000 from selling handouts. Sold at N2,000 or N3,000, a lecturer can get a lot from a class of about 100 students. Students that do not do well in the examination usually ‘sort’ (bribe) the lecturer with about N5,000. If about 60 students sort, you can imagine how much that is,” he said.
Ukezu also said the revolution in the university system should address the issue of record keeping. He lamented that improper record keeping, especially of results of examinations, causes a lot of problems for students. He said the common example was that of missing results.
“The issue of record keeping in public institutions needs to be addressed, particularly that of results. Government should look into it because it keeps students in school longer than they are supposed to be because those in charge do not collate the results on time. Results get missing because of improper record keeping and when students want to access them, they are unavailable. If you cannot find your result, you have to rewrite the course. If you are in final year, it means you are forced to spill, thereby paying extra school fees.
“The entire system should be overhauled. Those in charge of monitoring the universities are not doing their jobs,” he said.
Woo the best teachers from ‘outside’
The best teachers in Nigeria may not currently be teaching in schools. To attract them, given the positive impact good teachers can make on their learners, Mr Femi Longe, who teaches Literature in English at the Africa International College, Abuja, said the new government should make getting the relevant teaching qualifications flexible for non-professional teachers.
He said: “There is so much emphasis on teacher education; you must have a qualification in education before you can go into teaching. I think it is a good idea, but I also think it is militating against education, because most of the best brains are not in the education . Many of those who study education in the universities are doing it because it is a last option, not because they want it. They would end up graduating and not even going into education.
“I did not study education, but in my over 12 years as an educationist, I have seen the success of many of my past and current students. So I simply learnt on the job.”
Longe said making professional education training available online would encourage more teachers at heart to embrace teaching as their profession.
“If they can reduce the length of time it takes to get that education qualification and also make it available as an online course, so that you do not have to leave work in order to get it. I am using myself as a point of reference. I work in the boarding house, so even the weekend classes are very difficult for me because I have to attend to the children in the boarding house. So if they can make it easier to get the certification online, it would favour many of us. Then the so-called best brains who have found themselves in the education line, can now get certification without quitting their jobs,” he said.
Re-examine UBE, National Policy on Education, Quality Assurance
Whatever the Buhari-led government decides to do with the education sector, it must not forget the foundation – the primary education level.
Vice-Chancellor of the Ondo State University of Technology (OSUSTECH), Prof Tolu Odugbemi, said the government would do well to take care of that level of education because it has implications for other levels.
Recalling a lecture he delivered during the 2014 Synod of the Ondo diocese last year, Odugbemi said: “The foundation of any viable education system is the primary school level. Successful nations appreciate this and go to considerable lengths to build it as the launch pad for human capital development. Our educational system has been marred by poor funding, ineptitude and sheer irresponsibility.
“Education is a tool for development if properly handled from childhood to adulthood through various systems – primary, secondary and tertiary levels. We should pay attention to the implementation of good ideas if they are to be useful for positive change in Nigeria. Character building must accompany any form of learning for products of such institutions to be relevant to society development.”
In attempting to fix primary education, a teacher in the Department of Early Childhood Care Education, Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education Oto/Ijanikin, Mr Simeon Fowowe said the incoming government should revisit the blueprint for the Universal Basic Education (UBE) scheme, which was prepared by Prof Pius Obanya, with the view to ensuring it is properly implemented.
“The incoming government upon assumption should revisit the UBE document as put together by Prof P.A.I. Obanya to see how it can be fully implemented,” he said.
For instance, Fowowe said that the UBE is meant to be nine years of uninterrupted basic education rather than the six years of primary and three years of junior secondary education that is currently in operation.
Fowowe is also concerned that contrary to the UBE blueprint, pupils are moved en-masse into the senior secondary school rather than what it recommends that the very brilliant ones should be allowed to proceed into the senior secondary level, while others are awarded a certificate of literacy and allowed to proceed with technical education.
“I want the incoming government to pay more serious attention into this area. The idea of UBE is being practiced by many countries all over the world so it is not something strange. But most importantly, we need to get it right otherwise, it would not achieve its main purpose,” he said.
Proprietor of Starland Private School, Ogba, Mrs Elizabeth Olomofe-Kufeji, also wants the new government to find out why the National Policy on Education (NPE) is not well implemented.
“The new government should find out why the implementation of the national policy on education has been impossible; and how Nigerian children have been so messed up,” she said.
Mrs Olomofe-Kufeji, a one-time President of the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS) in Lagos, said in doing so, the government should look into the activities of private primary schools that yield to pressure from parents to graduate children from primary four or five into secondary school. She also said that private secondary schools that take such underage children should be sanctioned.
She said: “I am concerned because I am sad that the education sector is finishing by the day. I have been a teacher all my life. I know the type of education we enjoyed when we were young and I am ashamed that a whole nation like Nigeria cannot put the education sector in order.
“The childhood foundation of our children is eroded, because the national policy of education says 6-3-3-4. And it says there is a primary six, after primary six, you go on to secondary school. But because parents are in a hurry and providers of secondary school education are also in a hurry, they have finished that policy right from the foundation. They do not allow children to get to primary six. Some of them admit children from primary four or five. I have not seen a nation like this before, where people would just rubbish the government policy and I keep saying that this policy is as a result of researches. Parents are not supposed to dictate on such an issue.”
Deliver on campaign promises and ensure continuity
Former NANS President Dauda Muhammed told The Nation that that rather than make suggestions to the incoming government, he would hope the president-elect walks his talk as expressed in his various campaigns.
“I do not think I have a new advice for the president. I remember that during his campaigns, Gen. Buhari vowed that his government would repatriate ill-gotten wealth from those who helped themselves with the nation’s treasury and channel same back into the university system. He also promised to effect the 29 per cent bench mark of budgetary allocation as recommended by the United Nations. This is in addition to improving girl child education.
“With that, what do we expect again? We only need to pray that he makes good those promises when he eventually assumes office,” Muhammed said.
For Mrs Lydia Abaga, Guidance Counsellor of Africa International College, Abuja, the new government should continue good programmes of the old.
She said: “I would like to see a government that would look into what is already on ground and consolidate. That is to build on what we already have in the education sector. Instead of sitting down to brainstorm and come up with different policies all over again, new proposals, new systems, etc. the government should simply look into what is available and make it better, blocking loopholes. They should train more teachers, push more money, especially in government schools.
“They should make up their minds and stick with one thing. They should simply fortify the education system and make it good enough for the children. Really, no system is perfect, there would always be flaws, but it is the people that run it that matter.”
