Worthy awardees

It was a day of honour for the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) registrar/chief executive, Prof Is-haq Oloyede, as he received the National Productivity Order of Merit Award alongside 24 other Nigerians, including the chairman of Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Nigerian Customs Service Comptroller-General, Hameed Alli, Sam Omatseye, chairman, editorial board, The Nation, on Thursday. Occasion was the 18th National Productivity Day held in Abuja. Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, stood in for President Muhammadu Buhari at the occasion.

Prof Oloyede’s award particularly interests me for the innovations he has brought to the conduct of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in barely three years of his assumption of office. Even for a nation with short memory, the memory is not too short not to remember the chaos that sitting for UTME, popularly referred to as ‘JAMB’, used to be before Oloyede’s era. Virtually everybody in the country knew when ‘JAMB’ was holding in those years gone by as a result of the many shortcomings inherent in the previous order. Candidates would be moving from pillar to post to locate their centres; the integrity of the examination could not be guaranteed due to the fact that it was very easy for cheats to help others sit for the examination. And, when the integrity of an examination is in doubt, it rubbishes the entire outcome.

Oloyede has done a lot to make things better in JAMB, leveraging on information technology (IT). Virtually all activities concerning the UTME or ‘JAMB’ are now done online, from the point of registration for the examination to the time results are released. While the higher institutions are at liberty to determine their cut-off marks which is done at a major stakeholders’ forum, they cannot offer admission to candidates with lower scores than the ones agreed at the forum. He has successfully waged a war against financial, administrative and examination malfeasance in a way none of his predecessors ever did. He is on record to be the first registrar to return billions to the Federal Government in three consecutive years even as he has reduced the fees for the examination.

But one thing that many public institutions fear is disclosing their financial details. Yet, JAMB does this as a matter of routine, even in its weekly bulletin, which is also circulated online to many stakeholders. This transparency in reporting of financial activities is laudable and it is probably because the organisation, under Prof Oloyede’s watch, has nothing to hide. As another professor of note noted in his congratulatory message to Prof Oloyede on the award, the registrar “should buy several big bags as many more of such and higher awards await him in the years ahead.” There is no doubt that this is the least that can be expected of the JAMB registrar if he continues at the rate he is taking the board to greater heights. My only fear is the negative impact that the Federal Government’s directive making the National Identify Numbe (NIN) a prerequisite for UTME as from next year would have on the organisation. This is something that successive governments have not been able to handle successfully. Unfortunately, failure in other areas where NIN is required might not be as pronounced as it would be in JAMB for obvious reasons. The middle class whose children are about being made guinea pigs with the directive would not see the thing as a problem created by government; they would descend on JAMB ferociously, and understandably, too. Most of the children of those prescribing the directive are abroad where the governments would not toy with the future of youths the way we do here.

If there is any Nigerian that should keep featuring in awards for excellence, productivity, etc., it is 62 years old Aliko Dangote. The man is many things rolled into one:  businessman, investor, as well as owner of the ubiquitous Dangote Group. The man’s name has become a household name all over the country and even beyond. He is into virtually everything imaginable: rice, cement, sugar, salt, flour, noodles, freight services, etc. Indeed, he is the dominant supplier of sugar to many breweries, soft drinks manufacturers and confectioners in the country. Today, we are eagerly awaiting the take-off of Dangote Refinery, hopefully next year. It would be the largest single-train refinery in the world. So, from a modest small trading firm in 1977, Dangote Group has today metamorphosed into a multi-trillion-naira conglomerate with operations in Benin, Ghana and Togo. He has an estimated net worth of $8.9billion as of this month.

The young Aliko knew what he wanted right from his childhood and he went for it: “I can remember when I was in primary school, I would go and buy cartons of sweets [candy] and I would start selling them just to make money. I was so interested in business, even at that time.”

According to Wikipedia, “Dangote is ranked by Forbes magazine as the 136th-richest person in the world and the richest man in Africa and peaked on the list as the 23rd-richest person in the world in 2014. He surpassed Saudi-Ethiopian billionaire Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi in 2013 by over $2.6 billion to become the world’s richest person of African descent.” In this wise, he is simply being a chip off the old block, so to say. His great grandfather, Alhaji Alhassan Dantata, was also the richest West African at the time of his death in 1955. No matter what anyone may have against him, Dangote has provided means of livelihood for thousands of Nigerians and is still opening frontiers of jobs of all shades.

Col Alli’s award may not excite some people, especially coming at this point in time when the country’s borders are closed. Those whose economic livelihoods depend on the continued opening of the borders are not smiling now that the borders have been closed since August. It is not that the government itself wants the situation the way it is, but then, it is a painful decision that must be taken, especially when confronted with the kind of neighbours that we have who do not want to realise that we have to be economically alive for them too to continue to be in business. Even God did not admonish us to love our neighbours more than ourselves. Rather, He says we should love our neighbours as ourselves. If we allow business to continue as usual with these neighbours, then it is a matter of time for our economy to pack up. And, when that happens, where do we run to? We have made significant gains since the borders were shut. We must acknowledge that we have recorded an increase in inflationary level too. But that is expected because something must give in such situation. When our neighbours are ready to play according to the rules, we can only then reconsider our stand on the border closure.

Meanwhile, it’s kudos to the customs boss for ensuring that the border closure is effective as it should be. Apart from this, his officers and men too have done a lot, raking in so much revenue for the government even before the border closure. For the customs service, this must be a season of honour, especially with the presentation of integrity award to two public servants, Bashir Abubakar and Mrs. Josephine Ugwu of the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria on November 19, for exhibiting integrity in the performance of their official duties. Abubakar, the Assistant Comptroller-General of Customs rejected 412,000 dollars (N150 million) bribe offered to him by drug traffickers to import 40 containers laden with Tramadol, a controlled and highly addictive drug. Irrespective of what we might say, the service still has officers and men of proven integrity. The kind of seizures they made in the past, and even since the border closure are sometimes outstanding.

Omatseye’s award too deserves a mention. In the media, we hardly celebrate ourselves. Rather, we exalt politicians and others whose contributions to national development are dubious and even negative. As he noted, there is honour in being recognised by one’s own country. This is instructive when we realise that ‘only in his home town and in his own house is a prophet without honour’. All said, many of those who got this productivity award deserve it. The selection would appear a departure from the past when all manner of people made the list and the question we begin to ask ourselves is: if the country is so blessed, how come we are like this 59 years after political independence?

While I congratulate the awardees, they should remember that what is expected of them is more work. They should not rest on their oars. Those who felt left out should also not lose hope. Tomorrow might be theirs.