By IME OLA AND SAM OTTI
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
•Prof. Sheriffdeen Tella
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Major problems confronting University education in the country.
There are so many problems right from the primary school. It is like a computer system; what you put in is what you take out. If the primary school is not good, the secondary school will not be better and the university will be worse for it.
So, the public primary school has experienced teachers who are not empowered. Everybody is taking his child away, leaving the children of the poor to be there. And those people, because of their years in service and in order not to lose their pension, stay there. They don’t want to go anywhere.
Their own children are not also there. So, the commitment is not there. In Nigeria today, you go to some public primary schools and see dilapidated structures. I wrote a letter to the Commissioner of Education here in Ogun state.
I went to one school in the state, where one of my friends, was a principal. He took me round and what I saw was very bad. I decided to go round some other schools. So, I went to about four of them and I met the principals but they said, “no, no, no, you can’t do that”.
They believe they will lose their job. On my own, I went round. I wrote to the Commissioner urging him to go round and see things for himself. Classes are jampacked, the laboratories are empty, cracked walls everywhere. That is not conducive. If you go to other countries, you will see the environment for learning. That was what my colleagues saw in the University of Botswana.
They saw lecture rooms that were well organized. The public primary school is now left for the poor who cannot pay for private schools. But those in such schools will now graduate to secondary schools. And even those who are in private nursery and primary schools do not have experienced teachers.
And many of the schools assist their students to pass exams. So, what they are having is not the real result that they are supposed to have.
Some parents are also involved in this. They would like to show off that their children are good, and go to any length to buy results for them. These children could later be off-loaded to the university where they will come together again. It is like cracking their brain to put in the book. In our own days, a lecturer will come to the class, teach and go away. We have to go to the library for further reading. But these days, you have to teach to make sure that the students understand.
When they go to the library, they wouldn’t even find the book there. And when they go to the laboratory, they would do theory of practical. There are no equipment in the laboratory. The facilities are not there to teach students, let alone doing research by the lecturers. Part of what I am saying is that the environment must be conducive and the facilities to work with must also be there. People will feel happy.
Up till now, we are still not there. The facilities are not there to work with."
If the Federal or State government says it is spending money, are they really monitoring the use of that money?
The government will talk of empowering six universities. They have been talking of empowering six universities all along, since the Obasanjo’s administration. If you cannot empower them, you cannot challenge them. In the primary school, they still use chalk. They should not be using chalks now because the ones that are produced now are carcinogenic. There is no expansion in the schools. So, you find that classes are overcrowded. When we were in the school, you will find 35 seats in a classroom. But these days, some of the students would be standing, even in the secondary school and the university. It is really unfortunate that such things are happening.
As a former ASUU chairman, what can be done to resolve the on-going ASUU strike?
The best way to resolve the crisis is for the Federal Government to return to the negotiating table with ASUU. I know they have been on this issue for over two years. They have reached an agreement at the end of the day. It is not when the agreement has been reached that you can shift the goal post. They are saying they cannot sign the agreement because they would be committing the state government. You can put a simple sentence that this one is for the Federal Universities. So, the state government should resolve their own problems.
That single sentence takes care of all these things that we are talking about.
Even when an agreement is reached at the federal level, in my own university, (Olabisi Onabanjo University) we normally come back to our council. We negotiate with our council and then, go back to the state government. And it is like that for many other state universities. It is not automatic as it were. So, I don’t know. The Minister of Education was a state governor before. Maybe in his state, they were not doing that but in our own state, that is what we have always been doing. When teachers negotiated with the government, they reached an agreement. Before the thing was implemented, they called off their strike.
What is the outcome today?
Some of them have started another strike because you cannot trust your government. Government must be trusted at any point in time that when they reach an agreement, they fulfill it.
It has become an ego thing and that is unfortunate for this country. People who are supposed to be serving us, they see themselves as the boss. It has come to an ego issue that we cannot eat our words for the sake of national interest. We are all human beings and we are going to leave those positions one day. There have been many people in those positions before and they are no longer there today. People do not realize that only God is the Alpha and Omega. There were people who were there when the agreement was concretized initially. They have the glory. Your own glory is to make sure that it is implemented.
If you want to raise fresh issues, you can do so after the first agreement has been signed. In Nigeria, we don’t plan for the future and that is part of the problem. We don’t have national planning. We take issues as they arise. No, when you have your plan, it will be very easy to earmark what would be done in the next two or three years. That is why we always say that we will cross the bridge when we get there.
What is your advice to the ASUU President?
If you go back, there is no need for any negotiation. Negotiation has broken down, and that is what they are saying. They won’t negotiate further if the union goes back. This kind of thing happened in Ghana. There was a strike; they closed down the university and by the time it was called off, there were no lecturers to teach.
What if ASUU chooses the Ghana option?
When there was nobody to teach in Ghana, what happened? The government started appealing to people to come and teach whereas the lecturers were already engaged in South Africa. In South Africa, there are many Ghananian lecturers in the University as there are Nigerians. I was part of a team that went for an accreditation of Economics programme in Ghana last year. In one of the universities, we saw one person with Ph.D, other ones have Masters and they were running Ph.D programmes. Who will handle the Ph.D students? It is only that man. Do you think that programme would gain accreditation? Only one person, an associate professor, the other ones were having Masters. In fact, they have one lecturer, whose Masters Degree is not teaching Masters, it was a professional Masters.
So, we recommended that the person cannot teach anymore. And it will cut across like that. There is shortage of academic staff everywhere in the world. When you have your Ph.D, you can move anywhere. The only problem anybody can have is if the person is not doing research work to have a competitive CV. The person may not be able to get a place. But as an academic, if you sit down and quickly start writing some things down, you will use that place to do some quick work and then, you move out.
Our children would be the worse for it at the end or the day if we choose the Ghana option. In fact, they are already suffering it now. We all have children. Two of my children are at home. One has started learning computer here while the other one has gone to my sister to learn sewing. My own child is a Pharmacy student. I have said that when she finishes her Pharmacy; I will send her out to know what the course is all about. The Pharmacists who are supposed to produce drugs are out there selling drugs. Did they learn marketing? Because they cannot produce drugs, they now sell them. That is the theory of practical that we are talking about, currently in place in universities lacking facilities.
How did we get to this state of rot?
In Nigeria, there is no focus on education. There is focus on some other things, at the neglect of the education sector. Up till now, it is still the same thing even when we have people who are said to have been in academics as President and Vice President. Take a look at the 7-point agenda, where is education there? Education is the basic thing that would solve other problems. Education should be the number one in any country. If people say that power should be the number one, which still requires people that have knowledge to come and do it, they will use their knowledge to put it in place and as well maintain it. We need the knowledge to do things ourselves.
China was in this state in the early 80s, they closed down the universities and sent their brilliant students abroad. They are still sending their children abroad to go and study Engineering, Science and Technology. By the time they would be back, the equipment they need to work with would have been prepared for them.
Some of them did not go back initially but when the economy started changing, they did. Once you have 60 per cent return, and there is preparation for them, definitely there would be changes. They are still investing in education. China, in early 80s had 53 per cent literacy level. I just looked at the World Bank Development Indicator here now, China with 1.32 billion population has 91 per cent literacy level. More than 1 billion of them are literate. How many are we here in Nigeria? The President went to Brazil recently. Brazil has 192 million people and the level of literacy is 89 per cent. These people are investing in education and once this is done properly, other things would come to pass.
Nobody is coming to assist us here. The power that we are talking about, they are not going to assist us. They are the producers of recharge lanterns, solar electricity, and even battery operated lanterns. We are the largest importer of all these things. If they solve our power problem, it will result to their own problem. It will create unemployment for them and loss of revenue. China realized that early and sent her people to go and learn. We have to take our destiny in our hands and solve our problems. The way forward is to educate our people. Send special people abroad, even up to Ph.D level.
How do we get these special people?
How did China get her own people? They are there. There are people who finished Engineering here but do not have any thing to work with. Some of them have first class and second class upper. They cannot settle down on their own. Send them for Masters and Ph.D abroad and they would go. Although, we may not likely get 100 per cent return at the end, but some of them would come back when they see that the facilities have been put in place for them to work with. By the time they come back, they will be different people. But if you continue with this old game that we are playing, the year 2020 will be shifted to year 2050.
Education solves other problems. If we invest in education now, we don’t need to invest in it in future. People from the South West who enjoyed free education, like myself, would be ready to spend any amount to educate our children. Our own literacy level is 52 per cent. But I don’t believe in it, it is less than that. But even at 52 per cent, it means that half of the Nigerian populace is illiterate. What kind of country are we running. It is unfortunate. Let the minister sit with ASUU, discuss and resolve this issue once and for all. Immediately after that, a stakeholders meeting would be convened to resolve the crisis.
If they go back to the classroom it will be dangerous for us. It is dangerous because they did that before, and people started moving out in droves. That is why we have all these people that have become professors in other countries.
If they come back and see that thing are not as they expect, they will still move out. They will be doing partial teachings and collecting their salary, while still planning to go out. They will go elsewhere, Ghana, South Africa, Botswana and other places. You could imagine 50 Nigerian academics in one university. The 10 lecturers I met in Cape Town were also Nigerians. I know there are still more of them there. At the end of the day, we have people who are not supposed to teach in the lecture halls. Currently, that is what we have. The caliber of people that are going to succeed us, I am sorry may not be able to teach our children.
Professor Sheriffdeen Tella, former ASUU Chairman and Vice Chancellor of the Crescent University, Abeokuta, has urged the Federal Government to return to the negotiation table with members of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
In an interview with Daily Sun in his office recently, the Professor of Economics said: “I know they have been on this issue for over two years. They have reached an agreement at the end of the day. It is not when the agreement has been reached, that you can shift the goal post.”
Professor Tella who lamented the rot in the education sector stressed the need for government to focus on education. He also spoke on the problems confronting universities and why government should provide a conducive environment for learning.
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? Anyways it wud end real soon!! 
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