Nigeria must get it right in education to achieve national development

The Nigerian National Merit Award, (NNMA) was established about four decades ago to stimulate and reward intellectual, academic and professional excellence for national development in Nigeria. Recently, Laureates of the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM), at the 10th forum of the board insisted that unless governance reform and human security become a priority for the federal government, national development might remain elusive. The Chairman of the Board of the NNMA, Professor Shekarau Yakubu Aku, in this interview with KINGSLEY JEREMIAH, discussed further on the topic, especially the need for a state of emergency in the education sector.

What is your take on the state of governance and human security in Nigeria?
THE government has tried. There was a lot of impunity in the country in the past. I think this has been reduced considerably. Even if they have not prosecuted anybody to a logical conclusion, they have created the atmosphere that if you do anything wrong, you will face the music. And so the level of impunity we have witnessed in the past is no longer there.

However, there are other various problems in the country that needs serious attention. One of them has been the issue of security. We have insecurity problem, particularly in the north and in the Niger Delta, we also had some insecurity issues in the South East and the rising rate of robbery. Another issue is the rate of medical tourism outside the country. These are critical issues that government must continue to improve.

In the area of food security, for some years, we thought the imported things are the better things and so people turned their attention to it, which affected our agriculture sector, especially in the area of rice. We have created the mindset that several imported things were much more superior, we now have to break that mindset otherwise people will still have the impression that imported products are better. A lot of things are imported but they are not of good quality. Some of the things made here are stamped as imported because of people’s mindset, when they are actually local material. Most Italian shoes are made in Aba but since we value imported things we put them that way so that people will buy. Attitudinal change is important to most of the goals we are setting in Nigeria.

If there will be a reform in governance in Nigeria to bring about national development, what really need to change?
We should have short-term plans and long term plans. We should have goals, for instance that in 20 years from now certain things must be achieved. We need to go beyond mere words to actions needed to reach those goals. We also must set up for each step what would help us reach those goals, that way we would get to the goals. The most important thing in developing a country is the education of the people. If everybody is properly educated, they will know what is expected to be done. Once we get it right from the point of education, things we move in the right direction.

How will you access the Buhari administration so far?
I think the government is trying. We have seen a few things that are no longer as it used to be. But the problem is very enormous and there is no way you can be able to achieve everything. But certainly, they have put us in a direction that will lead us to the goal. There used to be impunity, but there is no longer there. People now do things according to how the processes require them to be done.

Do you support restructuring?
There is need for changes in Nigeria. What we have is supposed to be a federal arrangement and by the federal arrangement, the various federating units should have a lot of autonomy. But this has not been the case. Perhaps we got into this because of the military. The state has different policies in regards to certain things. Before they meet centrally and decide on what to do and they all do it that way, but this is not obtainable in the federal system.

The federating units should have a lot of autonomy to do many things. The federal government has no business in trying to supervise secondary schools, even the state government should not be too involved, this should be handled by local government. But the way we went, the local government could not handle it because they are not properly funded. The state has taken over the allocation of the local government and the local government is completely incapacitated.

It is almost four decades that this agency came into existence, what have you achieved so far?
We have carried out the mandate as it is in the act successfully. One of this is to organize the Nigeria National Merit Awards (NNMA). We have improved on research to some extent. However, some activities have been limited to Abuja because of logistic. In the past we are able to take the activities to various states. We had held activities in Calabar. We have been in Lagos. We have been in Kaduna and one or two other places. So that the various part of the country feel the impact of the board.

Are you saying the agency is underfunded?
Yes. The funding is not what it is supposed to be. This is not limited to our country though, countries across the world are complaining of limited resources. This is a global problem because the economics seem to be down everywhere. If you look through, we have kept our track record over the years. The body has been in place since 1979. And the award has been done smoothly. We have not had any interruption primarily because of the way we operate the system. We have the system of assessors and when the nominations are made the assessors get the nominations, they go through them and the candidate do not know who has their papers. This is a very serious so that nobody tries to know who is assessing him or her and not try to influence. We will not mention the name of any candidate. We have four committee chairmen, who are former assessors. They have served for a period then they come back as chairmen. We allow assessors to work for period of four years after that they retired for other assessors to come in so that we do not have the same person doing the selection.

You started a forum to make recommendations to government on how to improve national development, but it seem cases where intellectual recommendations that ended up as mere paper work and thrashed eventually, please share your experience with us?
We have a communiqué group. Whatever we have is presented to the President directly what our resolutions are before any investiture. We do not submit to just anybody. When we give recommendations, we expect that government would implement but the various governments have their agendas and priorities. It is possible that what we want as priority may not be government’s priority. But we thank God that some of what we recommended has been implemented. The ministry of science and technology for example was as a result of pressure from this body and some other professional bodies. And we thank God that they actually accepted and have created the ministry.

As a stakeholder in the education sector, who is serving as head of the highest academic award in the country, what will be your assessment of the country’s education sector?
We have many problems in the education sector and the biggest is under funding. When we consider what we do and consider what happens in the more advance countries, you will realize that we are given just peanuts and there is no way we can carry out works effectively to match with what happen in the developed countries. We get less than one or two per cent of what our counterparts get in developed countries, so there is no way we can compete with them.

Government should declare a state of emergency in the education sector. Though I am concerned about the tertiary level but the situation at the primary level is alarming. It is very bad. I am from Kaduna state, where the present governor has recognized this and is trying to do something about it. The problem is so big beyond imagination. We have infrastructure problem. Many schools have no roof and even desk for students. The teachers have their problems. The governor in Kaduna went public by saying the teachers could not pass exams their children were taking. We have serious problem. That is for Kaduna, I hope other states are better.

So, we are celebrating academic award today, when you compare education in Nigeria while you were younger to what is obtainable today, do you think we would have something to celebrate in the future?
We will have because at every face we will have people, who will excel. You may look at it as retrogressive in some ways. But I can tell you that what the primary four children knows today is properly far more than what I knew at that level. This is because the level of knowledge is increasing all the time and the level of understanding is also increasing. While we think it is not good, it is obviously better than what it was in the past.

Beyond awards, what is your plan for the future?
If our funding goes well we have a developmental plan. We have space for development and we want to focus on that. We are looking at generating fund beyond the allocation we get. The funding from government for expenses is not sufficient. We have gone out to seek for support from a number of organisations. But we do not think that this should be the case because when you do that you open yourself to unnecessary pressure. If somebody gives you a contribution, he may be expecting to come with a request of helping someone. We cannot do that because the system is such that even if you wanted to help you cannot. I don’t know whether you know how we operate. When nomination comes, we have the four specialize committees, there is humanity, science, engineering and technology and there is medicine.

The nomination goes to these committees. They look at them to separate those that have merit from those that do not have. Those that have merit are being assessed and may need to be sent to other external assessors. When these come, then the committees deliberate on them. If they scale through they go to the next stage. The next state is the committee of chairmen of chairmen. The chairman of the chairmen heads that committee. They go through the work of the committees. The idea is to ensure that there is fairness across committees. Sometimes, some committees may be soft and another hard, so the committee of chairmen harmonise the level of decisions. After that the recommendation goes to the board, the board makes it input and the recommendation goes to the President. The president does the final approval.