Why are you in the teaching profession?

Ordinarily, you would expect a teacher who was in the final round of an interview for a life-changing national award to be prepared for such a question. But after a momentary hesitation, the respondent said she chose teaching because it is a profession that “offers me opportunities to do other things by the side.”

For us, that summed up the tragedy of the education sector in Nigeria today. But that was just the beginning of the revelations that would come as we interacted with the ten finalists in the bid to pick someone who approximates to the best teacher in Nigeria. In the process, we learned that there are secondary schools in our country called “Miracle Centres” where many students usually pass the West African School Examinations Council (WAEC) even when they don’t know anything; simply because they are allowed, in fact aided, to cheat in the examination halls by the proprietors of the schools with the active connivance of the invigilators.

We learned that several of the teachers training colleges in Nigeria no longer teach specific subjects, preferring to offer professional courses, including in business administration and law! We were also availed the story of a student who was dismissed from school for failure to meet the required grades but who, on the way home, met the principal stranded on the road because his vehicle (most definitely a Tokunbo!) broke down. Since the boy spends his after-school hours at his father’s mechanic workshop, he was able to fix the vehicle for the principal who immediately recalled him back to the school that had no place for his vocational knowledge. And perhaps to cap it all, one of the teachers told us: “In my school, we teach computer on chalkboard”.

At an impressive ceremony in Lagos on Monday evening, the Nigerian Breweries Plc- Felix Ohiwerei Education Trust Fund held the first Maltina Teacher of the Year Awards. Moderated by Frank Edoho (‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’), it was a night of fun with a fantastic Jazz band, “Platinum Blazers,” and comedy merchant, Gbenga Adeyinka, reminding many us of those good old days when men were boys! As an aside, interviewing the finalists provided its own entertainment and drama. One of the men who called himself the “Barack Obama of teaching profession” gave us a lot to laugh about. Another said he is so good that his students call him “Obama”. And yet another said he is known in his school as Barack Obama because of his teaching prowess. So, among five male teachers, we had three Obamas. Just how lucky can a nation be!

Meanwhile, on Monday, Mrs Rose Obi Nkemdilim from Anambra State emerged the “Best Teacher in Nigeria”. She won N1.5 million on the night plus five million Naira cash spread over five years. Additionally, she will be sent abroad for further training while the Federal Government Girls College, Onitsha where she teaches, also gets a fully furnished block of six classrooms, courtesy of NBL. “Teaching is a noble profession, it is a calling, it is a commitment to building the nation” said the 37 year—old teacher of mathematics and chemistry whose mother, also a teacher, could not contain her excitement at the occasion.

The second prize went to Mrs Binta Lawan Mohammed from Federal Government College, Maiduguri, Borno State who bagged a cash award of N1.5 million. She said most memorably that teaching is her life and that not even insurgency would prevent her from following her passion. Daniel Sunday Udiong from Akwa Ibom State who came third got N1.25 million. In all, there were 19 state champions and 16 of them (outside the top three) went home with N500,000 each.

However, notwithstanding the glitz and glamour at the Monday event, what our experience on the assignment has signposted clearly is that there is crisis in the Nigerian education sector, even though I hasten to add that there is also hope, if we do the needful. But we must commend the NBL for the idea of celebrating and motivating teachers in Nigeria with a focus on public secondary schools.  “Everywhere in the world, teachers play a vital role in training, coaching and determining the quality of education, and this is critical to sustainable national development. Our objective is to create an avenue where exceptional teachers will be showcased and rewarded annually and continuously”, said Kufre Ekanem, the NBL Corporate Affairs Adviser, while inaugurating our panel of six judges in August this year.

Chaired by Professor Pat Utomi, other members included: Professor (Mrs) Mopelola Omoegun, Faculty of Education, University of Lagos; Professor Thomas Ofuya, Vice Chancellor, Wellspring University, Benin City; Professor Tijjani Abubakar, Dean, Faculty of Education, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria; and Dr. (Mrs.) Fatima Binta Abdulrahman, National President, All-Nigeria Confederation of Principals of Secondary Schools (ANCOPPS). Among the six judges, I am the only one who doesn’t operate within the education sector.

The process itself kicked off in May when the entry forms were advertised in the media with interested teachers asked a set of eligibility questions which included how long they have been teaching, the subjects being taught and in what class. They were also expected to list the awards (if any) ever received. In Section 2, each applicant was asked to write, in not more than 750 words, their “strategic approach in teaching students that impacted or improved their performance in the last 12 months.” Under this section, each teacher was to provide a case study with the topic and background of strategy, innovative and instructional practices, challenges encountered, how such were resolved etc.

Before our work commenced, the consultants employed by the NBL were able to work through the entries to shortlist 275 valid application forms from 32 states of the federation and Abuja. But at our first meeting in Lagos on August 11, we agreed on the marking schemes and what scores to award to each question. The idea was that each of us would separately mark all the 275 scripts and the marks would be tallied with the average scores taken. We initially set the pass mark at 55 percent but it was later reviewed downwards to 50 percent after marking the scripts, for obvious reasons. But we also agreed from the beginning that we would have a final interview session with ten states champions and that held on October 2 this year. That was the session that clinched it for Mrs Nkemdilim who was crowned Teacher of the Year on Monday.

However, our experience, marking the scripts (which cost me sleepless nights for more than a week) was very revealing. Many of the teachers did not understand the questions they were asked and thus wrote, for want of a better description, utter nonsense! What makes that a serious issue is that this was a form each filled without any supervision and at their pleasure. “The process was particularly enlightening in the weak comprehension skills of those who teach young minds. This is alarming and shows the need for intense use of English in further education for teachers”, said Professor Utomi. As he argued, even for those who teach science subjects, “knowledge can be of limited value if they cannot communicate what they know to students”.

Notwithstanding, there were also some silver linings. For instance, there is something that the Anambra State education authorities must be doing right not only because the best teacher comes from there but also because it is the state where many of the teachers scored above average. Perhaps that accounts for why candidates from the state continue to come tops in WAEC examinations every year. It is also gratifying that the teachers who performed well in the exercise are in the sciences (especially mathematics, physics and chemistry) as well as English. We could also see the commitment of many teachers who have taught for decades, including those who have written instructional books etc. These old war horses need greater encouragement from us all.

Whether those in authority understand it or not, teachers are central to the production of high quality human capital and providing incentives that would make life easier for them could make all the difference. After all, we all owe much of what we are today to our former teachers. However, while we must commend the Mr. Nicolaas Vervelde-led NBL management for the initiative of rewarding teachers in the public schools, the point we need to underscore is that the challenge of education in Nigeria is beyond the poor reward system. The environment too must change in terms of the infrastructure critical for learning and the disposition of those in authorities.

From our interactions with the teachers, there are many schools without functional laboratories while in one particular state, public primary schools were effectively closed for almost one year due to non-payment of teachers’ salaries. With such foundation, has the future of children in that state not already been compromised? But the greater challenge is that the critical stakeholders in both the private and public sectors do not seem to be paying the much needed attention.

The 21st Nigerian Economic Summit, with the theme, “Tough Choices: Achieving Competitiveness, Inclusive Growth and Sustainability” ends today in Abuja. With the tone set on Monday by the CEO of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG), Mr Laoye Jaiyeola and Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (who led discussion and stayed throughout yesterday’s session on reforming public institutions), one thing most participants were agreed on was that human capital development is essential to any efforts to rebuild the nation.

Unfortunately, aside Mrs Oby Ezekwesili, who used her public service experience to draw attention to some systemic problems, there was not much discussion on education at the all-important session and it was not a prime issue in other sessions either. Yet, if the education sector is not reformed in our country, all other developmental efforts would be in vain. It is therefore my hope that President Muhammadu Buhari will appoint a reform-minded person for the ministry of education to tackle the rot within while putting in place enduring structures to reposition the sector. It is very important for this administration and other critical stakeholders to understand that the classroom remains the central location of Nigeria’s hope for change.

This piece was first published on 15th October, 2015

Reach Tijani across major social media platforms @OluwamayowaTJ

Source: The Cable

Over 19,000 schools have so far been covered under the National Home Grown School Feeding Programme.

In total, 2,918,842 schoolchildren from 19,881 schools in the 14 pilot states of the federation have so far benefitted from the school feeding programme, which is part of President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s N500 billion Social Investment Programmes, SIPs.

A total of N6,643,432,789 billion have been disbursed by the Federal Government since the school feeding programme kicked off late last year.

With 3,325 schools, Kaduna State has the highest number of schools so far covered under the programme, as well as the highest number of schoolchildren (835,508) who have been fed.

It is closely followed by Benue State where 2,220 schools have been covered and 240,827 schoolchildren have been fed.

Zamfara State also recorded a high number, with 1,952 schools covered and 198,788 pupils fed under the programme.

Similarly, Bauchi State recorded impressive figures with 1,904 schools already covered, while 307,013 schoolchildren in the state have so far benefitted from the programme.

Also, a total of 1,850 schools have been covered and 151,438 pupils have been fed in Osun State.

In the same vein, 1,479 schools have been covered and 171,835 pupils fed so far in Taraba State; while a total of 1,403 schools have been covered in Oyo State, where 107,983 pupils have been fed.

In Anambra State, 807 schools have been covered and 103,742 schoolchildren have been fed so far, while in Enugu State, 108,898 pupils in 622 schools have been fed.

In Ebonyi State, the school feeding programme has so far covered 1,050 schools and 163,137 schoolchildren have been fed.

In Ogun State, 903 schools have so far been covered with 231,660 pupils fed. Also, a total of 95,134 schoolchildren in 882 schools have been fed in Plateau State.

Delta and Abia states recorded 742 schools each, with 141,663 and 61,316 schoolchildren fed respectively.

With the commencement of a new academic session in September, it is expected that more schools will benefit from the programme, as more states would be added to the list, in line with the federal government target that 5.5 million schoolchildren would be fed by the end of 2017.

Source: www.premiumtimesng.com

Yakurr, apart from being a local government in Cross River state, is a group of communities that share common ancestral heritage. It’s a fractured union in that many of the communities like Ekori and Idomi speak different languages but, however, they all respect and give authority to Obol Lopon, the paramount ruler whose palace is in Ugep, the capital. Among its cultural uniqueness of note is that the trademark cultural regalia of the sole ruler of the kingdom whom everybody, rich and poor, reveres and at whose feet they fall is a wrapper, an unclad chest and a towel left dangling over the shoulder. Amazing, isn’t it? Or should I rather say it’s mysterious because the idea of a king, I grew up to know, is that of an extraordinary link between the lands of the living and the dead and whose expensive and kingly traditional attires play second fiddle to none. Then, how can he be a king?!

Whatever inkling of plausibility it might seem the analogy has, it reeks of disguised bigotry and, of course, brazen ethnocentrism which is the uncritical belief in the superiority of a culture over another, using the former as the standard. Literally, that’s a venom that defies all world known chemotherapies but whose only antidote is liberal education.

I define liberal education as a strong belief or conviction in the plurality of opinions, races, religions, political ideologies, ethnicities, lifestyles and orientations. It’s a mind-to-limb understanding of the sanctity of one’s own natural and constitutional rights and the respect of others’. An educationally liberal person understands that we are all wired differently and that it’s historical, biological too perhaps, human to associate with different groups and ideas. It leaves on its recipient a broad cognitive space that easily accommodates all ideas, tolerates dissenting opinions and understands and/or appreciates cultural variations or even differences.

This line of thinking is golden especially with the prevailing realities in Nigeria. We live in precarious times. Tensions are upped, mostly undeservedly. If only hate speeches could be converted to dollars, we probably wouldn’t have FX problems. An ethnic group hates another passionately and even strives to see its end. Another faraway culture, in comparison with ours, is barbaric and should, consequently, be hated and fought. Marrying from another tribe is a taboo and our kin and kith who do so are renegades who should be excommunicated. Our religion is the only way and anybody who does not worship like us will, of course, rot in hell. It is deserving of a disbeliever who’s afflicted with problems and woe betide any of them who dares ask questions or challenge the tenets of our faith- speak of religious intolerance. Certainly, we fail to realise that all of the world would have been adherents of just one religion if God, the creator, wanted it so. He wouldn’t have given us free will and power of reason too. It’s in His place only to judge.

All opinions, apart from ours, are wrong and should be thrown in our arbitrary trash cans. We are now a generation that is unnecessarily rude and which glamorises intellectual perfectionism and righteousness. Our social media engagements perfectly exemplify this. We don’t care in as much as we get loads of likes and retweets from the virtual followers who support because they know or like us and not because of the concerned issue’s merits. Our political discussions, especially online, are heated and intolerant. All a student of philosophy, anywhere in the world, who wants to write a PhD thesis on argumentum ad hominem, attack on personality, needs to do is glance through our online engagement sphere- a repertoire, he will find. This is wrong no matter how hard we try to make it look cool. A beer doesn’t become a monk’s beverage just because it’s poured into a Malt bottle- it remains alcoholic irrespective of the bottle type.

This is not a call for us to ditch religion or even change it to suit dissents’ views. This is neither an admonition stressing the need and benefits of loving other cultures more than ours and compulsorily so. I understand we can never have same political orientations and affiliations and I’m therefore not advocating a unification. It is rather an invitation to peace and harmony. It’s a call to have a broad grasp of the universe and relate with others accordingly. It is a charge for us to agree and coexist on our many similarities and overlook and tolerate our few differences. It is a call to a liberal edu-nation. A country whose citizens understand, cherish and practise all these and more.

Lawal Temitayo, a psychologist and writer, can be reached on Twitter @Lawatem

But that’s a digression. His advice to Buhari is on point and infinitely more sensible than the nonsense of his Kogi State counterpart, Yahaya Bello, who declared a public holiday to mark the President’s return but didn’t know what to do to save even one of the 60 persons that died from abdominal infection in Kogi the same week.

Buhari has work to do and he has to start from home while the rodents in his office are being apprehended and the cobwebs cleared.

His six minutes national address was a mixed bag. But whatever its defects, he has made enough speeches in the last two years. It’s time to do what he has been saying.

As far as I can remember, Buhari is the first to win a presidential election depending almost entirely on votes from the North and the South West. What he should have done on assumption of office, was to rally the whole country and not give the regrettable impression that he would only be President for the regions that voted for him.

That posture, compounded by a few skewed appointments in his early days, has fuelled separatist sentiments, especially in the South East, and popularised Nnamdi Kanu’s Biafra rhetoric.

Renaming Buhari “Okechukwu” (a share from God) or even “Onyenzoputa” (saviour) will not solve the problem created by his initial faux pas. The government has to start an honest engagement with its citizens, especially groups that have been radicalised by official insensitivity.

The 2014 National Conference report and even reports from previous ones, which Buhari has inexplicably refused to read, would be a good starting point.

As I said in this column last week, Boko Haram appears resurgent and insecurity is assuming new, frightening dimensions. It would be naïve to assume that Boko Haram would be wiped out. The recent deadly attacks by the group suggest that there’s still work to be done.

Buhari cannot afford to take his eyes off the insurgents; nor should the even more difficult task of resettling the victims be ignored anymore.

It’s heartening to know that Vice President Yemi Osinbajo had not submitted his committee’s report on the $43 million found at a Lagos residence before the rodents invaded Buhari’s corner.

The Vice President’s committee was supposed to find out how tons of dollars ended up in a private residence and if it was true as the former Director General of the National Intelligence Agency, Ayo Oke, claimed, that he sheltered the money on orders.

That report should be made public, along with the findings of Osinbajo’s committee on the role of the former Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Babachir Lawal, in the alleged case of millions of naira set aside for the Presidential Initiative on the North East, which ended up in private pockets.

The war on corruption appears stuck in the mud. But since the President was getting regular briefings in his London sickbay, he’s probably already aware of two court rulings asking his government to publish looted funds recovered since 1999 to date; looted funds recovered on his watch since 2015 and the names of the looters.

Corruption will kill the country if all we do is talk about it or turn a blind eye when the culprits are close to us. Some people close to the President are giving his government a bad name and he knows them.

If the National Assembly is still perceived as a den of corruption, it’s because Buhari has failed to use his leverage as leader of the ruling party to deal with it; and if the judiciary is making mincemeat of anti-corruption cases, it’s because Buhari has retained a minister of justice who is confused, if not incompetent.

If he seriously wants a change, he’ll have to make the right call. And time is not on his side. There’s merit in Okorocha’s advice that he might need to overhaul his cabinet.

Not only does he need to take another look at the Justice Ministry, he might also need to overcome the sentiment that to love a competent minister is to kill him with work: Babatunde Fashola is currently overworked with three ministries. He needs to be where the country can optimise his talent and energy.

In theory, the Ministry of Education should be able to handle the national strike by university teachers, which is in its second week. In practice, however, Buhari cannot afford to outsource the problem, which has lingered on now for eight years.

I recall that when The Interview interviewed Buhari in July 2016, he said one of the reasons why he dumped the National Conference report was that Goodluck Jonathan’s government used the money that ought to have been used to pay lecturers to host “a useless conference.” Now, he’ll find that the matter is a bit more complicated.

Money won’t bury all the problems in the universities, though. Sure, the universities require more resources, but even if we hand over the key to the treasury to them, nothing will change as long as the market continues to think that university graduates are useless and that a good number of lecturers themselves need teachers.

What is required is a comprehensive overhaul of the educational system – the kind that Oby Ezekwesili tried to implement as Education Minister before vested interests fought her to a standstill. Fixing education is a presidential assignment.

It’s good to know that, so far, there are no reports of well-wishers falling over themselves to visit Buhari at home since he returned. They can send him cards with a spray can or two of pesticides for his office use, if they can afford it.

The man has work to do and should be left alone to face it, squarely.

Source: thecable.ng

Ishiekwene is the MD/Editor-In-Chief of The Interview magazine and board member of the Paris-based Global Editors Network