What is your opinion on this? ‘Politics is killing education in Nigeria’ Mr Sylvester Onoja [OON] is the Executive Chairman, Kogi State Teaching Service Commission and Technical Adviser to the Kogi State Governor on Education. In this interview with KEHINDE ADIO, he traces the genesis of the much-talked-about fallen standard of education in Nigeria, identifying, among others, the undue politicisation of the sector. AS a retired principal of a Federal Government College and former Commissioner for Education in Kogi State, what is your perception of the state of education and its impact on the people and economy of Nigeria over the years? So far so good, there is nothing wrong with our educational system. Our problem is that we have the wrong will towards education. What do you mean? We do not have the right political will to drive education in this country. Also, we do not have the patience to give education what it takes to grow. We do not have the courage to do what is right and put the best people to manage education. We have been throwing money into education, but we have not really established education. It’s sad to note that we have brought a lot of politics into education. So, how do we redress that? We have to depoliticise education. Until we separate politics from education, there will never be serious development in our education system. When the missionaries started education in Abeokuta and went on to Lagos in 1850 to establish the Christian Missionary Society (CMS) Grammar School in Bariga, Lagos, which was the first secondary school in Nigeria, there was no problem. Even when the Baptist mission joined education business to establish the Baptist Academy in 1855, there was no politics in the system. St. Andrew’s College started in Oyo in 1875 without politics. The first government secondary school, the Kings College, started in 1909. There was no politics either. The best men came to run the schools and the best students attended the schools. Today, behind every school there has been some politics. The first set of Federal Government schools in the country were established on political bases. It was political decision that located them and not on merit. Politics came into education after independence. For example, from 1960 to date, we have had 46 ministers of education, including ministers of state. That is to say that no minister has stayed in office for five years. There is no continuity in education management. What about the school curriculum and syllabus? There is nothing wrong with those either. The major problem is implementation and lack of continuity. For education to endure, there has to be continuity. The problem we have with education started with the Universal Primary Education (UPE) in 1976. During this period, the Federal Government introduced crash training programme for teachers. All kinds of people – motor mechanics and other people who had no business with education – enrolled for the programme to join the teaching profession. This is the genesis of the falling quality of education in the country. What’s your assessment of the existing teacher training colleges in the country? We no longer have true teacher training colleges as we had them before. This is another disservice that government has done to education in this country. Today, it is candidates who scored the least in Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) that attend colleges of education. If government wants to encourage education, the best candidate should go to colleges of education. Entry requirement for admission to colleges of education by JAMB is 150 points. Why? How do you produce the best graduates for the labour market with unqualified teachers? In some advanced counties, it is more difficult to get admission to study education than to study medicine. Even in America, admission into teacher training institution is very tough. I think JAMB should give education its pride of place. How can government encourage the best brains to go into the teaching profession? Government should introduce special incentives in the form of scholarship to students who want to study education in the tertiary institutions. Government should raise the admission standard for colleges of education and faculty of education. Government should increase the salary of teachers and make it comparable with those working in the oil company, or the banking industry. If we get education right, everything will go well in this country. Nigeria is preparing for another political dispensation in 2015. How would you want education to be handled? First and foremost, we need to repair the damage in education. Our primary and secondary education is faulty. There is nothing we can build on a faulty foundation. If we continue to build more universities and locate them in the villages, as long as the state of our primary and secondary education remains as it is, there can never be progress. Moreover, it has become imperative for Nigeria to establish a commission for secondary school education in the country. Secondary education is the only arm of education that lacks a regulatory body. The universities, polytechnics, colleges of education and the primary schools all have regulatory bodies. There has to be a regulatory body for secondary schools; a commission to promote the activities of secondary schools.
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 08:04:43 +0000
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