Again, congratulations sir. I wish you a hitch-free inauguration on the 29th May 2023 and pray that Nigeria will experience the best under your administration as the next President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. While I also wish that you will accord education priority attention, as a commitment.
GRANT THESE OUR THREE REQUESTS … e3.8+ Solution
(3 areas of concern that will solve our challenges in education for the next 8 years and beyond)
The very first task of this letter is to glorify God and congratulate our country for a successful process in the political change of baton, as attested to, by the just concluded election in which a candidate has clearly won. Importantly, I congratulate the President-elect – Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu. Having gone through the analysis of a viral post by Dr. Kesington Steele, linked to‘48 Laws of Power’ a book authored by Robert Greene. Kesington extols the political sagacity, virtues and ambidexterity of the President-Elect, I am left with no other option than believing in the capacity of our incoming president to do things differently and be an accomplished president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. There are intelligent submissions, pertinently made on a number of platforms I belong; bothering on personality and capacity of Asiwaju and his emergence as president-elect for Nigeria. Also, Kunle Awosiyan of Daily dispatch news of March 13, 2023 in his article captioned: ‘How Tinubu’s Victory Confirmed God’s Words Instead of Men’s Words’. With those submissions, I became convinced that God gives power, and to whomsoever He desires. My prayer, therefore, is that God Almighty will direct your thoughts, sayings, actions and ultimately grant our country peace, tolerance, love, prosperity, and to become great again, as a blessed nation of note, amen.
Your Excellency sir, the crux of the matter is that I got an inspiration to write this letter as a result of my concern and love for our dear country – Nigeria and her education system. When I read in the National Daily that you are already forming your government, I thought I should pen down some concerns. Today, our country seems to be undoubtedly overwhelmed by the challenges confronting our university system. We seem to be pretending that everything is fine, but not. Our system requires serious and critical overhauling. However, I take solace in your utmost concern, as expressed in an unprecedented commitment to upgrade education in Nigeria; as expressed in your victory’s acceptance speech. It has been observed and discovered that our education has been beleaguered with a whole lot, resulting from the 3 focal standpoints of entanglements that solutions shall be proffered, to be my own contribution to your administrative success. Just not to be an ingate, I must on behalf of the Nigerian academics thank Honourable Speaker of the House of Representatives for his intervention, done with good intention, during the last ASUU-FG cacophony. Having mentioned Nigeria and her education here, as my concern; it therefore means that I shall be adopting the 3rd stanza of the Nigeria’s former national anthem – “Nigeria We Hail Thee” which the lyrics were written by Lillian Jean Williams (British expatriate) and the music first composed by Frances Berda in 1960;and lasted till 1978, when the new one was adopted. It is upon this that I shall premise this epistle as a very useful reference point.
Former National Anthem of Nigeria – 3rd Stanza
O God of all creation,
Grant this our one request,
Help us to build a nation
Where no man is oppressed,
And so with peace and plenty
Nigeria may be blessed.
I remember coming across the above former national anthem of Nigeria – Nigeria, We Hail Thee, at a time my mentor, a Kalabari High Chief, Alabo Prof. Anyamebo Kulabibiye-Dokubo Okorosaye-Orubite of blessed memory was ruminating on which title to adopt for his inaugural lecture. He involved me in the search for a suitable title, as his closest mentee. We arrived at choosing – Grant this our one request, as contained in the said anthem. A moment after, I was not too comfortable with the choice of‘one request’, which I bared my mind to him. He alluded with my resentment and immediately, he wrote to the university and quickly modified the title. Finally, he settled for a new one, tagged – ‘Grant This Our New Request’, as the 137th Inaugural Lecture of the University of Port Harcourt.
Anyway, Nigeria is older than myself. However, what is of interest to me is the 3rd Stanza around which myself and my late ‘oga’ had wrapped our heads,to whet the repository of knowledge and increase the volume of literature that are heavily pregnant with many solutions to the problems of humanity. The lecture was an academic contribution, calculated to salvage the situations in our national education life. In the said old national anthem, where the Nigerian nation called on God of all creation, to “Grant this our one request” must have been made out of enthusiasm for the envisaged independence or because a foreigner who composed it deliberately put a limitation to how we should sprout developmentally. When at birth, Nigeria had only one request, as indicated therein. The one and no other request may be why we are yet to get it right, amidst all surreptitious needs and new manifestations that we were not conscious of adding in our request then. It is upon this narrative that I have decided not to ask for just one request, but more. Today, I call on God of all creation to grant us all our national requests, for peace, security, love, tolerance, abundance, progress, unity and above all; prosperity and greatness that will make many other nations bow or be at standing ovation; whenever the name Nigeria is mentioned, amen.
As it is important to this letter, after requesting for all our requests to be granted by God; I also ask our incoming president, the President-Elect of the Federal Republic of Nigeria – Grant These Our Three Requests. Your Excellency sir, the caption of this letter would have been with the use of ‘grant my’, instead of ‘grant our’; but I have the strong conviction, believing that many other Nigerians in the educational clan are in the same spirit and mindset with me. The requests are therefore ours and not only mine, particularly those who share in my thoughts. As an educational historian, I have researched into how we have come to where we are in the country’s educational successes and failures. As a policy expert, I have used the acuity and skills of appraising, critiquing and evaluating the errors of policy formulation which I describe as indigestion and somersaults, as well as the implementation quagmire which I describe as diarrhea. We can look at indigestion and diarrhea and interpret how the sufferer of either of them feels. Also, as a scholar in the discipline of International and Comparative Education, my knowledge horizon has shown that we have not learnt anything of emulation in the global best practices, rather window dressing and playing to the gallery. Before the three requests are highlighted sir, let me put in perspective and identify some of those critical areas which we have been goofing in our educational policy – conceptualization, contextualization and interpretation.
The Problems Identified
For the discussion on these three requests, and its digestibility; it is very excessively necessary to open up on a number of underlying problems that have kept us abased, branded and retrograded our educational system with ridiculing characteristics in the comity of nations, even in the sub-region.
Your Excellency sir, it is so disturbing, worrisome and nauseating that, over the years, we struggled to get it right in our system of education; but efforts to revitalize the system have always been on addressing the effect and not the cause. Some of these, are to me, the errors of:
To quickly buttress the above sir, we have had a number of education ministers in the past; whose understanding or knowledge of what is traditional to the office was not in conversance, such that they never saw that National Common Entrance Examination is illegal in Nigeria, by the interpretation and analytical provision of the 2004 UBE Act. Also, that five (5) credit passes, since 2014 as requirements for admission into tertiary institution is largely an error to behold. There are 9 other areas in our education practices, bothering on policy and legal complexities, which we are even running afoul the law; including the various Acts, establishing the universities. I shall further on this, as discussions progress.
Merging the affairs of running tertiary education in the same Ministry, with Basic and Post-Basic education remains an age-long error, particularly for a country with diverse and peculiar cultural and socio-economic characteristics. Mixing the issues of higher education, especially the university; with its global requirements of being universitas and lumping it with peculiar issues at the Basic and Post-Basic education levels, calls for serious attention. The administration of national education in amalgamation is burdensome, considering the struggles of the country for development in the different aspects of our existence. More shall be discussed in the subsequent part of this letter.
Academics in the Nigerian tertiary institutions are poorly paid, consequently the motivation that should get them to be atop of their performance for the country is buried under the whims and caprices of unwilling managers, consequent upon which many of our finest and bests are leaving in droves for greener pastures. Exodus of our medical and other colleagues is alarming. However, those who have chosen to remain are pauperized and be-laboured. No incentives associated with this noble profession again. Sabbatical, vacation, research leave, exchanges and linkages (international collaborations), quality tools and conducive environment are fast disappearing. Autonomy has conferred certain administrative powers on the Senate of the Universities, e.g. opening and closing of the universities, not even the Vice Chancellor’s unilateral decision; but things are changing out of the order, with directives from the above.
As a Letter-writer
I am a letter writer, but this is the first time I am writing an open letter and the second time my letter would be going outside my constituency – university system. My own letters have always been focused on education and nothing more, to sensitize about strategies for development or offer suggestions on how best the system can run; not running down people at the helm or writing to cripple the system or pursuing self-aggrandizement; except when emotion is injected, then the letter sounds radical. May God help our country to be the greatest of our dreams.
The Three Requests
Before a comprehensive discourse with clear justifications, the three requests are:
Your Excellency sir, there was no time a Minister of Justice/Attorney General of the Federation was sourced outside the circle of legal practitioners, so also, for the offices of Ministers of Finance, Health, Defence and others. Accountant General, Surveyor General, Chief of Defence Staff, Chief of Army Staff, Naval Staff, Air Staff, Inspector General of Police etc. were never picked outside their professional families. This is the first unconscious error being committed and injustice done to education by the government, which has been crippling the progress we ought to have made in our national system of education. If we should all be retrospective in this regard, not having the right type of professional as the Minister of Education over the years has kept us where we are. Sir, I shall reveal to you, as already mentioned passively in the foregoing; what damages the appointment of a ‘non-specialist’ professionalas the Minister of Education has caused the country, even those that are bothering on violation of the laws of the land (federation) and a breach of international charters, with which our country remains a signatory.
A specialist professional being advocated for, is the one who must have gone through and experienced the training that places him or her in a more skillful pedestal to initiate, formulate, synthesize, interpret, facilitate, appraise/evaluate, activate and reactivate the development or implementation of policy on education; these are the required skills or understanding which a non-specialist professional may not possess. Few identified non-specialist professionals in the time past were close to the achievement of little, because of full involvement and free hands given to those engaged-experts/specialists who assisted them; but procrastination may not be ruled out, unlike when the initiator of policy is a ‘specialist’professional, in which case; time is saved and the anticipated results are visibly and impressively achieved. If I may mention here the three identified former ministers of education, without prejudices, since our return to Democracy; who had served as Minister of Education and were good initiators of education policies in Nigeria.
By my own assessment and standard of estimation, as an education policy expert,we had the likes of Prof. Tunde Adeniran (midwifing the universalization of primary and junior secondary education – UBE, the birth of private and national open universities, and famous for his ban on satellite campuses of higher institutions across Nigeria );Dr. Obiageli (Oby)Ezekwezili (finest policies for reforms in our education, covering wide range areas; but too drastic in approach and many of such were put forward to be achieved the same time. However, Dr. Oby’s efforts became the foundations for her successors), and Prof. Ruqqayatu Rufa’i (compensatory education and the need for early-childhood education which is even a global trend, including but not limited to revitalisation of Technical and Vocational Education (TVE); introduction, development and adoption of National Vocational Qualification Framework (NVQF), to include Manufacturing, Agriculture, Hotel and Management, Information and Communication Technology, Transportation and Construction etc.). The Guardian 6th June, 2019 also has its own evaluation on who the cap fits as the Nigeria’s best education minister in 20 years.
Your Excellency – Mr. President-elect sir, it will do us much good, if we unbundle and bifurcate the Federal Ministry of Education. To separate and proliferate different ministries for Higher/Tertiary Education on one hand and on the other, Basic & Post-Basic Education. The requirements of higher education administration are not the same with those of other levels below it. The sophistication that characterizes higher education demands that the Federal Ministry of Education be unbundled. Everything that happens at the Basic and Post-Basic levels is important and required exclusive attention; as anything that is wrong from those levels have its effects suffered at the higher level, therefore require a seasoned educational administrator who may not necessarily be a university professor at the saddle. The peculiarity of everything about higher education also requires giving it exclusive and undivided attention too.
In Nigeria, we pretend that everything is okay, but they are not. Many states of the Federation have started realizing the need to accord special attention to their education, for optimal benefit of what education can offer in the cause of development. The first step these states have taken, which is the right step and which has started yielding results; is the bifurcation of the Ministry of Education, where tertiary or higher education have been separated from Basic and Post-Basic (Senior Secondary) schools. This great realization has made many states to come up with Ministry of Basic and Post Basic Education and having Ministry of Higher Education or Ministry of Tertiary Education, appendaged in some, with Research, Professional, Science, Technology, so as to accommodate other aspects of tertiary/higher education concerns; such as we have in Abia, Adamawa, Anambra, Borno, Delta, Kano, Kebbi, Kwara, Niger, Plateau, Taraba States etc. At the international level, same realization of the need to unbundled their Ministries of Education has seen countries like: Benin Republic, Botswana, Cyprus, Egypt, Gambia, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Oman, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirate, Zimbabwe and others to be proactive and adopt bifurcation where administration of education in these countries are superintended over by two different ministers. Note that in Italy, there are two different ministries for education and Minister for University and Research and Minister for Public Education. This idea has started solving problems in Botswana, Cyprus, Egypt, Malaysia, South Africa, UAE; to extent that they are now countries of higher education pilgrimage.
Your Excellency sir, most of the Nigerian problems can be solved from the efforts and activities of the universities. For instance, the security challenges in the country can be mitigated and abated; if all universities are supported to mount academic programmes in or evolve centres/institutes for criminology and security studies, as well as strengthening the existing ones. This is the capacity; I know of the universities, making it imperative to unbundle the Ministry. My understanding of the current system as it is, does not agree with a singular Ministry of Education. Our education, as earlier remarked, is overwhelmed with challenges and bifurcation of the ministry is one aspect believed to be antidotal. It must be noted, if I am correct, Federal Ministry of Education has the largest number of departments, agencies or parastatals among all the Nigerian ministries. Tertiary education is a potential ground to stimulate the growth and development of our country. This has to be professionally and distinctly explored, being a raison d’être of the call for this detachment.