- Exclusive interview with Dr Okechukwu Groupson-Paul, Registrar of Enugu State College of Education
Angel Network News (ANN): Scholars don’t normally agree on the meaning of education. In your view, what is education?
Dr. Okechukwu: Scholars don’t usually agree on the meaning of education because education means different things to different individuals. However, to me, education in the real sense means light shining in darkness. This is because without education, you and I will not be heretoday. Education makes modern life possible. Without education, the youth wouldn’t know what they knew today. Education is that light that broadens the horizon of human possibilities.
ANN: Renowned educators have consistently underlined the nexus between education and governance. Can you walk us through the exact relationship between these two concepts?
Dr. Okechukwu: Education is vital in every society both in the past and in the contemporary time. Every good leader who is educated knows that good governance requires good education.The Nigerian situation is more or less a skewed system of governance. Those in leadership have turned things upside down, pursuing their self-interest. The base of the Nigerian problem is primordial accumulation of wealth which made it that even those who travelled outside and have seen how things are done, still return to continue the bad behaviour.
In addition, most educated Nigerians are not enlightened. An enlightened person should know that the right thing should be done at the right time but most Nigerians who claim to be educated are not enlightened. They put their personal interest above the common good. In the real sense, leaders are supposed to serve the people but in Nigeria, the reverse is the case. This is the relationship between education and governance. Those who are aware of what education is do the right thing and those who are not aware do the wrong thing. Nigerian leaders don’tunderstand the real value of education that is why they are doing the wrong thing.
ANN: How would you evaluate the current state of education in Nigeria?
Dr. Okechukwu: It is disheartening and very painful because the level of education in Nigeria has gone to the lowest level. Those who did not go to school are doing better than those who went to school simply because the Nigeria system does not value education. That is why a country like Nigeria was on strike for 8 months and nothing happened. Nigerian leaders see education, as nothing because if we value education as done in the developed countries or even in neighbouring states like Ghana then we will know that education is very vital. If that happens, we would have seen our people moving forward. You can see the state of things in the country. It is a reflection of our value for education. That is why this year’s election is very important and anybody up to the age of voting should do everything to vote because if you allow a mad man to win election in your community, he will use that madness to rule you.
ANN: No doubt, the quality of education in Nigeria has declined over the years. At what point in the history of Nigerian did this decline begin?
Dr. Okechukwu: I will say that Nigerian education started to decline from the 1980s to date because when we were kids in primary school in the early 1970s, we heard about Grade 4. Somebody who had Grade 4 then is equal to somebody who has MSc, today. Then somebody who has finished WEAC and made good Grade is like a graduate today. It was joyful to find yourself making Grade 1 simply because there is respect accorded to it. If it were the community that was training you, you would go straight to the university. If you made Grade 2, you were going to any of the secondary schools to be a teacher and if you made Grade 3, the same joy because you would find your way to the ministry. In the ministry, they would give you a motorcycle or even a car. Then the people were happy but today it is no longer the same. The fact is that those who took over governance in Nigeria from the 1980 messed up Nigeria. From the time of Alhaji Shehu Shagari to date was when real corruption started in this country. Not that there was no corruption in the 70s but the idea of corruption became so obvious from the 1980s. Beginning from the 1990s to the time of IBB corruption was politicized. Those who were trained by the military, who are in government currently, steal with impunity. That is why nobody is interested in the country’s education. What they do is to amass wealth and send their children abroad to study and receive their graduation at record time and come back to join their fathers in looting the country. Therefore, from 1980s to date, Nigerian education has been horrible. It was like God has cursed the country.
ANN: Where specifically do you think Nigerian government is getting it wrong educationally?
Dr. Okechukwu: Generally, if you count from the 1980s to now, we have over 20 ASUU strikes. From the time of Ali Must Go to date, Nigerian education has been bastardized. The issue of quarter system, for instance, bringing somebody who read Arabic to be a minister of education made the situation worse. Therefore, the Nigerian government started getting it wrong from the 1980s and it has been horrible since then.
ANN: The Government is often accused of underfunding education. Can the government alone fund education?
Dr. Okechukwu: The essence of governance is to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves. However, when the government fails to do this, the society goes into chaos and that is what we are experiencing today. When as a president, you give education a budget of 10% and defense 50% and foreign affairs 30% and you forget that education is the foundation of every development. If education is the building foundation of a nation, nothing stops the government from assigning to education what it assigns to defense because defense itself depends on manpower that comes from education.
Because the system is not taken care of, the lecturers are hungry. You are paying a senior lecturer N150, 000, and somebody on the same level and the same certificate who works in Central Bank is paid 2.5million and some other person in the oil company with the same certificate is paid 4.3 million, how do you think that the lecturer will be happy doing his job. Who trains all these other professionals, is it not the teacher who is paid 150k. Therefore, if the lecturer is well paid, he will work hard knowing that at the end of the day, he can take care of his family. Nevertheless, it is not like that today, that is why the lecturer has to neglect his work and get involved in so many other things to make ends meet. Remember that the market where the person working in the oil company and the one working in Central Bank buy their things is the same market that the lecturer buys his also.
ANN: Are there things the private sector should be doing to contribute to Nigerian education?
Dr. Okechukwu: The private sector at this point is doing a lot in its contribution to Nigeria education. Why do I say so? You have heard about TETFUND, which is money collected from private organizations to fund education. It started during Obasanjo’s regime and has continued to today. Go to Nigerian institutions, you will see many structures funded through TETFUND. If not for these funds, tertiary education in Nigeria would have gone moribund. Therefore, the private sector is doing a lot only that the managers are not managing the fund well. Who are the managers? They are government officials who are in the ministries. Instead of utilizing the fund for education, they divert it for their own personal aggrandizements.
ANN: Successive Nigerian governments have not given the required attentions to the country’s education. However, the government is not the only institution to blame. How much of these blames do you think lecturers like yourself share?
Dr. Okechukwu: Yes, the blame should not go to the government alone. I agree with you but as the saying goes, the first thing is democracy of the stomach and democracy of the stomach is that when a man eats well he will have the strength to deliver. When a man is owned three to five months’ salary and you are saying no work no pay, how can you hold him responsible for the falling standard of education in Nigeria. A hungry man is an angry man.
When the lecturers are on strike, most of them used their cars for taxis to be able to survive for the many months they have not been paid salaries. If school resume, the gullible ones among them will start extorting money from the students: asking them to pay for handouts and marks. However, if a man is well paid and eats well these malpractices will not come into his mind easily, after all, those he is teaching are also his children and you can’t destroy what you want to grow. So the lecturers are hungry and at the mercy of the government and the society and until we get thing right to ensure that they are taken care of, things will continue the way they are going.
ANN: ASUU was on strike for over 8 months and Nigerian public institutions are in very bad states. What is the way forward?
Dr. Okechukwu: It boils down to the same thing, bad governance. Many of those who are at the helm of affair in the country don’t understand the value of education. Take for instance those currently vying for the presidency. Some of them are saying that they don’t have certificates or that their certificates are missing. Tomorrow if such person gets to office, do you think anything will be done about education? So ASUU strike is a painful thing. It shows that the educational system have been destroyed simply because those who are supposed to help are toying with the system. They are only interested in what they will get. Unfortunately our brothers, the Igbos are the ones being used to destroy this country. You can see the role Ngige, the Minister of Labour is playing in the struggle with ASUU. He is behaving like someone who is not even learned simply because of his own selfish interest.
ANN: To be a bit more specific, if you are made the president or the minister of education today, what is that one thing you will do to turn the state of Nigerian education around?
Dr. Okechukwu: Education in Nigeria is a complex issue and for you to do that you, you need to go back to the drawing board. You have to go back to the experts. We have experts’ proposals in this country. The problem is that their proposals are not being utilized. Therefore, if such is the case, the first thing is to start with a good plan on how to rehabilitate the educational sector to make it attractive. So if you give me the opportunity, I will reorganize the education sector and make it viable because that is the bedrock of Nigerian development. If you get education right in Nigeria, every other thing will fall in place.
ANN: Now, even if the Nigerian Government starts to invest massively in education, it will take some time to take effect. What advice do you have for students who for no fault of theirs have to manage what is available in Nigeria currently?
Dr. Okechukwu: Our people say that whenever you wake up from bed is your morning. If the government start investing in education today, we will still get to where we want to be simply because as one set is graduating another set is following. What the old set miss, the incoming set will get and there will be change because life itself is in stages. Therefore, no time is late. All we need is to get it right first. We can start now.
