Right of Reply


Standing Facts on their Head


By Yusuph Olaniyonu


Reading through Steve Oliyide’s reaction to my article published in some national newspapers on July 12 and 13, gave me an initial feeling that at last, Nigerians will enjoy a good debate on issues affecting Ogun State as we approach the 2015 elections. However, if the outright falsehood and misrepresentation which dotted the response from beginning to end is the nature of exchange that our people will be subjected to, then the expected debate may not be worth the name. In any case, I still feel that I owe our people the duty to further reinforce the points I earlier made in the article entitled ‘ Bisi Onabanjo on My Mind’.
 
First, the Special Assistant to ex-Governor Gbenga Daniel noted that my article must have been informed by the need to respond to a claim made by his principal and also that the results of the Ekiti election must have compelled me to want to inform the public about our education policy. This is surprising, as the Ekiti election only held on June 19 whereas I had already written several articles between 2012 and now to inform Nigerians of our administration’s policies, projects and programmes. Before the one under focus, I wrote an article titled ‘Before We Forget’ published in many national newspapers on June 8, 2014, 13 days before the Ekiti polls. In that piece, I chronicled how the Otunba Gbenga Daniel administration inflicted violence, impunity and fear on our people and how the Amosun government has since restored peace and normalcy. Nobody in that administration has written a rejoinder to that piece. Maybe because there was no Ekiti election result to serve as inspiration for them or more appropriately, they have no answers to the details of atrocities contained in the article.
 
Secondly, now that we are being told that ‘the love of the people’ formed the philosophical underpinning of the education policy in Ogun State between 2003 to 2011 and that the aim was to create ‘model teachers’, we can as well examine the logic of that claim. In an administration with so much ‘love for the people’, parents had to pay huge sums of money to enrol their wards in public secondary schools, construct chairs and desks to be used by the students in school, pay building or development levies, buy textbooks and registration materials. 
The ‘people-oriented’ policy of the past administration was manifested in its inability to pay the WAEC fees which it had promised to pay. At a time, WAEC withheld the results of students from Ogun State. In 2010 when the results were withheld by WAEC, I had to write about it in my column on the back page of THISDAY newspaper. In that article, I revealed how the Commissioner for Education told the House of Assembly that he had advised against the policy so that the government  would not start what it could not sustain.
 Even then, the Amosun administration since May 2011 had to pay some backlog of WAEC fees that it inherited from the past government and has paid for the just concluded 2014 examinations.

If Oliyide remembers my 2010 intervention which forced the Daniel administration to quickly pay some money to WAEC and pleaded for the release of the results, he will not make the false claim that I was probably far from home when the administration was misgoverning Ogun State. I have been following and commenting on developments in the state for more than two decades. The former governor is very well aware of this fact. 
 
I know for sure that Chiefs Obafemi Awolowo and Bisi Onabanjo would be happy that while replicating their free education policy which translates to abolition of tuition fees, provision of infrastructural facilities in schools, supply of text books and instructional materials, the Amosun administration also  introduced Unified Exams in all state-owned primary and secondary schools. This is paid for by the government and it ensures that teachers strive to cover their syllabus and that the same standard is set across all our schools. When we talk about increased enrolment in schools, this is a direct result of the high standard of education available at no cost to students. The migration to public schools from private is because very few rational human beings would pay for what they can get at no cost. 
Again, Ogun State has 1,436 primary schools  and 345 secondary schools (173 JSS, 172 SSS and 129 combined schools). So, how can the enrolment figure be the same at both levels? This disparity in number of primary and secondary schools necessitated the need for construction of new model schools which members of the Daniel administration seem incensed about. I will address the issue of model schools later. 
 
Also, the last administration that created ‘model teachers’ , according to its propagandists, owed teachers salary of up to 19 months as at May 28, 2011. Deductions made from their salaries were not remitted to their co-operative societies. This therefore stifled their access to loans which usually provide financial succour to this category of workers. Their unions were polarized so as to enervate and prevent them from taking organised action against government. The vocal ones among them were suppressed, intimidated and whipped to toe the line or face grave consequence. Yet, the administration that subjected them to all these unsavoury experiences wanted to make them ‘model teachers’, as we are now being told.
 
There has been so much noise about TASUED as the number one university wholly devoted to producing teachers. However, that claim remained only on paper. The TASUED that the Amosun administration inherited was one in which all manners of non education related courses were created and students admitted arbitrarily with the sole aim  of generating funds. The university was running courses in diverse disciplines from mass communication to petro-chemical engineering, industrial relations, computer engineering and so on. Obviously, these courses were miles away from the proferred objective of training “model teachers.”
As at 2012 when the current administration set up a Visitation Panel to review the institution, it had more students than Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) which is a multi-disciplinary institution. It equally had loads of courses not accredited by the National Universities Commission (NUC). Since it was not well-funded by the government that created it, the authorities would  simply admit students each time they needed funds. This became manifest in that it had more part-time than full-time students. Admission requirements were so fluid, depending on the expected financial targets. And that was the university that members of the last administration in Ogun State usually boast is the premier education-focused institution. What manner of teachers will such a school produce?
Thanks to the intervention policy of the present administration which, after deciding not to merge it with OOU, appointed a new VC and Governing Council with a mandate to streamline the courses and get them accredited, audit the student population and ensure only the qualified ones remain, as well as ensure academic discipline in the school. So, while the Daniel government created a monument which he planned that his expected protégé –successor governor  would name after him, as recorded in a State Executive Council memo, the Amosun administration actually saved the institution from self-destruction.
 
 Further, Oliyide mentioned that the Daniel administration achieved so much in OOU. He can tell that to the marines. Is it the same OOU which before 2012 did not hold a convocation ceremony for eight years, thereby creating a racket-ring for the award of its certificates? Under the present administration, in order to clear the backlog, over 40,000 graduates had their convocation in 2012. The 2013 edition held on time and we are eagerly looking forward to the 2014 convocation. 
While some people believed that the general neglect suffered by OOU under the Daniel administration,  during which it had no single tarred road on its main campus, was due to the plan to promote TASUED over it, our conclusion is that none of the higher institutions fared better. In fact, just before the Amosun administration came into office in 2011, TASUED took a loan of N500m which we never knew what it was used for. There was the widespread belief that it was part of the funds that went into sponsoring a new political party that was set up at the twilight of the last administration. Imagine what collateral was promised to the bank? Expected student school fees. That was the philosophy of the ‘people-oriented education policy’ of the government in which Oliyide served.
  We  should also remind our readers that while the 'people - centered' policy of the Daniel administration made it fix the bursary for students of Ogun State origin at N1, 500, the present administration has since raised it to N5, 000. We have also taken steps to ensure that the bursary awards  are not turned to a source of siphoning money from the government as it was in the past.

Those who  speak about some phantom Human Capacity Development programme are probably reflecting the ‘Government by Proposal’ system with which Ogun State was governed between 2003 and 2011. This is a system in which a crony quickly puts together a proposal designed to help him make some bucks and money is quickly approved for the programme. Sending a few loyalists for some hurriedly designed courses abroad as a way of further dividing the body of teachers is not the style of the Amosun government and nobody should brandish that as an achievement here. We prefer sustainable all-year-round training programmes involving reputable national and international agencies. This is better and more beneficial.
I can see that the issue of construction of model schools runs through Oliyide’s reaction to my piece. Just like his boss, the former Governor who has been  whingeing about the model schools, this ex-Special Assistant does not seem to believe we should have constructed model schools, not to talk of building 15 out of the proposed 26 at the same time. For the umpteenth time, let me explain that the need for the model schools arose from one of the bad policies the Daniel administration hurriedly initiated for lack of well-thought out solution to the rising cost of running the education system.
The administration without thinking about the implications or conducting any impact analysis, hurriedly returned schools originally owned by the missionaries without creating alternative public schools. The policy  led to some 23,000 students dropping out of the school system in one session alone, for inability to pay the school fees charged by the new owners. The Amosun administration had to quickly reverse the policy on its assumption of office. However, the government knew that this was a temporary measure. The permanent solution is to construct new schools that will take the present students in the schools owned by the missionaries and the growing population in our public schools, particularly the secondary schools.
The foundation stone of the first model school was laid in 2012. The schools are planned as major projects which will redefine public education in our state. It is therefore not something that will be hurriedly executed. Those who feel threatened by the achievement that the model schools will become for the Amosun administration should wait and see how well they will turn out. The tenure of our administration is definitely not terminating now. And just as we have not failed in the execution of previous projects we have embarked upon, we will invite them for the commissioning of the model schools.
  Let me also remind the readers that our administration has reclaimed the glory of Ogun State which was thrown to the dogs when the past administration got Ogun State blacklisted by federal intervention agencies like UBEC and ETF for mismanagement of the funds coming from these agencies. That is why it was the Amosun administration that had to pay the state counterpart funds to assess the UBEC fund for 2008/2009 and subsequent years. We have since used the funds to construct over 1,000 blocks of classrooms in our schools. Yet, despite knowing that the UBEC fund is a joint contribution by both state and federal government on a 50-50 basis, Oliyide is unhappy that we are taking part of the glory for the proper utilization of the funds for viable capital projects. What a way to reason.
 
Olaniyonu is Commissioner for Information and Strategy