By DICKSON OKAFOR
Professor Jude Njoku is an expert in agricultural economics and former Vice Chancellor Federal University of Technology, Owerri. He lamented the decay and depreciation in standards of education in the country.
The scholar served as commissioner twice in Imo State ministries of Lands, Survey and Planning and later Education attributed the problem to underfunding. He said lowering of university cut-off mark by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) amounts to further eroding the little that is left of the system and double standards. He noted that his efforts and recommendations on how to improve on the standards of education was politicized by governments.
Many believe that the education system is politicized resulting to the fall of standard to the extend most graduates cannot defend their certificate and unemployable, do you share the same view?
What is happening in our educational system is what the computer experts calls ‘garbage in garbage out.’ For instance, there are so many people who are not supposed to be in the university that eventually gained admission into our universities and tertiary institutions. So, when you have a poor quality input, it gives you poor quality output. In our days there were only five universities in Nigeria, and, the University of Nigeria Nsukka, covered what is now the entire South-East and South-South known then as Eastern Region.
It was such that families only sent their best brains because it was costly to educate them. And it was also because those who apply to study engineering were those who made As in either mathematics and chemistry while those who studies medicine are those who made nothing less than As in physics and chemistry and so on as so forth. Today, you have people with the lowest level of pass or C6 in mathematics and chemistry and they study engineering and medicine. So what quality of engineers and doctors are you going to produce? The corruption in the system has also laid the stage as the system encourages it. So, at the end of the day the universities produce half bake product.
Many have condemned JAMB for lowering the cut off mark for university admission. Do you share the view?
That has worsened the already bad situation in the education sector. In fact, it is tantamount to lowering of educational standards as well as having double standards.
How come experts like you with clear ideas of how the sector can be improved are not engaged by government to find a lasting solution to the challenge in the education sector?
Many people have said the problem with Nigeria is not necessarily making good policies but the problem is with implementation. I can assure you that from past experience, when I served in the Presidential Task Team on Education we came up with several documents which contain recommendation on how to develop our educational system, but the level of implementation was very low. Beside, when it comes to implementation, it is not necessarily the best brains that are recruited to do the job.
There are so many other considerations, so you may have all the knowledge and skills but may not be the one to implement some of these policies and plans. So far, we don’t get the best out of what we put in.
Nigeria faces a huge problem of unemployment for youths, how best can these youths be engaged?
We have always suggested that if government is listening that we should continue to review our curriculum so that we can produce people who acquired practical skill and able to become self-employed or employers of labour rather than being job seekers. So, we are beginning to introduce a lot of entrepreneurial components in our curriculum so that we equip people with the necessary skill that will enable them establish on their own and be able to find jobs for themselves and possibly employ others rather than depending on government for employment because as it is the government cannot employ all the people that are available for employment.
Again, we think that we should have a clear cut policy to enable the private sector grow because the private sector should take off government burden of unemployment which means that the policies must be such that deliberately empower the private sector to be strong enough to absorb a good number of the people available for employment. The policies also must empower the small and medium enterprises and small businesses. They are small but they take bit of graduates and if you look at the number of these small businesses, they employ more when aggregated together and generate income for the economy. So, we are through our policies trying to encourage this sector of the economy because they are also areas that create a lot of employment for our young men and women. This is some of the things we urge the government to put in place to create more jobs for our people.
Many say these laudable recommendations don’t fly is because our leaders prefer to send their children abroad to study hence the reason for not improving the sector, is that true?
It is becoming increasingly difficult even for most people to send their children to school overseas. When you look at the proportion of the population that is ready to send their children out for training overseas is a very insignificant number. There is beginning to be a reversal in such effort hence people are now looking inwards because it is now more expensive as a result of recession. There is effort to establish more institutions that are of quality to provide them the kind of quality education they want for their children. Also, to ensure that our people will patronize less those institutions abroad to reduce the out flow of the children.
There is a lot to make us look inward and if we begin to look into improving what we have inward rather than patronizing other countries facilities, I think the present economic recession and the experiences we had and the financial crunch we have in the system, a lot of people are beginning to rethink and looking forward to patronizing our local institutions. We are beginning to notice that we are now trying to make the best of what we have locally rather patronize what is outside the country.
What is the role of private universities towards raising the standard of education in the country?
There are a lot of private universities of good quality in the country. For instance, I know of Afe Babalola University in Ekiti State which is providing one of the best services. I also know that churches are beginning to establish universities such Caritas University that is owned by the Catholic Church that also provides quality faculty and lectures that will give our students the best. Recently, one of the religious universities came second in ranking among African universities and know that most of these universities both in Nigeria and Africa came before the first ten which means they are of good quality. So, our students can go to these institutions to get the kind of quality education that they want to get from outside.
I think the advent of private universities is a good omen for the country because they are beginning to improve on the kind of quality that exist in public schools which is sometimes overcrowded. Essentially again, the public school is underfunded. And I have always told our people that free food is not tasty so since we run pay-for-nothing education system we can’t hope to get quality out of such system. However, private universities provide quality because it is where you pay more and you get the necessary facilities for effective teaching and learning.
What is your assessment of the education policy of the present government?
I got the glimpse when I was going through the government economic recovery roadmap for the development of the economy. They made mention of establishing Almajiri schools of about 200 classrooms and that is the glimpse I had. But looking at the service critically it formed comment on the educational policy of government, as we all know what the problem is which is under funding. In as much as government has made efforts in the recent past to improve funding in the education sector, but I think in the last two years of the new administration funding has diminished drastically and it is affecting the functionality of the institutions particularly the Universities, the polytechnics and the Colleges of Education. In the days of former President Goodluck Jonathan a lot of money was pumped into infrastructural development in the universities through the Tertiary Education Trust (TETfund), but since the inception of the present administration TETfund has not functioned and that has adversely affected infrastructural development in the universities.
When you go through the normal budgetary process, there is little or no provision for educational institutions particularly. I know a lot of universities that don’t get up to N100 million in their annual budget and even when you have those provisions at the end of the day they don’t get up to 50 per cent released to them. So, how can they provide classrooms, offices, workshops, equipment and even utilities, like electricity, water and so on and so forth? How can there be effective teaching and learning? Those institutions cannot pay salaries. Let me give you an instance, when I was the VC of the Federal University of Technology, Owerri, do you know we could only pay 80 per cent of salaries. Today, they have been struggling over time to make sure they pay salaries borrowing funds from various agencies to make up to pay. For the first time this month they paid only 80 per cent. Last February the Federal Polytechnic, Nekede paid salaries because it was under funded. So, it was as bad as that. My take is if various administrations were able to find money somewhere to pay salaries of lecturers in institutions those days, why can’t we find it now?