As Rufa’i bows out

Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i reported for work that morning at the Federal Ministry of Education in Abuja, to receive the Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Ms. Irina Bokova who was in Nigeria on a three-day working visit to commission a West African regional office. Unknown to her that […]

Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i reported for work that morning at the Federal Ministry of Education in Abuja, to receive the Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) Ms. Irina Bokova who was in Nigeria on a three-day working visit to commission a West African regional office. Unknown to her that would be her last official assignment. A few hours later, she would sit and listen to her boss, President Goodluck Jonathan announce her sack alongside eight other ministers.
Close observers of the political drama unfolding within the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP)  may not have been surprised by the ouster of Rufa’i from office, but education stakeholders sure were. This is because in May, rumours of her sack were so intense after former President Olusegun Obasanjo stirred troubled waters when he declared that Jigawa State Governor Sule Lamido, who nominated Rufa’i for ministerial position, had the ability and competence to be president in 2015.
But she survived. She appeared to be in the good books of President Jonathan, always tying policy changes to his transformation agenda and she made it her duty to attend many official engagements of First Lady Patience Jonathan. She seemed to have fostered a relationship with the presidency that went beyond political exchanges and negotiations.
Last Wednesday’s announcement, however proved she was no cat with nine lives. The political turmoil in the PDP in the last couple of weeks which climaxed with the breakout of some governors including Lamido to form a ‘New PDP’ and  pressure on Jonathan to declare his intention to run for president in 2015 before September seemed to seal her fate.
Even though the Minister of Information Labaran Maku claimed there were no political undercurrents to the sack and it was a move on President Jonathan’s part “to inject fresh blood to achieve greater service delivery”, others knew better.
The move speaks volumes: even as 10.5 million children remain out of school, 40 million Nigerians are illiterates and federal tertiary institutions remain shut down after three months, education is still a game of politics for government.
Rufa’i may have been a political scapegoat but she is one of Nigeria’s longest serving education minister in recent times with three and a half years to her credit. She begun under the Yar’adua administration and continued into Jonathan’s tenure when he was officially elected president.
Her stint at the helm of affairs of the education sector was centred around expanding access such that it earned her the nickname  ‘Mama Access’. It was during her tenure, that nine new federal universities were established with another three in the works. This is a move that is yet to sit well with many stakeholders who claim the existing universities are in a poor state and establishing new ones would only overstretch the funds federal government claims not to have. But she stuck to the vision of President Jonathan to ensure every state, including the FCT, has a federal university.
It wasn’t only the number of federal universities that increased, even private investors had reason to smile. Under her, nine private universities were given provisional licenses to operate.
The expanding access programme carried on into the basic education subsector where the almajiri education programme was introduced to accommodate children on the streets begging for alms especially in northern Nigeria. A total of 124 of the 148 schools have been completed and are due for formal handover anytime soon. This programme is also been specially tailored for out of school boys in the South East and other regions.
She also gave political backing to ensure the transformation of the Education Trust Fund to Tertiary Education Trust Fund which saw improved funding for tertiary institutions. Again, under her, for the first time the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and federal government sheathed their swords and conducted the needs assessment of 61 public universities to ascertain the individual needs of each institution instead of just giving blanket funding. That report opened up the rot in the university system – understaffing, imbalance in programme levels, poor state of hostels, uncompleted projects and poor administration among others.
The Federal Ministry of Education under Rufa’i also reviewed many policy documents: the National Policy on Education, nine-year basic education and senior secondary education curricula. She also saw to the introduction of one pre-school year to the 6-3-3-4 education system being implemented in Nigeria (known as Early Childhood Education), saw to the standardisation of artisanship through the National Vocational Qualification Framework and fully mobilised examination bodies like the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and National Examinations Council (NECO) to reduce incidents of examination malpractice with the introduction of biometric data capturing.
Constraint of space would not allow one list all the achievements of the education sector under Rufa’i and though some of them were thought controversial or misdirected, no one could deny she had the zeal to work.
Unfortunately, her exit did not come at the very best of times. All the academic unions: Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics, Academic Staff Union of Universities and Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union appeared to have exhausted their patience in waiting for government intervention particularly in the area of infrastructural development and took turns, downing tools.
At her handover ceremony last Wednesday, Rufa’i proudly declared she was going back to her university, Bayero University Kano to continue as a lecturer. Well, that would have to wait until ASUU calls off its strike. She never foresaw switching sides so soon: from dining with the negotiators to suffering with the activists.
But she can at least sleep well in her home state, Jigawa. Indigenes of the state can now boast of a federal university and many almajiri schools due to her intervention.
Many Nigerians know that the Minister of State for Education Nyesom Wike who is now the supervising minister has his eyes set on the Rivers State government house come 2015. This may or may not materialise depending on whether President Jonathan and Governor Rotimi Amaechi are able to resolve their feud and what deals come out of it. But he is unlikely to be made a substantive education minister or remain as minister of state beyond 2015.
The Nigerian education system has for long begged for stability. But would this happen with politicians at the helm of affairs? At the handover ceremony Wike said, “As politicians we don’t know the date when we leave. We expect it at any time.”