Govt wouldn’t go back on deal with ASUU – Wike

How has it been with the demands of your office so far? We all agree that the state of education today is not how we need it to be. When President Goodluck Jonathan came in, he said things must change. He said we must carry out transformation agenda. People asked, ‘transformation what?’ For me and […]

How has it been with the demands of your office so far?

We all agree that the state of education today is not how we need it to be. When President Goodluck Jonathan came in, he said things must change. He said we must carry out transformation agenda. People asked, ‘transformation what?’ For me and for the Federal Executive Council, what Mr President means, particularly as it has to do with education, especially as it has to do with basic education (my specific responsibility), is that we can no longer allow what we have now to continue the way it is. We must move from where we are now to that state in which it is acceptable. We want to institute education from which you graduate and know that, ‘yes I am a product of so, so, or so school; yes, I am set for the competitive market of the educated’. Manufacturers Association of Nigeria was telling me the other day that it is difficult to employ Nigerian graduates, that they (Nigerian graduates) are not employable. Why? They said the graduates shouldn’t be graduates in the first instance. And so, Mr President said we can’t allow this to remain, that there must be transformation. Nigerian graduates should be employable, they should be able to compete well with their contemporaries from anywhere around the world. We come to the question, ‘what is wrong?’ The foundation is not right. When the foundation of your house is not right, that house will collapse. When you don’t get education delivery the way it should be at the basic level, you won’t get it right at the other levels. Now, what is not right at basic education level? The infrastructure to drive education delivery at that level is not there. Qualified teachers are not there. There is no commitment. The reading culture is no more. Parents are not playing their own role. Everyone is responsible somewhere for the problem: the government, teachers, parents, students, the society. Now, the one that will interest you as it involves me is government being responsible for some of the failures. Mind you, the constitution provides that it is the responsibility of state and local governments to cater for primary education. But the Federal Government feels that because this is the foundation, we shouldn’t leave it for state and local governments alone. So, the Federal Government provides assistance through interventions. The Federal Government has been doing this through the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), by which it provides funds for states to access by paying their own counterpart fund to ensure commitment and project implementation. But over the years, most states were not accessing the funds. As at the time we came on board, UBEC had over N50 billion in banks not accessed by the various state governments. We had to discuss with the governors through the Nigerian Governors Forum to take their funds and today I can disclose that most states have accessed their funds up to 2011, unlike when we came in when most states had not accessed their funds up to 2009. Awareness creation and advocacy made the difference.

There is a call for the UBE Act to be amended to ease the process of accessing fund from UBEC. What does the government make of it?

There is no difficulty with accessing funds from the UBE scheme. There is money going into the fund from the Federal Government. All that states need to do is provide their own counterpart funding and a plan of how exactly they want to spend the money for basic education development. That’s all that state governments need to do to access the fund. What made for poor accessment of the fund before was not difficulty in getting at the fund but insufficient information and advocacy. As I have said, once we filled those gaps, the story changed and we no longer have problem of states not accessing their fund. And, the Federal Government does not stop at the UBE scheme in assisting the state governments to improve basic education at the primary school level. Every year, Federal Government releases money to state governments for the training and retraining of their teachers at the basic education level. When we came in, we released not less than N5 billion to the 36 states and the FCT for this purpose. Now, apart from UBEC, Nigeria Teachers Institute (NTI) has the responsibility to train teachers at this level. Precisely in September last year when I came on board, we flagged off the training of teachers, over 22, 000 teachers as at last year through NTI. We also have relationship with countries and international donour agencies which have built and even furnished many schools and even trained not only teachers but administrators of many schools. We will have no less than 50 teachers who will go to South Korea in March this year for training in various core subjects. Apart from disbursing funds through the UBEC for infrastructural development in schools; every year, too, the Federal Government gives books to all the states of the federation in the core subjects their schools offer. Last year, the Federal Government supplied books at over N7 billion to pupils in primary classes and students in JSS 1-3.

At the secondary school level, Federal Government created unity schools which are meant to be centres of excellence to entrench sense of unity among our children. These schools are not what they were and to bring them to what they were and where they should really be is a challenge we have taken with high sense of responsibility. It became clear to Mr President that we cannot allow this lofty dream of our founding fathers to die. What we did immediately was to change the budgeting system relating to these schools. We said if we continued the way we were going we would not make impact. Why? We have 104 schools and each year about N10, N20 million was given to each school for capital projects. To use only that kind of money on improving classrooms, hostels, or library, and some other things as the principal may decide, you will not go far. We now said since we do not have the funds for large scale projects in all the schools at once, let’s phase out development among the schools. Within the 2012 budget, you will find that we have taken 20 or 30 of the unity schools for substantial funding so that they can carry out comprehensive development projects. Now, we are going about these things in ways that show we are not just saying transformation, but that we are talking about and working on transformation in concrete terms.

The Federal Government said a long while back that it was going to convert a couple of polytechnics to universities. What has happened to that policy?

The process is on. That the process of seeing the policy statement to reality is taking time is not to say that it will not be done. Government is not a like a private enterprise where the chief executive will make an announcement today and tomorrow you see the effects.  The civil service follows a procedure that can take a long while sometimes.

The Academic Staff Union of Universities went on strike based on demands which include improved infrastructure in universities. What assurances did government give to make the union suspend its strike and what is the guarantee that they would not resume the strike soon?

You heard ASUU say that it was satisfied with government, that government showed rare commitment in its talk with ASUU and that government had given assurances of infrastructural development, among other issues. Government will not go back on what it has promised. Now, let me say this: apart from budgetary allocation to universities, government also intervenes by giving special assistance and funding to universities. Funds are frequently being released for special projects. So, it’s not just about budgetary allocations. It may not be enough, and that’s why some understanding of all parties is necessary. The other day when we were meeting with vice chancellors over ASUU matter, there was much talk and it came out that there is misunderstanding or misconception of what the reality is in some cases with reference in this case to what is believed between vice chancellors and lecturers. Now, I told the vice chancellors that when you tell lecturers that there is no revenue and they do not believe, you probably should remember that when you were lecturers, (you used to tell vice chancellors that) there was revenue. Now that you are vice chancellors, there is no revenue, but to the lecturers, there is revenue. So, it would take a lot of sincere efforts and a lot of explanation for confidence building in our efforts to stabilize the system.