NIGERIAN PERMANENT DELEGATION TO UNESCO

GUARDIAN

INTERVIEWS NIGERIA'S

EDUCATION MINISTER
AT UNESCO GENERAL
CONFERENCE IN PARIS

Minister of Education, Mrs. Chinwe Obaji spoke to Guardian's
Rotimi Lawrence Oyekanmi in Paris, France about some of her
plans for the Nigerian education sector.

EXPERIENCE AT UNESCO GENERAL CONFERENCE:

Exciting and at the same time hectic. Hectic in the sense that a
lot of work has to be done here. There are many commissions, and
you have people coming from 192 countries, to share their
experiences in education, Information, Science and Technology.

INTERVENTION AT THE MINISTERIAL ROUNDTABLE:

We had two ministerial roundtables. One comprising the 192 countries,
which was chaired by the Director General of UNESCO. The other one
was the ministerial roundtable of African Ministers. And I intervened
in both sessions. At the first roundtable, I talked specifically on
some the achievements that have been recorded in EFA in Nigeria.
And this included our home grown school feeding and health programme,
which also ensures equal opportunity for every Nigerian child to have
access to free basic education. Like you know, there are certain kids
who cannot even get to school because they are hungry. They don't
even have food to eat. And nobody can study with an empty stomach.
So this programme ensures a decent meal per day. And there are a
lot of school children that have been orphaned by AIDS. This one
meal a day now becomes a window of hope for them. This is a
presidential initiative, which came up in the middle of this year,
and by September, we were already launching it. And most of these
kids got into this programme. The programme is supposed to be school
based but community driven. We believe that it is only when it is
community based that you can guarantee its sustainability, because
governments can come and go, but the community remains there.

Another area I spoke about is science and mathematics education,
right from the primary school level. Our president has awarded this
contract of N3 billion to NASENI for them to produce mathematical
kits for primary schools. And the interesting thing about this
their science kit is that, it is like a mobile laboratory. It
can be used anywhere, in the village, under the trees. Just
before I left Nigeria, this was launched. And we have started
delivering some of these kits to primary schools.

Then, I also intervened in the area of tangible access. What has
happened over the years is that most of these donor countries
have helped in the area of the training of technicians. We are
now looking for more tangible things. For example, UNICEF should
come in. UNICEF can give us water in our primary schools, to
enhance our school-feeding programme.

I also talked about reforms in our tertiary institutions,
because unless we have a sound tertiary education, basic
education will not be sustained. Basic education is good,
everybody should be literate, but we require more than just
basic education for technological development. And no
country has attained great heights with just basic education.

FOCUS OVER THE NEXT TWO YEARS:

I don't even have up to two years left. We just have about
one and a half years, and I am conscious of that. I just want
to, amongst other things, tackle reforms in the tertiary level.

Our major problem in most of our universities is this question
of over enrolment. Working with the NUC (National Universities
Commission), we've come up with what we term: carrying capacity
of each university. And that tells us how many students each and
every university can take, based on available facilities.
Facilities include human and material. We are making sure that
none of the universities exceed its carrying capacity, and the
enrolment figure that has been given for this year. It's
interesting to know that the NUC did not just arrive at this
concept. They (at the NUC) worked out this figure with
individual universities. The vice chancellors, the
university authorities were part of this enrolment thing.

Having said that, we now looked at the issue of JAMB (Joint
Admissions and Matriculation Board), and the UME (Universities
Matriculation Examination). Over the years, reports have shown
that there is no correlation between JAMB scores and actual
performance. Actually, some of the reports quoted that the
best students are those who score between 180 and 210. And I
tried to confirm it from many universities. I found out
that it was the same story all over the place. So, what I
then did, with presidential approval, was to ask individual
universities to further screen these students after the JAMB
result. And it is not just new to Nigeria. Even in America,
after people sit for SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) and pass,
individual universities further screen them. And those of
them that are found wanting are not admitted. So, what we are
doing in Nigeria is post UME screening. It is not just new to
Nigeria. It happens even in the developed countries. And like
you know, any new thing will have initial problems. So, there
were initial problems, like some universities trying to charge
more money than is necessary. But we are coming up with how much
each university can charge for this. And then if we have the right
quality of students in the universities, we now believe that a
lot of other problems will be solved. Like you know, before this
time, individual universities, even after JAMB has given them some
students, they go ahead and print supplementary forms, which they
sell for about N5500 each to these students. And through this
supplementary forms, they will continue admitting students. But
with my reform agenda, there is nothing like supplementary forms.
Universities are expected to matriculate at least four weeks after
resumption. In that case, the question of late admission does not
come in. The screening exercise will take care of all kinds of
ills in the universities. We will now make sure that only those
students ready to study are given admission.

Apart from that, I've also directed the universities to
computerise all their activities between now and September next
year. Students should be able to access their results online,
pay their school fees online, register online and that would
reduce a lot of travelling on the part of the students. And then
you know that when we have just the right number of students that
the lecturers can handle, then the lecturers will have no choice
than to mark examination scripts on time. You know, right now in
certain universities, people get to their final year without
even seeing the first semester result of their first year
in the university. This is one of the problems that we hope
the screening at enrolment will be able to take care of.

WHAT HAPPENS TO THOSE NOT
ADMITTED INTO UNIVERSITIES?:

In the first instance, are they (candidates) qualified to write
the UME? That's the question we should ask ourselves. Is it just
talking about figures? Are these people qualified to write the
exams? When I visited JAMB on assumption of office, they were
showing me forms of people who want to get into the
university, and yet they could not fill the forms. Somebody
is looking for university education and cannot fill a simple
JAMB form! Is that person qualified to be in the University?
Of course not. We have a way of throwing out these big
figures. Big numbers. But we should try to find out in the
first instance, are these people really qualified
to write this exam?

So, we should also come up as to who is qualified and who is
not qualified to write this exam. You find out that most of
the people who are writing this exam are awaiting the SSCE
(Senior Secondary Certificate) result. And they end up still
not making that result. But they've come into the large figure
that you are talking about. So, by next year, we may be thinking
of only getting people who are qualified. People that must have
made five credits. And then you find out that you will not get
that number that you are talking about. You also forget that
we have the Polytechnics and the Colleges of Education. And what
happens is that it is the same people, the same number that is
sitting for the UME, some of them also go to sit for the MPCE.
It's all the same Nigerians sitting for these exams.

ON MORALITY IN THE UNIVERSITIES:

We are already looking at that. If you've been going through
what has been happening in the universities, the vice chancellors
have been empowered to deal with any lecturer that is found
wanting in terms of morals. Like in the UNN (University of Nigeria
Nsukka) a few weeks ago, they had to sack about 20 lecturers who
were selling marks for sex. A few other universities are following
suit. Let's face it, these children are put under the care of these l
ecturers. And these lecturers are supposed to act as their fathers.
And it is wrong for the teachers to try to mess up these students.
I don't blame it all only on the male lecturers. I also blame
some of the female students. For those of them that bought
their way into the university, they also do not have any other
choice than to go and....some girls even harass male lecturers.
And that's also where that issue of admitting quality students
comes in. If we have the right quality of female students, their
chance of harassing male lecturers does not come in.

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