…OPEN LETTER: The Precarious State of the Educational Sector in Kaduna State
Introduction
In furtherance to one of the key Mission Statement of the Kaduna Restoration Group which is “to promote and seek transparency and good governance in the management of public affairs by those in government in consonance with universally acceptable norms”, we are indeed constrained to once again write to you this open letter, this time dwelling on the already imminent collapse of an all important sector which is a major yardstick of evaluating delivery of democratic dividend; the educational sector. This has been occasioned by the various policies, action and deliberate in-actions of your administration upon your inauguration as it has to do with this critical sector.
We wish to particularly note with great dismay that, despite the fact that upon your assumption to office, you declared a state of emergency on the education sector, that declaration of yours made over 2 years ago is yet to translate into any meaningful achievement in the sector. This has left a lot of people especially the downtrodden in despair as they solemnly realized that their hope and high expectations in the change mantra of the APC were dashed sooner than they ever thought. The blatant truth today is that there is nothing emergent about your so called declared state of emergency in the educational sector of Kaduna State.
There is no gainsaying the fact that it is universally acknowledged that one of the fastest ways of bringing about development in human capital and socio-economic status of any society is by way of provision of qualitative education being availed to the populace and their accessibility to same.
The above synopsis forms the basis of our deep concern about the gains made in this sector in the years past that is being serially reversed on various fronts by way of policies whose main achievement have no doubt left the main drivers of education – teachers being demoralized, debased, demotivated and rendered dysfunctional to carry out their main duty of teaching and learning. The situation on ground today is one that should be of utmost concern to all stakeholders in the State as we are talking of not only our today but indeed our future.
Teaching and Learning
The primary aim of any educational interface is that of imparting knowledge, which simply put is referred to as teaching and learning.One of the key actors in the task of doing same are indeed the teachers.
Thus their physical, mental and psychological state is paramount to the achievement of the overall aim and outcome of the process. However, we all know that in any system where people have been demoralized and debased by way of lack of the right environment to empower them to properly perform, can we expect any reasonable good from such set or group of personnel? It is a common fact today in the public parlance that teachers in the State are being demoralized for being denied their dues by way of promotion. Even at that, when it comes, they still have to spend two to three years, before they are properly placed on their correct salaries derivable from such promotions with arrears not being paid.
Other instances of serious short fall in the payment for a period lasting up to six to nine months without any redemption is common practice. It is also pertinent to point out that teachers in the State service have been over stretched, this is so because despite the claim by the government of raising primary school enrolment from 1.1 million in July 2015 to 2.1 million pupils by September 2016, it has not done anything by way of recruiting additional teachers thus shooting the teacher/pupil ratio to as high as 1 teacher to over 70 pupils today; whence at least in the first place, a minimum of not less than 40% of the number of the then existing staff ought to have been engaged to cope with the increase in enrolment. So how can effective and qualitative teaching/learning be imparted on the pupils? The United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) standard is 1 to 26 pupils, thus given the number of teachers at 34,004. In Kaduna State today, we have a shortfall of 46,765 teachers that ought to have been engaged by now. What could be more serious than this especially in a supposed state of emergency?
Your Excellency met 34,004 teachers on the ground and it is impossible to make inspirational change in the sector with the same number despite the spike in enrolment. We challenge the government to release to the public the number of teachers engaged at UBE Primary School Rigasa in Igabi Local Government where over 25,000 pupils are enrolled; the LEA Primary School Gonin Gora in Chikun LGA with 2,298 pupils, LGEA Sabo Yelwa in Kaduna South LGA and let the government tell the public what the carrying capacity of the Schools were before the increase in enrolment and after same.
We wish to note that the only recruitment of Teachers effected in the educational sector in the past two years was for Secondary Schools. This no doubt negates the qualitative free and functional education that Your Excellency promised and claimed to have delivered to the State in the past two years.
State of Physical Facilities
The sate of physical facilities is another worrisome lapse. Dilapidated classroom buildings with no roofing in some instances, pupils taking lessons under trees as there are no furniture in the classrooms and the floor are so decrypt that pupils cannot even sit on them. These situations are replicated right here in the State capital not to talk of schools in rural arears, that is just to sight a few examples. Government Day School Fire Brigade Tudun Ilu, Kaduna and LGEA Primary School Kwarbai, Pada, Zaria is one of other numerous schools where pupils are as usual seated on the floor in classrooms which have neither chairs nor roofs over them.
The government may want to argue that it met a lot of rot in the sector and it would really take a while to sort issues, but the question to be asked here is; what steps and policies has the government taken to ease out the problem? The policies have rather been misdirected, incoherent and rather aimed at misappropriating the resources of the State so as to favour cronies by way of populist programs that do not really have proper evaluative value of accountability that forms the basis of such illconceived programs like the School Feeding chaos of the government.
There are Four Thousand, Two Hundred and Eighty-Six (4,286) Primary Schools in the State and despite your profound declared state of emergency, your administration has only renovated/rehabilitated Four Hundred (400) or less than 10% of the total number in the State. What a scorecard in a state of emergency!
The colossal amount claimed to have been expended in the School Feeding Program could have been better spent in addressing the debilitating physical state of facilities; instructional materials and capacity building of the teachers by way of training programs, engagement of new hands and motivational measures such as readdressing the current scale and state of disenfranchisement of the teachers of their lawful and proper dues in terms of salary, promotion and other emoluments.
The adoption of populist measures that are not well founded in planning and implementation and as usual, such so called mass measures can onlybut lead to massive failure and can never be the panacea out of the present conundrum which the educational system in the State has found itself under your watch.
Manpower Development and Training
That there is no coherent orchestrated plan nay action to train and retrain teachers in the State is not in doubt despite the fact that we have a lot of institutions nearby such as the National Teachers Institute, the Faculty of Education ABU, Institute of Education as well as the Federal College of Education – all in Zaria, whose resources could be readily harnessed to boost the human resources of personnel in the educational sector. However, we are not surprised at your refusal to take due advantage of same, your penchant for cronies in the name of consultants would not allow you avail the State of the services of these institutions whose services are not only cheaper but also have more experienced personnel and indeed conducive environment to do the needful.
Abolition of Quality Assurance Board
Your Excellency may wish to note that your policy of abolishing the Quality Assurance Board which is akin to the Inspectorate Department can never be in the overall interest of education in the State. The Quality Assurance Board only required to be strengthened by way of engaging more personnel, training and provision of logistics to enable them carry out oversight function in the education sector, however, the downgrading of their all important role in the system by way of moving them to the parent ministry and as well as embarking on massive transfer of their personnel can only be a pre-requisite in your usual way that you have almost rendered the State Civil Service dysfunctional, so as to create a fertile ground for your coterie of cronies (consultants) to take over roles which previous governments had expended huge resources in manpower development and training of the civil servants over the years, only for such experienced hands to be whimsically sidelined or even eased out of service.
Kaduna State University
We are also aware that the State University is not left out of the mismanagement of the educational sector by your administration. The funding situation as it relate to release of capital vote has not only been very poor but also slow in coming. That explains why a program such as Law degree has not been commenced in the University, while younger Universities such as North West University have already obtained accreditation for same. Mr. Governor, the stifling of this institution and others alike of resources is akin to denying it the opportunity to effectively deliver on their mandates. This must stop if truly your administration means well for the future of our youth. The only visible development projects in the University today are mostly those funded by TETFUND, a Federal Government intervention Agency. Closure of Tertiary Institutions in Southern Kaduna This write up on the parlous state of the Educational sector in Kaduna State can never be complete without recourse to the deliberate effort of
your government to sequestrate and consign to history the tertiary institutions located in the Southern part of the State. Your Excellency, all the measures taken by your government to the effect of the sustained closure of these institutions, for over 7 months or so now, does not correspond with the Oath of Office you took while swearing before all and sundry to be fair, equitable and just in the discharge of your duties as Governor of Kaduna State. It is clearly on record that all other educational establishments in Southern Kaduna, from Primary to Secondary level, have seamlessly been in session without any disruption or even a single incidence recorded to warrant closure of any of them. We wish to ask: are those attending the schools not of the same genre, humans, as the ones that would have attended the tertiary institutions? We wish to admonish you sir, to be more forthright and have a people driven vision as key anchor for delivery of stewardship to the people of Kaduna State.
Sir, you cannot be oblivious of the fact that even in States that are in the epicenter of the Boko Haram crisis and also at the zenith of the insurgency, the tertiary institutions located in their areas were never for once closed down. We therefore seek answers to the big question: why the prolonged and sustained closure of tertiary schools in Southern Kaduna? Is the crisis in Southern Kaduna worst that what we have witnessed in Boko Haram States?
At this juncture, we seek for answers to the following pertinent questions:
- How many schools could have benefited from the due allocation of resources diverted to the bogus feeding program by way of enhanced infrastructures/instructional materials?
- Having claimed to have increased Primary School enrolment from 1.1 million to 2.1 million pupils which is an increase of about 90.90%, what increment has your government brought about interms of enhancing the carrying capacity of our schools, that is by way of physical facilities (new classroom blocks), teachers, furniture and instructional materials to combat the increase in enrolment?
How does it look to your government having failed to see and act to recruit more teachers for the primary schools? The comical distribution of handsets to Heat Teachers can never be a solution to the undaunting challenges in the sector which are already well known to everyone both in and out of government.
- What specific capacity building and retraining program has the government availed the teachers in the sector in the past two years and who were the facilitators of same?
- The government should come out emphatically clear with details of the location, work done, contract sum/contractor and directors of companies of all the so called 400 primary schools claimed to have been renovated in the State.
- The School Feeding Program exposes the deceit in the governor’s claim of school enrolment of 2.1 million pupils. This is because accounting for these expenditures statistic of N50 per pupil, N1,838,514 was used which translates to a whooping sum of N91,925,700 daily on feeding or N22,022,365,400.00 at 22 school days per month or, 6,607,096,200.00 per term. Please can this priority be said to be well placed given the challenges in the sector, aptly a case of putting the cart before the horse?
- Sir, are your children attending any public school in the State and have your lieutenants and other public officers followed suit?
What happened to the Sure-P funds that the government met on ground (treasury) at both the State and Local Governments when it took over, meant to be deployed for the provision of furniture for Primary Schools that were never delivered till date and who are the beneficiary contractors and why is the government keeping mute about this more so in view of the dire need for them and colossal amount involved?
In line with the Freedom of Information Act (FOI), we challenge the government to release the names of contractors that were given the supply of textbooks and why not the publishers directly? This would have been cheaper for the State.
Is your government oblivious of the importance of educational management and planning as well as the significant place of Quality Assurance (Inspectorate Department) in the delivery of services in the educational sector? The pointers today is that it has blatantly shut its eyes to the obvious, an indicator of how impassionate your government is indeed about our today and the future of our youth. Please remember, education is the bedrock for progress and development in any clime and it offers the children of the downtrodden (talakawa) one of the best opportunities to bridge the gap between them and the sons of the well-to-do in the society.
On a passing note, now that the veil has been removed from the eyes of the good people of the State, we hope your government will be more transparent, honest and focused in discharging its obligations to the people of Kaduna State. We also join the call on the various anti corruption agencies to rise up to their responsibilities and probe into the activities of the State Government before the State is completely mortgaged due to misappropriation, fraud and outright fleecing of the resources of the State. The culture of governance today as evinced by your administration’s actions are rather product of poor legislative oversight and ill conceived policy formulations epitomized by negative human capital development and poor ineffectual delivery on the promises of the APC to transform the educational sector of the State. The Effect of Dysfunctional, Non-Qualitative Education and How It Serves As Recruitment Base For Political Thugs The strategic importance of education as a barometer for social harmony and peace can best be appreciated against the background of the serious security challenges which Kaduna State is bedeviled with today, where millions of poorly educated unemployable youth are involved in various acts of crime and criminality across the State. Would these poorly conceived educational policies stem that? Certainly the answer is No.
Mr. Governor Sir, please do take note that refusal to give the children of the masses qualitative and functional education is the basis for the recruitment of thugs in our State.
Your educational policies cannot but only be best described as anti people, anti development and purposely designed to further impoverish and enslave the children of the downtrodden talakawa by denying them of the opportunity of a sound education. We now understand why you have chosen to abolish the State Scholarship Scheme, by the ambience of your government, qualitative education is meant for the noveau-de rich, just as you and your lieutenants have your children in private schools mostly abroad.
Sir, The Kaduna Restoration Group (KRG) would not rest on its oars until the glory and egalitarian precepts as the abiding objective ofgovernance is fully restored back to our dear State.
Please do accept the assurances of our best regards.
Yours
Yahaya I. Shinku
Director,
Media and Publicity.
