The Chairman, Kwara State House of Assembly Committee on Education and Human Capital Development Hon Nimota Ibrahim. The female lawmaker, who represents Ilorin Constituency in the legislature has variously served in the state cabinet as Commissioners for Education; Women Affairs, Lands and Housing. In this interview with ASSEMBLY WATCH, she bears her minds on the state of education in Kwara among other issues.

First year in the legislature

Well, all glory be to God Almighty on our activities generally at the Kwara State House of Assembly and specifically what I have been able to do as a lawmaker representing the good people of Ilorin East Government Constituency. Like, you rightly observed, its being one year that we have been in the business of legislation in the parliament. Of utmost importance to me as a legislator, is to bring to the fore the problem of the people of my constituency in particular, and the state in general.

During my campaign before elections I went around the length and breadth of my constituency and met with the stakeholders; the councilors of all the wards in my local government, party chairmen, traditional rulers, women and youth groups to know how to represent them well. In the course of all these interactions and in addition to the challenges faced during the campaign.

The first issue I raised at the floor of the House with respect to the local government was the issue of Adualere Road. Adualere happens to be a very big community in Ilorin East and they have been be devilled with problems of road and water before I was elected. During the time of campaign, I was able to assist the community to get their pipe borne water connected.

So, when I got to the House, I raised the issue because I personally passed the road each time I go to Ipata market.

Other problems that I was able to bring to the attention of the House are the issue of clearing of debris in my local government; electrification project that connects Iponrin, Akande and Maraba, and there are so many ones that have been listed in the pipeline, most especially the ecological problem in Ilorin East Local Government. And on water, I was able to bring the problem of water in the constituency, with some of them already been solved.

Situation of schools in Kwara

The issue of mushroom private schools has become a serious problem and it is getting, worse because our people don't appreciate effort of the state government on education is renovating schools and building more classrooms.

In the course of my going out for oversight function, I have discovered many of the schools are operating at their temporary site, though they have their permanent site under construction, but because the ministry is not hammering on them to move, they just put our children in all sort of terrible and hazardous conditions under the disguise of constructing a permanent site.

If you go to some private schools, in fact you will be sorry for the children, you will wonder why some parents are keeping their wards in such private schools when there are public schools around them. Even, some of the schools don't have qualified teachers; in government schools we have qualified teachers.

There are good Nursery schools around, very good ones, but there are so many bad schools that are not supposed to be called school at all. You get to some, the wall will be almost collapsing on the children and the roof will also be falling on their heads and they called those ones schools. ...I got to some schools, the qualification of the principal or the teachers are not there. Some teachers taking little pupils cannot even speak good English; I asked one, which year did you leave teachers' college, she cannot remember; what is your qualification, she cannot answer me.

The parents, if they want to enroll their children in any school, they should find out the qualifications of the Proprietor, Head Master and of course, the teachers that would be taking the children. They should not say there is a school behind my house, let me just enroll my child when they do such they are endangering the lives of the pupils. Because when they get wrong values to remove it from their heads becomes difficult because they are in age where they register things in their head permanently into then memory.

But on our own part, we want to work on such schools to bring them up to standard. We want to get give them this holiday, because they are going to have long holiday, to get their permanent sites prepared and after that if they don't do so then we go back and sanction schools that are not up to standard.

How to improve education

Though the state government is doing well, but there are areas it needs to improve upon. For instance, from the findings of my committee there is over 900 classrooms that are in dilapidating condition. The state government has captured 200 for rehabilitation in the 2012 budget. So, if government could capture more of it in the year's budget, it would go a long way in booting schools infrastructures. By and large, the government needs to upgrade infrastructural decay in schools. Another area that needs improvement is the training and retraining of teachers to keep them abreast of modern day technologies.

Oversight function of the House

On the oversight function, the House is planning two things; before we embark on holistic oversight function, we want to know what each ministry is doing. That was what brought about the ongoing Question Time in the parliament. Each commissioner will be invited to appear at a time to brief us about his/her activities both in written and oral. The member of the House will ask questions and the public too will be watching. With that the House will know the areas to conduct its oversight function in our bid to assist the government in achieving its aims and objectives.

How far have state government implemented motions and resolutions so far passed

Fantastic; the state government is really trying when it comes to the implementation of the resolutions and motions passed by the House. From my own point of view, almost all the issues I brought to the attention of the legislature, which the House has passed resolutions on have been implemented because most of the projects are under construction. Each time the House passed resolution, the state government makes sure it works on it and I think we should give kudos to Alhaji Abudulfatah Ahmed.

For me, it is by the implementation that the government would allow the electorate feel its impact in all aspect. If government implements resolutions that government will be popular because by that it will be doing what the people want at any time they want it. You know many people expressed their feelings by way of writing petitions to the House, which we investigated and passed resolutions. Therefore if government passes resolutions of the House, it's doing the Wish of the electorate.

Culled from The Herald