At the recently concluded 2012 World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in Doha, Qatar, Senior Correspondent, Goddie Ofose, cornered the immediate past Vice Chancellor of University of Ilorin who is former President of Organisation of African University and also former Chairman of Association of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, to speak about quality of education and how introduction of private education in the country has affected the system. Excerpt…

Several case studies at this summit show that most countries adopt a bottom-up approach to develop education in their country, but Nigeria seems to focus on top-bottom. In your opinion, sir, are we getting it right?

From what we are seeing, we are not getting it right but it seems as if in Nigeria there is no bottom from which we will come up. For them to come to the bottom, the bottom has already been created. The situation in Nigeria is that there is no bottom to whom you can go, therefore we have to adapt whatever we get here and by adaptation, to start from the top is not good but we must create the bottom to make sure it actually meets the top correctly.

We have to create a middle class to create the low level which we can develop our politics and programme. If you look at the Education For All (EFA) report that was submitted, we are likely to be disappointed in Nigeria. Go and check, we will discover that almost in all cases, Nigeria has no data, and what could have called for that? It is because the middle level officers who are supposed to check are not there anymore. There was an Olaopa in the Ministry of Education in charge of this data, suddenly he was promoted to Permanent Secretary in the Presidency, which I am not against but the job he was doing has been left undone because no one was appointed to fill the gap. I am happy he is a Permanent Secretary in the Presidency, but the truth of the matter is that we have not created that bottom. The truth here is that we are learning here and what we are learning is to go and adapt what we learnt to our situation at home, particularly the education sector.

Another revelation is that most countries' education sectors are non-governmental organisations driven. However, Nigeria is business driven. How successful has this approach in the country been?

There is no Non-Governmental Organisation in Nigeria. What we have is that we have Non- Governmental Individuals (NGIs), not organisations where we have the husband as the Chief Executive Officer or Chairman, and wife as the treasurer and the son as the Chief Operating Officer. What we call NGOs are actually called NGIs. For that reason, there is this selfish angle to what we are doing, but here you have genuine people who come together for the purpose of leadership and the purpose of serving people. I believe that because of the sincerity they have exhibited. You will also find out that they have achieved the goals and objectives of which these NGOs were established. What I think we can do in Nigeria is for us to form a network of NGOs, we are too political in Nigeria because NGOs or NGIs are focusing on politics, they are focusing on being recognised by the media, they are not working for the purpose of working but getting popularity is an issue. You can see that some of these people are going to the rural areas to contribute their quota to ensure common people have access to education; they don't seek cheap publicity from the media.

Nevertheless, in Nigeria, if one establishes an initiative, they will seek publicity first before the initiative takes off whereas in other countries like India, Qatar, Bangladesh and Indonesia, the media will recognise what they are doing, then starts to ask them questions, but with us, as soon as someone establishes an NGO today, the first place to go is the media.

The NGOs should come together and form a genuine network and focus on communal issues and play down the political aspect where everybody wants to be governor, Local Government Chairman, and Legislator. We need to deliver particularly in the education sector. We also need to bring them to the Qatar Summit to see how things are being done. When the former Prime Minister of the UK, Gordon Brown was giving his speech he said that he had seen what it takes to be at the driver's seat. We could also see what individuals are doing, it is not about money but about how we ought to manage resources that we have and the methodology and the strategy of getting what it is to be done.

You mentioned dearth of data in our polity, what is your view about the lack of research and innovations in higher institutions?

Anybody that wants to know the level of innovation in Nigerian universities should go to University of Ilorin. We have delivered and there is nothing that has happened here that has not happened there. At University of Ilorin, we have been able to put in place things that are of international standard and that is why we continue to rank high. The media don't report the things that are positive except negative. For instance, when there is strike in Nigerian universities all the newspapers will report it. They will not come to Ilorin where there has been no strike. The point is, if you visit University of Ilorin, you will know that a lot of things are happening. Somebody yesterday was talking about suspension bridge and I saw people clapping, we had suspension zoo at the University of Ilorin, we only want to say that people should come to UNIILORIN. UNIILORIN is already promoting the standard of how things ought to be done all over the world.

Again, stakeholders in the education sector focus on urban areas rather than rural areas and corporate organisations that purportedly support these initiatives do not like going to the rural areas. What is the reason for this?

Everything appears to be wrong in Nigeria because the poor that you intend to work for would think you are working for yourself. In Nigeria, the rich will have to sweat to convince the poor that they are not out to trick them. It is not just meeting the poor to say follow me, because they believe that the rich are fraudsters, who want to exploit them. What we need to do is to innovate. For instance, University of Ilorin in 2007, we started Computer Based Test (CBT), yet people complained about where they will get electricity considering the huge figure of students in the school. Five years into it now, it has become an issue. Even JAMB now says they will start using CBT from next year and no one is talking about it because we started it and we have sustained it. The situation in the country is that of a blind leading the sighted. Somebody who has never gone beyond Ikeja will be telling you that somewhere in the world, which is just around Agege and Oshodi; he will be the one telling you that he has gone to the whole world. The point we are making is that we need silent workers. One thing that we lack in Nigeria is volunteerism, the spirit of volunteerism whereby you will work quietly not to be seen, acknowledged or recognised, You do what is right because it is right, not because you want to get an honorary award or national honours. All dishonourable people in Nigeria want national honours and when the media are reporting it, they will say Nigerian universities are awarding honorary degrees. UNILORIN has never awarded one in the last 12 years.

Let us focus on some institutions that are doing some quiet things. My challenge to the media is that they should identify the people who are quietly working to promote what they are doing, they don't have the fear of negativity. If you look at people working, for instance, the lad from Kenya was talking; she was telling us what she was doing quietly in the last 20 to 30 years, not knowing that she will be recognised. If you want to acknowledge somebody, if it were to be from Nigeria, his Local Government would have been here with cars and aso-ebi for the Summit. I think a lot depends on the media. We have created so many figures that are not in existence. I think the media have to reexamine and reinvent the society. You need to set an agenda in measurable task and why.

In Nigeria, we have this collective amnesia such that what happened yesterday, many people don't know again today and they will be asking question that will give youth an impression that they did not even know what happened yesterday. The media should be able to network rather than stand alone by distributing and sharing information so that you can start to do things as they are being done in the world now, the inclusiveness in whatever we need.

As a professor and former vice chancellor, do you think the standard of education has improved in Nigeria?

For me, I think I cannot say it has improved, but I would say the level is not falling. I have seen graduates particularly from UNIILORIN going out to first class universities in the world and they are best in their classes. I have not seen any graduate of UNIILORIN that has finished in the last five or 10 years that was asked to do a remedial course before he or she can be asked to do Master or PhD. They are leaders in their own field. I am a product of the Nigerian university system and I have never at any time felt inadequate because of the training in the Nigeria university system. What is happening is that we have self-emulating habit and to me I believe things can be better. But things are not as bad as we think, particularly in the education sector.

We have individuals who are not doing what they are supposed to do. I can beat my chest to say that generally there are bad universities and bad secondary schools. But when we are talking on the average, they are not doing badly at all.

What do you have to say about the introduction of private schools, which seem to have watered down the quality in the public schools?

The coming of private education in the sector is a signal of bad things in Nigeria. In the past, if you want to go to good primary school, you go to public schools. The private sector came in to commoditise education and what do you have now? If you have 90 students in the class, 80 of them would have attended private schools. Then gradually we move to secondary schools. It is all over now, if you want to go to good schools, you attend private secondary schools. Gradually, it has moved to universities where you pay from N400,000 to N500,000, which is immaterial compared to what they pay in Ghana or Britain, but it is money in Nigeria. They are now in the majority. We have 27 Federal Universities, 37 states' universities and 50 private universities. The whole 50, if you count how many students they are admitting, it is not up to one federal university. What all the private universities are doing may not be up to what UNIILORIN alone admits. But in number they are there. The truth of the matter is that private universities are good if properly regulated, if it is not for profit.

In Nigeria, we are starting both for profit and non-profit at the same time. We have very good private universities but they are few. What is happening now is that we have taken so many horrible steps and that can lead to collapse. What we need is that we need both public and private universities, and we need more planning and the National Universities Commission needs to be empowered in its regulatory functions. I am not talking of the supervisory functions. The NUC by law is established to perform two functions, the supervisory roles for federal universities and regulatory roles for all universities. Yes, at the supervisory level, things are going on well but at the regulatory level, I do not think that NUC has been sufficiently empowered to regulate Nigerian universities.

For instance, you cannot establish a radio station today without taking permission from the Nigerian Broadcasting Cooperation (NBC). You can't start a telecommunication company without going to Nigerian Communications Commission. But today, a state government can wake up from the wrong side of the bed and establish a university. NUC has no option than to approve and once it is approved by the State House of Assembly. It is the private investors that are being harassed to come and register. Again, it is a sign of irresponsibility that the Federal Government will wake up one day and establish nine new universities at once. It shows that NUC is not a regulatory agency. That a state government could establish three new universities when it cannot fund one properly and NUC, what it can do is that once the law has been passed, it can approve it. I think that aspect of the regulatory powers of the NUC needs to be enacted and strengthened up. Look at Ghana, as close as the country is to Nigeria, they have two different bodies, they have the equivalent of our own NUC, which is the supervisory arm, and they have the accreditation agency which accredits. It does not want to know the owner whether it is government, private, primary or secondary, an accreditation agency is a regulatory agency. But in Nigeria they merge everything, what we have is proliferation of nonsense.