Lawrence Ogbonna is the executive secretary of Abia State Secondary Education Management Board, who is a professional teacher and architect. In this interview with UDOKA AGWU, Ogbonna x-rays his achievement since assumption of office a year ago; his strategy to ensure that Abia continues to maintain first position in all external examinations and his efforts to ensure that Igbo Language does not go into extinction by the 2050 as predicted by UNESCO, among other issues. Excerpts:
When exactly did you assume office as the Executive Secretary of the Board?
I was appointed the Executive Secretary of Secondary Education Management Board on August, 8, 2018 by his Excellency, Governor Okezie Ikpeazu. I resumed office effectively on September 2018.
Since assumption of office, what are the major achievements you have so far recorded?
We have been able to get effective working vehicles for monitoring of school system. We have re-roofed and painted some office buildings, we now have active office, and our offices are now functional. We have harmonised the part-time teachers system which has been the effective method of organising the schools in order to give them their sense of belonging and encourage them to do more. The Board has restored/revived collapsed/closed down schools in the state and also refurbished old vehicles to ease supervision, among others.
What efforts are you making to ensure that Abia continues to maintain first position in external exams?
We have embarked on training and re-training of our teachers and deployment of more to fall in line with the new curriculum. We have equally trained and deployed 150 Science Teachers employed by our Education-friendly governor after retraining to secondary schools in the state. We also embarked on effective supervision of schools. We have procured more utility vehicles to enhance effective supervision. The Board has equally partnered with Old Students Associations of various schools in the state to restore their lost glory.
What problems do you face as the secretary and how have you been solving them?
That is before the government. Whatever problem we have, the government is addressing it.
What are your charges to the teachers?
We are going to do more and the government has pledged to do more and we promise them that they will get a better system, their salaries have been taking care of by his Excellency and we are going to make sure that they get all they need to work with.
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What efforts are you making to ensure that Igbo Language does not go into extinction as predicted by UNESCO come 2050?
We have recruited and formalised the appointment of about 300 Igbo teachers and posted them to various schools. We are also looking into the area called Culture and Creative Art. we are going to do our cultural exhibition, and all the students will participate, same to language which is also part of culture, we are putting all efforts to ensure that schools put cultural exhibition in their inter-house sports, so that next year they will come together and do cultural exhibition and other traditional cultures, which is the means of getting our children to fall in line with our value system and being encouraged both in school and at the state level. Even History, which was hitherto removed from the school curriculum, has been restored back by the Federal Government. We have deployed more teachers in that area into the school to teach History, which is an important subject. It recalls your memory back, like what happened in the past so that you can cue in and move forward.
What efforts have you made to checkmate loitering of students on the streets during school hours?
We have what we call clocking truancy cards. In the next few weeks, the cards will be sent to schools, which will be used in checking and to ascertain how often a student has been in school and also will be given to students as their permit cards to be in the class room, of which if seen outside without the card such student will be arrested. The truancy cards will be used to assess the number of times a student has attended classes and also absenteeism. We have set in motion measures to enforce the law. Law Enforcement Agencies have been directed to arrest any student seen loitering street after 9am. In Aba, we are working with an organisation called NAPOS; they will arrest any child seen outside the school after 9′ o’clock, without permit card. I hope that with this development, loitering about and being absent from school will be a thing of the past.
May we know the efforts your Board is making to motivate teachers in schools?
To motivate our teachers we have a lot of things apart from the housing programme that has not taken off; we have established an NGO which is Abia Teachers Agricultural & Industrial Service Scheme. We are going to train our teachers in the area of agriculture both in oil palm growing and in various areas of Agriculture, so that by the time a teacher is retiring he/she will have something to lay hands on. My promise to the people is that with the concept we have on ground, in the next 10 years some teachers apart from being teachers, will also acquire other knowledge which will help them in the area of entrepreneurship. We have a lot of entrepreneurship courses in schools; so, with teachers being entrepreneurs they will practise it with students. We have also been able to revive our technical schools, for sometimes now it has been that of Aba only. But the one at Afara in Umuahia, Umuahia North Local Government Area and that of Ohafia in Ohafia Local Government Area have taken off. The one at Ohafia, some weeks ago we have 14 teachers that came to pledge support for new employed teachers, that they are engineers who have promised to make sure that the school bounces back, so the technical schools have taken off effectively. Science school at Ariam, we have posted a principal there who is an award winner in science. Presently, he is the principal of that school. We have given him a charge to turn out student- scientists.
