Professor Umaru Kyari Sandabe was the pioneer, immediate past vice chancellor, Borno State University and also ex-commissioner for Animal Resources and Fisheries between 2011-2014. In this interview with LADI JOSSY, he spoke on a number of issues, including what led to the deterioration of education in the North and possible solutions: Excerpts:
Could you please briefly tell us about yourself?
Well, I am Professor Umaru Kyari Sandabe. My father was also an educated person who had gone to university at that time. So, it was not very difficult for him to take us to school. So, we were never forced by the native authorities to go to school, as many in the rural areas were forced to go to school, and because then, the natives never believe in Western education.
Going down memory lane, has anything changed in our education sector?
Many things have changed, but now it’s not that they don’t believe in western education, but lack of infrastructure in schools is the main problem. So, I started primary school in earnest. And at that time, the primary school was very robust, and even then, our secondary schools up to our universities were fully funded by the states and the federal government. At that time, I attended a many primary schools, but my father being a civil servant, wherever he went, we had to follow Him, and that was how I attended a lot of primary schools. But I finally completed my primary school and then proceeded to Government Secondary School, which is now called the Government college. But the principle that I wanted to tell you is that at that time, the teachers in the primary school were robust, and well trained. By the time we finished primary school we were able to write letters, both formal and informal letters. We were trained also to speak, you know, communicate in English. So, when we went to secondary school, in the secondary school, sometimes our lecture notes were being dictated, not written on the blackboard for us to copy.
They were dictated, and we were able to follow and write quickly at the speed of the teachers. This was because we had a very good background at the primary school, and we were able to understand whatever the teacher was saying. So, by the time we came to university, at the university, nobody will come and start writing notes on the blackboard for you to copy. It was all lecture through. So, what I’m calling for the authorities now to do is to strengthen the primary education at the national level. Let them put more impulses, more money, more energy into the primary education system. Let the teachers in the primary school level be recognised and be paid very supportive salaries; salaries that can be compared to that of a professor, so that these teachers will put in their best, and believe you me, even the discipline of a child is attained at the primary school level. By the time you finish your primary school level, you have gotten a lot of discipline. Your character would have been molded so that you don’t misbehave.
At what point did we miss it as a nation?
As an educationalist, I know the first step was the primary school level, until now, when the government is trying to rebuild primary schools by building mega schools, well furnished, before they were dilapidated, no teachers, children don’t go to the school, no teacher in the class, nothing. They play around and they waste their time for over six years.
So, what do you expect this child to go and do after secondary school? Unless we strengthen that primary school level, and most of us attended public primary school. Most of the people that are saying that education is expensive now but they all benefited from free and full-funded education. You can’t subsidise security and then say education is not cheap, I don’t believe in this school of thought. In my days, there was no private school across the region, I don’t know the whole nation, but across northern Nigeria, the syllabus of the primary school is the same, whether you are in Maiduguri, in Kaduna, in Zaria, or in Gombe, you are operating the same syllabus so that your movement is made easy. Now, we have to sit down. We have a lot to do to ensure the primary education is strengthened. We have the UBEC, you have this SUBEB. So, they have to sit down and look and work things out because without the foundation.
You cannot build, even in civil engineering, when you have a very bad building foundation by the time you finish the building, it will collapses. So, that is what is happening.
How worried are you at the alarming rate of out-of-school children in northern Nigeria?
Yeah, definitely, let me tell you, if you go to the rural areas, a family in a single family will get about 20 children. That is the average. And these children were born because their father is a farmer. He doesn’t care whether these children go to school or not. And they grow up without any form of training. In those days when you are not doing Western education, you are apprehended to go through the Quranic education, but now they are not getting both, and this is recipe for insecurity. They could easily be recruited into any unwanted project. They could be easily lured into criminal activities. This is a recipe for insecurity. That’s why, if you have a robust education, at least, the primary level education, you will not get them idle, even if they are unemployed, but well educated, they will decline your offer to join evil group. What is happening now is that even the educated ones, because of the poor training, poor discipline level, you will see somebody who has a degree but will be recruited to do some unwanted thing, that is problem.
Do you think lack of access to education was a failure on the side of government?
No, it’s not lack of access. Government at all levels try their best to see that there are facilities for these children to have access to education. But the main problem is acceptability. If you go deep down to the rural communities, the families are giving birth to these children for farming activities so that they should go to the farm and help their parents in farming a large field of land. Now, they are contending between going to the farm and going to the school. So, in most cases, they will say, no, look, we are farmers. Have we ever gone to school? Come follow us to the farm, and then the child may not go to school.
But that’s why, in those days, during the native authority where they had the instrument of power, they go and force these children to go to school. If a parent stopped the child from going to school, he would be punished. That was how they recruited many of our elders and before us then to school.
Now these things are no longer there. You have left your parents at their free will, if they like, they take the children to school. If they don’t, they leave them. Is it not a failure on the part of government looking at large chunk of our populations uneducated?
Well, if you like, you can call it a failure of the government. But you see, what I see is a general failure of the society. Because, this large chunk of out-of-school children is very alarming and worrisome. That’s why the Federal Government established Almajiris commission to see how they can tackle this problem. But they have to go back to the drawing board, involve a lot of stakeholders to sit down and see what are the ways to make these people accept but if you bring some theoretical aspects, you may likely not succeed.
You made mention of Almajiris Commission, you recalled that then President Goodluck Jonathan set something like that across northern states. What do you think the government needs to do to get it right this time?
That’s what I said earlier. They have to sit down and ask critical questions, why did the earlier project fail? It’s not a simple answer. Why did it fail? The then Minister of Education was going around the nation to reinforce and implement that policy, but still at the end of the day, many of the states could not even use the facilities. They were given money to build Almajiris schools, to recruit these children into the school. But at the end, it didn’t work. Now, if the present one should not deviate from the earlier part, they may likely not succeed, but they have to sit down and look holistically, why did that one fail?
And then if they can provide answers as to why that one failed, then they may correct and likely this one may succeed. It’s not about sitting down in the office, giving directives, writing memos, sending high profile scholars going around this country, the globe, making consultation. It’s not like that. It is a field work. They have to come out, they have to go to the villages, towns, and tell the people that, look, the government is concerned about the plight of out-of-school children and Almajiri education. That’s why we put up the buildings and provided these facilities. Please take your children to these facilities, and sometimes you have to use the carrot and the stick approach. If anybody is sabotaging the policy of this government, then he should be apprehended and jailed. Once you have given birth to a child, it no longer belongs to you only. It belongs to the state also. And the state has a responsibility of seeing how this child grows and becomes a better person in the society. This is how we should view things.
Don’t you think that the traditional rulers could have done better if they had instrument of power?
You see, this is a constitutional matter. In those days, the native authorities had the instrument of power. They had the tools, they had the courts, they had the police, and they had all the state infrastructure to coerce, to force those people to take their children to school if you disobeyed, they would now send the police and one of the district heads or village head to go and arrest someone, and they would bring you before him and he asks why you disobeyed. It was a common policy. Government wants this child to study. Why are you stopping the child? If you don’t, if you continue with this, we are going to take you to the court, and we will jail you. By tomorrow, he will not interfere again. But now this instrument of power is no longer with them. It has been transferred to the government, and now government has its own instruments, just as I said earlier, we have other agencies of government. So, these agencies now, they should come up, stand up to their expectation, and then do just what the traditional rulers were doing.
Then, they should now mobilise the people. They will now bring out rules and regulations according to the government policy that if you stop your child from going to school or if you become a hindrance and you start sabotaging this government policy, you will be prosecuted and jailed. Then the parents or whoever must know this, that government has policies, has responsibilities. This is what we are lacking now. That’s why things are deteriorating. But if this instrument is fully utilised, you will see that all these out-of-school children and misbehaviors will end.
As immediate past Vice Chancellor of Borno State University, how did you navigate those turbulent times of insecurity?
You see first, as a scholar, once when you are given a responsibility, you have to sit down and set goals for ourself, the aim and objectives of establishing a university is to enhance the quality of education and to bring out graduates. So, what are the goals? It means that during my tenure, you must be able to produce at least one graduating set. We set this one as our goal. Two, in person, of these goals, you have to map our strategies how to implement those goal so that you don’t allow anything to deviate you, and you have to strictly follow rules and regulations of how universities operate.
And importantly, you have to remove self-interest; anything that will lead to corruption which will lead to all unwanted material favoritism and all these things. You remove all these things, because even if you are going to get the entire resources of the nation as your allocation, it may not be enough, so whatever you are getting, you have to sit down map out strategy, how to spend it and then achieve those goals. That’s why, at the end of the fourth year, we were able to graduate our first set of students, and we were able to secure accreditation for all the 30 programmes. There was no newly established university that took off with 30 programmes in Nigeria, but then, having seen my closeness with the neighboring University, I sat down to calculate. I said, no, look, we can start with 30 programmes.
And even the NUC was cautioning me, 30 programmes? Was it not too much? I said, it may not be too much, giving our resources and proximity to some federal universities. I think it may not be a problem for me, and when we took off with that 30, I made sure that all the programmes got accreditation, and God willing, we got all the accreditation for the programmes, and then we graduated our first set. Now, this first set are those serving their NYSC. And then in the history of NUC, I think our own would be the first of the universities that among the first universities that after establishing within the four year period, they have graduated their first set many universities after establishing them, before they graduate the first set, they take seven to nine years or so, even more, but here we are. Within the first four years we were able to graduate.
Recently, the federal government said funding tertiary education is too expensive; what are your views on this?
But if not for us, even the TETfund that people are now banking on was a product of the ASUU struggle. It was ASUU that gave the hints and the suggestions to the federal government that look after all said and done, the President asked them, now, this is your requirement, this is what you want. But if government has no money, how do you want us to fund this? They said, Okay, 2% for every company in Nigeria, 2% education tax. And when government accepted that TETfund was born, it was ETF. Then now turned to TETfund. In the beginning, it was purely as a suggestion. They included up from primary school level up to secondary up to university.
So, later they realised that they removed them, and that’s why it was turned tertiary. So, they said, okay, let’s leave it at tertiary. And then at tertiary level, they have polytechnics, they have colleges of education. All these things are now funded by the TETfund. And if you go to many universities, if you go to many universities now, and polytechnics and colleges of education, 80% of their infrastructure was provided by TETfund. So, we cannot say ASUU is a problem. ASUU not is a problem in our educational system. Some people see them as they’re asking too much from government when they know that education is not cheap, and they know that there are lots of responsibility from government and all that, but ASUU is always asking for more you see. The problem is, you have to sit down and see the charter of ASUU.
ASUU is not there to fight for the rich and well to do. ASUU is an organization that is championing the cause of the people. That’s why they said, if you make education very expensive, how could the children of the poor attend? So, let’s government fund education. That is one of the principles of ASUU, that government should fund education. During our time, our tertiary education was almost free, even those people that are talking now, ‘oh, university education should not be free; Should be paid for,’ they all enjoyed a free scholarship, even when their parents were very rich. They still enjoyed free education. But now they are turning back to say this, our state resources could cater for funding education. Let’s not deceive ourselves that the country has the money.
You see, funding education should not be viewed as just funding education. It’s a security issue. You have to see it that way. You have to handle it as a security issue, because if you say, okay, I will not do it and you have a lot of young people who did not go to school, who could not go to school, they are roaming the streets. You will spend a lot of money in maintaining security in your country. So, why don’t you reduce the security funds by training these people so that at the end you don’t spend more on security?
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