The Executive Director, Corporate Services of UAC of Nigeria PLC, Mr. Joe Dada, in this interview with SEGUN OLUGBILE spoke on the defect of the Public Private Partnership policy designed to develop the education sector, the need to reposition the Education Trust Fund and how the quality of the nation‘s tertiary institutions‘ graduates could be improved.
Nigeria has adopted the Public Private Partnership approach to solve the problem of inadequate
funding and decay in the nation‘s education sector, but most Nigerians believe that the organised private sector seems not interested in the scheme. As a member of the OPS, how do you react to this?
To tell you the truth, the adoption of PPP is not new in the country. It is legendary because if you look at most of the old schools we have in the country; you will discover that they are a product of this approach. The only difference is that there was no organised private sector then, what was in existence were various religious missions and the partnership they had with the government then was such that most of the earlier schools in the country were established by missionaries. Schools in this category include St. Finbarrs, Baptist Academy, Ansar-Ur-Deen College, Isolo and many others across the country. That time the partnership was good and government was only giving grant in aids to these schools and the entire nation was the beneficiary.
But what we have today is different from what obtained then. Now we have organised private sector but the focus of the PPP is far more enlarged. The OPS now has almost equal status with government in education delivery. Having said that, I will like to say that though the PPP we have today is defined, it implementation has not been very efficient and that is why most private organisations are doing their intervention through corporate social responsibility schemes. However, PPP should be deeper than that because private organisations should be deeply involved in education. So, there should be a new policy crafted in such a way that the nation will benefit more from it.
But back to the question of whether the OPS has embraced PPP or not, I will say that people with that opinion are ignorant of our contributions to the Education Trust Fund and the Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme. Members of the OPS contribute two per cent of their profit to the ETF on a yearly basis for the development of physical infrastructural facilities in our institutions and we trained undergraduates on industrial attachment.
On our part, UACN being the oldest conglomerate in the country having started operation in 1879, I can tell you that in the last 40 years, we have been offering scholarship to 36 university students every year. We call them the UAC Scholars. At the secondary school level we have a scholarship scheme for 50 pupils every year. We sponsor verifiable organisations that are educationally inclined.
Since 2006, we started the Goodness Initiative as a platform to develop the legacy schools. Legacy schools are those pioneer secondary schools in all the six geo-political zones of the country. These schools include Rumfa College, Kano, Hope Waddel Institute, Calabar, CMS Grammar School, Lagos. The idea is to rebuild and equip them. We have started this and all the schools identified across the country are benefitting from this gesture. We build technical workshops, laboratories and provide teaching and learning materials including computers, furniture, science equipment for the schools. Apart from this, we also organise free weekend classes for secondary school pupils during the long vacation. In fact, we just finished one few days to the resumption date for the 2010/2011 session. All our managers including me are mandated to go to these centres to teach and much more to motivate the pupils. However, our intervention is not just in the area of education because our CRS covers health, community development and humanitarian gesture. For UACN, we are trying, but on the general note, PPP should be more than what ETF and SIWES are presently doing.
Are you saying that the implementation of the ETF model and the SIWES are defective?
No. The ETF is good but it is only about finances. To get the best out of it, we should define the kind of intervention we want from the members of the organised private sector at the federal, states and local governments‘ levels. For participation to be effective the three tiers of government should craft a policy of adoption that will promote the longevity and sustenance of such areas of intervention in the education sector.
Also, the SIWES is good but not far flung. It should go beyond issuance of letter of introduction to an undergraduate to a particular industry so that the student can do his or her industrial attachment there. The SIWES scheme as it is now is loose. The scheme is one area of partnership that the members of the organised private sector should be involved. To do this, we should carve the country into educational cum industrial training zones.
For instance, we can say students of Yaba College of Technology, Lagos University of Lagos and those contiguous to them should do their training in Ikeja industrial district, while those from University of Port Harcourt, Rivers State College of Science and Technology and institutions not far from them should be in Port Harcourt, when we do this it will become easier to monitor the students for training. It will also encourage industry in a particular location to guide the students undergoing the SIWES.
Another thing that I will suggest is that the teachers and the lecturers should also be made to undergo what I call the Teachers Industrial Work Experience Scheme. This is necessary because laboratory of theory is different from laboratory of practice. So, in order to knock together theory and practice, teachers need to undergo industrial training in the operation and expectation of the organised private sector. This will help them to do their own part of the training well in the class and thus produce skilful graduates.
Beyond this, research institutes which are presently far too removed from the universities should be drawn closer to the ivory towers and the two should seek better linkage with the industry so that their research efforts could end up in the final stage of wealth creation.
Employers of labour have complained that the nation‘s graduates lack skills required in the work place, do you think that conclusion is correct?
Yes, it is correct though not back up by any data. But from my experience, I know that if you are looking for two good graduates to employ, you will have to talk to over 50.
Why is this so?
It is so because students now just read to pass examination. They no longer read to gain knowledge. And beyond head knowledge, most of today‘s graduates have attitudinal problem. Imagine a young graduate who come for interview chewing gum or answering phone call during interview. Some will come to interview dress like area boy and when you ask them how much you want to take if you are offered this job, they tell you millions of naira. This is so because money has affected the psyche of the Nigerian nation and unfortunately, it has caught up with our youths. Now they don‘t want to work hard all they want is money in millions. All of these are wrong attitude and they do not know that a human resources manager hire people for attitude and train them for skills. I think we missed it when we spike out the teaching of civics, religion and nature study from our school curriculum. We should reintegrate these subjects back to the school curriculum
Do you think education should be tuition free?
No. I don‘t believe that education should be free because nobody can quantify the gains of education. The knowledge education imparts into people liberates and emancipates them. Education is an equalizer, a kind of a leveler, in fact education is life and life is not cheap. So, I don‘t think that such a virtue like education should be free. It can‘t be free. It must be paid for. But let me add that the cost of knowledge and education transcends money, it include time, relationship, devotion and ability to learn from others. Can you quantify the time a parent spends on nurturing a child? No. So, for me, the cost of education should be shared. The financial cost should be shared by all the three tiers of government, the parents, the private sector and even the student. The international donor agencies too should be involved after we must have broken down the element of the cost of education. Like I said earlier, members of the organised private sector should be given a clear definition of their roles and they should perform this role to compliment what the other stakeholders.
Source: http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art201010030342545
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