INTERVIEW: My struggle between Jonathan, Saraki; and why Otoge movement succeeded — Ex-Minister
sacked the family from the control of Kwara, the education reform he initiated in the state and why he is advocating a new political culture in the North.
I belong to a political group that is led by the former Senate President, Dr Bukola Saraki, and the counter mobilisation that happened in 2019 was to send away all of us that belong to that political group. When we came in 2003, we were committed to rebuilding the state, which was traditionally known as a civil servants state. We tried to rebuild the economy, we tried to reposition the state, and I think we did quite well, because at that time, it was very unlikely that you would mention five top-performing economic states in Nigeria without mentioning Kwara State.
Of course, from resentment there could only be one direction to go, which is rejection. And people within our system have become so swollen with patronage that they were no longer in a position to fight, they only knew how to take; they have lost the capacity to fight. So, when the battle came, when the enemies arrived at the gate, we were not in a position to mobilise any troops because everybody had grown so fat and lazy, they relied only on one person to always work the magic.
You have more children attending schools today than before, despite the growing statistics of out of school children, but fewer are getting education. Meanwhile in the 60s, 70s, the mere factor of attending schools guaranteed that you would get an education. But with the collapse we have seen over the years, in the 80s upward, attending schools no longer guarantees education.
In fairness to the people that continued, it required a level of consciousness, a level of knowledge and awareness of what it takes to deliver that kind of change. If you have not been tried to deliver that kind of reform, you will rather just sit down and continue to build classrooms. Question: You aspired to become the governor but you couldn’t make it beyond the primaries. It has been one year since the incumbent governor got into office. Looking back, would you say some of the programmes are being implemented by current governor?
The thing is, one of the major reasons Universal Primary Education was founded was to also bridge the gap between the north and the southern parts of the country. That is one the major arguments for the UPE. Don’t forget that it was the same man who introduced UPE that later introduced UBEB. But if you look at the enabling law of the UBEB, I would say that is the major problem in delivering quality basic mass education in Nigeria.
The thing we need to do is to reorder the system of governance around basic education. What do I mean by the governance of basic education? Someone sits in Abuja, sends money to the states, is it by chance that the majority of the states are not paying the counterpart fund? There is a reason, and what is the reason?
Imagine if every school gets to prepare its own budget. This classroom is broken, I need to fix it. This classroom needs one more mathematics teacher, I need to hire one. So, they get to prepare their budgets, which go to the local government education authority and it is these budgets that are collated by the local government education officer and sent to SUBEB. It is this same budget that is taken from SUBEB to the commissioner, from there to the ministry of education.
I had 157,000 children in Kwara and I am certain because I was the first commissioner to conduct a school census. We counted every single child. Before then, we were already told that we had half a million children, and every plan we were making were for half a million children. The teachers we were recruiting were for half a million children, the books we were buying were for half a million children.
So, we now say, the teacher that is expected to deliver this, are we sure they will be able to deliver this kind of outcome that we desire? The only way to know is to test these teachers. That is why we developed Teachers’ Development Need Assessment . What we wanted to do was to test the development level of the teachers. We asked all teachers to write primary 4 examination and must score 80 per cent and above.
It is a lot of work, it is not money. If we want to improve the quality of teaching, we need highly qualified teachers. Why private schools do better in quality than public schools is because they determine who to recruit and who not to recruit, how much to pay, the school assess you completely and so on. That is why private schools are getting results. If we want to get results, we need to mimic that model.
President Jonathan was one of the most committed presidents to sports in Nigeria’s history. As minister of sport, I didn’t feel less important. He was interested and he sat in a summit of sport with me for 14 hours and participated actively. He gave me all the necessary support and that was all I needed. I did the same thing in Kwara as commissioner because I had a governor that supported me.
When that happened, I had to say no and when I said no, of course, I should expect consequences – the consequence was getting sacked. I have no regret whatsoever. It was not because of Saraki that I left. The last thing they did was the dissolution of the executive of the party in Kwara State and I was a member of that executive but they never consulted me. How could you dissolve the executive of a party in my state without telling me, a member of the NWC from that state? When you do that, you have insulted me. So, instead of continuing to pretend that nothing happened, I decided to leave.
One of the things that I have learnt as a reformer from Kennedy School of Politics, is to ensure you remain in office. And the only way you can remain in office is through political authorization. And if you are not in the centre of political authorisation, where will you derive your power from? These are some of the things that have dogged my experiences. This has been my advice to young people that come to me for advice.
Some of the things people ask me to do then were easier options for me to choose but I would be betraying my upbringing and I would have lost my legitimacy to educate my children accordingly. You will be a hypocrite to stand for a certain principle and expect no consequence. Question: You spoke glowingly about former President Goodluck Jonathan, but you wrote a book on how he won and lost Nigeria on a platter of gold, so many believe it was written to get back at him.
Question: If you are given an opportunity to manage the affairs of Kwara or get appointed as minister again, what are the things you didn’t do well then that you would love to do better next time? Being a sport minister is even worse, your performance is judged by how others play their parts. You cannot jump or run, they have to be the ones to do that. And, don’t forget those forget that this people work with the orientation that they belong to the federation which belongs to another federation called Nigeria.
Ahmadu Bello died in 1966 but how come he is still a reference point for development in the north? He was the one that said the north was not ready for independence and the moment he said that, he knew that was only a matter of time, then he built university, schools and all kind of things for the North to catch up with the rest of the country. In fact, he even projected that with time, the North would catch up with the rest of the world. He had a vision that was driving him.
What I am saying in essence is that we embrace a different kind of politics in this country, most especially in the North. Until we are able to carry the North along, Nigeria may not make progress. It is obvious that blood that is keeping us together as one in this country, is oil money. Now that oil is gradually losing its value in the international market. What happened during the coronavirus pandemic is just a yellow card, now that we have recovered a bit.
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