Speeches

2nd Lagos State Education Summit

Dec 17, 2009 - Of all the tasks that we can possibly set for ourselves, qualitative education for our children is, without doubt, the most important. As the great philosopher, Aristotle, put it so many years ago, "all who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth."

In fact, history confirms that the growth of civilizations has always been defined by knowledge and skills acquisition. The more educated societies dominate their environment and achieve a high standard of living. For better or for worse, they then go on to project their influence onto other societies around the world and, indeed, into space. This validates the wise thoughts of Nelson Mandela who once described education as the most important weapon we can use to change the world.

More significantly, education begets more education, such that it is those societies that take education seriously who perpetually push the frontiers of knowledge and determine the direction of socio-economic, scientific and industrial advancement all over the world. On the other hand, countries with poor educational systems tend always to do battle with the same old enemies, grappling weakly with basic problems like food production, power generation, ravaging diseases and natural disasters, all of which ensure a high poverty level, low standard of living and loss of prestige in the comity of nations. This trend amply justifies the saying that 'the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.'

In spite of our rather slow start, I believe strongly that Nigeria is well placed to catch up and pull ahead in the race to development - "if only we set our educational systems right. As already suggested, this must be the essence of all our efforts. For agricultural, scientific, and industrial progress, Nigeria needs a well educated citizenry, and by this I mean "well educated" at all levels. I am not looking at University Lecturers, Engineers, Doctors, Lawyers and such professionals only. Our auto mechanics, clerks, traders, builders, tailors, law enforcement officers, etc can do much better for themselves and for the rest of society if they come through a system that ensures qualitative education at all levels.

But if we leave our educational system to flounder, we will be condemned, God forbid, to having as many bad engineers as we have bad artisans; as many poor farmers as we have incompetent scientists. This kind of situation not only arrests the pace of national development, it guarantees perpetual dependence on other nations. It becomes imperative therefore for us to pull away from the inadequacies of the past. As they say, the only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.

Fellow Nigerians, at this stage of our national life we do have a dilemma of sorts. Even if we assume a strong will to get better, Nigerian needs to make an extra effort in order to succeed. I say this because many of our developmental problems have ripened together and each now demands very urgent attention. We need to spend trillions of naira to offset our infrastructural deficiencies in the areas of power generation and supply, roads, bridges and drainage construction, reconstruction of railways, etc. Meanwhile, our population is among the fastest growing in the world; ironically, with one of the weakest industrial bases. This compels equally urgent attention in the areas of agricultural and industrial development as it does in the educational and health sub-sectors. We are therefore confronted with a most uncomfortable obligation to either spread ourselves thin or prioritize the resolution of our many, equally important, problems. Too little spent in the health sector, for instance, or the neglect of agriculture and housing, can easily constrain our efforts to rebuild the educational system.

Nowhere are these problems more pronounced and the search for solutions more daunting than in our dear State. Today, Lagos State has a population of 18 million which is growing rapidly. In the primary education sector alone, we have 1,045 schools with 466,201 pupils and 16,351 teachers. Our 317 junior secondary schools have 9,215 teachers grappling with 326,171 students. This figure includes 12 junior secondary schools established by this administration in developing areas of the State which hitherto had no such schools.

Our 319 senior secondary schools have 9,625 teacher's and 322,242 students. One hundred and twenty-two thousand, four hundred (122,400) pupils have been placed into the 317 Junior Secondary schools of the state and, out of the 317 junior secondary schools, 313 have presented 98,624 candidates for the 2008/2009 Junior School Certifi"cate Examination. Besides, we have a State University, a Polytechnic and several teachers' and technical colleges which are even now arguably inadequate for our teeming population.

Your Excellencies, distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen. This sheer scale of what I would call the Lagos educational challenge is compounded by another essential fact. Most residents of Lagos State are relatively poor. This is because a significant proportion of the Lagos population consists of indigent in1migrants from other parts of Nigeria, West Africa and the world. School leavers and job seekers flock to Lagos daily in search of work and other economic opportunities. Unfortunately it often takes months if not years before they can truly earn a living beyond subsistence level.

Our free education, free health and other liberal social policies continue to attract more and more Nigerians and foreigners from the sub-region who always think they can find a better life in Lagos. As we improve our public schools, many who previously struggled with private school bills are quick to change over. Meanwhile, if these public schools are not affordable to parents, it is certain that we will very quickly beat all records of school age kids who are out of school. The socio-economic implications of this are better imagined. More than any other State in Nigeria, Lagos is therefore confronted with the challenge of providing squalitative education at very little financial cost to parents.

Despite these daunting statistics, we are convinced that all our current efforts to make Lagos better will only be sustained and improved to the extent that the educational system is accorded priority attention. The vivid vision of this administration is, therefore, the provision of 'equitable, qualitative, and functional education for self reliance and socio-economic development'. Our focal points in the last two years have included schools rehabilitation and construction; enhancement of pupils' performance and learning outcomes; human capital development; quality assurance; and educational planning and management.

In accordance with the National policy on education, Lagos State runs a free and compulsory Universal Basic Education; but we go beyond that. We also provide free senior secondary education. Our management system is decentralized for efficiency, as we now have six Education Districts spread across the 20 Local governments and 37 Local Council Development Areas. Each of these districts is headed by a Tutor-General/Permanent Secretary.

For quick spread and quality assurance, the construction and rehabilitation of school plants and infrastructure is undertaken through the PI'bjects Unit of the Ministry of Education and the Special Committee on Rehabilitation of Public Schools. In the last 24 months of this administration, we have been able to provide 75 schools with completely new laboratories while 92 others and the 5 Technical Colleges were supplied with Science materials. 6 Multi¬lingual laboratories were c,ompleted, one in each of the Education Districts. 33 schools were also supplied with integrated science equipments for Junior Secondary Schools while 339 schools were provided with new toilet facilities. These are in addition to sundry undertakings like the provision of school fence, repairs and rehabilitation of other school facilities, provision of generators for 30 model colleges, 31,580 new students' furniture, 5,069 new teachers' furniture, etc.

All our libraries are currently being automated to enable users access them on-line with the new On-line Public Access catalogue system. As we speak, two of our libraries - Herbert Macaulay and the Old Secretariat - already provide internet services to users, and this has expectedly increased their patronage. All our libraries have also been supplied with generators to enable them have hitch-free operations.

Meanwhile, our determination to improve the results of students in our public schools has necessitated the exploration of other solutions. For instance, the Lagos State government continues to pay W AEC examination fees of students in public secondary schools. N211, 136,614.00 was released on behalf of 60,070 students last year and N367,520,000 is earmarked for 70,000 students this year. We anticipate that the figure will continue to grow rapidly.

Another echo of the poverty level which we have had to deal with is the fact that many parents of students in our public schools cannot afford to buy textbooks for their children. This has hitherto constituted a significant drawback to the teachers and to other students who actually had textbooks. To deal with this problem, we started the distribution of free textbooks to pupils and students in public schools beginning from the 2008/2009 academic session. Through this initiative, every child in our nursery, primary and secondary schools received at least five text books in the core subjects to enhance their studies. As may be expected, this has significantly improved performance, which is good. But at the same time, it has pushed up our school enrolment figures, thereby creating fresh challenges for us and a greater imposition on our meager resources.

Nevertheless, we still have the duty as a State to encourage and assist with higher education by providing bursary and scholarship awards to qualified indigenes on both foreign and local academic programs. In the past year alone, over N43 million naira was expended on scholarships and bursaries for 513 students of Lagos State origin in various institutions of higher learning who scored 4.0 aggregate and above. F9r the Year 2009 awards, a total sum of N98.7 million has been approved as bursary to 3,326 awardees. With effect from January 2008, we have also approved an upward review of rates payable to beneficiaries of bursary and scholarship awards ranging from 100% to 500% as in Medicine and Engineering.

Beyond the demands of academic standard improvement, we realize that social skills and the attitude of our youth are critical growth factors. In pursuit of a wholesome development of the mind for a useful and productive social life, we have found it necessary to pay equal attention to non-academic activities in our public schools. This is perhaps most significantly symbolized by the restoration of uniformed Clubs and Societies in all public primary and secondary schools to re awaken values and leadership traits in them. To jumpstart the scheme, free uniforms were given to all student members as well as their teachers.

The moribund School's Festival of Arts and Culture last held in year 2000 was also resuscitated in October 2008 to showcase the nation's diverse culture and traditions. Special programmes of this nature, in conjunction with our improved Principals' ~up competition, resuscitated and renewed Schools' Debate, Spelling Bee competition, etc continue to provide students with the platform to showcase their innate talents and boost their self-confidence. We have also introduced a, long vacation vocational training programme for students with training in such areas as hairdressing, dress making, ICT appreciation, and woodwork. At the same time we have made it a policy to provide holiday jobs for students in government establishments and interested private firms with a view to preparing our youths for the future and keeping them productively engaged while out of school.

Another challenge that we take on is that of vocational and technical education. Of course, we know that we cannot seriously advance and sustain our infrastructure development without a pool of well trained artisans, technicians and other skilled manpower. Lagos State Government has therefore taken very firm steps to revamp and propagate Technical and Vocational education among our youths. The five (5) Technical Colleges in the state are being rehabilitated and equipped for greater efficiency.

To ensure the successful accreditation of courses being offered in each of these colleges, we have filled all academic staff vacancies, standardized the facilities and significantly improved teaching and learning situations through professional developmental programmes for staff members. We have also improved the welfare of the instructors and introduced a standardized industrial training procedure for the students to ensure uniformity in the colleges. At the moment, we are introducing legislation to establish a Technical and Vocational Board to manage the affairs of the technical colleges and bring them to the required standard.

In general, training and professional development of staff in the education sector is a core value of this administration. As new challenges and opportunities emerge with the megacity status of Lagos State, we cannot ensure the required quality of education unless we keep our teachers well equipped with updated information and teaching skills. In the past year, 159 inspectors attended Quality assurance Workshops organised by the Ministry of Establishment and Training, while 98 French Teachers were trained on French methodologies and capacity building. 600 Senior Teachers were also trained on performance enhancement courses in physics and chemistry.

This attention to teachers' welfare and professional development extends to their" post-retirement life. The Teachers' Establishment and Pensions Office (TEPO) was specifically charged with the responsibility of providing not only training and manpower development, but also seeing to pension matters and the welfare of staff in the Education Districts. Since the inception of this administration, the office has processed the retirement benefits of 614 staff and has recently computerized the payment of pensions of its 6,289 pensioners after the maiden biometric enrolment and verification exercise. Within the last two years, this office has paid about N940, 186, 928.44 to those on its pensions pay roll. Of course, all serving and retired teachers enjoy free medical facility at our public hospitals.

In terms of planning resources and the coordination of our educational systems, we are committed to leveraging on information technology. In fact, our system for managing students' information will soon be in public domain with the Lagos State Educational Management Systems (LASGEMS) to be commissioned shortly. When operational, this system/will have the overall data of all students in both public and private schools which can be accessed on-line for information. We are then able to assign each student a unique Student Personal Identification Number (SPIN) and an identity card. This will ripen in due course to a system that enables us to determine exactly the resources and facilities we need and to plan for the future.

Your excellencies and distinguished ladies and gentlemen, we have done so much but there is much more to do. As we strive towards educational excellence, our school enrolment figures will grow and become even more demanding on scarce government resources. As I said earlier, the population is relatively poor and introduction of any appreciable level of fees will keep millions out of the school system. Yet I must say at the risk of repetition, that for us there is no alternative to qualitative education. As James Garfield (American President, 1831 to 1881) reminds us that "next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained."

Funding of this social imperative will come mainly from taxpayers, but we obviously cannot continue to raise taxes in a depressed economy such as ours. How then do we get the funds to attain and sustain the educational system that we aspire to? Fori/now, we get some assistance from public-spirited individuals and corporate bodies through the 'Support Our Schools' initiative, but how far can this carry us? In all of these, what is the role of parents, especially in ensuring punctuality and due supervision of our students after school hours?

This gathering is essentially to assist us in finding the answers. I am informed that we have here world renowned experts from Nigeria and abroad. Without doubt, we have the intellectual capacity to find out what happens elsewhere, make comparisons and come up with suggestions. I therefore charge all participants to join in critically reviewing our current level, policies and programmes now being implemented, and the projections that we have' in terms of population, revenue and sectoral needs. This process will help us to appreciate how we stand and constructively plan for the future.

I want to close this keynote address by thanking all the organizers, lead speakers, discussants and indeed all participants at this Summit. The challenge that we face here concerns the character of our future, a matter of utmost concern to all of us. I therefore urge you to rise to the occasion with a realistic appreciation of our situation and a dispassionate analysis of our problems. Here in this hall we have the wherewithal to make our society better and to deliver a brighter rewarding future for our children. While anxiously awaiting your resolutions, I sincerely wish you all very happy and fruitful deliberations.

Eko O ni baje o!

B. R. Fashola, SAN
Governor of Lagos State