Tunji Alausa: Educational Reformer on the Saddle

By Sunny Hemebrim Amadi

Education is undoubtedly the fulcrum of any developing country and not a portfolio to be easily assigned. It is said that for any country to have a better life, they had to have better education. However, prior to the arrival of Tunji Alausa as Education Minister, the sector was in deep crises with work to rule actions declared in quick rapidity while it was difficult for a student to determine his or her year of graduation even after knowing the course duration as lecturers were more on strike than they were in classrooms.

The curriculum from crèche to tertiary levels were not only obsolete but behind in all developmental paradigms that would enable a generation to progress. That was worsened by the fact that schools in Nigeria were not preparing her students from its curricula to be competitive or fit into modern jobs. Teaching aids and research grants existed only on papers thereby making the institutions in the country to produce unemployable graduates.

Those that had occupied the position prior to the arrival of Alausa appeared not to have had an idea what modern education is, and arrived the position with staccato of irrelevant and sometimes mundane policies which made the country the boot of a joke among other nations. Primordial sentiments soon transmuted to state policy and the rot festered.

The situation was so bad that the country continuously failed to scratch the United Nations minimum benchmark of budgets for education which is 20 percent of the national budget as it hovered between seven and 10 percent which is grossly inadequate for educational development. People began questioning the rationale for going to school and even manufactured the false narrative that education is a scam. Like happens to a society with wrong values, Nigeria which population consists mainly of youth started losing all sense of wellness and intellectual advancement. That birthed the get rich quick syndrome and tore at the social fabric of the country.

People who needed artisans to work for them had to go to neighbouring African countries to outsource them because technical and vocational education were dead in Nigeria, Sexual harassment and sorting became sobriquets in the Nigeria’s education system which vended certificates to those who had the money.

It was at this sad juncture that Alausa was saddled with the duty to recover the sunken education ship, a mission that appeared impossible. However, this Nephrologist who has traversed several educational systems of continents, had to rework everything with the care he was trained to give to human organs for preservation and aligned the curriculum to the advancing needs of humanity so that progress could be felt in development within the educational system. Since he took the reins, he has never looked back and has not left any detail in his plans. Issues as minute as bullying in Nigeria’s educational system was well taken care of and banned.

One of the biggest problems of Nigerian educational system is the number of out of school children which he has come up with different schemes to tackle including incentives and sanctions for those who allow the denial of early childhood education to their children. States with endemic problems in school dropout like Kano and Katsina have already been made to sit up.

Alausa weeded out courses that were excess to need from all institutions and made those specialised ones to return to their core mandates. The agriculture –based ones were made to face their real mandates and those, with adequate funding while those established with technological bent were also redirected to enable the realisation of the intended objectives for their being set up. A never seen allocation of N30 billion to 30 Agric institutions at N1 billion each to establish mechanised farming were disbursed to assist the nation towards achieving food security through research and practicalisation of their professional courses through hands on system of studies. It was simply the retrieval of lost opportunities through what he called STEM integrated agribusiness curriculum. That checked heads of institutions running courses, sometimes unaccredited just for monetary gains from students’ population.

At the secondary level, Alausa has reintroduced skill acquisition and vocational programmes with some of them so specialised that they are being set up to train artisans and that with full sponsorship and free tuition full with bursary. That is to fill the skill gap and produce a generation of employers rather than job seekers, a broader form of empowerment. Under this scheme a National Education and Skills Revitalisation initiative was launched where technical school were shifted from theory-based studies to practical and realistic skills transfer.

It was common for students to be saddled with course works that have little or no relevance to life like students concentrating on drawing parts of flowers and insects but now have to do courses that will make them globally competitive like Artificial Intelligence. Also, subjects like History which will enable Nigerians to study and know their heritage was banned but Alausa restored the subject to promote national identity, unity and civic responsibility in a world where those who do not know their roots are looked down upon wrongly.

Given the poor state of infrastructure in the sector where counterpart funding by state governments was treated with levity, Alausa revitalised the Universal Basic Education Commission to oversee and ensure improvement by providing basic necessities like water and conveniences that would make a learning environment conducive for learning. Added to that was the reintroduction of the inspectorate system in school as monitor for both teachers and students. Security and encroachment on school premises was an issue leading Alausa to work on school fencing and activate other safe school initiatives.

One other area where he put his feet down to ensure standards is the proliferation of private universities where glorified secondary schools were passed off as universities and lacking in basic provisions for learning. To stem that, he put owners of such universities on tenterhooks for them to upgrade both physical infrastructure and academic standards before finally spearheading a moratorium in the establishment of private universities through placing a hold on granting of licences.

To ensure that poor people were not shunted out of tertiary education, he pursued the and got the approval for the National Education Loan Funds which advanced loans to students so that people that lack the financial capacity to pay fees and buy books can access them and still have equal opportunities in life to enjoy university education.

He ensured that the number of students seeking admission yearly which is in excess of 2 million but with as low as 650,000 placements have a better deal and opening the way for more students to be admitted by increasing the number of placements to one million.

The reformer followed up with the recertification of teachers through the National Teachers Institute so that only those trained in knowledge impartation would handle the teach our children. Before him, teaching which is a profession had become an all comers job where those unable to secure jobs would settle for teaching. The standard also rubbed off on lecturers who must attain certain educational qualifications to be considered. He further has sorted out the welfare issues in universities which use to be the main plank for strikes while also implementing agreements, even those reached before him with university unions which previous occupants of his seat kept to in breach. He implements what is agreed.

His efforts has led to countries that use to reject certificates from Nigerian institutions to begin to recognise them while he is honing reformatory strategies on how every Nigerian child will have at least 12 years uninterrupted basic education as well as phasing out Junior Waec which is neither useful to secure a job nor recognised as a qualification but in other words, encourages school dropout since it appears like a level of educational attainment.

Adding a humane angle to his reforms, he has outlawed the practice of attaching workbook to textbooks so that it is only used by one person. Every textbook going by Alausa’s new rule must be usable for at least six years; that would enable siblings to pass same to their younger ones reading same class and level. That will ease the burden of parents buying same book for their wards yearly. Again, he has streamlined graduation ceremonies so that only on completion of primary school, Junior Secondary 3 and Senior School Certificate would one do graduation. That is also to lighten financial burden on parents.

The clincher has come now with the scrapping of dichotomy between Higher National Diploma and first degrees from Universities. He has not only enthroned the policy of Polytechnic being a degree awarding institution but has ensured that technical bent and the objective of polytechnic education is realised while works of research and prototypes are to be funded and commercialised so that industrial revolution of the country can start in earnest.

Alausa aims to be irreversible in his quest to position Nigeria on an educational track that will enable an average Nigerian child to be globally competitive educationally.