PiniJason[/caption]INTRO
WE met in the early 90's maybe twice or thrice at Ikoyi Club.Then it was the norm to show that you had climbed the social ladder by your membership of the prestigious Club.We met at the main bar where we shared a few drinks and watched soccer on one of the first very wide screens in the country.Lots of chit-chats were going on at the same time but i focused on him once i got to know he was Pini Jason (Chief Pini Jason Onyegbaduo!)
I had read a few of his posts in the Vanguard and had come to admire him from afar.I asked him a few questions about his work,column and writing.After a few minutes we were chatting like long lost brothers because there was instant chemistry from both sides.But even at the Club's main bar where you were bound to meet some members behaving like keggites Pini's intelligence and humility were noticeable and both made you to like,love or respect him.
So here is to those few moments we had together shortly before i stopped going to the Club because of Mason College which was on the drawing board then.
The End of a Perfect Day
by Carrie Jacobs Bond Song
When you come to the end of a perfect day,
And you sit alone with your thoughts,
While the chimes ring out with a carol gay
For the joy that the day has brought,
Do you think what the end of a perfect day
Can mean to a tired heart,
When the sun goes down with a flaming ray,
And the dear friends have to part?
Well, this is the end of a perfect day,
Near the end of a journey, too;
But it leaves a thought that is big and strong,
With a wish that is kind and true.
For mem’ry has painted this perfect day
With colours that never fade,
And we find, at the end of a perfect day,
The soul of a friend we’ve made
Pini,may your gentle soul rest in perfect peace.Amen.
HIS ARTICLE ON EDUCATION
Before he died we had twice published his article about politicians and education in Nigeria.It is a beautiful piece.So kindly grant us the indulgence to" re-re-produce" the write-up especially for those who have joined this blog since then.Probably about 80% of those reading our posts these days!
PINI'S ARTICLE (UNABRIDGED)
How bad politics killed our education…BY PINI JASON (AUGUST 2011)
Left…Chief (Barr.) Ezenwo Nyesom Wike – Honourable Minister of State for Education
LAST week, several national papers lamented the abysmal performance of Nigerian candidates who sat for the 2011 West African Secondary School Certificate Examination. According to reports, of the 1.5 million candidates who sat for the May/June examination, only 472,906, or a disappointing 31 percent, obtained five credits and above in the subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.
Over one million of them failed, while 80,247 candidates had their results withheld. And this result was said to be an improvement on last year’s result. In the last four years, the WAEC result has been consistently woeful.
The implication of this mass failure is not just that it is only 31 percent that can seek university admission this year. The truth is that rest who did not “make” it or those who would say, “WAEC gave me…” will still join the 31 percent in seeking admission, albeit with forged results, Oluwole certificates and all manner of bribery, if you know what I mean. That is how, in the first place, many of the teachers who produce this annual mass failure got into the universities and teachers’ colleges. If you doubt me, let the government order a screening of all teachers’ and lecturers’ certificates today, and see if it will not illicit stiff opposition, diversionary name-calling and threat of strike!
Every time we are confronted with this type of ugly reality, we moan and complain. Indeed many Nigerians, including a former Minister of Education, Prof Jubril Aminu, wailed about the result. The moaning will offer the usual excuses that do not touch on the real causes, and then we flip the page and move on.
Ask anybody why the dismal performance, the ready answer would be: “Government is not funding education well enough”! May be poor funding, but can we first audit the little that goes into the educational system to know how it is used? The real problem lies elsewhere, in a corner we hardly look!
Bad politics
There is a fundamental disease that is behind this national headache called falling standards in education. This disease is also behind our failures in almost all the departments of our national life. The problem is bad politics! Poor funding of education, non-implementation of annual budgets, corruption, name it, they are all products of bad politics. Bad politics is that which is obsessed placating personal and group aggrandizement to the detriment of public good. Richard Joseph called it prebendal politics.
The language of this type of politics goes like this: “Since independence, none of our sons has occupied the Ministry of Siddon Chop”, “Since this democratic dispensation our clan has not produced a Minister of Wackie and Quench”. What this type agitation does is to put unnecessary pressure and the wrong emphasis on the criteria for choice of public officers or induce a musical chair in what we call a “lucrative” ministry.
Eight years ago, a former Minister of Education told me something that was really instructive about our educational system. He said, from information he could glean from the ministry, that since Independence, no Minister of Education has attended the bi-annual Commonwealth Conference of Education Ministers twice!
This, if it is true, points to three critical implications. One is the high rate of turnover of Ministers in the ministry; two, the near absence of institutional memory and thirdly, we suffer policy reversal and uncertainty of implementation. Obviously, in such atmosphere of instability, supervision suffers, unqualified teachers are recruited, resources allocated to schools develop wings as corruption has a field day.
The longest serving Minister of Education in the history of this country was Aja Nwachukwu who, who in the “brief shining moments” of Nigeria, spent eight years in the Ministry. He was followed by Chief A.Y Eke, five years and Prof Jubril Aminu, four years. If you look at the years of political crises, such as 1983, when Shagari’s regime was terminated, and the years following June 12 crisis of 1993 to 1999, they coincide with shortest tenures in the Ministry, showing how political crisis affects us. Things began to look up again from June 1999, the return of democracy, when some Ministers spent between two to three years. Then there was a relapse between 2003 and 2007, the era of third term scam and the crisis it generated.
Grim statistics
From the above grim statistics we can also see why ASUU was constantly going on strike. When a new minister comes, he begins to study the files, including ASUU file. But if he puts in just six months you can agree that he would hardly be in any position to understand the details and essence of any agreement before he is trundled out of the Ministry. During these periods of short tenures, civil servants would dump on the Minister new education policies he would hardly have time to digest or he starts one addle-headed policy that creates its own problem and like a bad cold, runs its course six months or 10 months after the Minister is shown the door. For example, Mrs. Ezekwesili spent just nine months in the Ministry. But in that short time she raised a storm of her own with her proposal to privatize (or was it to concession) the Unity Schools!
While this musical chair is going on in the Ministry, the supervision of the principals, rectors and Vice Chancellors is relegated to the background. All manner of things happen undetected. A university with admission quota of 2000 students begins to sell admissions (they call it supplementary admission) to those who failed WAEC examinations and JAMB. It is lack of effective supervision occasioned by high turnover of ministers that has killed our education. It is not just poor funding. The little that goes into the schools can be better managed for better results!
In fairness to the ministers, many of them have the competence and the ability to deliver. And if you followed the screening of the ministers, you would agree that they are not lacking in ideas. But they often hardly have the time to put their ideas into practice. Take the case of Prof Rufai for example. I was told that she did a great job in Jigawa State and that was why she was brought to the center. But the truth is that if President Jonathan did not reappoint her to the ministry, she would have lasted just one year and would not have had time to deliver on the expectation that brought her to the Federal level. There would have been no basis to judge her performance.
Other ministries
This crisis is not limited to Ministry of Education alone. The sad story is replicated in all the other ministries. That is why all the Federal Roads have become national embarrassment. You wonder how a nation can go to sleep and allow all her roads become death traps. The simple answer is that the ministers are constantly engaged in a dizzying going and coming. You wonder how a nation can watch all her hospitals break down.
The Minister, who assumed duty just three months ago, is probably busy preparing his handover notes! Every sector you see decay is just a victim of our bad politics. Were people and sponsored groups not lobbying for President Jonathan to drop some Ministers, not because they are incompetent but to abort some policies they initiated in their various ministries?
For us to turn things round, especially as we dream about 20: 2020, we should identify our national priorities in key ministries and allow ministers, who know what they are doing, to last long enough in such ministries to make impact.
And to back him up this was our next post
HERE IS NO 1 PROBLEM CAUSING EDUCATIONAL ARTHRITIS IN NIGERIA
SO LONG,DEAR FRIEND PINI,BYE FOR NOW JASON.
mason foundation school students....there is no reason for the great gulf between them and public school students...[/caption]
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