Haba Minister Alausa!

Dr. Tunji Alausa is at it again. He has brought to mind the notorious fact that Olawale Gladstone Emmanuel Rotimi, that playwright of immense skill and repute, gave some of his works titles that are as hilarious as they are soul-searing. One of Ola Rotimi’s books is entitled: “Our Husband has Gone Mad Again”. Yes, that is the title of one of his many plays. The first time I saw the book, its title was an immediate trigger. It has remained so for me, and this has made today’s thoughts not to have anything to do with either the theme or the plot of the play. It’s just about its title as it has usually been for me over the years. I think the “Our husband has gone mad again!”

In May last year, Dr. Tunji Alausa was the Minister of State for Health and Social Welfare. On May 11, 2024, this column asked, “Have You Seen Tunji Alausa’s Health Tourists?” It was a reflection on Minister Tunji Alausa’s reaction to burning issues on healthcare delivery in Nigeria. Alausa had argued that the unhappy, fleeing Nigerian doctors and sundry health workers in Nigeria were ungrateful because they didn’t seem to appreciate the efforts of the government. The column had said: “Dr Tunji Alausa held that the Nigerian public health sector isn’t as bad as many disgruntled Nigerians say it is. According to him, Oyibos from Europe and many other peoples of the world, especially from sub-Saharan Africa, now run to the hospitals in our towns and villages to access real and up-to-date healthcare.

“Oh yes! This, he said, is because healthcare delivery in Nigeria is easily accessible (of course you and I know that our boarders are porous); quite affordable (you see how useful it is to devalue the Naira?) and readily available (if only you knew where to go)… Dr Tunji Alausa said our healthcare delivery system is so good that no less a personality than our Number One, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, also gets SOME of his care in Nigeria!” That was Alausa, the Minister of State for Health.

By October 23, 2024, Tunji Alausa had become Nigeria’s Minister of Education. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu redeployed Alausa from the Health Ministry to replace Professor Tahir Mamman as the substantive minister in the Ministry of Education. Since that time, Professor Mamman has disappeared from our faces. I hope you still remember that man as our former Minister of Education.

On Monday, December 16, 2024, Minister Alausa had a meeting with some stakeholders in the Nigerian education sector in Abuja. At that meeting Alausa announced the intention of the Federal Government to ensure and enhance the integrity of examinations in the country and bring a renewed trust and hope into our testing system. Beautiful! That day, he received a healthy round of applause for speaking passionately on a very touchy and sensitive issue in our national life. He told the various examination bodies with which he was in that meeting the need for our examinations to be pristine in their integrity and trustworthy in the eyes and assessment of the watching world. It was a nice outing for the minister because we love what he said, and because nearly all well-meaning Nigerians want our examinations to be in good standing and trustworthy. In fact, we can say that everyone is looking forward to a time when these examinations could be as easygoing as JAMB wants its UTME to be in the comity of examinations. Of course, that is why technology is there to help us in our transition.

At that same December 2024 meeting, Minister Alausa said he was giving a three-year time frame for the migration of examinations to become computer-based tests. It was an unstated fact that the call did not include JAMB because of where it is already with its computer-based tests. It was a major shift in gear towards what he had said earlier—a bold move towards credible examinations and testing system in Nigeria. So, those stakeholders with him – officials from NECO, WAEC, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), and the Directorate of Senior Secondary Education—must have adjusted their glasses and focus to see 2027, and might have also scribbled down some thoughts on what might be done as the preliminary steps towards the time and goal set by Minister Alausa. This shift was of utmost importance to the federal government because Alausa was reported to have “outlined the commitment to digitalising the examination process.” Dr. Tunji Alausa’s beautiful thoughts were thus part of the government’s broader efforts to enhance the credibility and security of the nation’s educational assessments.

The gaze was thus firmly set on 2027 and as the race to attain this craving commenced, Alausa buoyed it by inaugurating a committee to drive process. The body, known as “Committee on Improvement of Quality Examinations in Nigeria” was inaugurated on January 23 in Abuja. There Alausa said: “Teachers, school principals as well as those supervising the examinations are also culpable in the rising examination malpractices in the country. So, we are planning that by 2027, all our exams will be computer-based. We will work so hard to ensure that that happens. We have to use technology to help our endeavour. The committee will also be working with local swapping of candidates.”

However, what could pass as a sprinkling of confusion into the process occurred on Monday, April 28, when Alausa spoke again. He didn’t speak like a man who had the committee he had set up in confidence. The minister said in November 2025, WAEC and NECO examinations would be computer-based while there would be a total shift by May/June next year to computer-based test. Even the most tenacious of the supporters of the policies of the administration will be taken aback at the somersaults in the announcements and directions of Minister Alausa, on behalf of the federal government. If the minister had expressed this as an opinion and had hinted that efforts were ongoing to achieve the plans, there would not have been any reason to cast a second look at him in awe. But announcing a major shift in the Nigerian educational evaluation system with what he saw in Bwari as a basis, calls to question the minister’s capability.

The Honourable Minister seemed to have forgotten what took him to Bwari on Monday. Obviously, he had taken his mind off what actually led him and the JAMB Registrar to the field on that day. Dr. Alausa, you were in Bwari for the inspection of the UTME examination because there were widespread complaints by Nigerians that the 2025 UTME had timing, scheduling and in some places, network/server problems. That was what Nigerians expected you to have addressed. You were expected to have spoken to the work of the committee you set up in January to plan the migration of WAEC and NECO to computer-based tests. Nigerians just woke up to the news that in November, examinations would be by computer. It should not be Dr. Alausa again!

I think Mr. Alausa got there and was blown away by the sight of a beautiful array of young Nigerians who are writing their UTME in peace, oblivious of their counterparts who are struggling to get the same kind of peace and service in their quest to write the same examination. Alausa forgot that he was out on the field because parents were crying in hysteria and candidates were frenetic in their apprehension.

Dear honourable minister, it is not just like that sir! You said: “By the 2026 examinations, scheduled for May/June, both the objective and essay components will be fully CBT-based. That is how we can eliminate exam malpractices.” You however disclosed that a committee is currently reviewing examination standards nationwide, with recommendations expected next month. After the review, what next? Professor Ishaq Oloyede, after seeing his UTME in action passed his own message: Everything is fine, the JAMB is jambing. If you have issues, or if there are glitches don’t look at us, look at yourselves and our accredited registration centres. It wasn’t us. UTME is mostly four subjects with multiple choice answers, what would happen to the essays and the practicals? Where is the infrastructure? Where is the network backbone for this? Haba Alausa! The three-year plan is ambitious, to be modest but November? What would be the plight of schools in the rural and underserved areas? What about all the stakeholders?

Prof. Ibrahim Wushishi of NECO told of the complexity of the body’s examinations and how this might hamper easy and, perhaps immediate migration from paper to computer-based test. How much of this has the minster explored? It is good to have a clean, efficient testing and examination system but it would take a process. We must work towards achieving this. It is will not happen by mere speeches.

READ ALSO: Have you seen Tunji Alausa’s health tourists?