Michael Otedola College of Primary Education (MOCPED), Noforija, Epe, Lagos State, is the only institution in Nigeria solely devoted to the training of teachers in primary education. Its provost, Dr Nosiru Olajide Onibon, in this interview shares with LAOLU HAROLDS his achievements in the last one and half years since assuming office, as well as plans for the future.
Leading a specialised college of education must come with its own peculiar challenges. Do you want to share some of these with us?
Running this kind of specialised institution and at that level –primary education – from afar, the first person that sees that would say this is more of primary school; if I graduate from here, I’m going to be confined to teaching in the primary school. And as you know, generally in the country today, no one wants to take their children to any institution below university level. So, the challenge comes first from the name. Then, the sociopolitical view of what a teacher or even the teaching profession looks like. That poses a problem for us as an educational institution. But this kind of specialised institution can transform the quality and standard of education in Nigeria. I’ve been opportune to attend conferences on early childhood education. The idea behind the establishment of this kind of institution is that the foundation of any education starts from primary education. Today, they are even moving further down to early childhood education – and it’s gaining currency all over the world. I believe that if successive administrations had keyed into the aims and objectives of the establishment of this institution, perhaps we would not be here. The institution would have been the hub for the training of primary school teachers in the country.
Is there any kind of feedback mechanism in place through which you monitor the performance of your products in the workplace?
We get this first through the alumni association, and secondly through the patronage we receive especially from the private institutions – private nursery and primary schools. Traditional rulers around come and request that we send our students for teaching practice in their areas. I want to believe that that is borne out of their performance after graduation in those areas.
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In your convocation address, you bemoaned the paucity of funds to run the college. How bad is this funding problem here? How is it impacting your operations?
At MOCPED, as we speak, we have not accessed our capital vote for the year. We also have peculiar challenges in payment of gratuity and remittances of pensioners and taxes of our workers. Before I came on board, the subvention was not enough to pay the gross; so the management would just pay the net and leave the gross; they would leave the other deductions going to the Pension Fund Administrators. This I inherited here. And you know when the staff unions want to cause crisis that is where they come in from. We thank the state government; the subvention was increased about a year or so before I came on board. As at today, we can still pay our salaries (the gross), and I have been doing that religiously since I came on board. I’ve not owed them a kobo whether as deductions or remittances, whether for pensions, taxes, cooperatives or dues. This management has not owed staff a kobo.
…IGR (Internally Generated Revenue) is not helping?
The IGR is not helping for now because I inherited almost a rundown college. It’s like we are just breathing life into the college. This college didn’t do results; talk less of issuing certificates to graduands. The contract between any educational institution and the students is not complete until the students are certificated. That’s my own way of looking at it. When I came on board, with all the trouble of the unions to arm-twist this management, we insisted that the first thing was to get the students on board; let the classroom be conducive for them, teach them as at when due, examine them, assess them, give them their results and issue them certificates. We are here to produce teachers, and they are not produced until you give them certificates.
Dealing with staff unions is where most chief executives of institutions have their greatest problems. What has been your relationship with the unions?
Well, I have been able to prove to them that I’m a trustworthy person. The problem we have, whether government or chief executives, has been total loss of trust. The unions don’t trust the government or the chief executives. When you tell them it’s N100 million, they think it is N200 million; it’s just that you don’t want them to know. Even when you bring documents to the table, they still think the documents have been doctored. I’m telling you as a chief executive, I’ve spent over one and a half years now; I don’t have an official vehicle. I have not been able to take my statutory allowances. I see that as part of the sacrifice to make the institution continue to grow. Today, we have been able to clear the backlog of results from 2013 to date. Today, when our students finish their examination, in two weeks’ time the results are online.
So, my relationship with the unions has been that of a family, I would say; because even at the family level, you disagree then, you come back to agree. There will always be demands, but there is no way management can meet all the demands. I have been at that end before; demands will always come, but what we must realize in life is that when you meet a demand or you solve a problem, that solution creates another problem for you to solve.
You’ve not really been long on that seat, will it be premature to ask you what impact you’ve been able to make since assuming the office of provost of MOCPED?
If I do those things that are ordinarily expected of me to do, would they be achievements? But then, some would say if you were not able to do them, it would still count against you. So, if you are able to do them, they are still achievements. Since I came on board January 2018 in acting capacity (January 2019 I was confirmed as substantive provost of the college), I have been able to renovate the biggest building on this campus that houses the highest number of classrooms and offices. We’ve gotten some of the offices and classrooms renovated, acquired furniture for our staff. We have distributed work tools to them in the registry like laptops, desktops, and printers; we have repaired some of the abandoned vehicles. We have been able to train our staff; I’ve organised for them collective training in ICT and management. We have been able to access our TETFund interventions in terms of staff training and development. Now as I’m talking, I have about eight to nine staff running either master’s or PhD programmes in different figures of intervention from TETFund; the least got N3.2 million for their PhD programme. We’ve been sending both academic and non-academic staff on conferences abroad. We met on ground non-payment of professional fee of our students that had graduated; they didn’t remit it to the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria. This management remitted the money and we called back the students to come and take the professional certificate. We also had the first professional TRCN examination in this college last year.
What else do you hope to have achieved by the time your tenure ends as provost?
We have just had an intervention from TETFund; they’re building for us a storey block that will contain six classrooms and about 14 or 16 offices. One of the classrooms will be ‘smart classroom’ – and that is where my focus is going. I want to leave a legacy by making academic and administrative activities seamless. I want to automate the whole process here to the extent that you cannot enter any classroom if you do not belong in that classroom. If you’re not billed to be in that classroom, whether as a lecturer or as student, you cannot enter. When we came on board, we met the ICT that was ill-equipped; when I gave them the volume of what I expected them to be doing, they said what they had as megabytes per second was small (2 up, 2 down), we increased it to 20 up 20 down, and we are maintaining that. It’s going to cost the college about N8 million. It is this regime that started results upload online; before, results were processed manually.
I want to leave behind a Michael Otedola College of Primary Education that is working. I want to leave the classrooms conducive for teaching and learning and to make the classrooms second home for the students; I want to make the offices second home for the staff. We’re working towards issuing certificates on convocation day. I also hope that, with time, the landscaping of the college will be done; hopefully government will help us. We need perimeter fencing and we need the landscaping.