Dr Hamid Bobboyi, is the Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), he speaks in this interview with Nigerian Tribune, on some unsung reforms and transformation going in the Basic Education sub-sector in Nigeria, and the commitment of the Federal government to deliver quality education to the Nigerian child. He also spoke on some landmark achievements of President Muhammadu Buhari, in the last two years. He said that the two years of President Buhari administration, even though came at a very difficult time, has made tremendous impact in the nation’s polity. The Adamawa born scholar and politician of international repute, urged Nigerians to keep faith with the administration and cooperate with the government in the effort to build solid foundation for development of Nigeria.
Two Years Administration of President Muhammdu Buhari
The government of President MuhammaduBuhari, came in at a very difficult time; the time when we had the insurgency in the North East. There were really fears all over the country. When the insurgency was raging those of us from the area knew very well the effect, because at one time, one has to think which direction to go with your family-either to go to Cameroon, Niger or some other places to escape the insurgents. One achievement we should all talk about of President Buhari administration, is the ability to come and contain the insurgency in the North East, re-establish peace and start giving people hope that, yes, we can live in peace in Nigeria. I think this is very fundamental. As I discuss with a lot of people about this issue, I always say we shouldn’t forget that particular point.
The other aspect that we have also seen in which the government has attained some level of success, is trying to do what was right for the country. Everybody knows how deep the corruption had eaten into the fabric of the society, but he took a stand that the nation cannot develop without taming the monster of corruption in ensuring that we do things right in the country. In the past resources were allocated but because corruption was endemic, everything ends up in private hands. I think, anybody who wants to succeed in building Nigeria and building the economy of this country, must first address these issues. There is no way we can develop as a nation, without collectively address it. How far he has succeeded is left in the hands of people to judge depending on people’s perspective but these are fundamental issues we need to address.
The third element that I want us to take into account is building the nation’s economy to be sustainable. We have gone back to agriculture, and I think tremendous effort has been made in building agricultural system that will ensure that we feed our own people. We do not have to keep importing rice and other things. If those objectives that were set initially are achieved, it will take the country to much greater height. Of course, there are challenges here and there. I am not a typical politician that will say that everything is very rosy. But in every situation, you have challenges and the important thing is to be able to address those challenges whenever they emerge.
UBEC Synergy with State Governments on UBE Delivery
Nigeria has made a lot of efforts in trying to institutionalise some kind of Basic Education in the past. We had Universal Primary Education (UPE), which was launched President Olusegun Obasanjo in his past life before he became the civilian President of Nigeria. In 1999, the Obasanjo, as the civilian President launched the Universal Basic Education (UBE) in Sokoto, to ensure every Nigerian child is accorded the opportunity to acquire basic education of 6 years of Primary School and 3 years of Junior Secondary School. From that time, a lot of success has been achieved in terms of drive for enrolment in different parts of the country. The effort to ensure we have the synergy between the Federal and State governments in ensuring that attention is paid to the basic education sector, led to the establishment of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) by the Federal government. UBEC as you know is an intervention agency to see how the Federal Government could work with the State governments in providing basic education for the citizens. The Federal government does not own a single primary school with the exception of the Unity Schools or Federal Government Colleges; and it doesn’t employ a single teacher. So, unless we work together, build the synergy between the State and Federal in our systems, it will be difficult to achieve success. Much progress has been achieved, particularly in some States. Transition rate from primary to Junior Secondary schools has also improved. Though, we still have challenges; challenges of out-of-school children and we are addressing that vigorously to ensure that we provide those opportunities for every Nigerian child to be in school.
Of course, the problem of out-of-school children has other dimensions in terms of some people trying to avoid the conventional schools in favour of Almajiri system and other education system that are out there. But I think a lot of progress has been made to ensure that we get every child to be part of this process and benefit from the system. The Federal government has made a funding arrangement where, it provides matching grant through UBEC that the states are also required to produce the counterpart fund in order to access the grant. The whole idea is to provide robust financial base for the Basic Education sector. I think, it is an important arrangement that has served the sector quite well in the last few years. Of course, there are problems but it has worked quite well in ensuring sustainability in the basic education system in Nigeria.
Challenge of Out-of-school Children Syndrome
The Federal government has evolved several initiatives designed to address the challenge of out-of-school children in the country. School feeding is one area that the Federal government has introduced. School feeding promotes school attendance, because a child needs to well and healthy to be able to go to school. If a child is provided some kind of nutritious meal per day he or she will be available to continue with a lot of difference. The nutritional health of a child enhances the child’s ability to comprehend what is being taught within the four walls of a classroom. The current administration has put in place a more realistic school feeding system under the Office of the Vice President as part of the Social Investment Programme and a lot have been archived. The programme is a partnership between the States and the Federal Government, because without such synergy we cannot achieve progress. A lot of States had attempted the school feeding programme but have all collapsed. The school feeding programme in place now is more sustainable. And as more States join with their contribution and management systems; and learning from the past mistakes, then we will move forward towards ensuring every child in school has a decent meal at least once a day. It makes a lot of difference in the area of education.
Integration of AlmajiriSystem into Basic Education
The Almajiri system is a very old system that has been there, in some places like Borno, over 800 years, that they have been practicing the system. We need to engage with that system because we find out that many our States particularly in the North, you have people in the Almajiri sector more than you have in the conventional school sector. It is the realisation of this particular activity and the need to provide basic education in much larger goal that UBEC has to intervene in this area and build schools in some states of the Federation for integration of Almajiri system into basic education. We have also restrategised to see how much we could involve not only the States Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEBs), but also the communities, the Islamic Organisations, so that those that are willing to integrate have the Islamic School System side by side the conventional school system. It is important to us, to our educational development; it is important to us for our security; you see what happened in the North. Much of the recruits were coming from the traditional sector. We have taken this seriously and we have been working on it. Fortunately, there are some international development partners that have been active in this particular field. UNICEF has been active, UNESCO has been active, DFID has been active as well as the World Bank. It is our hope that with the cooperation of all these agencies we will be able to register real progress in the near future.
Matching Grant to States
The Federal Government has done much in the intervention to states in the last few years to support the implementation of Universal Basic Education. One of the key interventions is the provision of matching grant to states. Under the law establishing UBEC, the states are also required to provide counterpart funding in order to access the matching grant disbursed to them. A rundown of the intervention in this respect in the last few years indicated that in 2005/2006 over N30 billion was disbursed to states. In 2007/2008, about N58 billion was disbursed as matching grant to the States. In 2008/2010, N42 billion while in 2011 to 2012, we have N63 billion that was disbursed. In 2013/2014, we have about N68 billion disbursed. In 2015/2016, there are still some states that are still trying to access, we have about N24 billion disbursed. This gives you a total of disbursement within these years under review to over N290 billion that has been disbursed to the states.
Challenge of Un-accessed Fund
The law establishing the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), made it mandatory for the states to provide counterpart funding before they could access the matching grant. As I said earlier, the essence of establishing UBEC was to see how to expand the resource base for the basic education sector. Although, we have a situation where some states are not really able to make progress in accessing the fund. Last year, we had complained that about N68 billion had remained un-accessed. Fortunately, that figure has come down. By the 2015/2016 record, un-accessed fund at the moment stands at about N46 billion. It has come down quite substantially. We shouldn’t forget that 2017 allocation cannot be accessed in 2017. It will be accessed in 2018, because the releases are not complete and the release will keep on accumulating until December 31, 2017 when the states will begin to access it in 2018. At the moment, now the focus many of the states is to see how they could access 2016 allocation. That is why the bulk of the money is still remaining. We are making quite a lot of progress. Many states have began to listen to our pleas, and of course, the media, this is one area that the media has been very helpful in trying to draw attention to the fact that why should this money by lying idle with UBEC when the states could utilize it to revamp the basic education sector.
Recruitment of 500,000 Teachers
One of the key problems with the basic education sector is about teacher supply; teacher quality and supply has been the major challenge and until we can address those issues, all the infrastructure investment that we make within the sector would be in vain. We can’t realise the full outcome without having qualified teachers who are able to deliver basic education effectively. The move by this administration to bridge this gap is something not only commendable but ought to have been done much earlier, so that we focus on this kind of investment in terms of employing the right kind of human resources needed to move the basic education forward. The Social Investment Programme is something certainly that is commendable.
Distribution of Instructional Materials
UBEC distributes especially, the core textbooks, in terms of Mathematics, English, Basic Science and Technology, as well as Social Studies to schools. But for quite some times, this was stopped because of certain problems. However, we have resolved the issues. It is in the process; by next week the final financial bid by various publishers would have been completed. The publishers engaged are expected to begin delivery of the books six weeks after. We have done two things: first, we have to discuss with the states which kind of textbooks do they need? The idea of distributing the same textbooks to all the states is not appropriate. Textbooks needed per time in Abuja cannot be what is needed in Uyo. So, we discuss with them which textbooks do you need and we have this. The second thing we are also trying to address now is about the number. It used to be on pro rata basis, that every state has the same number of textbooks. We have been mandated to take care of the Nigerian child. If you are lucky to come from a less populous state, you end up getting more textbooks but if you are populous state like Lagos and Kano, you end up getting short-changed. The current procurement process is eliminating all these kinds of anomalies. We focus on the child within the country. That is the responsible of UBEC to ensure that it provides the textbooks to that particular child and it is a commitment that we are making. Our hope is that and with the system we have put in place, by the middle of next year, UBEC would be able to provide almost all the textbooks that have been requested by the states. This has never been achieved before but we hope that we can achieve that, God willing by June, July of 2018.
Key Success Areas
First, we have made tremendous progress to whittle down the high figure of the un-accessed fund. Many states are now accessing the fund based on our advocacy and we also monitor the projects that are being executed by the states. We have a very strong project monitoring team, we have a very strong financial monitoring team and as I said earlier, if we find any infraction in any state, we close down the matching grant account. The matching grant requires the presence of the counterpart fund, legally to support the fund in the state. UBEC has to withdraw its matching grant if a state is trying to withdraw its counterpart fund after the Federal government has paid money into that particular account. We have upped our effort in financial monitoring. This is something that since I came, we have been doing.
We have also begun to streamline and ensure the effectiveness of our other projects. We have teacher professional development project. This is a very important project to us. For last year, 2016, we have given every state N120 million for Teacher Professional Development. We have increased the monitoring of this particular project to ensure that teachers are properly trained because of the importance the administration attaches to improving on the quality of teachers in the country. In terms of the impact assessment, we have also changed the old system and we are bringing knowledgeable people to follow these things and advise us on whether the outcome is what we are looking for.
Inclusive education is another area we focused in the last one year. We have redesigned the programme. We are working with the states on how to take care of those who are challenged one way or the other-hearing impairment, sight impairment, those who have problems in movement or whatever challenge. We are trying to ensure that provision of basic education include all those who are also disadvantage in one particular area or the other. What we are doing is that if you are a private provider of education to these groups of people, you must provide concrete proposal to us. It is not enough for you to come to us that I’m doing this and doing that and funds are given to you. We ensure that we monitor the proposals, assess them just to ensure that money from UBEC for inclusive education is being spent judiciously.
Within inclusive education, we are also experimenting with a new programme. We are trying to do early detection of sight problems. We check children who have sight problems. We discovered that some children with sight problems go to classrooms but unable to concentrate. We are moving around the schools to ensure that we detect these problems very early, instead of allowing it to hinder their education. Some the affected persons could stay there staring at the black-board and you would not know whether they are seeing or following up with what is being taught. We are also going to roll out in this particular area, Model Special Schools before the end of the year. It’s a promise that we are going to have six Model Special Schools in the six geopolitical zones. We will soon begin the award of contracts in that direction. Go around the country they are still challenges, blind schools are still looking for Braille paper and type writer. I’m not sure that in all our offices, even in journalism, how many people are using type writer; so we have to move. This generation is into computerising. I was in South Africa and I met a Secretary in an organisation within a University, we used to correspond; he sends me e-mails and I will send I will send to him, only to discover that he was blind but functional. He has his own walking stick and sits on a computer and communicates all over the world. He can make a phone call to you and discuss with you effectively. We need that kind of functionality and I think that is part of the process that we are trying to do as far as Special Schools are concerned.
Establishment of New Model Schools
By July, we will begin rolling out the general model schools; about 7 of them to be built in Abuja. We are discussing with the states that the matching grant that we give should also complement this project. Why do we need the model schools? I think the world is changing, computerisation is taking over, smart classrooms are coming in place and we cannot stay stationary with our blackboard and chuck. The chuck-board has become a relic in many parts of the world. So, the model schools will really give Nigerians the new phase of basic education, the modern phase that is going to safeguard the integrity of the system and the integrity of our country. Because if we don’t do that we would have failed really in making Nigerians understand that the delivery of basic education in the modern era is different. We are not going to make them elitist schools, but they will be made available in such a manner that they are systemic, so that yearly, we keep moving on to certify more schools as model schools. Our hope is that within five years, we would have made a lot of impact in this direction in the sector.
Development of Strategic Master Plan
When we came in, one of the challenges we faced was to see how to plan and plan properly for the basic education sector. That brought us to the issue of Strategic Plan. The challenges that we face can be gargantuan and when we use fire-brigade approach in trying to solve them, we cannot succeed. So, when I came in, one key effort we made was to discuss with our partners at the state levels, and ask, can we continue to address the problems within the basic education sector in an ad hoc manner? Certainly, we cannot. We need to sit down and understand, what are the major problems that we confront in our basic education delivery, look at the data that we have in terms of the various indices within the basic education sector and have a long term plan. So, how do we do it? We insisted that we must have strategic goal that we need to pursue within a time frame. This has led us to take strategic plan very seriously within the sector and we have made a lot of progress. We cannot only plan for UBEC, we have to also plan for the SUBEBs and for the entire country as far as basic education is concerned. Quite a lot of effort has been made in that regard so much so that a lot of states have began sending their own medium-term strategic sector plan to us. We are going to put all these together and see how we can build a national plan for the basic education sector and then use this as a basis of activity at least for the next three, four five years. So, as we begin to address the issues, we can sit down and assess what progress we are making and be able to say these are challenges, how do we address them? I feel happy talking about this because it appears as if it is the hidden key that we have not found. Now when a state brings its action plan, we check how it fits into our medium-term plan, how does it fit into our strategic master plan. Hopefully, by June, we should have all these plans in place and publish them for each one to see because it is part of the public record. This would enable journalists and others to also monitor the progress being made based on the strategic master-plan. And if there are challenges, how do we address them.
May 29 message
I must tell all Nigerians that we must keep faith. We must have hope in the future because this is the opportunity where we can work more closely together towards making Nigeria great. A lot of things depend on the leadership and the leadership may make its effort, but I think, the follower-ship, the Nigerian citizens need to find ways in which our innate energies could be mobilised; that irrepressible Nigerians that you can find anywhere in the world, to building the nation. We need to provide environment where people express and realise their potential and to excel, because Nigeria without excellence will be difficult to become a virile nation. We must also cooperate with one another build a vision of a better Nigeria, rather than seeing any opportunity to pull down the country. How do you bring this down and bringing out primordial sentiments have become a major problem. I think, as a nation, we need to put our act together; we need to see how we could build cooperation and discourage situations where if I can’t have it, no one else should have it. Nigeria is big enough for all of us to participate and realise our ambitions, our goals and potentials. My message is for Nigerians to keep faith with the government. Yes, we must have hope in the future and we will produce a Nigeria that we will be proud of.
and then