Why we are investing in education, healthcare —Agboola

Olusegun Agboola, a business mogul, is the coordinator of Mafoya Oluwa mbe Foundation, a non-governmental organisation initiated in honour of the patriarch of the late Chief Ezekiel Amoo family to give intervention in the education and health sectors, as well as empower the needy. In this interview by OLAWALE OLANIYAN and RUKIYAT BAKARE, he speaks about the foundation’s plans for out-of-school children and the need for government and other corporate bodies to invest more in education.

 

What influenced the establishment of Mafoya Oluwa mbe Foundation?

We discovered that in the South-West, Oyo State has the highest number of school children and children who are not even going to school due to the economy of the country. Though the current administration in Oyo State is working and has been able to increase the number of children in school through some initiatives, we believe more children can return to school because education is the principal thing. Anyone that is educated becomes enlightened and when you become enlightened, you become less of a burden to people; you provide solutions. When you provide solutions, you have a means of earning an income. That is why we picked education as our principal focus.

We also look at health because life expectancy in Nigeria is pegged at 54 while in developed countries where there is adequate medical care, they have life expectancy of at least 85 and people retire at 65. If life expectancy here is 54, then we know that we have many problems. But health care  should not a big problem because God has actually blessed us with good weather conditions; we don’t have extreme weather conditions like they do in such places. We don’t experience snow, landslides or earthquakes; so, it’s just the basics; taking care of ourselves, knowing what you look for, knowing how to manage our body, knowing what to eat and what to avoid.

There was something called a sugar tax in the United Kingdom; they added to the price of coca-cola and all sugar drinks because they discovered that there were certain people who drank it a lot and started having diabetes. So they worked round it. Some countries have fully banned the sale of cigarettes because they know it causes cancer; it has been demonstrated. But here, there was no ban; they say they must not display it so that people don’t see it. In some countries, they only sell alcohol to people of a certain age because they are aware of the effect of alcohol on the liver. These are some of  the pieces of information that we want to share with our people.

 

Who should be blamed for such situation?

The blame goes both ways; sometimes the people who produce these things don’t know the impact but the health workers over time document their observations and they come to their conclusions.

Where there aren’t lots of researches, you would not get that kind of information coming out because the moment it comes out, they forward it to the government and government will make regulations and policies that will be extended to cover such things. That is how it is all over the world and it is a continuous circle; for people to introduce products, they need to get NAFDAC’s approval. When we are able to sensitise people enough, they can take smarter decisions for themselves.

Also, one of the aims of our foundation is to empower the needy. With a little help, we can assist our beneficiaries start up small trades. We might be able to put some money together to buy the tools needed for their trade or we sponsor the beneficiary’s education, this will be done to help the beneficiary become a useful member of the society.

 

How do you want to help out-of-school children with the data at your disposal?

The government is already taking some good steps and it is seeing positive results in that regard. We have gone around and we have seen that the condition of the schools is very bad; children are not interested in going to school. These are the areas that we see and there are many of such interventions that we have identified.

The United Nations (UN) states that 690 million people all over the world go to bed hungry everyday and the part they did not emphasise is that a large percentage of that is in Sub-Saharan Africa where Nigeria is the largest country. In fact, it is said that Nigeria now has the largest population of people living in poverty all over the world and what they mean by that is that people are living on less than a dollar a day. The UN considers and classifies them as poor.

The second area we are also looking at is to encourage teachers; we all know the salaries teachers receive. We can encourage the real people who are interested in education and are qualified to come and teach. The incentives that we want to give them is end of the year bonus and also introduce online courses so they themselves can begin to upgrade their skills; these courses are available on the internet for free for both teachers and the students.

We are working on helping to improve working environments for teachers. We are also looking at infrastructure for schools and meal programmes for children. We know that the Federal Government has a project like this but there is still a gap and we want to improve on that and help the schoolchildren.

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