SUBEB Chairman: Gov. AbdulRazaq Returned Basic Education’s Lost​ Glory in 3 Years

Prof. Shehu Raheem Adaramaja, a former don at the University of Ilorin and now the chairman of the Kwara State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) spoke on the​ state of basic education, challenges, achievements, the newly introduced KwaraLearn programme, among other things in this interview with Hammed Shittu. Excerpts:

How did you emerge the SUBEB chairman in Kwara?

When Governor Abdulrahaman Abdulrazak came on board, he decided to have me as a member of his team. He asked me to come and oversee this place.

What were the mandates handed over​ to you by the governor?

Like I said earlier, I was handed this responsibility as a trust. SUBEB in Kwara was rotten. You would have heard that the former occupant of this office connived with some people in the account section and the Nigerian Union of Teachers, and some Micro Finance banks and cooperative societies to defraud the state to the tune of millions of naira. That is on the one part. On the other, it was also on record that the UBEC’s matching grant for 2013 was diverted by the previous administration.

How much was diverted?

Over N1 billion was diverted. The money was in our account, but they deceived UBEC. In the course of awarding the contract, the money was siphoned and used for other purposes for which they were not meant for. That led UBEC to blacklist Kwara State. What it simply means is that we can no longer qualify for grants from the commission.

How did you and the state governor tackle the problem?

Well, the situation led to the governor looking for someone who could help reform the place and bring back the glory of the state in education. The choice was me. The mandate is clear from the outset; go and reform the Kwara SUBEB. Let me also add that before I came, teachers’ morale was down. Paying their salaries piecemeal and in instalments was the order of the day. There were no promotions for hard work. Teachers were unwilling to go to work; our classrooms were dilapidated; there was no furniture. You enter some classrooms, and all you see are pupils sitting down. Enrolment in public schools had gone down seriously. This gave opportunities to private schools to thrive in the state. That was what the administration of Governor AbdulRazak met on the ground, and we are trying to reform it.

How far have you gone in reforming the SUBEB?

If I were given a chance to choose a governor I should serve under, again and again, it would always be Governor Abdulrahaman Abdulrazak. This is because we have an understanding that I have been given a clear mandate to go and reform this place. He has given me a free hand to work. But he asked me to apply wisdom and common sense in what I do. He meant common sense in the sense that you must know what you are doing. The governor is not just one you push a proposal to without the ability to defend it, and you think he will approve it. You must be able to convince him. And once you convinced him, you get our approval. You have to conceive meaningful ideas and defend and define the framework to actualise them. The result of this is what you see in all 16 LGAs today. Go round them and see what we have accomplished. I told you that Kwara SUBEB was blacklisted. UBEC vowed never to have any form of relationship with the state again until the state returned N1 billion that was diverted. Before the former governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed left, he was paying the money in instalments but couldn’t finish it up until the expiration of his tenure. He left a deficit of about N450 million.​

How did the state get out of the UBEC blacklist?

Governor Abdulrazak came on board, cleared the deficit, and UBEC opened another record for him. It was in the process that it was discovered that the state arrears in matching grants for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019; six years of arrears were waiting — the money all accumulated to N7.1 billion. To access that money, we have to match it up with our own N7.1 billion. This makes it a total of N14.2 billion. You can now see the reason why he needed a trusted hand to be here. When I came on board, what I met on the ground in our account was N14.2 billion. The governor has never for one day asked me to bring one naira from the money. With that money, we did adverts witnessed by UBEC and the Bureau of public procurement to massive infrastructural provisions for our schools. We did the construction of classrooms; some a block of two classrooms with offices, others, three classrooms with office, others with four blocks and so on. Others had VIP toilets because of our COVID 19 experiences. We had to make water accessible in these schools. Earlier I talked about dilapidated structures where our classrooms were nothing to write home about. So we went into renovations, remodelling, and reconstruction of over 1,335 schools across the states. We also invested in teachers and pupils’ furniture. For the children, we provided 29, 005. This is a twin sitter that accommodates two students. What this means is that we had furniture for 58,010 pupils. We also provided for teachers for about 7,000. A teacher will have his own table, his own seat and two other visitors’ seats. In addition to that, we are also providing digital literacy. It’s like a mini-computer centre that prepares the students ahead. Because we knew that Kwara Learn would come. We looked for a cluster of schools, and in the place, we put digital literacy. We have it in every local government. We also invested in teachers’ capacity building. So, the reformation is total.

Have there been results?​ ​

Last year, in August, the All Progressives Congress, in conjunction with the presidency and UBEC, accessed all APC-governed states on utilisation of the matching grant from the commission. They came to Kwara, and we took them around all our projects. We had just started at the time, but at the end of the day, we were given first in the North Central. We then asked ourselves, if we were able to make first in the region with just 30 per cent execution of our project, what would happen if we had done everything before they came? Also, we enrolled in the Presidential Schools Debate last year. It was the first time the state would feature in that kind of contest. We camped the children for two months, training them. It was easy for me because back at the university, I was the chairman of the faculty debate committee. I knew what it takes to put up a formidable team. I had the experience. We got Lagos state, the venue of the championship. We beat Oyo, Anambra, and Edo, and then they brought Katsina. We also beat them. In the semi-final, we met Lagos, and we beat them again. We met Katsina again at the final, and we beat them again. And we came back with the trophy. Today, Kwara state is Team Nigeria and will represent the country in the World Debate Championship that is coming up in August in the Netherlands. We have started their preparations in earnest. We have even taken the governor to the students in their camps, and he was impressed. Also, in Mathematics, we enrolled our students in a competition put together by the National Mathematical Center in conjunction with UBEC. From state level to zonal level, our won Aisha from Ilorin East came first. We came sixth in Nigeria. We came first in North Central and Sixth in Nigeria.

You were once quoted while speaking on the learning outcome initiative, Kwara LEARN; the team in charge made some saddening discoveries about the state of education when they came. Can you tell us?

What we met on the ground was sad. Before the commencement of the project, we did sampling. We did purposive random sampling; that is, we took two rural and two urban areas for study. Then we did random sampling, which is that we picked, say, from the rural, we picked two. We took two from the urban, mindful of the political fallout that may come out of it. What I mean is that if you pick all of these from one senatorial zone, others may not like it. From Kwara North, we picked Baruten. From Kwara South, we picked Offa; Kwara Central, we picked Ilorin East and Ilorin West. In education, there is what we call formative evaluation, that is, before you start, what are those conditions you met. You do this so that when you do your summative evaluation, you will know the values you have added. In doing this, we dug down in all 365 pilot schools, evaluating what their situations were. In Baruten, we found that in some schools, you can’t find more than two or three teachers. In some locations, because of the terrain, once rain falls, the schools will be closed. The teacher will not go to school, and so the pupils. In some locations where there are big markets, there is no school for pupils. We also found out that some schools had to augment teaching staff through efforts of the community and PTA teachers. We summed up all these challenges and sought a way out. So, we summed up all these challenges and fashioned out a way of solving them.

What did you deploy to solve the problem?

We knew that Kwara LEARN is a digital initiative. We knew we had to retrain the teachers on how to use ICT based tools to effect teaching. Some can use gadgets other than their cell phones; some done even know how to use phones other than to make calls. We devised a means of bringing them up to par on how to use it. In Kwara LEARN, once we deploy a lesson for classes, it goes round. And you can’t, as the teacher refuses to teach it.

Do you mean lessons will be deployed centrally?

Yes, lessons are deployed centrally now. And teachers are bound to be in classes. If you are not in class, the system will prompt us that the teacher is not there. If the teacher is in school but not in class, we have a way of also detecting it. We expect that some of them may soon start to complain. Previous, the teachers just came to school and sat under the trees, marked the register and went home by 12:30. This will be the first of its kind in the whole of the north. The first in Nigeria was Bridge Academy, Lagos. No institution can be compared to Bridge Academy in the country. As a secondary school, its standard is even higher than some of these state-owned universities. This is because the student there are prepared for Cambridge exams, and they pass excellently. Edo state is the first to copy the initiative. They named it EDO BEST. Lagos saw the digital initiative and keyed into it. Lagos started theirs last year and called it Eko Excel. We had the confidence to embark on this because Kwara used to be the best in the whole of the northern region. Every other Northern State copied from Kwara. We have to return Kwara to that status. Thank God for Governor AbdulRazak.