A Glimpse into Tinubu’s Lagos Magic

Femi Akintunde-Johnson

Since the incumbent president, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, surged ahead of other aspirants to win the primaries of the All Progressives Congress APC, in June 2022, we have been serenaded with the masterful, resourceful and near magical handling of Lagos affairs by Tinubu between 1999 and 2007. These eight years were subsequently sold to the electorates as the halcyon of brilliant and groundbreaking stewardship in the art and science of public administration. The vote-catching mantra went thus: if he did such great feats in Lagos around 20 years ago, he is eminently primed to dazzle the disconsolate, and uplift the dreams and hopes of Nigerians, in a short while. 

  For those who were too young to consciously live through the Lagos era of Tinubu, and other hope-bubbling devotees of the Jagaban Borgu, we have unearthed this piece written during his second tenure, at the height of his fracas with then president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo. It gives a candid profile of the then governor’s handling of an important area of the polity: education. And how we spontaneously responded. Perhaps it will help to contextualize and moderate our enthusiasm as supporters and angst as opposers. The piece was titled “Give My Daughter a Break!” and was first published in The Guardian newspaper of June, 2006. Let us move on….

  “My daughter came back from school the other day, and brought another letter. My heart skipped a beat, and I wondered if my grace period had elapsed. The worst that can happen to a parent is to have your child kicked out of school for unpaid or uncompleted school fees. First, you cannot blame the school for obeying the law of the jungle, and in any case, the school will also have to pay their own “fees” to suppliers, staff, and government, ever demanding and never satisfied like the grave, etcetera. And can you blame the parents who want the best education for their children? They have now been overtaken by the surging hikes in fees such that their initial calculations for choosing a particular school has been rubbished and compromised, sometimes embarrassingly. It is no longer strange to see children withdrawn from one school to another, as the old school has suddenly become too expensive for their parents’ fiscal resources.

  Only psychologists can anticipate the sort of damage some of our children are exposed to as we drag them from one school to the other on account of out-of-sight increases in fees, and other perplexing demands on the fast deteriorating personal economic portfolio of the Nigerian family.

  But the clear and present danger, at this point in time, is not the exorbitant cost of private primary and secondary education (vital and injurious as it is to the Nigerian family who is increasingly worried about the unrelenting decay of the public schools); the issue is more pervasive and destructive to the quality of education we offer in Nigeria.

  The letter my daughter brought was from the principal, who wanted the parents to pay an extra N3,000 for their JSS 3 children. Now, this fee is for “Registration for the new Lagos State Common Entrance Examination”. In a civil but firm note, the principal revealed that this novelty was from the whiz-kids at the Lagos State Ministry of Education. And it was meant for “additional examination practicals”. Of course, we had about two weeks to pay up, or face the consequences. Knowing the rate and ferocity with which the owners of the City of Excellence run public business, we will not be surprised if the idea came as an after-thought, without consultations with schools, parents or any stakeholders for that matter.

  We all know the culprit: the lingering political tussle between the powers in Abuja and the Alausa warriors, culminating in seizures of state allocation. On that aspect, a new fiscal policy is now on course…eminent intervention (call it interlocutors and political guarantors) now have to visit Ota Farms every other month, to massage the ego of the maximum head of the country, to release a part of Lagos allocation, in return for a clear display of good behavior from the stubborn governor with elephantine political dreams. That in a nutshell is the reason why we suffer after-effects of brainwave from harassed civil servants who must think up ingenious (even if injurious) schemes and propositions to eke out money from hapless Lagosians.

  Now, why this foaming in the mouth? Is N3,000 so heavy that some of us have become “activists”? On that query, the answer is yes. Our anger is not only on the brash and impromptu procedure of demanding N3,000 for “practicals” from students in private secondary schools barely weeks to the examinations; we deplore the apartheid attitude where JSS 3 students are made to act as “martyrs” for the sins of national looters, and as mop-basin to clean up the messy stench public schools have become.

  First, let us ask: are students in public schools made to pay this ridiculous amount? Of course, no. Did this same government not collect N6,000 from parents a few months ago as the fee for the common entrance examination? Were these same parents not asked to pay to their federal counterpart (NECO) another N6,000 about the same time as the one stated above? Of course, on each count the sad answer is, yes.

  And, please, pardon my ignorance: what are the “practicals” that we are asked to pay N3,000? Are these not the same items my daughter badgers me regularly for, either to help her do or get artisans to work on them? So, why are we made to pay N15,000 for the same common entrance, just to move to the next class, in the same school, without scant regard whatsoever from an elected government whose cardinal plank for governance is qualitative and affordable (if not exactly free) education?

  It seems to us that the government (be it state or federal) is driving backwards, at a breakneck speed, in its effort to completely wipe out any sort of quality education in the land. Or what else is the benefit of this current madness? Why do we pay for a junior secondary school examination that is five times more expensive than sitting for WASC or GCE or JAMB? Why? What are our educationists trying to prove by asking parents of Nigerian children in private schools to pay through their noses some bogus “extra-curricular” fees when indeed they should bury their heads in shame for the perfidy they have turned public education to?

  I am a product of public education; my parents, poor as they were, did not groan to send me to school; and I got enough quality to allow me make my way in life…without harbouring any inferiority complex whatsoever. Can any student pass through what remains of our public education today and escape the stench of its pervasive odium and neglect? Or shall we take it that the next focus of the government for general and corporate desecration is the sprawling private enterprise in the education of our children?

  If these statements sound overstretched, or seem like crying wolf; one just needs to put the latest yo-yo dance over the current approaches to the Universal Basic Education scheme (6-3-3-4 structure) and the “rumour” of extending primary education to nine years, in retrospect. Before we conclude that government is indeed confused and disillusioned about how to run education in the country, we may have to observe the military tactics they have imported into public policy machinery: they brow-beat school proprietors into all sorts of hare-brained schemes, in the name of “government said so”…”.

(To Continue)

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