Oshunniyi: Why Public Institutions Must be Adequately Funded
Dr. Leke Oshunniyi is the president of King’s College Old Boys Association. In this interview with Funmi Ogundare, he explained why stakeholders should seek innovative ways of funding and enhancing education at all levels, considering that public institutions in the country are massively underfunded and the need to celebrate merit, honesty and hard work by imbibing the right values in the youths at an early age. Excerpts:
As a medical doctor, how do you manage your role as the president of the Kings’ College Old Boys Association (KCOBA), a board member of Shape-A-Child and the managing director of AIICO Multishield Limited?
Over the years, I’ve learnt to multitask. The first years of my medical practice were very, very busy, and I still had to find the time to do other things, most of which were non-profit engagements. I had to become used to working free of charge. After that, it became much easier to work for remuneration. I do quite a lot of things, not just those you mentioned, but many other roles.
As the president of KCOBA, what are your plans towards creating a pathway for effective leadership in the college?
The King’s College Old Boys Association (KCOBA) was started exactly 10 years after the school held its first assembly on Monday, September 20, 1909. In the year 1919, on the occasion of the 10th Founder’s Day Celebration of King’s College, Lagos, His Honour, the Lieutenant-Governor, A.G. Boyle, made a speech in which he observed that old students of the school owed it a ‘never-ending-duty’ to ensure that the greatness of the school was their greatness. It is a reciprocal relationship. Ever since then, the association has tried its utmost to give back. So, there’s a tradition of ‘giving back’, which, by the grace of God, I intend to continue with the rest of my team. We’re rallying the troops, all old boys here and in the diaspora, to give back.
Many old boys from college are making waves in Nigeria’s politics. How do you intend to galvanise their support towards building a better nation for all?
King’s College boys have done very well in the private sector, and we are well represented at the commanding heights of the private sector. However, we all recognise the fact that they have not sufficiently engaged in politics. That much is clear. Apart from His Excellency, the late great Alex Ekwueme, who was a vice-president of Nigeria, we really haven’t had anyone at the very top level. We’ve had governors. I can remember Senator Bukola Saraki, who was Senate President. Before that, he was governor of Kwara state, and a few other political greats. We recognised that politics was one place where we had not acquired enough momentum to change the history of the nation. We’ve been encouraging more of our old boys to actually try their hands in politics. If everybody sits back and says, no, I don’t want to do politics because of morality issues, we are never going to make progress in that direction. We’ve had some candidates for governorship and others for National Assembly seats. We have had candidates who have achieved a few successes, but that large-scale entry into politics is what we seek to help to contribute our own quota at all levels of government in the country.
What do you think is the relationship between leadership and values? What do values mean to you?
Values are a set of standards that help decision-making and character-building and, therefore, family and nation-building. I would say that if you bring up young people in such a way that they form very, very strong characters with built-in qualities of patriotism, collaboration, creativity, and other such desirable characteristics, then you’re actually building leaders because these people would adopt the things that will make the society progress. All those good qualities that make individuals or societies progress are worthy of being taught to our young people. The world is almost overwhelmed by information. Even as a grown person or an adult, it is difficult to determine exactly what to adopt or which way to go. Exposure to so much information is like being at a buffet meal. You see all the food spread before you. You don’t even know what to partake in. But if you have a proper upbringing, it allows you to make choices that will favour the growth and development of your community, the growth and development of yourself, as well as the growth and development of your country and the world. You will be responsive to environmental issues, issues of corruption, and issues related to collaboration, growth, and adoption of proper IT positioning. It is all about catching them young.
In other words, youths should begin imbibing values at an early age?
Yes, at an early age, because we have to teach the teachers. There’s a gap in our society wherein people don’t really know what values to adopt. That gap dates back to the first decade after independence when the standards were gradually being forgotten. We want to bring back those good old days. In secondary school, we had a subject called Civics, and I always remember a diagram in the textbook showing three people. One person was pulling the wagon forward, another was pulling the wagon backwards, and another was just sitting down doing nothing. The one sitting passively and one dragging the wagon back were defined as passive citizens. They are not contributing to the society. The one pulling the wagon forward is the one contributing. With that mindset, we can begin to see how we should train the children to be good citizens, and the country will grow.
Again, if you have to look at it, the current youths are looking up to some people up there who are corrupt and not worthy of emulation. What is your view about this?
The standards are so blurred that I won’t blame a child for being confused because we don’t have a tradition of transparency. How do you know the person is corrupt when he has not been convicted? So technically, you can just infer that if you see a man whose salary is this amount and whose lifestyle is 10 times his legal earnings, you can now say this person is making his money invisibly. Most often, that is not the legal way. So there’s a lot of work that we need to do, and it starts from home. When you ask children what they want to become, they mention some ridiculous professions because they see some people who are practising those illegal professions thriving. We need to take our society back to when we celebrated merit, honesty, and hard work. Otherwise, I fear the worst.
You once pleaded with the federal government to consider ceding the college’s administration to the old boys under a public-private partnership arrangement, considering the enormous requirements to run the college. Has FG acceded to that request?
Our actions should be fact-based. Fortunately, King’s College boys are doing well academically. A lot of it, I suspect, has to do with the reputation of the school. I feel that as a student, you want to live up to those historical expectations. However, the facilities are completely deteriorated compared to when we were there. Indeed, some of the sites will bring tears to your eyes. There are 104 Unity Schools, and the federal government spends the majority of its secondary education budget on these relatively few schools, whereas hundreds of secondary schools all over the country are not benefiting from the federal government. If you are spending 60 to 70 per cent of your budget on secondary education in 104 schools, It’s not a policy that is fair. What we’re saying is, look, let’s take up some of the burden from the government. Every year, we do projects in the school worth tens of millions of naira. Last year, our members donated libraries, IT laboratories, boreholes, sewage treatment plants, classrooms, and toilet projects.
Do you see the college competing on the same level as St. Gregory’s College in terms of facilities?
Honestly, the mission schools have done well because they had the advantage of being able to decide on how things are done without an owner. King’s College is owned and run by the government. It’s very difficult for a private person to want to build a road from Lagos to Ibadan, for instance. In the same way, if you do not have ownership, it’s very difficult to put all your efforts into running the place. The missions, states and old students of St. Gregory’s College, Igbobi Colleges, Government College, Ughelli and Government College, Ibadan, are to be commended for the rejuvenation of the eponymous institutions. I understand that in one of them, admissions were actually stopped for years just to renovate the school, and the outcome has been very admirable. We are trying to see how we can work with the government for the betterment of King’s College. What strategies? What can we do, and how much of a listening ear will the federal government give us? One of the things we achieved was to reduce the intake. In the past, the intake was as high as 800 in one class. Whereas the whole school population was about 400 when we were there. Over the past few years, we have brought the number down to 400 in a class. That’s progress.
What is the KCOBA doing to employ more teachers for the college?
It is not a task for the KCOBA but the PTA. They were paying some teachers because there were gaps, and they were earning very low salaries and working on a temporary basis. It is clear that the burden of education is heavy on the government. Recently, universities were asked to pay 40 per cent of IGR, back to the government, that they should be self-sustaining. I don’t know how that’s going to work. We need to face facts. Publicly owned educational institutions in Nigeria are massively underfunded. We need to find innovative ways to fund and enhance education at all levels. This is what King’s College Old Boys seeks in our public-private proposal.
