ogun state principals are productive - dejo kadir ancopss chairman southwest

Can we meet you  sir?

I ‘m Dejo  Kadir, Principal  of  Ansaru  deen  Comprehensive College, Ota, the  senior  wing of  the college and the state president of ANCOPSS and the South- West chairman of ANCOPSS .

For how long have you been on this saddle as the state president of  ANCOPSS.

By  November 2014  I would have concluded four (4)years.

How has the experience been so far ?

Very interesting, though sometimes very challenging. It is an interesting thing which gives you an opportunity of serving your professional colleagues and it also gives you opportunity as an individual to have an insight into government thinking and policy execution. But so far, so good.

Ogun state is a gateway state and population is expected to be high in the schools like in Lagos and other big states. How have you been able to be coping with large population in schools?

Well, maybe that is one of the major challenges facing school administrators in Ogun State and I want to say that this may not be peculiar to Ogun State, like you said we have Lagos. In those states like Oyo, Anambra e.t.c when you talk about over population, we are not just talking in terms of the enrolment, we want to look at teacher – student ratio. There are schools that have just about 200, 300 students but the question you want to ask is, how many teachers do they have? Is it commensurate to the number of students and subjects. Sometimes people, who are not in the education field equate the numerical strength of teachers in a school to availability of teachers or to student-teacher ratio. Like if we are talking about the so called small schools where you have about 250, 300 students and you are having about 15, 18 teachers, if you just put it on a scale directly like that, you will think they have enough teachers. But in the junior schools we are having nothing less than 14 subjects while in the senior schools, minus the technical or business acquisition subjects, we have 23 solid subjects. So in a situation where you have 400 students and you are having 20 teachers, what you will want to ask is, the spread in terms of subjects. Is it adequately taken care of? We have cases of places where you don’t have mathematics teachers, where you don’t have English Language teachers, the natural sciences are there. When you put it side by side, that is when you can now say you have adequate staffing, not just in terms of the student heads that you want to count. We are now looking at the available subjects for the students, the number of students on roll, then the number of teachers cum subjects being taught in the school. That is when you can come up and say, we have over population, we don’t have over population. Don’t just go straight away placing the number of teachers against the number of students and say this is the teacher – student ratio that we have. It goes beyond that. And I want to tell you, today in Ogun State we still require more than 1000 teachers who will adequately take care of the subjects and the students ratios. While the government is doing everything humanly possible to savage the situation, we are saying that the good situation could be arrested not to get worse. But for now we still need a lot of yearnings to bridge the gap between the teacher and the student ratio.

Sir, when we talk about productivity on the part of teachers, there is a school of thought that believes that presently in Nigeria the existential reality is such that teachers  are not putting in enough, that you are still likely to find a teacher that is a trader somewhere. You as an administrator, head of school and head of ANCOPSS in this state, how have you been able to manage your teachers?

The first question we will want to ask ourselves, is, is it possible for you to have a product that will not be an end product of a society? Every man is a product of his own society and the circumstances within which such a person is working. How many states of the federation today, I’m not talking of the south-west alone, apart from Lagos, how many states in this country have provision fir teachers housing scheme? In the real sense of it, how many states in this federation as at today that have provision for car loan? realistic car loan, I’m not talking about those that will be telling you they will give you N300,000, can N300,000 buy you any reasonable car without you inviting more problems into your family? We need encouragement. Until government sees this in education as a pivot of development, we will continue to have this type of problem. When a councellor will be earning over N200,000 and post graduate teacher of 6, 7 years experience in the classroom, we are not talking of the age of the certificate now earning less than 150,000 take home, we live within the same society.

In Ota here, I doubt if you can, get a self-contain apartment for anything less than N7,500, N8,000. Per month. You pay school fees for you children even if your children are going to public school. As a teacher, you will know that you children need supplementary textbooks apart from what the government will give. By the time you put all these together, there is that economic pressure. That does not justify not doing what they are employed to do, but like we are saying, in the urban centres we have a situation where you have an enrolment of 2,000 students in a junior school where all the subjects are compulsory and for a particular subject with over 2,000, 3,000 students having just 2, 3 teachers how do you expect the mathematics teacher in that school to give take home assignments? How do you expect an English Language teacher in that school to give an essay writing? How many times will they be able to do class work and mark those exercise judiciously? You don’t have to pass buck, we know where the problem is. You know for how many months the polytechnic lecturers had been on strike and colleges of education. When they come back whichever way they want to do it, they clamp the two semesters into their scheme and within the next 3years or 3 ½ years those people will pass out. It is the products of those colleges of education and universities that will come to teach in secondary schools. That is why I said we are products of our society, of our environment. If you are a teacher, for over twenty years and just tomorrow the student that passed out under your nose with just four passes,not at credit level in WAEC and is “fortunate” to be very close to a senator or a member of the House of Representatives and he’s been appointed as a liaison officer for that person in the same local government and he’s ridding 3, 4 cars, building a house within 24 months and you have just 5years, 4 years to leave the service, won’t you look elsewhere?

The society itself is not getting its priorities right. We now measure people’s quality by economic standard not minding how they got there, so everybody will want to save for the raining day. A man that has just 5 years, 6years, 7 years to leave the service and not very sure of his pension. These are realities. There are some cases the government should be able to take care of before you start to accuse somebody. If all the social facilities are there, why do I have to go and do extra work anywhere when I know if I’m sick I go to the hospital and pay the minimal? I know I don’t have to think twice before sending my child to higher institution. I don’t have to buy a generator in my house, I don’t need to change my tires unnecessarily every year. And I know that once I drop my pen tomorrow within the next six months I’m already taking my pension, my gratuity is already in my bank account, why do I have to do any extra thing? It’s because of perceived economic insecurity. Even when you leave the job, even the children you’ve trained, an average family today will have at least a graduate of five years roaming the streets. If you are a teacher, your wife is a teacher and you have three children in the university, how do you cope? Even if it is public university. How many teachers could afford to have two children in LASU? How many of them could have two children pursuing professionally oriented courses in Olabisi Onabanjo? Until when we look at the roots of the problems, that is when we can start to say people are shirking their responsibilities.

When you look at the parents, even members of the alumni of various secondary schools, are they doing enough to help in savaging the situation?

 Well, in some schools, some privileged schools that are fortunate to produce by Nigerian Standard, elites, the old students are there to assist them but the question there is how far could they go? Because these schools are not many and almost everybody within the environment where they are situated wants their children in those schools. So when you look at the efforts of the old students, you still discover that there is still a yawning gap. As much as they are willing to do, as much as the schools too are trying to make judicious use of whatever these old students are giving in, the gap is still there. We still have to face that reality, we still need more. We should go beyond the attachment of an alma mater. We are members of a society. If you come from Ota, is it because you are fortunate to have had your secondary education in Ijebu Ode Grammar School, at Igbobi College, at Kings’ College that all your attachment should be to Kings’ College? How many members of sets of your age group had the opportunity of going to such schools? There is need for the community itself to look beyond the old students, the PTA, we should come into the community. People should be philanthropic without looking back for a gain. Most of our philanthropists that will come, they do this, they do that, it is either an avenue to project their name for a further gain from the community, or whether they are working with a multinational corporation that they know will one day come into the community and say, what has so so person done for you? Or worst still that we are not looking at, many of these industries and philanthropists are doing so little to evade tax.

Yes. Take your time to go and investigate it. When you look at the profit they are making, you look at what they are putting into education as a social service and look at the tax relief, you discover nobody is doing anything. But because this is a society where we don’t have many philanthropists the little number that comes, we still have to encourage them and appreciate them.

The old students are trying in the real sense of it. Most of the schools that have viable old students, they are benefitting from their coming together, but how many of such schools do we have?

I was happy when our governor was having his town hall meeting about a year ago when somebody came up and said “in schools they are still asking us to pay for extra lesson this and that”. The governor was being realistic. He said what the free education is saying is that giving everybody a level playing ground but that does not mean that individual parents should not invest in their children. Like I was saying the other time, is it the government that will come and buy you extra books for your children? Is it the government that will buy uniforms for your children? Our people especially in the south-west are misconstruing free education for total free, which is not possible. Even in Yoruba parlance as people will have it, any medicine that is being given free, is not valued. You have to invest in your children and that is where our enlightenment is now weak. Parents should be enlightened to let them know that they should participate more in the PTA and not just only paying PTA money. Come to meetings, monitor the development of your child, ask questions about what schools are using those money for, don’t just give out the money. Even the payment is not something that is compulsory, it’s a donation, its voluntary and under voluntary thing, a lot of parents are hiding under that not to carry out their responsibilities and this has backlash on the standard of the school. It’s not the government that will come and pay for electricity, it’s not the government that will come and pay for water, it is whatever we generate within the school, but people don’t know, they think once the government says it is free, it should be total free. It is only free to the extent that you don’t pay tuition, you don’t pay teachers’ salary, you don’t renovate schools directly, compulsorily you are not being asked to construct more classes, government will do that. But parents should also know that there is room for them to lend an helping hand to the schools.

Another school of thought believes that secondary school education in Nigeria suppose to have a board, i.e national board for secondary school education. Do you subscribe to this school of thought?

Very much. If we have a national body for primary, we have for colleges of education, we have for technical education and we have for universities and we have to remember, what products you have in the primary can not get to the tertiary without the secondary, why are we abandoning it? During Obasanjo era there was a draft of the supposed law that was supposed to be given to the national assembly for an enactment. Like our elders will say and logically, is it possible for you to barb somebody’s hair without his real presence in the saloon? We came up with a Secondary School Education Board where secondary school teachers were not represented and that was one of the reasons why that law had not seen the light of the day. Inspite of all efforts by ANCOPSS, by secondary school teachers, by NUT, they refuse to do something about it. It will not work, when you go and pick a technocrat who had never been an administrator in a secondary school but because he had been in the ministry of education or one agency or the other, you bring him and say this will be the executive secretary. How does he understands the pains, the needs, the yawning of those he suppose to serve? There are some duties and some responsibilities where experience will account for about 50% of your productivity. Even if you want to get across to people, you want to find out some things. If I know that you are my colleague, I will be freer to discuss with you than talking with an external person. If you are a professional teacher and I’m talking to you as a teacher even if I want to lie to you, if you want to be humble you may not say I am telling lies but you know where to draw your lines. And because that body is not there, that is why we are having crisis in our secondary education and you discover that like in the junior school sector, in the basic schools, that is why they are having problems. All over the states you cannot say this is the person that is responsible for basic education in this country. If the government wants to be very stubborn, they will tell you, go to UBEC in Abuja, UBEC will tell you your state has not paid its counterpart funds, these are technical things that are affecting our operation, but the man on the street does not know. It is the state government that will employ those that will teach in the basic schools, it is the state government that will make land available. But when a minister needs a plot in any state we now know that the president is the custodian of all the lands in Nigeria but if we needs it for educational purposes, we still have to start passing through routines that may not be easily achieved. These are the problem we are having.

In the last four years where have you taken ANCOPSS in Ogun State, I mean what are the achievements you have recorded?

I would have preferred you ask my members that question because sometimes we are all human beings, there is no way your want to assess yourself and you want to have a full assessment. That is my own attitude to it.

We took over from somebody, from somewhere and we are heading somewhere. If you are the driver of a vehicle, your concentration is where you are going but sometimes your passenger will know whether you are a rough driver or you are a good driver.

Let me reframe the question. What are those things that you have been able to put on ground?

We’ve been able to establish what I will call a temporary secretariat. We’ve been trying for long right from my first year, that was 2010, to get an allocation from government and we’ve not succeeded in getting that, so we have to look for a temporary accommodation for our secretariat.

Talking in terms of attendance of workshops and seminars, for the first number of years, 2, 3years now, we’ve succeeded in getting almost,80, 85% of our members attending national workshops organized by ANCOPSS and other agencies because we now make it part of their annual responsibilities. But in terms of registration of all workshops organized by ANCOPSS either at the state, regional or national level for the past two sessions we’ve been having 100% registration. But in terms of actual attendance, it is still between 75 or 85%.

We’ve been able to take Ogun State ANCOPSS to a higher level. The position of the south-west chairmanship I want to believe was not given to Kadir, it was given to Ogun State because of our drive within the national ANCOPSS because of our contributions and presentations. Like I told you 3 years ago when we were in Kano, we had 100% registration about 65% attendance. When we got to Makurdi last year, we had about 70% attendance, 100% registration. This year we were in Ibadan, we had over 80% attendance and 100% registration. And may be we can use that as a measure but that one is a voluntary participation of individual principal. It makes our members to see that there is need for us to go on orientation from time to time. The world is changing. ICT is coming in everything. Most of us administrators got out of universities when ICT was not in fashion so we have to build ourselves up to the present challenges in our schools. To that level we have tried to strive to establish an esteem status for principals within the state. There is no way you will have an association of over 400 and there won’t be black sheep. We know we have some of our members we still need to work on, but the population of such members is been coming lower every year and to the best of my knowledge, we’ve been trying to cooperate with the government, we’ve been trying as much as possible to keep our schools clean and for the last four years, there had never been any year that a principal from Ogun State does not win a presidential award. For three years now, we have the best administrator in junior schools. For two years we have the best administrator in the senior schools. That shows that principals in Ogun State are productive.

How was the Ibadan conference?

It was fine. The people in Oyo State, the governor was with us not only physically but he was there for us economically and morally and the organizers too, they tried a lot to make people comfortable right from the venue to the conference materials. And for you to know how truly the south west conference was, the vice chancellor, university of Ibadan was made to give the keynote address. He presented the lead paper personally. We had other professors who presented papers, who shared their experiences with us. I think it was a successful congress by my own assessment.

What does ANCOPSS stand for in this society?

ANCOPSS stands for uprightness and continous development of secondary education. The purpose of ANCOPSS when it was established 57 years ago was to continue to uplift the standard of secondary education and more importantly to make sure that our members are up and doing professionally and in terms of stability within the society, I think to a large extent, our people have achieved that.

Your message for principals and secondary school teachers in Ogun State generally.

What we should note in this our job as much as I don’t subscribe to the axiom that teacher reward is in heaven, we should not only take salaries, we should earn our salaries and if every teacher in this state earns his own salary, that will mean we are doing our best for our students. We should look beyond what we are taking today. We should see our service as a kind of contribution to the development of the society. Like our motto will say, we are suppose to be leaders who will build leaders and that should be our guiding spirit. Every secondary school teacher, every principal should see himself or herself as a builder who will build the foundation of the future of the state.