Dr Bassey Ubong, a former provost of the Federal College of Education (Technical), Amoku, Rivers State, has lamented that education is not being allowed to play the role it is supposed to in Nigeria because of the lip service to the sector.
Ubong, who expressed his regrets while speaking with Daily Post correspondent in Uyo Akwa Ibom State over the weekend, noted it was sad that Nigeria is yet to allocate up to 1% of her budgetary provisions to the education sector out of the 26% recommended by the United Nations.
According to him: “The problem of education is that we are not ready in all sincerity to let education play the role it should play, like in the University of Claringforth, Austria, from chalkboard they have everything they want.
“The UN recommends a minimum of the federal budget of 26%, but in Nigeria, we don’t have up to 1%. We don’t allow education play the role it is supposed to. Education transforms lives and society. It is quite sad!”
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He added: “The truth is that I have gone through this thing and I know what is inside. You may mean well as a leader but you may be so constrained. I always believe in one policy, total policy management, policy succeeds when everyone does his work if we do our own bits, the country will succeed”
He also blamed poor followership in Nigeria, adding that leadership succeed in the context of followership.
On examination malpractice, the author said: “Well these things are as old as the system, it is a matter of magnitude and it is more sophisticated now that is why I’m talking about followership. There was a time when I was a provost, we had a leakage in exams question, you think it was caused by one of the teachers, we asked a student whether she is involved, she said she paid N1000 to get the question.
“Also when parents give money to supervisors to get exam questions and answers, instead of encouraging them to read, what do you expect.
“On cultism in schools, we should blame the adults because they introduced the children into it. As an adult you are asked to lead a group and you introduce children into it, these children are being funded and who are the people funding them?”
