Merit, quota system and all that

By Josef Omorotionmwan
OUR sense of democracy may be warped. There is still a large group of Nigerian youths who are deprived of freedom to learn because of poverty or prejudice or the absence of adequate educational facilities.

And as citizens of a democratic society whose moral premise is that each individual has a right to that education that will permit him to achieve his maximum growth as a person, our duty is to work for, and support, whatever measures of reconstruction we deem necessary to remove the social obstacles to freedom of learning.

It is morally binding on us all to study these problems and proffer solutions to them. The world over, all universities worthy of the name are already doing so.

It admits of open failure that more than 53 years of our nominal independence, we are still engaged at the level of the elemental politics of cut-off marks to our secondary and tertiary institutions of learning.

Never has one had a better cause to doubt if the government is still making efforts to “direct its policy towards ensuring that there are equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels”, as enshrined in Section 18 of the country’s Constitution. In our search here, no approach is entirely wrong.

Sometimes, we talk of merit as if that is the panacea to all the problems besetting our educational system – just as our first generation universities are currently doing, when they refuse to bend backwards a little to accept candidates who have scored lower than the cut-off mark of 200 points.

Invariably, what this does is to open itself to the opportunity for a university to accept say 1000 students from Abia State while allowing only three students from say Zamfara State.

It does violence to the principle of Federal Character, which originally realised that the country should be treated as a unit of development in which the strongest shall uplift the weakest and they shall both move on together.

At the base line, we have this year’s table of scores at the National Common Entrance Examination for all the states of the Federation, which has fully accepted the principle of federal character and the inherent concepts of quota and compensatory treatment.

This table shows that while candidates from Zamfara and Yobe states could be admitted with as low as two points, their counterparts from Anambra State can only be admitted with 139 points and higher.

Because of the accident of geography, that candidate from Anambra State who scores 138 points has to watch helplessly as he is unaccepted in the Unity Schools while his friend from Zamfara State with two points proudly walks into the same Unity Schools.

The quota system such as we are faced with here has been attacked at various fronts, including the fact that the presence of less able and ill-prepared students in a class cannot but retard and depress the level of classroom teaching and participation. An instructor who wishes to reach all his students would have no choice but to seek the lowest common denominator, thus further sinking the standard of our already deteriorating educational system.

It is time to invite Albert Einstein (1879-1955): “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its entire life believing that it is stupid”. Our Northern youths are not stupid. Neither can we accept the sweeping generalisation that they are of lower Intelligence Quotient, IQ, but what must be done immediately is for the Northern leaders to sit down and rearrange their priorities and pay greater attention to education.

For instance, salvation remains a personal issue. The sponsor of many people to the holy land on pilgrimage may itself not be offensive, but it becomes rather lamentable alongside the continued poor performance of their children in schools because of poor funding.

A society without problems is a non-existent society. There must be problems and there must be people to solve them. We have demonstrated that whichever mode of admission is accepted, there are associated problems. Individual institutions must be left with the task of working out internal mechanisms for dealing with the problems associated with their choices!

The cure for democracy is more democracy. We cannot wish away the problems associated with the candidates eliminated by the two extremes of merit and the quota system. We must realise that no matter what we do, everyone cannot get placement in the Ivy League Schools.

All the same, government has a duty to ensure that there is a classroom for every student to sit and a teacher to teach him. Here, we think that there is no alternative to the provision of community colleges where there will be open enrolment for all.

Yes, what we are discussing here is capital intensive, and highly so. In any event, this lofty goal is attainable, if only we can plan more and steal less.

In this journey, we shall not be deterred by the not-so-easily attainable goal of full employment, which would include the provision of jobs to graduates from the system.

The goal of full employment is laudable and it is an integral part of the responsibilities of a good government. But where this is not immediately attainable, as we now have, we must also contend with the obvious fact that education, too, has its intrinsic value.

Besides the employment value of education, an educated citizenry is easier to govern and in the final analysis, for society at large, an educated prostitute is better than her illiterate counterpart because among other things, the former would be more likely to observe the rules of hygiene and less likely to be a liberal donor of sexually-transmitted diseases. An educated taxi driver is also better than the uneducated one for obvious reasons.

Need we remind the Federal Government of the familiar cliché: If you think education is expensive, try ignorance? Time is of the essence!

 

Jigawa in a new world

By Ochereome Nnanna
A  LITTLE over six years ago, Jigawa State was rated by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, as the poorest state in Nigeria. At a public lecture in Kaduna, former Central Bank of Nigeria Governor, Prof Charles Soludo, after reviewing the figures from across the North, reached the sad conclusion thus: “Poverty is still a Northern phenomenon”.

I had the opportunity of touring the state in June 2007, paying particular attention to the rotten educational facilities and infrastructure. Six years later, after many postponements due to security uncertainties in the North, I returned to the state to assess the situation. I can comfortably report that Jigawa State is not only in a new world, it is also in a world of its own.

It has almost completely overcome its infrastructural deficits, especially in the areas of roads, education, water supply and health. Though surrounded by terrorism flashpoint states such as Kano, Bauchi and Yobe, Boko Haram staged only one raid in the Ringim area and it was a clear hit-and-run raid, as the anarchists have no home base in the state.

An official of the state government who explained the reason the terrorists have not found a breeding ground in the state, said Governor Sule Lamido runs a government of total inclusion. No section of the state is left out from the benefits of governance, and this includes non-indigenous residents.

The Jigawa State government is welfarist. It is the only state where beggars are paid monthly stipends to keep them away from the streets though al majiris are still noticeable around eateries. In Jigawa, every certified handicapped person of the state’s origin is paid N7000 per month. Education is free for girls to close the huge gap between males and females in the state, while the boys enjoy partially free education.

The Fulani nomads have also been brought into the care system. The perennial conflict between them and farmers is almost a thing of the past because government established windmills all over the state.



These draw water into surface tanks from the aquifers as the wind blows. It provides water for people and their cattle and reduces communicable diseases which result from drinking water from unsafe sources. Pastoralists and their cattle have been granted safe passage corridors along all federal and state roads to prevent livestock from stomping through farmlands. During our visit over the past weekend, emirs and chiefs were undergoing a seminar on conflict resolution in the state capital.

In Jigawa State, villages are frequently evacuated to create room for development. For instance, the natives of Ngullo village near Dutse, the state capital, were evacuated to make way for the new international cargo airport.

But the state government first built modern huts for them in their new village and still paid them compensation.

They are living happily in their new abode and the airport project is going at a break-neck pace, giving officials reason to believe that a Hajj flight will take off from there this year.

Inclusion is also evident in the spread of amenities. The major roads in all the headquarters of the 27 local government areas have been constructed with drainage channels and street lights powered with solar energy.

The housing bonanza also benefits all strata of government workers – from junior to senior civil servants, from commissioners to ministers and from the Deputy Governor to the Governor. The emirs of Dutse, Hadejia, Gumel, Kazaure and Ringim, have luxury plazas built for them in a section of the state capital. Lamido made a rule that every top government functionary must own a comfortable house in Dutse to avoid the temptation of straying back to Kano or getting stuck in Abuja.

What impressed me most was the Jigawa Academy, a model school for gifted children in Bamaina, the Governor’s hometown. It currently has 160 students drawn from all parts of the state, with one student each from 17 of the 19 states in the North. Admission is strictly on merit and once a student gains admission he or she is on full scholarship.

We were told that due to the strict merit-based admission, none of the children of the top officials of the state government – including the Governor and Deputy – is studying there. In compliance with the prompting of President Goodluck Jonathan, the school will open its gates to students from the Southern states in the next academic session.

Governor Lamido paints a picture of his political history with the way he is building up Dutse. There is the Aminu Kano Triangle, the Jigawa equivalent of Eagle Square, Abuja. Inside, there is the Sawaba Monument, set up to honour the eight founders of Northern Elements Progressive Union, NEPU, who, in 1948, met and issued the Sawaba Declaration for the liberation of the masses (Talakawa).

These were: Abba Maikwaru, Musa Kaula, Magaji Danbatta, Mudi Sipikin, Abdulkdir Danjaji, Bello Ijumu, Abubakar Zukogi and Babaliya Manaja.

Also, near the “three arms zone” is a housing estate named after the G.9, the group that met in 1998 and demanded General Sani Abacha to hand over power to civilians when it was clear he was poised to succeed himself through his five registered political parties. Each of the nine chalets in the estate is named after Alex Ekwueme, Bola Ige, Iyorchia Ayu, Jerry Gana, Francis Ellah, Adamu Ciroma, Solomon Lar, Abubakar Rimi and Sule Lamido.

Lamido is a disciple of the Aminu Kano NEPU/PRP ideological school and a founder of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. But from all indications, he is running a NEPU/PRP government. The whole of the Jigawa landscape is green and crawling with intense agricultural activities, with government-sponsored oxen-drawn carts (6,000 in all) putting as many idle hands as possible to profitable work.

By the time the airport comes alive Jigawa will no longer be in the back waters. It will come to the centre stage as a rapidly developing state in the country.