How Kwara Is Changing The Face Of Basic Education SUBEB Boss – Adaramaja, SUBEB boss-June 15, 2022
By Demola Akinyemi
Kwara State will represent Nigeria at the World Debate Championship in Netherlands in August this year after winning the Presidential Debate Contest in the country. In this interview, the Executive Chairman of the State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB, Prof. Shehu Adaramaja, speaks on the turnaround the education sector has witnessed in the state under Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRasak. Excerpts
Could you tell us how you found yourself in this seat as the chairman of Kwara SUBEB?
When Governor Abdulrahaman Abdulrazak came on board, he decided to appoint me as a member of his team. He asked me to come and oversee this place, with a trust. SUBEB in Kwara was rotten. The morale of teachers was low. The previous administration diverted funds meant for the Board and the Universal Basic Education Commission suspended the state and we were no longer able to access funds meant for the state. The situation was terrible and bad.
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Over N1 billion was diverted. That led UBEC to blacklist Kwara State. Well, the situation led to the governor looking for someone who could help reform the place and bring back the glory of the state in education. The choice was me. Let me also add that before I came, teachers’ morale was down. Paying their salaries piecemeal and in installments was the order of the day. There were no promotions for hard work, teachers were unwilling to go to work. Our classrooms were dilapidated; there was no furniture. Enrolment in public schools had gone down seriously. This gave opportunities for private schools to thrive in the state. That was what the administration of Governor Abdulrazak met on ground and we are trying to reform it.
How far have you gone in the process of reforming the place?
If I were given a chance to choose a governor I should serve under, again and again, it will always be Abdulrahaman Abdulrazak. This is because we have an understanding that I have been given a clear mandate to go and reform this place. He has given me free hand to work. The result of this is what you see in all 16 LGAs today. Go round them and see what we have accomplished. I told you that Kwara SUBEB was blacklisted. UBEC vowed never to have any form of relationship with Kwara State again until the state returned #1billion that was diverted. Before the former governor, Abdulfatah Ahmed left, he was paying the money in installments, but couldn’t finish it up until the expiration of his tenure..He left a deficit of about N450 million.
So how did the state get out of the UBEC blacklist?
When Abdulrazak came on board, he cleared the deficit and UBEC opened another record for him. It was in the process that it was discovered that the state arrears in matching grants for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019; six years arrears were waiting. The money all accumulated to N7.1 billion. For us to access that money, we had to match it up with our own N7.1 billion. This makes it a total of N14.2 billion. With that money, we did adverts witnessed by UBEC and the Bureau of Public Procurement for massive infrastructural provisions for our schools.
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So we did the construction of classrooms; some a block of two classrooms with offices, others, three classrooms with offices, others with four blocks, and so on. Others had VIP toilets because of our COVID 19 experiences. We had to make water accessible in these schools. Earlier I talked about dilapidated structures where our classrooms were nothing to write home about. So we went into, renovations, remodeling, and reconstruction of over 1, 335 schools across the states. We also invested in teachers’ and pupils’ furniture. For the children, we provided 29, 005. This is a twin-seater that accommodates two students.
What this means is that we had furniture for 58,010 pupils. We also provided for teachers for about 7, 000. A teacher will have his own table, his own seat, and two other visitors’ seats. In addition to that, we are also providing digital literacy. It is like a mini computer centers to prepare the students ahead. Because we knew that Kwara Learn will come. So we looked for a cluster of schools, and in the place, we put Digital Literacy. We have it in every local government. We also invested in teachers’ capacity building. So the reformation is total.
So has there been result for these efforts?
Last year, in August, the All Progressives Congress, in conjunction with the Presidency and UBEC assessed all APC-governed states on utilization of the matching grant from the commission. They came to Kwara and we took them round all our projects. We had just started at the time but at the end of the day, we came first in the North Central. We then asked ourselves, if we were able to make first in the region with just 30 percent execution of our project, what will happen if we have done everything before they came?
Also, we enrolled in the Presidential Schools Debate last year. It was the first time the state will feature in that kind of contest. We camped the children for two months, training them. It was easy for me because back at the university I was the chairman of the faculty debate committee. So I knew what it takes to put up a formidable team. I had the experience. We went to Lagos State the venue of the championship, we defeated Oyo, Anambra, and Edo, then they brought Katsina, and we also defeated them. In the semi-final, we met Lagos and we defeated them again.
We met Katsina again at the final and we defeated them again. And we came back with the trophy. Today, Kwara State is Team Nigeria and will represent the country in the World Debate Championship that is coming up in August in Netherlands. Also in Mathematics, we enrolled our students in a competition put together by the National Mathematical Center in conjunction with UBEC. From state level to zonal level, our own Aisha, from Ilorin East came first. We came first in North Central, and sixth in Nigeria.
What we met on ground was sad. Before the commencement of the project, we did sampling. We did purposive random sampling; that is we took two rural, and two urban schools for the study. So, from Kwara North, we picked Baruten, from Kwara South we picked Offa; Kwara Central, we picked Ilorin East and Ilorin West. In Education, there is what we call, formative evaluation, that is before you start, what are those conditions you met. You do this so that when you do your summative evaluation, you will know the values you have added. In doing this, we dug down in all 365 pilot schools, evaluating what their situations were.
In Baruten, we found that in some schools, you can’t find more than two or three teachers. In some locations, because of the terrain, once rain falls, the schools will be closed. The teacher will not go to school and so the pupils. In some locations where there are big markets, no school for pupils. We also found out that some schools had to augment teaching staff through efforts of the community, PTA teachers. So we summed up all these challenges and fashioned out a way of solving them.
So what did you deploy to solve the problem?
We knew that Kwara LEARN is a digital initiative. We knew we had to retrain the teachers on how to use ICT based tools for effective teaching. Some cant use gadgets other than their cell phones; some don’t even know how to use phones other than to make calls. So, we devised a means of bringing them up to par on how to use it. In Kwara LEARN, once we deploy a lesson for classes, it goes around. And you can’t as a teacher refuse to teach it.
Yes, lessons are deployed centrally now. And teachers are bound to be in classes. If you are not in class, the system will prompt us that the teacher is not there. If the teacher is in school but not in class, we have a way of also detecting it. Edo State is the first to do this, they named it, EDO BEST. Lagos saw the digital initiative and keyed into it. Lagos started theirs last year and called it Eko Excel. We had the confidence to embark on this because Kwara used to be the best in the whole of the Northern region. Every other Northern State copied from Kwara. We have to return Kwara to that status, thank God for Governor Abdulrazak.