Rewriting the fate of public schools in Nigeria: Old Students Associations to the rescue

By Tunji Olaopa

In my earlier musing about my alma mater, titled “Olivet Heights and Wale Okediran: Rewriting the Fate of Public Schools in Nigeria,” I had challenged the Wale Okediran-led Olivet Baptist High School National Old Student Association (OBHS-NOSA) on the herculean task before it. Apart from the critical commitment to raising the bar of the school that gave the OBHS-NOSA its most immediate responsibility, I argued that OBHS-NOSA has another crucial responsibility: being at the forefront of an advocacy campaign that will focus attention on the state of public schools in Nigeria. I noted specifically that “We can no longer continue with a piecemeal approach to individual development in Nigeria, from individual Nigerians to individual public schools. We need a better approach. And the starting point is to achieve consciousness building across the nation.”

And this challenge became urgent within the context of the increasing rot that has almost brought the public schools and the entire education sector in Nigeria on its knees. From the primary to the tertiary levels, the story of gloom remains the same. We are building an army of human capital that are not sufficiently set to transform Nigeria’s infrastructural deficit. The second reason for the significance of the challenge derives from the need to throw open the task of rescuing the education sector to all willing stakeholders in a collective drive to salvage Nigeria from the grip of underdevelopment. Nigeria’s pubic schools have truly lost their glories. These are the same schools that have produced the cream of nationalists, poets, scholars, professionals and managers who have all impacted every facet of Nigeria’s national life. Now the narratives have changed.

Resuscitating the education sector in Nigeria requires a framework of creative innovation that supersedes the attention often given to the urgent need to increase budgetary allocation. Beyond the funding matter, government needs to pay critical attention to issues of political commitment that will not unduly politicize the need for reform. Attention to deep analytics and data will also become essential in optimize the available resources and allocation to the sector. This is where government needs to urgently pay attention to matter of governance, leadership and managerial sophistication that will allow it to pursue an education funding and governance models that draw significant stakeholders—from parent-teachers association to private businesses to old students’ associations—into buy-ins that assist government in connecting its available resources to other investment sources for revitalizing the education sector.

Of all the nongovernmental efforts to resuscitate the functional efficiency of public schools, one must commend those of old students’ associations. Imagine all such associations conscientiously take charge of the development of their schools. The consequences would be enormous. However, there is a need to rethink the modus operandi that these associations work with if such efforts would not be in vain. There is, indeed, no doubt that there are so many well-endowed old students’ associations that have enormous financial resources and elite clout, and have mobilized the same to lifting their alma maters out of the doldrums. Unfortunately, such hands-on/out approaches have been anything but systematic. In other words, the investment to redeem the schools have been essentially infrastructural, without due attention to the critical systemic and structural reengineering that speaks to infrastructural development of the schools on the sideline. The usual attention is to bifurcate the responsibilities, and leave the systemic reforms for the government to handle. Experience demonstrates that government is either too overwhelmed by the development and governance imperatives or is too disingenuous to face the demands of crumbling education to do what we all expect of it. The implication is that the investments of the associations in their alma maters end up not meeting the targets envisioned.

At the first instance, since reform interventions and investments bring the associations head-to-head with the government, some significant cautions are required that will guide the change management dynamics involved in the interventions. The most significant of the concerns has to do with the possibility of government abdicating its responsibility in the face of the commitment of the old students’ associations. This is further compounded by several issues having to do with jumpstarting the reform interventions in the first place. For instance, there is possibility of non-sustainability of the efforts through reform fatigue arising from the same set of people being taxed, year in year out, in pursuing the challenging responsibility. In some cases, the intervention of the associations might just be restricted to some fundamental and strategic need to facilitate a transformation of the business or management models for administering the schools. For example, there might be the need to return the schools to old or original owners, or the initiation of a programme of public-private partnership between the government and either the old students associations or relevant private organizations. In its 4-Year Strategic Plan for the Development of the Education Sector (2011-2015), the Federal Government recognized the failure on its part to facilitate the participation of the private sector and nongovernmental organizations through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI).

Intervening in one’s alma mater cannot therefore be a haphazard consideration, or an investment done from the perspective of philanthropy. On the contrary, it must be a reform issue phased into series of significant steps and processes. This is what would really make the interventions of the associations a definitive game changer. The key dynamic is that the reform intervention must occur in a synergistic manner that will not allow the associations take over the responsibility of government. This will involve initiating strategic communication with the government on the significance of shared responsibility in repositioning the schools. Once this initial agreement is settled, then the associations can then initiate a school-wide needs assessment, or better still utilize existing ones. Several of such assessments abounds. For instance, the Education Sector Analysis – ESA (2006), of which I was the coordinator when it was initiated between 1999 and 2002, contains a significant analysis of the state of primary, secondary and tertiary education in Nigeria. The challenges involve funding, dwindling facilities, data issue, accountability, community participation, curriculum renewal, professional development, and many more. Let me highlight three crucial issues that old students’ associations can benefit from in their reform intervention.

The first is governance and managerial issues. This cuts across the ESA. The management of a school has a lot to do with the business model and philosophy that will determine the objectives and direction of the school. Any infrastructural renewal outside of the assessment of the business model will amount to nothing. The second issue concerns standard and quality assurance. This has to do with the professionalism of the teachers and the staff training dynamics and framework that will facilitate it. It also concerns the curriculum development mechanism that will generate qualitative learning achievement for the students. The third issue concerns critical learning infrastructures that not only furthers managerial matters and quality assurance in teachers’ professional development, but are relevant in redefining a twenty-first century school anywhere. These include a digitized library, sporting facilities, scholarship schemes, quiz and debating culture, value-shaping religious instructions and activities, and many more.

From my vantage point as someone who had gone through the rounds in the public service, the old students associations, like OBHS-NOSA, do not only have a critical role to play in rewriting the fate of public schools in Nigeria, they also have a strategic direction to take in ensuring that their interventions are not merely cosmetic attempts and philanthropic gestures that only superficially poke at the surface of the fundamental issues bedeviling the schools rather than digging to the depth of the predicament. The idea is to be strategic partners with the government and other stakeholders in rescuing the public schools from their seemingly inevitable destruction.

(Being excerpts from speech by Prof. Tunji Olaopa, NIPSS, Kuru-Jos, as Chairman at the Maiden Edition of the Olivet Baptist High School, Oyo, National Old Students Association Distinguished Olivetian Lecture Series held at Lead City University, Ibadan, on Wednesday, 23rdFebruary, 2022)