Akwa Ibom Government Needs to Revisit the Education Roadmap- Prof. Education Joshua

 

 

Professor Enobong Joshua, the Chairman of the Inoyo Toro Foundation Award screening committee recently retired as the Professor of Applied Mathematics from the University of Uyo. Prof. Joshua who had also served as a member of the Akwa Ibom State Think-tank Committee on Education and now a member of the Board of Trustees (BOT) and also the Chief Operating Officer of the Inoyo Toro Foundation, in this interview bares his mind on the state of education and how it can be transformed. He also opens up on the happenings in the Inoyo Toro Foundation and future plans.

 

 

 

 

May we know you, please?

 

I am Enobong Joshua. As you know, I am a professor of mathematics, you talk about Applied Mathematics. I have studied mathematics all my days. I did maths, what we called additional maths in my time which later became further maths in secondary school. I had a very good grade, grade 1 in my school Cert. We had grade 1,2,3. I had grade 1 which was the highest.

 

 

 

I did NCE, mathematics and physics. I still fell in love with this mathematics. Then at the University I still did mathematics and graduated in 1980 from the University of Nigeria and then came to start work. I have a Master’s Degree in Applied Mathematics, PhD in Applied mathematics. I taught very briefly in the secondary school, not up to a term and then joined to teach at the College of Education, Uyo before it metamorphosed into the University of Cross River State and then that one also metamorphosed into the University of Uyo. So, I have been teaching like that, I retired this April as a Professor of Mathematics.

 

 

 

So why did you choose education? Why did you choose to be a teacher instead of venturing into other endeavours?

 

 

Somebody must choose something and I decided to choose a teacher because I admire the teachers themselves. I felt I could be a teacher of mathematics and not any other subject. When I did my youth service, I taught mathematics and physics in Lagos many years ago. So, I have always loved the profession. I would have been an engineer, perhaps, if I wanted to. Well, I never liked medicine because I didn’t like biology even though my search centers around biological sciences now. But those days, those big words ” Chlamydomonas and Paramecium” scared us just like the dates scared us from history. I liked history too but how to remember the dates scared us from there. I love mathematics, I love to teach.

 

 

 

 

You talk about mathematics with so much passion and energy. From your standpoint, it doesn’t look like one subject a lot of people see as very difficult and scary. Why do many have this phobia for mathematics?

 

 

 

One, is the mentality. You know, I read the Bible too, the Bible talks about the grasshopper mentality. You remember those folks who went and saw giants and they reported that that land easily consumes the people, they saw people. The mentality was small. When a child goes to school and he already has a phobia concerning mathematics, his make up is not to attempt. Added to that, if you have a teacher who comes to do some root teaching, quote this, quote that, the child gives in completely, he cannot make an attempt. He will say, Mathematics? No.

 

 

But if you have a teacher who can expose it clearly to you, fine.  I had some teachers in my secondary school who could expose mathematics clearly to you and we loved them. When you get in love with the teacher you also get in love with the subject he teaches. So, students who come to school must open their minds not minding the stories they hear to be able to get the subject. Mathematics is not that tough, in fact it is one of the easiest where you can get a 100 percent. It is where you can also get a zero.

 

 

 

Is there a better way to simplify mathematics and make it fun for learners?

 

 

 

It is the teacher’s problem. When I did my NCE, I had people who came to teach, there was a Canadian there was an Indian who taught us mathematics, and if you sit down and devise how to teach a particular concept, you can generate interest. So, if the teacher doesn’t have that commitment to teaching, he will just go and talk about those things on the peripheral, and that’s all.  They will not learn, they can’t. So that’s the thing. There’s no particular way. The ways will depend on the methodologies you use because methods are different depending on which students are before you. When I was in Southern Africa, we had two groups, we had a book of mathematics, one exercise was stronger than the other. The stronger ones were for students who were much better, the weaker ones were for students who were not as good, but then they caught up at some point together. It will depend on the method the teacher uses in handling the mathematics.

 

 

You have been in the education sector for a very long time, spanning across Nigeria and other countries. What have you noticed is the problem of the education sector in Nigeria?

 

 

One key problem is the handlers of the education sector, the key players. Right from the top, maybe Minister, to the Permanent Secretary, Commissioner to the others, the teachers too, the principals, that’s the problem of education. The policies are fine. Once in a while they can begin to change some things. The basic things are still there. Those things change maybe to meet with advancement, present advancement, but the basics, the fundamental concepts are still there. I was telling a story of a person in public primary school teaching children and one in the private primary school also teaching children. The child from the public school comes out unable to express himself, but the one from the private school expresses himself very well. What’s the difference? Commitment! Meanwhile, the teacher who handles that primary class in the public school may be better qualified than the one in the private school. What is the problem? Commitment!

Those days we never had private schools, everybody went to public school. Well I did, I attended the primary school sometimes in the village. I started off with Jubilee School in Uyo, moved to Ikot Akpan Abia Ubium, then to Ikot Ekpot, then to Ikot Akpa Etuk in Ibesikpo Asutan. So, I was moving with a teacher. That did not stop me from being what I wanted to be. Then, in public secondary school, the teacher is a key player. That is why I am passionate about the teacher.  If the teacher is good enough, education will rise. If the government is also supportive enough, it will rise. This is because the government will say some things and they don’t do them. The implementers, the hierarchy of government, are not interested in what goes on. I beg to say that.  But you see, if the government has a policy and it is not well interpreted by the handlers, the teacher takes the brunt of it because the thing has not been handed over to him the way it should be and that’s the problem.

 

Education is fine, policies are good but the handlers, the key players, which have to do with the people at the helm of affairs, the passion they have is questionable. When the Former Governor came for example, he said education would be his priority, and we followed him and he went on and on and set up a committee for the education summit. We had an education summit. Even though we have had an education summit before, we also had an education summit later in 2019. I was a member of the planning committee. I was also a resource person. We spoke all the English and they were fine. Good results! The Governor was there which was unprecedented. We never had that kind of a thing, the Governor coming to that kind of meeting and staying from day one, two and three till he left. Then the governor said ” Let’s set up a kind of a Think- tank on education to produce a road map”. This is because he was passionate about it, and we then produced a road map. I was a member of the think tank committee which was headed by Prof. Hillary Inyang. I was a member there, and we sat together brainstorming over months and came up with a road map.

 

Where is it now? We don’t know. So, I was talking about key players in the sector. When the key players are committed and interested, not everything is money. Sometimes you do your own thing, you become passionate about the thing you plan because of the interest you have. For example, as I work in the Foundation (Inoyo Toro), it is not for money, it is to see how we can move this sector (Education) forward. If the people at the helm of affairs are not gunning for money, but they are gunning for the good of the people, then you will see the change, it goes like that.

 

This morning I was just reading the book of Joshua, and Joshua said “As for me and my house we will serve the Lord”, and he asked the people “will you?” The people now readily said “Yes we will”. Why? It is because the leader has gone that direction. So, if the people at the top are going in the direction of commitment to education and others coming after them are doing that, it will get down to the teacher and will get down to the pupils who will now become serious and committed. We never had a cult in our days in school. We never knew what that meant, even at the university level. But today, people are distracted by those kinds of things. So, students don’t come to school. They come to school, later loiter around and later they go back home, they have finished studying, with no books, they come like that to school. But if things are done properly, you will see students who will sit down and work.

 

 

Don’t parents have a role to play?

 

 

 

Seriously, yes.  Parents are part of the stakeholders. They are the key players. If a parent would send his or her ward to go hawking during school hours it means they are not interested.  “Buy pure water, buy orange”, Whatever that is, they are not in school. Why is that child not in school? Parents have a role to play. Some are not interested and of course when the child turns out to be a gangster, they will attack them first. So, parents must be able to encourage their children to be in school and monitor that they are actually in school. Why is it in the public schools we don’t have those parents? But in private schools, the parents are different. But you know sometimes you may need to halt and find out. Not all parents are rich enough for their children to go to private school. My daughter was in a private school some many years ago. When a motorcycle rider brought his own child, the proprietor said he was going to increase fees. When we were quarreling, the motorcycle rider did not bother because he had the resources. I was a small teacher, I didn’t have enough so we were quarreling because I was trying to pay. But the motorcycle rider did not bother because he knew what it meant to be in that private school. But that same kind of motorcycle rider will send his son to go and do hawking instead of being in school and would not even monitor if he is in school or not. He comes back from school and doesn’t care if that son is revising his notes or reading at all.

 

I was talking to the three senatorial districts two years ago under the auspices of the State Secondary Education Board on “The Role of The Community in Education”. Parents, community have serious roles to play in education. I was just driving past the flyover at Abak Road after the Federal Secretariat and the roof of that primary school were removed, who removed them? Why wouldn’t the community rise up to say no when they were removing the sheets one by one because they were not removing the sheets at the same time. It is like nobody cares.  That’s part of it too. It is the nonchalance of the community, parents, government and many people, that is why education is where it is today, and I think maybe this news should go farther so that communities will sit up. We are not interested! If I have a son who is in the cult, do I draw his attention and say “no you cannot be”. Why must he go and fight another or even kill another? Why must society degenerate to that point? Every person has a stake in education, it is just that we are not interested.

 

 

You were part of the team that designed the education road map for Akwa Ibom State. What were the key recommendations from the team geared towards salvaging the education situation of the State?

 

 

There were many things. It is not something that I can rephrase now but the road map was in phases. I don’t know what phase this will be now because it started in 2020. By now we would have gotten to the second phase but we have not even attempted the first phase and that is why the education road map should be revisited. One of the things we recommended is what I think the government started doing, building fences in schools. This is because if we are to stem the tide of insecurity, you must provide fences. We said the sector should be reorganized, employ more teachers, and open more schools. One school cannot have 4000 students, some 5000 in a town, when others in a village are about 200, 300. Now in the town we said okay, look at Uyo for example, in fact there were figures, we had data. We looked at the population of children and those in school and we put all of these on the template. Government, if this school is 4000 or 5000, break it up. And we said to the government we should have at most 1500 students to be manned by one principal. The rest, open more schools, build more schools, that was a key recommendation.

 

And then when there is a concentration of teachers, scatter them with their relevant subject areas to where the need may be. I went to one school, there were about 29 to 30 Vice principals in one school in town. What are they doing there? So, we said okay, when you are building schools, schools can have school farms, raise funds, and schools should be equipped with laboratories. In fact, we designated a few schools that could be used as pilot, fully boarding, fully productive of what they eat through the school farms and other things, even metal. We located one school where they had machines which could produce things for the public to buy. We did all that, and then the next thing was to recruit teachers that can be sent to schools and we arranged them in phases because we knew it involved a lot of money and the government would not be able to cope at the same time. So, those were some of the things on the road map. It was a wonderful document which if the government had looked at it they would have done a good job. We said okay, set up an implementation committee made up of those who drafted this but you know government is guided mostly by politics so ordinary people may not come in. But that is okay, if you are a politician, have the passion, I don’t quarrel about that. If you have the passion, you will set the thing going correctly, but here we are, that road map. I don’t know the state of it presently.

 

 

Huge resources were put into this road map yet the process has been slow. How do you feel about that?

 

 

Well, progress has been slow. We are not happy about what is going on because I know what it took for Prof. Hillary Inyang, an international scholar, in fact he is known all over the world, he is regarded as an Ambassador, where he goes he gets presidential treatment. He came and sat here with us in Uyo and did that work. Well, I don’t know, maybe the government is dusting the document. It could be, it is possible, I can’t know because I am not there. So, I can’t really talk about that. Government may be working on it in the background, we don’t know.  But we need to see if there are areas they are about to implement. But for me I won’t know since I am not in government.  I have friends in the government but I am not there.

 

 Let’s talk about the Inoyo Toro Foundation which has stood out for its contributions to Education in the State. How do you feel being among the success stories of the Foundation?

 

 

 

I don’t know if I am. I had a principal in the college who would say ” We are doing our poorest best, please bear with us.” I think I am doing my poorest best and not necessarily a success story. I got interested in the foundation since its inception. Someone introduced me, the late Prof. Ebong Mbipom. He was a professor of Physics at the University of Calabar. He died a few years ago. When I went to Namibia I introduced an intervention programme for teachers of science. I was doing a Technical Aid Programme there in 1991. When I went there, I saw how they were teaching. I said okay, “folks, can we organize workshops for these teachers?” That is where I started. So, I organized workshops and the local government and the central government there were very interested and so we trained some teachers on how to teach science not only mathematics. So, when I returned, Prof. Mbipom contacted me and we started intervention workshops for teachers of science. That was his project. He went from a senatorial district to another to teach teachers, gather them over weekends and was teaching them Science and English. Then, Inoyo Toro Foundation came on board and Prof. was the Chairman of the Screening Committee in 2007. So, he invited me to join the screening committee, that is how I got to know about the Inoyo Toro Foundation. We worked together with Prof. for a number of years until God called him home. Then the foundation said, “why don’t you become Chairman of the Screening Committee?” That is how I got involved. Since then we have been trying our best to see what we can do to impact the teachers. Focusing on the teachers as well as the students, we also provide mentorship for students in various schools.

 

 

 

Are teachers also trained besides the screening?

 

 

Yes, we train the winners. Every year, we have mentorship training for them. We train them on how to train others. When we train, now you have gotten the prize, maybe first prize, second prize, third prize, go back home, get between four and seven teachers, where you stay in your neighbourhood, not necessarily your own school but school around, invite them and also teach them. You are a good teacher, aren’t you? That is how you won the prize.  If you are a good teacher and you won the prize, teach others to teach like you. This is because if we do that and the thing spreads we will have more teachers committed to the work and to improving education. So that is what we do.

 

 

What is really the vision around the Inoyo Toro Foundation?

 

 

Our vision is to eradicate poverty, because if you are not educated you will still be milking around looking for what to eat. But if you are educated, you have a better chance. Even if you are a carpenter, you have some level of education, you will know how to approach people to patronize your job.  Not that you are going to become a doctor, no! But if you have education even as a bricklayer, the contractor picks you, you will be doing the job but with education you will be doing it much better. So, to eradicate poverty through education, that is the main vision, that is our goal.

 

But we say how will we do this? If we teach the teacher very well and train them very well, then we will have a good quality education. And part of our road map was Train Teachers. The State should get resources to train teachers adequately. Many things were involved in that road map; monitoring. Not monitoring to go and get yam and cassava and all that, no. Monitoring to be sure that what they do is right.

 

 

Since 2007 that the Foundation came on board, how many have so far been trained and how do you measure your wins?

 

 

That information is on our website. One of the wins we have is one teacher who through us went to the United States of America and won the World Teachers Award. He became a Fulbright Teacher through us. He was with us. He won the first prize or so and then got the mentorship prize, I think twice, he won the other prize I think twice or so, and when we saw an opening for Fulbright, we invited him and he went. It was for physics. From his testimony, the way he taught physics to the children of America, the school he went to, the children got so much endeared to him to the extent that the teacher of the class asked him how.

 

Actually, we know how to teach. Nigerians are very knowledgeable. That is why when we go outside we don’t lack. When I was in Namibia, one man named John Sofor from the U.K came as a resource person and he was baffled about the Nigerians who were there. He was saying “you folks are good”. You know we are good at this, but we are also good at some terrible things, and of course they look at those terrible things and write-off the others, that’s the error. They don’t see that beyond the terrible things there are very good fellows who can do something. So that’s one of the wins. The other ones, we have people here and there in schools who teach.  Through our training, a lot of work is happening which we may not know in the hinterlands in the schools across the State.

 

 

 

What Informs the criteria of the selection of these teachers at the time they are screened?

 

 

First, the person should be a teacher for three to five years. You don’t just jump into school and come back with no experience, you have to be a teacher for three to five years, then you qualify. Then you take an examination based on what you teach, not University exams, no we won’t give you to solve differential equations in mathematics. We give you the things you teach and if you are good as a teacher you should pass. And if you don’t pass, then that is an error. If you pass very well, then we say okay that is written well, come and tell us how you teach these things and we sit in panels of two. As you are telling us, we are marking you. When we are satisfied with you, we give you a score. The other one comes, we give a score, we compare the scores and say okay sorry, we have 1, 2, 3 who have won in that subject. And we do this with all amount of integrity. That is what we have been known for since 2007, since the time of Prof. Mbipom till now we don’t toil with our scores, we don’t award marks, you earn your score. So, if you come tomorrow to be a teacher to be screened, you earn it, if you don’t earn it forget it. Sometimes we don’t have first prize in a particular subject because nobody measures up. We can’t say because you scored 50 percent and the others are scoring 40, you are the first. You must score up to 70 percent. You can’t have first class in the university even if you are the best in the class and you are on Second Class Lower points, isn’t it? It is the same thing. So, if you want to be first class, you score 70, or the second prize you score 60 and above. So sometimes, some subjects we don’t have teachers who score up to 60 and so we have only third place, sometimes we have only second and third. So that’s it!

 

 

 

We have been noticing huge rewards given to teachers who emerge winners. This must be capital intensive considering the span of time. What is the funding stream?

 

 

 

People volunteer, people who love education. There are many people in Akwa Ibom who do not see it that way. It is a sad story. This is because if people see education the way we see it, they would fund it. People take up certain prizes, like mathematics prizes taken up by one family, the English prize by another family, chemistry and so on. Some tell big testimonies of their parents because of that, they say we are going to fund this. And then we have also Savannah Energy that came up and said we are going to sponsor the Grand Mentor Prizes for the five science subjects including English and they have been doing that over the years when we started, and they are good, and they are sponsoring some of our projects, some of our programmes. In fact, presently they are sponsoring most of our programmes. If people have the vision of correcting and bettering education then you see them come in. We also have school mentorship where some people will opt to sponsor that mentorship. What is that? A few students from school will sit and interact with a mentor. If that mentor has gone somewhere and has been something, he now says this is why I got there and tells the children “if you work hard and you pay attention, you can get there too”.  But again, that is the thing we have floated in the media and people are not interested in picking up on that. That one is even a smaller mentorship, take a student from a school, talk with them. Through that we have had children who passed through that mentorship, got to the university, graduated and they are working in very key places now. But that vision is something we should sell to the public, maybe to you journalists too to see if we can help education, all of it is to sell education.

 

The foundation is actually named after Mr. Udom Inoyo. What is his support for the Foundation?

 

 

His support is tremendous, you know, when I said people sponsor prizes, there are other things we do.  You can sponsor English, chemistry and so on. But how do you get about that prizing? How do you run the office? How do you set up the machinery to do all of that? The Foundation is just named after Inoyo Toro. But it has a Board of Trustees. So, the board sits together to see how the Foundation is run. Mr. Inoyo puts in a lot of resources to it but some others also do.

 

Are there challenges you have encountered during your service as the Chairman of the Screening Committee?

 

 

Sometimes, the challenges could be sponsorship. Otherwise, we have volunteers who act as resource persons like the one we are going to have one shortly. They come to give exams and then sit for an interview. Sometimes, some of them are not ready but then we cover up. We have a way of subsidizing it or doing one thing or the other to take care of that normally. So, we don’t have many challenges. One challenge is just sponsorship. Two, response of teachers, because even when we have this kind of lofty programme, teachers are sceptical, principals are also not necessarily sceptical but they are afraid of the test, you know that kind of thing. You’ve left school for a long time and then you are asked to come and take a test. We campaign for principals to come and pick a prize but they are afraid of the tests, teachers are also afraid of the test. So, this year we have just about 100 and something which shouldn’t be. We should have up to 200 or more applying, but they are not interested. That’s a challenge for us because the more the merrier, isn’t it? The more, the more competitive too. If you have five people competing it is better than three. If you have 10 principals, we keep it at 10 to 15 principals but we have never had 15. The last time was about 11 or so, this year there are about seven principals. There was a year that was even lower than that even though at that time we were just choosing one but now we are choosing three. So, people are not willing to even come and compete and pick a prize.

 

 

Have you experienced challenges pertaining to picking out the most qualified candidates after screening perhaps after a tie?

 

 

No, we don’t have that because our criteria for picking are very clear. Unless there is a tie, if there is a tie we now know what to do. We go back to the records or give them another test if it comes to that but usually it does not get there.

 

 

In 2021 surprisingly, the Foundation extended its coverage into journalism. What informed that decision?

 

 

It is because we also want expertise in journalism. We have people who write all kinds of trash. So, can we have people who can sit down and do good investigative stories? We lack expertise. So, the foundation said can we also get into that. Maybe sometime later we can also look at another sector of the economy so that we challenge them to sit up. We also want the best in journalism, not this, how do I call it- pocket hungry or whatever journalists who go clap in hand looking for brown envelopes, no. Not some journalists who say just give us. Whatever the story is, we can publish. The story may not be tight and the paper is sued. You have to go to court to defend why you published it. We want people who are strong in journalism, so that your story is straight to the point, your story does not have any legal implications which can even cause you damages. Your story is concrete, your story is something that can sell. So, the Board of Trustees decided to do this and call it the Ray Ekpu Prize for Investigative Reporting. Ray Ekpu rose through the ranks to what he became known nationally and internationally. So, we said Ray Ekpu is our own to show that our own can measure up.

 

 

 

So what role would you like to play as your contribution in bettering the Foundation even as you have retired from the University?

 

 

I am still part of the Foundation. I am very much around. I will still play my role. God helping, we will see how the foundation can grow and we will see how we will collaborate with whoever wants to collaborate with us to move the Foundation forward not necessarily for the name of the foundation but for the bettering of the education sector. This is because it is not the Foundation’s name that is so important but if education is really handled the way it should in this State then we will be happy. The Foundation owners like the Board of Trustees will be happy if education is addressed properly in Akwa Ibom State.