BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE

FORMER Presidential Candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and co-founder of the Pan-African University, Prof Pat Utomi, is sad over the rot in the education sector and the Federal Government’s handling of its agreement with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), issues over which university teachers are currently on strike. In an interview, Utomi also expressed concern on the inability of the various governments to create wealth even as he backed calls for restructuring the polity to devolve more powers to the federating units. Excerpts:

On ASUU strike and falling standard of education

I am very angry with the Federal Executive Council (FEC) in Nigeria. The FEC has become a glorified tenders board. Any time they finish their meeting, they will announce to you that they have approved this contract and that contract. What kind of nonsense is that? FEC should be a high-powered group of people that can solve problems, not to award contracts. You can have a sub-committee to deal with contracts and bring them to the council. The way they sound when they finish these meetings it is like the only reason they go there is to award contracts.

When you look at the transformation agenda, and try to identify the things that will lead to this transformation like how is the government dealing with education? We were looking at some figures of a rating recently: no university in Nigeria made the top 30 in Africa. Even small countries’ universities are ranked higher than Nigerian universities. How people are able to attend a FEC meeting after seeing statistics like that and sleep in the night amazes me.

Pat Utomi

The education system was a disaster foretold, which has happened. I was watching the ASUU president saying they reached this agreement, nobody has implemented it. How can you reach an agreement and refuse to implement it? If you don’t believe you can do it then don’t reach an agreement. Meanwhile, members of that FEC spend more money traveling, for reasons I don’t know, than is required to revamp Nigeria’s education system. Our priorities are so wrong and that is really what the problem is.

I think that education needs a major review. There should be a state of national emergency. And it is a national emergency that is not resolved in Abuja.. We need all stakeholders – teachers, ASUU, communities, educational and bureaucratic institutions, etc.

On autonomy of regional governments

In the 60s, the regional governments did not get allocations. They created wealth. They created environments that enabled investments and taxation to come in. As a young man in Lagos here, I used to see people running frantically from Western Nigeria, which got up to Mushin in those days. By the time they ran across to Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH), they were free, they had entered the Federal Territory. They were running from tax collectors.

The point is, if you create the environment and investments are pouring in and jobs are being created, then you can chase people to pay tax and you can have enough money to carry out projects. But state governments today are all about collecting and sharing, they are not creating wealth.

Look at South_East, the area is dead. All those who have factories in the East are moving them to Lagos and places like that. It is tragic. And the governments are there waiting for allocations. When Chief Michael Okpara was Premier of Eastern Region, that same area that is now dead was at a point boasting to be the fastest growing economy in the world, if separated from the rest of Nigeria.

Why are the people who are leading there today not able to think like Okpara and therefore create the conditions that will lead to wealth being created and people being paid a living wage? There is leadership failure across the board in our country.

On restructuring of the country and devolution of powers

I am in support of devolution of powers. I am particularly in support of what I call zones of development. After you have created the regions, I support the South-East and South-South of Nigeria to constitute a zone of development; Western Nigeria becomes another zone of development; and the North-East, North-West and North-Central as zones of development.

On National Assembly’s latest effort to amend the constitution

I am not sure what their motives are. Many of them who want to become governors want to create states for themselves. Very few of them have a broad vision of how our children and grand_children should live in harmony and prosperity. What we should do is to put personal short time ambitions aside and think, 50 years from now how will my great grand children feel about the country?