Prof Hope Eghagha is the commissioner, Ministry of Higher Education in Delta State. In this interview with Correspondent Felix Igbekoyi, the human right activist, writer and professor of English and Literary Studies elaborates on education in the state, benefits of bursary and scholarships to the students’ infrastructural and human capital developments. Excerpts:
What is your impression of higher education sector as the commissioner in the Ministry in Delta State?
Higher education is crucial to the development of any society. The very idea of higher education suggests that you have gone beyond the basics. You are now beginning to develop and improve your mind and beginning to apply your mind to your environment, to the challenges in the society. This is because higher education goes beyond learning to application. The mind is stimulated into thinking about challenges. You also know that one of the main points of this administration is human capital development and you cannot develop the human being if education is not properly focused and if there is not enough access to education.
How do you intend to achieve that before May 2015 when the administration of your boss would come to an end?
In order to achieve that you need to create access at different levels – colleges of education, polytechnics and universities. At the university level, under graduate and post-graduate, we have two Colleges of Education in Agbor and Warri. Then we have College of Physical Education in Mosogar. We have three polytechnics in Ozoro, Ogwashi-Uku and Otefe. Then we have a university that has three campuses. In all we are managing 10 campuses as it were and the campuses at Oleh and Asaba could become full-fledged universities with time. That is what the state government is planning. In order to achieve this, of course we know generally that there is challenge with funding. Nobody has been able to fund education beyond 13 or 14 per cent budget and the minimum prescribed by UNESCO is 26 per cent. But what we have been able to do is to provide enough to make sure that system runs. The state government has also been able to allow the institutions to make use of their Internally Generated Revenues (IGR) to develop infrastructures as much as possible. As part of that, the government gives bursary to students in tertiary institutions, we have scholarships for those who have excelled, we have bursary too for the physically challenged, and we have for children of deceased civil servants. All of these are programmes that the government does in order to beef-up, sustain, and maintain the level of manpower needs that we require to make the engine of the state move.
What is the state of the new polytechnics when the state already has three?
Now, for any institution to take off there are different stages. There is the stage of conceptualization; there is the stage of development of infrastructure. We are still in the stage of conceptualization. Already we have decided that the polytechnics would start with two schools each with areas that are specified so that we don’t run the same programmers in two polytechnics. We are looking at agriculture, ICT, engineering but we have at this stage started building four polytechnics. Infrastructure development is on in Aboh, Abigborodo, construction has gone very far in Sapele and then in Bomadi. The state government has however decided to start from a temporary site. What the committee did in the last three weeks was to visit these temporary sites which were donated by the communities. Very soon, activities would kick off with the appointment of the management team to ensure that their programmes are ultimately accredited. Hopefully by next year we should be able to have our first set of students as the committee has recommended but it has to go through the channels for the final approval.
How have you been coping with the striking lecturers at the state’s Colleges of Education?
Strikes have become everyday tool in the hands of workers particularly in tertiary education, which is unfortunate. There was a time when tertiary institutions were the very last to go on strike; strike was not heard of. During the Gowon era when there was a strike when the striking lecturers ejected students out of the campus accommodation, for a very long time we did not have any strike. But from 1981/82, this strike monster came back with a vengeance into the Nigerian education sector. And because of the challenges with the managers, the teachers in the tertiary sector believe that enough is not being done. The lecturers made some demands on retirement age. On retirement age of 65, the governor told the visitor to the institution to give the approval of 65 years as retirement age since last year. On taxation, they complained about excessive taxes, we looked at the tax regime and said no, you are paying less before but now you are paying the correct tax. So they can make an appeal that the tax system should be reconsidered. They made demand about national housing fund and of course we told them that national housing fund is not within the control of the state government, it is a federal government thing, and we cannot ask you to opt out. Then the pension scheme we have come to see that it is a question of lack of information. So, quite a number of them have information. We were discussing all of this and I told them on behalf of government that Delta State government has done enough, has done a lot for tertiary institutions in terms of the new salary scale. We pay the latest and keeping the directive of the state governor, I said salaries are first line charge. We pay salaries when due, we do not owe. Then we still make funds available for research, accreditation and even convocation. If you begin to have problems with the interpretation of 65 years, how it affect certain persons or if you begin to have problems with individual taxes, if you begin to have problems with migration which is one of their demands; all of this the state government has acceded. So we did not expect them to go on any strike but the national body was on strike, so they just wanted to tag along. We have been talking and I do hope that very soon the strike would end. Strictly speaking they are not dealing with local issues.
What is migration; parents, students and others would like to know?
You see there was a level that was not existent before and there was an agreement with the federal government for those on level 12 to be moved to level 14 instead of 13, but you must have a master’s degree. It was the condition, but some of them think that once you get to 12 you move to 14. It is nationwide for the polytechnics and colleges of education. We have cleared that. Most of the issues we have discussed them exhaustively.
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