Special Report by Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku
The Institute of Continuing Education (ICE), Benin City, Edo State of Nigeria was once a school of excellence. It offered a pathway to students who could not make their West African School Certificate Examination in conventional high schools to study and obtain the certificates in order to pursue further education.
ICE also had a highly structured four-year high school which prepared students for their WASC examination so as to pursue further education, such as the university or Polytechnic. This section of the institute offered opportunities to adults, especially low level civil servants who still had the desire to study for high school certificates.
The institute also had a place for graduates of high schools, including civil servants, seeking an opportunity to study for their Advanced level education to proceed to the university.
Prior to the establishment of the institute, many of the students had to travel to St. Patrick’s College, Asaba, now in Delta State or pay through their noses to go to Cambridge University affiliate in the UK for the actualization of their educational dreams.
With its establishment therefore, a huge burden was lifted off the shoulders of the parents of teeming youth and civil servants eager to fulfil requirements for admissions into universities and other institutions of higher learning, locally and internationally.
In its heyday, the school ran both morning and evening sessions in the sciences, arts, commercial and social sciences. Its students came from the high and the low, from far and near together with the upper and middle classes.
It was an academic hub, run by seasoned professionals and teachers. Success rate at the JAMB, NECO & WAEC local and external examinations was high. Partly due to the existence of the Institute, Edo State attained excellence in academic pursuit and attainment in Nigeria.
For instance, a review titled: A Decade of Candidates’ Performance in NECO-SSCE Mathematics in Nigeria, authored by Prof. U.N Agwagah of the department of science education, University of Nigeria Nnsuka, revealed that the South-South of Nigeria had the highest percentage performance in 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007 and 2009.
Unfortunately, at some point of its existence, it fell into bad time. Sources said it became an all-comers’ affair. The once an academic hub in the state became an academic miracle center, where examination malpractice was the order of the day. Our sources told us that this state of affair was as a result of lack of oversight due to sheer neglect by successive governments.
That was not all. Since these successive governments seemed to have abandoned the Institute, administrators too had a field day with dipping their hands in its accounts.
Reports had it that after Godwin Obaseki, current Edo governor visited the school in 2017, he immediately shut it down following incidents of corruption ascribed to the institute’s administration.
Three years after the governor took that decision, the Institute is in ruins, rotting away, with a massive bush prevailing, air conditioners, cars, laboratory equipment, the classes and equipment worth some cool millions are in one form of decay or the other.
Some Edo residents told Alltimepost.com that they see no reason why the government of Godwin Obaseki has left the Institute to rot. One of them, Osamudiamen Arasonmwan, a researcher said that as governor, Mr. Obaseki had the right to shut down the institution if he deemed it fit.
“Most people are not against the decision of the governor to shut down ICE; but why shut it down without attending to the issues responsible for the decay that made the governor to shut it down?
“Look at this lab for example. At a time the world is looking for a cure for COVID- 19, we have here a lab worth millions of naira rotting away just like that,” Mr. Arasonmwan bemoaned. According to him, it is better to tear all the buildings down, renovate and change the leadership structure of the institution than leave it to wear and tear.
“If people were stealing the monies, he could have used the cashless system to checkmate them.”
Allimepost.com found some evidences that the governor attended to issues relating the reason for the shutdown of the school. One building on another section of the institute wears a modern look, with state-of-the-art seminar and conference facilities, a standby generator which runs Mondays to Fridays from 9am to 5pm, internet facilities, modern office spaces, spacious co-creation and Innovation Hubs.
Those taking advantage of the co-creation hubs with internet and power supply pay a token to government monthly to access the facilities. Very big multinationals like Multichoice often hold training seminars in that building from where job recruitment programs like Edo Jobs operate.
“Our South-South Innovation hub is an incubator of ideas. The Edo State government provides legal, accounting and financial services as support to young South-South techies who have ideas and solutions that can improve the quality of governance,” manager of the hub, Osayi Tres Omokaro told Alltimepost.com.
A report by Vanguard on April 29, 2018, headlined, Obaseki converts ICE to tech-Innovation hub, quoted the governor as saying: “We are trying to correct the faulty education and prepare our youth to compete favorably with other youth in other parts of the world.”
That may be so, but the ICE is not the only institution either shut down or decaying in Edo State. In 2019, a group, known as National Association of Polytechnic students (NAPS), in a press conference gave the Obaseki administration up till two weeks to reopen all tertiary institutions shut down like the ICE and left to rot, and attend to all issues leading to their closure.
The group said that if the ultimatum was not met, it would respond with ‘a mother of protests’ against the Obaseki administration. Among the tertiary institutions which the NAPS cited as reason for its protest included the College of Education, Ekiadolor; the College of Agriculture, Iguoriakhi; the Edo state school of nursing and the Centre for Community studies, Benin City.
After the protest by the NAPS, another group, Benin Indigenous Group (BIG) tasked Godwin Obaseki to revisit the circumstances that led to the closure of the Edo tertiary institutions.
While the case of the other tertiary institutions shut down by the Obaseki administration seem to hang in the balance as that of the ICE, that of the Centre for Community Development, CCD, in Benin City took a rather curious turn.
After Alltimepost.com report headlined, Edo State: When Centre for Community Development Fails, published on February 13, 2019, the State government tore it down and renovated the school, relocated the CCD to Ibekuma in Edo North of the state without a consideration of very many factors affecting the CCD and its students. The government then made the former center for community development a hub for migrant relocation and resettlement.
Some of those factors included the fact that the CCD was created by an Act of Parliament, and its repeal and relocation could have been done vide an Act of Parliament. The students too, who were relocated to the hinterland were just about to conclude their second semester exams.
“Most of us are civil servants working here in Benin City and environs, seeking to develop ourselves and contribute to the development of the state. Now that Mr. Governor Obaseki has relocated us into the hinterland, how do we cope?”
“We cannot leave our jobs and go into the bush somewhere to resume our studies,” a student union leader of the CCD said.
In the light of the COVID- 19 pandemic, public policy analysts are worried that these tertiary institutions for building manpower to handle cases related to the health of citizens are either under lock and key or are in one form of decay or the other.
According to the Alltimepost.com report cited above, ‘development centers around the world are catalysts for citizen and grassroots participation, mobilization and positive change.’
Like most universities in Nigeria, the Edo state School of nursing, the Centre for Community Development, the College of Agriculture, the school of nursing and the College of Education were supposed to perform roles crucial to the management of the COVID- 19 pandemic.
Instances of the role that these tertiary institutions could play include the production of hand sanitizers and masks, which the University of Benin already commenced, the sensitization and raising of awareness of the citizenry on a code of etiquette related to the COVID- 19 pandemic.
Barr. Sheku Kargbo of the Jackson, Kargbo & Associates thereby asks the crucial question: “if none of them is in session, who would then assist government to do the needful – grassroots mobilization, safety and easy distribution of drugs and raw materials?
When we reached Osarodion Ogie, secretary to the Edo State government, he was categorical that Jimoh Ijegbai, Honorable Commissioner for Education would shed some light on the issues.
But Ijegbai told us that the state school of Nursing and the College of Agriculture are not under his watch but under the health and agriculture ministries. With the College of Education Ekiadolor, the Hon Commissioner said that the school was being taken over by the Federal government.
When we asked him concerning the uncertain state of the ICE, he said: “Everything that has happened to ICE happened prior to my taking over there as commissioner, and therefore I cannot give you an update on the institute.”
Some concerned stakeholders are not happy with the response from the Edo State government. According to Samuel Ayokhai, a media consultant and lecturer, the state of tertiary institutions in Edo state is “highly unfortunate.”
He said that “government’s reasons for the closure of the schools is very weak and does not convince anyone. At the end of the day, there’s nothing to clap for, and the affected communities and students are left in the middle of the road more confused.”
In spite of this however, Bidemi Nelson, CEO of Shield of Innocence Initiative, an NGO working on child advocacy issues has a contrary view.
According to her, the Edo state government took the bold step to shut down the schools due to dilapidated buildings, threats of attacks by wild animals and most important, the poor standard of education.
“I think the government stand is justified especially since it plans to scale up educational delivery for students by investing in teachers’ training and repairing dilapidated structures. However, the governor should have convened a stakeholders’ meeting with definite time frames for all these propositions which should be jointly agreed upon.
“Now is a good time to have a stakeholders’ meeting and also set up a committee to monitor and report on progress of the government so as to meet with deadlines.”
But the panacea to the matter of shutdown and rotting tertiary institutions in Nigeria comes from
Dr. Matthew Ayibakuro, a lawyer, university don and development expert.
According to him, most tertiary institutions in Nigeria are classic examples of universities not fit to meet the needs of the 21st Century.
“Therefore, any decision being made to shut them down should first consider how to bring them up to modern standards and expectations. The decisions should not be political but seek to prepare them to handle present and future challenges like the COVID- 19,” Dr. Matthews said.
CALL TO ACTION: The COVID- 19 pandemic has seemingly demystified the educational and health institutions of the civilized world. Now it is Carpe Diem for all Nigerian leaders – Nigerians expect them to seize the hour, seize the moment, seize the day and begin proceedings to drive the great developmental ideas, such as the ones put forward by Dr. Matthew Ayibakuro and Bidemi Nelson.
Bob MajiriOghene Etemiku is Alltimepost.com Special Correspondent andDeputy Executive Director, Civil Empowerment & Rule of Law Support Initiative, CERLSI.
