Dr Yusuf Hussaini is the chairman, Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP). In this interview with UJI ABDULLAHI ILIYASU on the sideline of School Applied Sciences Annual Exhibition Week which held at the Federal Polytechnic, Nasarawa, between September 4th and 5th, he talks about the significance of the exhibition, the industrial conflict between Academic Staff Unions of tertiary institutions and the federal government and sundry issues in education sector.
What is the significance of this annual exhibition week for Applied Sciences?
You know in the academic community there is this saying that you either publish or you perish. This is a forum where staff academic members who are due for promotion come and present their findings. These findings will serve as the official document that will be assessed to qualify them for the next promotion. It is a festival usually done quarterly for us to showcase what we have added to knowledge.
Recently the Executive Secretary of Tertiary education Trust Fund, Professor Elias Suleiman Bogoro inaugurated Technical Action Group (TAG) comprising of renowned academics across tertiary institutions in Nigeria, which aims to deemphasised self-publishing. Do you think it will work?
You know anything that has an advantage will definitely have a disadvantage. If they have well qualified and intellectual hands in the group, it will only sanitise the sector. And the members of the group must be drawn from academic institutions. And if so, it is still our own because academics will be able to manage it well. We know the significance of such undertaking. But if they choose to infuse politics into such an important and purely academic undertaking, it won’t achieve its aim.
What do you think, as a unionist, the federal government can do to end the constant industrial conflict by the academic unions of tertiary institutions?
We need sincerity on the part of the government. Quality education cannot be guaranteed in a society where the president, the minister, governor and all others who manage the ministries, departments and agencies (MDAS) and make budget for education sector t do not deem it fit to train their children in them. They take their children and wards to schools outside Nigeria in America and Europe and you expect Nigerians to believe that they mean well for our education?
It is the insensitive of the government that is responsible for the constant industrial conflict between academic unions and it. If the unions down tools and stay out of action for six months or even a year, it does not concern them because the future of their children are not affected. So they don’t have that sympathy and political will to make education sector vibrant, viable and attractive for people to continue learning. The public education sector in Nigeria is for the poor. How many of us can afford to send our children to Ghana not to talk of Europe and America.
Some go to Niger. So until the government leads by example, quality education remains a mirage. Political officeholders should not be allowed to take their children and wards or relations outside our shores to foreign schools; let them be here. Definitely, if your children and wives and other relations are in schools in the country you will not agree to let the sector down. This is the solution towards the end of strike and the harmony we are looking for. If their children are with us they will be sensitive and appreciate the challenges in the sector and feel what we are feeling.
Did you have a prior meeting with the national chairman of Academic staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, who in his last interview with Blueprint said Nigeria was running a dual education system?
I have never met Professor Ogunyemi in my life, and I have never read the interview in question. It is an obvious issue. When you have the president, the Senate president, the Speaker of the House of Reps, all have their children studying in the best schools in Europe and America what do you think will happen to the home education sector? Video evidences abound where they celebrate their children and wards’ graduation in foreign universities. They are the same set of people who make budget for our education, so how can that work? If you want the system to work, participate in that system and you will know where it pinches and where it is hard or soft. You will then give the system what it deserves. Come to our labs and see; they are empty. The class that is supposed to take 50 students takes up to 250 students. How can a lecturer be meticulous in marking when he marks more than 1000 scripts at a go. We don’t have research grants even though we have so many researches. There is no link between research institutes and the companies that are producing.
What do you say on the award of Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) by polytechnics as solution to the issue of dichotomy between them and universities?
For us here it is yet to commence. But if this dichotomy is removed I will give the government a round of applause. My question has been, what are the universities doing that the polytechnics are not doing? Have the universities moved us forward scientifically and technologically? No. Universities are good in theories but polytechnic education is based on hand-on or practical experience. If the government wants Nigeria to leapt into the technologically advanced comity of nations more attention should be given to polytechnic education and the right people put in their administration. All we need to do is to reverse technology. Whatever is being done outside can be replicated here. China did that and now it is a technology giant. Bring inventions into the country, uncouple and re-couple them to your advantage. You are not bringing something new; you are only replicating the existing ones. Gradually we will start making the machines we hitherto imported from outside the country. We can fabricate the parts and sell them. So if the government is serious on the issue of the dichotomy there must be improvement in the curriculum of universities and polytechnics so that schools will be practical-oriented. We have more of paper intelligence. Somebody might have exceptional paper qualification, but tell him to enter a lab and carry out some experiment, he cannot do it.
What had the minister of education, Mallam Adamu Adamu done to deserve the second appointment in the Next Level?
In Nigeria who you know determines what position you occupy and what you do. The question of what Mallam Adamu had achieved in the first tenure can be best answered by the presidency. We don’t have an instrument for measuring performance. If at all Adamu’s performance had been measured, I don’t think he deserves the appointment in the Next Level.
You can imagine that the education ministry is the brain and intellectual hub of a country, but for a person, who has no doctoral degree to manage it, is ridiculous.
What has he to offer? We are turning things upside down and we expect to get good result. No way. It is case of a round peg in a square hole. No, Things are not done like that. If you put the right perspectives in the system we will get good result, otherwise for next 20 to 30 years it shall be all motion without movement.
