Sunday Olatunji is the chairman, Royal Masters School, CBD, Alausa, Lagos. In this interview, he spoke, among other issues, about the state of the country’s education system, what is needed to be done and the celebration of four outstanding men who were recently awarded Doctoral degrees in academic fields outside their core banking field. Excerpts:
Congratulations on the celebration of men of letters. At what point did the idea to specially celebrate the four scholars for their academic attainment occur to you?
Well, when these guys are our bankers, accountants and all of that, they were not in academics and of course they made their marks in banking at various levels. We worked together and they were marvelous. Remarkably, they went on beyond banking to do what is very rare in Nigeria for their dogged pursuit of academics to the highest level.
That shows commitment, vision, sacrifice and determination. The kind of virtue that made them successful in their careers and for them to have conquered the first mountains in their lives, in their careers to that level and still pursue another career, another mountain in another sector entirely and to the highest level is truly commendable. I was immensely impressed and excited at their achievements.
How often do you monitor their career and academic progression?
They call me from time to time concerning the progress they are making in their lives. These are a remarkable team of resourceful men and they are doing well in their various endeavours. Those that remain in banking and others still in the banking profession have continued to do well. You can’t have so many blessings and blessed people around you and will not want to celebrate them. Life is too short to ignore such things.
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Obviously, these are not the only ones that have passed through pupilage under your watch; what is your advice to others still struggling to make a mark?
Everybody is facing a challenge at any point in time. It is a question of degree, type, shape, size and all of that. Like I said one common ingredient is, these guys have all done very well in life. The virtues of determination, integrity, hard work, of visionary and organised life, is there and those things will always see people through. They were well resourced, well equipped for life and that is why they’ve continued to weather the storms and move on.
Also, we try to get in touch with one another and support one another as much as we can. That is why we gather once in a while to discuss, brainstorm and of course,to fellowship together because the community is a great asset to anybody and we are enjoying that by God’s grace.
Sir, you are known to be a banker yet you still have a passion for education, what is your thought and impression about the sector in this country?
It is the most neglected, the most afflicted, the most traumatised. That explains why we are not making progress. Schools and education systems reform society and when we ignore education it becomes a time bomb. and we are going to pay dearly for it. Things are not getting better, they are getting worst.
There is a flood of illiterate graduates at all levels coming out with certificates that are said to be good but they are good for nothing, either for the individual or for the community. It is a disaster and we need to address it seriously.
What should the government do specifically and parents as well?
The government needs to take education seriously and as much as possible they need to create jobs. There are ways they can do it. The value system is a bit challenged. I am just waiting to see how the miracle of the government running schools successfully the way it used to be some 14 to 15 years ago. I am still trying to see how that miracle can work.
It is just to take truly visionary people, truly committed people, patriotic people that are prepared to make a sacrifice. People that are prepared to think about the society, think about Nigeria, the next generation and the future of this country. Unfortunately, we cannot say about people in power who are unconcerned about the destiny of the nation, about the building blocks of a vibrant nation. There are many countries of the world with no natural resources and they are doing excellently well because they’ve nurtured the human capital so well that they are leaders in many areas of human endeavours. We can see the calamity that has befallen us despite the resources that we have and all of that because we have neglected the human capital side of the enterprise. With that the vandalism of values in the society where from primary to secondary, all levels, children are no longer inspired to achieve anything meaningful in terms of academic pursuit. They are looking for great ways to make money, to become celebrities, to go into entertainment and things like that, thinking of quick ways of making money rather than old-fashioned ways of hardwork, integrity, skills building, and resilience to weather the storm and challenges whether they will be able to survive under adverse circumstances.
We understand you have an investment in the education sector. Can we have an insight in terms of your contribution to the sector?
Contribution to education is hard to measure. The physical contribution is easy to measure but the success of a school is far more than physical contributions. I stand here today by the grace of God, I am a product of the contribution of many teachers. Some of them are dead but their work continues in the things I have done today by the grace of God. But in terms of the physical things we can talk about, we have the Royal Masters Montessori Nursery and Primary School. We have a day college here as well and boarding college along the expressway in the name of Christ College as well.
We have the Trinity International College that has been there for a quarter of a century and has turned out many hundreds of graduates who have done excellently well in every continent on earth. By the grace of God, Trinity University is going to take off shortly by the grace of God. We are expecting a licence anytime from now.
By November, politicians will be going around the country making promises to up the game in the education sector. Specifically, what agenda would you want to draw for politicians as the 2019 approaches?
You see it is a big challenge. The first thing about education is the learning environment that has been badly polluted and that has created an immediate challenge first for the education curriculum.
There are many unintended elements in the curriculum. The curriculum is the totality of the exposure of the learner in the setting in which they are learning. So, there is corruption in the curriculum as you can see at all levels.
If there is abuse against the curriculum, whatever people are exposed to in the environment of learning is part of the curriculum and it called the unintended curriculum and it affects them. That is why you find children come home with negative habits they pick from schools. That is one and it is a big issue.
The next of course, is instruction, teaching. Teaching is fundamentally about quality teachers who have expert knowledge, who are genuinely committed and interested as the single and most important factor to educational success when the environment is right. You cannot deliver what you don’t have. There are corps members posted by NYSC who could not write essays that grade five primary schools could write during an interview. We had to keep them because at one time NYSC complained that we are always rejecting corps members. We told them that we are looking for graduates, not illiterates. We have evidence in the essays they wrote that are inferior to what our grade five pupils can write. That is the truth.
The next thing is the assessment and you can see what is happening to assessments. Assessments don’t measure anything anymore. You can find a school in the middle of nowhere where the students are scoring A’s yet they can’t write correct English. They can’t answer any question correctly but they have results showing A’s. There is a challenge with the curriculum, challenge with the teaching and challenge with the assessment. So, they carry about certificates that are meaningless. It is a big issue and we must have to look at all that. The society itself is not helping matters whatsoever. Thus, we have the environment, the curriculum because of the environment, the curriculum which is outdated in many respects. Imagine a school using a typewriter and examining in typewriter when there are no typewriters to buy any more. It does not make sense. People come out of school and they can’t write a simple application for a job and you want to read it. That is the problem from the curriculum to the teaching to the assessment, and what it really represents is a big challenge.
