RE: Ineptitude, Failure in Delta and Wrong Scapegoating

BigPen’s editorial of Sunday March 24, 2019, fell far short of the standards expected of a responsible online media organisation. For an editorial to truly serve its purpose of forming and influencing public opinion, as well as holding the Government accountable to its constitutional responsibilities, it must be rooted in deep research, intellectual rigour, balanced analysis, logical reasoning, and pragmatic solutions; it must present facts not just dispense opinions. Sadly, the editorial by BigPen was pitiably lacking in all of these. It was a classic case of armchair journalism riddled with bias and prejudice, wild conjectures, inaccuracies, sweeping generalisations and unsubstantiated claims.
First of all, it is disingenuous for Bigpen to attempt to muddle up the issues by vainly trying to link the Success Adeghor saga with the scrapping of Edumarshal. It would have been laughable were it not so pathetic.

Edumarshal, as conceived by the previous administration, was established to check truancy among pupils/students. But the case of little Success was not that of truancy. She was unlawfully sent home from school by the authorities due to her parents’ inability to pay an illegal levy. There is a world of difference there. Then Bigpen makes an outrageous claim that “there are more children out of school today than in previous years,” yet it provides no statistics to back up this claim.

It amounts to journalistic indolence for BigPen to assert that Edumarshal “was scrapped for no good reason.” If the editors had taken the time to do the needful, they would have known that the Governor Ifeanyi Okowa administration was forced to drop the programme after a detailed review that began in October 2015 and was concluded in the first quarter of 2017. The review process was consistent with the administration’s trademark discipline, meticulousness, probity, accountability, and devoid of any political and parochial considerations. It is pertinent to point out that it took almost one and half years for the review to be completed because of the near absence of proper documentation of the programme.

At the end of the day it was the considered view of the review Committee that even though on the surface the programme looked appealing, it was nonetheless bedevilled with weak recruitment procedures, unstructured remuneration/salary scale, improper promotion/advancement plans, structural imbalances, organisational gaps, lack of proper accounting policies for funds already expended, and the absence of a legal instrument establishing the programme. But perhaps the most disturbing thing was that Edumarshal was run not as a Government agency with the appropriate structures in place but as a personal entity/fiefdom operated on the whims and caprices of those saddled with the responsibility of establishing and running it.

By the time the current administration made the decision to scrap the programme, the morale of the Marshals was at an all-time low having worked as contract/ad hoc staff for almost three years. Meanwhile, at the point of recruitment they were told that they would be bonafide full time staff of the Delta State Government. It is also on record that as a sign of good faith, a one-off payment equivalent to three months cumulative stipend of the 147 persons whose names appeared on the list of Marshals was made by the State Government. Not to mention the fact that the Marshals were carried along during the review process and the outcome unambiguously communicated to them.

The hallmark of leadership is the ability to take decisions, no matter how tough, for the purposes of good governance and not pander to the emotions and sentiments of a few individuals in the society. While some may, for reasons best known to them, have some sentimental attachment to the Edumarshal programme, the current administration was not bound to continue with it, especially when it was not even a legal entity!

Using the state of disrepair of the Okotie Eboh Primary School 1 as an example, Bigpen wants its readers to believe the story is the same in all public schools in the State. How misleading and uncharitable. It is axiomatic in journalism that facts are sacred. It is either the editors at BigPen made no attempt to check the facts or it was simply a case of ‘don’t confuse me with the facts; my mind is already made up’. Otherwise how could a respectable organisation such as BigPen fail to acknowledge the valiant efforts of the current administration to upgrade infrastructure in our public schools? As at December 2018, the administration had constructed/reconstructed/renovated 4,738 classrooms throughout the State, including public schools in the coastal communities. With 1,125 primary schools and 465 secondary schools in the State, it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that it is not possible for this administration to fix all the schools in four years. Besides, the infrastructural decay in our schools did not start in 2015 when Dr Okowa became Governor.

BigPen alleged that the Government’s response to the Success saga was “knee jerk” and queried the rationale behind commencing the reconstruction of Okotie Eboh Primary School 11 instead of the one little Success attends. Again, I put it down to lazy journalism. The Press Statement by the Honourable Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Mr Chiedu Ebie, was categorical that “the contract for the first phase was awarded on the 29th of December, 2018, and work has since commenced.” So first, it was not a “knee jerk” response to the viral video but part of the Government’s on-going efforts to provide a conducive learning environment for our pupils. And as to why the Government should start with the second school instead of that of Success, are the editors of BigPen in any way suggesting that pupils in the other school are underserving of a better learning climate? Is Success in any way different or better than them just because they did not appear in a viral video? Haba BigPen!

The editors at BigPen must be the only ones in Delta who are unaware of the new life that has been infused into our hitherto moribund Technical Colleges, in line with the Okowa’s administration’s emphasis on skills acquisition. To date, approximately N5b has been spent on infrastructural upgrade and supply of equipment to the six Technical Colleges. The schools have received full accreditation for all their courses by the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), thus positioning them as Vocational Enterprise Institutes and for the National Vocational Qualification Framework. In addition, with improved linkages and partnerships, all six Technical Colleges now enjoy a World Bank/SEEFOR grant of N45m annually. As proof of their popularity among the populace, enrolment into these schools has jumped from 2,424 in 2015 to 6,395 in 2019, more than 100% increase. In addition, while still in school, students of these colleges are already enjoying the benefit of executing contract jobs because of their newly acquired vocational/technical skills.

BigPen, again uncharitably, spoke of the “deterioration in the quality of education in our public schools in Delta State over the last few years,” without supplying evidence to support this assertion. Of course, the facts on ground negate this wild claim. For instance, since this administration came on board, the performance of our students in WAEC has steadily improved. In 2014, the overall performance stood at 39.1%. This jumped to 62.22% in 2015 and 2016, and as at 2017, 64.57% of students who participated in WAEC scored credits in at least five subjects, including Mathematics and English. It is also public knowledge that apart from regular training and retraining of teaching staff, the Okowa administration has commenced the construction of a Teachers Professional Development Centre. So what deterioration is BigPen talking about?

If the editors at BigPen would be honest with themselves, they are the ones who churned out a “knee jerk” editorial pandering to the whimsical dictates of a few desperate and unscrupulous politicians who want to exploit the unfortunate incident of Success for their selfish purposes. That is not only unfair to the little girl but also highly objectionable and unconscionable. 

Ekwugum is Manager, Communications, Government House, Asaba.