By Bashir Bello (Dollars) & Ali Ahmed
The Nation newspaper in a last report of a three-part serial of assessment of the performance of some minister under President Goodluck Jonathan had this to say about Prof. Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufai, the current Minister of Education “Though the Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufai, joined the cabinet shortly after the then President Goodluck Jonathan became a substantive President, she was one of the few new ministers who hit the ground running. Immediately she resumed at the Federal Ministry of Education, she ensured that everybody was kept busy on how to improve the sector. Most of the parastatals under the ministry have been engaged in several developmental activities which, according to sources, were left unattended to before the arrival of the woman who many describe as hardworking. Her latest achievement is the recent public presentation of the nation’s education data survey and the launch of the Digest of Education Statistics for the period, 2006 to 2010 which gingered President Goodluck Jonathan to assure Nigerians of increase in budgetary allocation to the sector.” The paper went further to award her a well deserved ‘Good’ performance scorecard, unlike her other colleagues who mostly got an ‘average’, and below average pass mark.
No doubt, only a prejudiced analyst would have failed to see the truth in the paper’s assessment that the professor on resuming duty as the Minister of Education hit the ground running, and that patriotic sprint by this erudite woman to revamp the sorry state of our education sector has brought about some positive success.
This write up is to really put in view the remarkable silent achievements of this unsung Amazon who within the shortest possible period as minister of education in our country history had been able to revolutionized our education sector and also set a standard that many of her male counterparts who had a long grace period as education ministers, including resources, and a then peaceful security situation failed to hit their masculine feet on the ground to restore sanity to our almost sunk education sector.
According to an article published online by a Nigerian focused website www.nigerianin America.com,titled : Education in Nigeria: The Return of Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufai as Minister, while analyzing the needed reforms to save the Nigerian education sector, had this to say “When Minister Rufai took over the ministry roughly 18 months or so ago, she quickly identified four areas of focus: (1) access and equity, (2) standards and quality assurance, (3) technical and vocational education and teacher training, and (4) funding and resource utilization as part of her plan to reform the education sector. Professor Rufai has strategically aligned herself with state commissioners of education and selected board members of the National Universities Commission (NUC), particularly Chris Okojie and others in the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) to re-conceptualize the tertiary education or higher education. The strategy is now paying dividend as fidelity in compliance and rigor in action returns to the federal ministry of education”.
Over the years, since the country’s return to democracy, the Nigerian schools have witnessed a shameful sliding among other schools in the Africa continent, away from its hitherto number position. Helpless citizens were forced to watch as public schools in Ghana, Benin, Zambia, Kenya, Togo, Botswana and other African countries with little resources compared to Nigeria continued to modernize their schools, and yearly churned out educated and intelligent graduates from their various cradle of learning.
It was still this poor state of schools that Professor Ruqayyatu met on assuming office as the minister of education, but today the story cannot say to be the same as this woman of substance has within the shortest time changed the face of schools in Nigeria. Still fresh in mind, was the actualization of a change in the country’s outdated curriculum which became a reality under her tenure, a long expected change that finally saw the light of the day following a decision reached during the last National Council of Education meeting, a new curriculum was approved for Senior Secondary Education.This decision was made public at a meeting between the Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqayyatu Rufai, and Commissioners for Education from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, in Abuja. The Executive Secretary of the National Educational Research and Development Commission, Prof. Godswill Obioma, while presenting a brief structure of the new curriculum at the meeting informed the public that under the new structure, a total of 42 subjects were approved. He said the new SSE curriculum structure specifies 42 subjects, distinctly categorized into four distinct fields of study namely: “Senior Secondary Education (Science), Senior Secondary Education (Humanities), Senior Secondary Education (Technology) and Senior Secondary Education (Business). He further explained that the structure also indentified compulsory/ cross cutting subjects; core subject i.e. subjects selected from any of the four fields of study; and elective subjects for each field of study. In addition, 34 entrepreneurial trades subject are to be offered in secondary schools to encourage self reliance and wealth creation.
Looking at this transformation in our hitherto out of date secondary school curriculum, one would but agree that the coming of professor Ruqayyatu was part of the catalysts that brought about a much needed change in our secondary schools, initiated the students to learn how to be self reliant and importantly propelled our schools to meet up to the 21st Century teaching techniques in this globalised age. Also worthy of mentioning is the undisputed fact that it was during the tenure of this woman achiever that more federal universities where approved and established across the various regions in the country; a remarkable achievement that will no doubt live in the sand of time, with her name reechoing in our minds whenever the issue of education reform in Nigeria is being mentioned.
It is an undisputable fact that this woman as rightly positioned by the nation newspaper hit the ground running on assuming office as the minister of education. A race she won by creating various positive records in our education sector and setting a landmark that our schools are identifiable with today.
