By Peace O. Aboje
KAMAL Mohammed, a car technician and painter, is 50 years old. He has been in these trades for the past 25 years. But it was not until 2014 when he was 42 that Kamal began his journey in education.
Kamal’s second chance, so to say, at formal learning came through an adult education programme in which he enrolled.
Interestingly, the reality that ultimately pushed Kamal into the philosophy of ‘better late than never’ when it comes to education, stemmed from the difficulties he faced in his trades and other existential encounters of life brought on him by illiteracy.
Married and father of five, Kamal told this reporter that he missed out on the normal system of education as a young boy with an uncle who lived in Kano but could not afford to see himself through primary and secondary education.
Kamal, who hails from Ankpa local government area of Kogi State, Northcentral Nigeria, told National Record that prior to his enrolment and graduation from the adult education class, he hardly had confidence in himself, particularly when in the public.
In addition to his low self-esteem, was also the challenge that constantly irked him; Kamal had no personal secrets, as he always needed someone to assist him to write down basic things around him in English language.
“I couldn’t do little calculations or even write out receipts in my business place. When I’m at home, I have my children write for me and outside the house I had to get anybody available to do the writing. I realised that this people didn’t come with it from birth but learnt it so that means I can too” Kamal said.
According to him, he also missed so many business opportunities on account of his inability to read and write. “Whenever I needed to go to the bank for one reason or the other, I used to go along with someone to help fill forms or write letters as the case may be.
“I also missed out on a free land that was supposed to be given to me by someone some years ago. I didn’t get the land because I couldn’t write the reason why I wanted the land when I was asked to,” Kamal says.
His greatest motivation to learning how to read and write, Kamal told National Record, came from a young security man at an office he visited for business. The young security man, he said, mocked him for his inability to read and write. The man, Kamal confessed, also told him that he was not too old to go back to school.
“This young man told me; Mr Man, you can still go back to school as you’re still young and learning never ends. This statement touched and motivated me as the man in question was a very young man,” Kamal said.
Following this encounter, Kamal took the bold step and enrolled in the FCT Department for Mass Education (DME) in 2014.
For the six years he spent at DME, he endured and patiently began attending classes from 1pm to 6pm. To reinforce his evening lessons from the adult literacy classes, Kamal said he also enrolled with a private tutor whom he visited for some hours in the morning to put him through what he had been taught a day earlier before he would proceed to school by 1pm.
“I was able to cope because I had a private tutor that I go to in the morning, whatever we’re taught in school and I don’t understand, I took to my private tutor and he will explain better before I proceed for classes in the afternoon. This was how I was able to excel,” Kamal said.
At the end of the six years, Kamal sat for the National Examination Council (NECO) examination and passed with flying colours.
The six years was not without challenges. Kamal said he had to combine school with his work as a car technician and painter. In addition, he said he had to bear stigmatisation from people around him who perpetually mocked him.
But regardless of these obstacles, he stuck to the goal of freeing himself from his illiteracy and stayed focused. “Enrolling in the FCT Department for Mass Education is one of the best decisions I have made in my life,” he told this reporter.
Kamal, at the moment, a 200-level part-time student at the Nasarawa State University, Keffi studying Public Administration, says he owes his redemption and current state in life to the FCT Department for Mass Education.
Education, he says, has made him more confident in himself, helped him better understand his trade and moderated his manners, especially in the way he relates with people.
He recalled a situation in early February 2022 when he had issues with his account. According to him, confidently went into the banking hall and wrote a letter of complaint to the manager with smiles on his face without the help of anyone. “When I was asked to write a letter to the manager, I confidently wrote and felt like heaven was smiling at me. I wrote to the manager without help from anyone and my account was rectified. If it were before, I would have had to go with someone to the bank. It was a great experience,” Kamal noted.
‘If you wait, you waste’
Like Kamal, 37-year-old Ms Maris Usifoh, owes her new course in life to adult education. In her case, she combined literacy classes with vocational skills training, also at the FCT Department of Mass Education.
Maris, who hails from Edo State, is literate as she said she holds a diploma from Akwa Ibom Polytechnic. But she enrolled in 2020, registering in the Hospitality and Tourism section, which is basically about event management. She graduated after six months and has been on her own ever since.
She said prior to her enrolment in the DME programme, she was into assorted businesses and wasn’t really doing well. Her enrolment and training became a path to new world and thinking, she recalled, that totally altered the course of her life.
Maris expressed joy at the result she got from her decision to enrol in the programme that has capacitated, and transformed to become not only self-employed, but also an employer of labour, in addition to being a producer with products to her credit as well as a trainer of other people.
“If you wait, you waste,” Maris told this reporter in a bid to encourage others. She admonished other adults out there not to remain where they are as there are many legitimate ways for economic survival and self-emancipation. She called on adults with disadvantaged upbringing in formal learning to seek knowledge and make meaning out of life for themselves.
Maris recalled with gladness how her new vocation has changed her life. She adds that dedication to duty and hard work are basic ingredients for success. “If you stay in one place, you know, hard work makes one to achieve his or her goals. If I had stayed idle, nothing will come to me. I had to go all out and hustle. I always encourage people, that they have to be up and doing. Before I stepped out this morning for a meeting before this interview, I had already baked fish roll for a customer I supply every morning to sell at Asokoro [in Abuja],” Maris told National Record.
Refusing to give up
Now a hair stylist, 33-year-old Bose Daniel missed out on early childhood education because she was at a very tender age made to care for her ailing grandmother in the village.
Bose’s first attempt at formal education was at age 24. Although she attended primary school in the village while tendering to her sick grandmother, but in the school, they were being taught only in their local dialect (Yoruba), a situation that made it difficult for her to speak, read and write in English.
Relocating to Abuja from the village at 15, Bose’s plight was compounded by her inability to access education. Her uncle (whom she stayed with at the time) felt she was too old and had outgrown schooling. To make matters worse, he had wrongly assumed that she was dull and instead opted to send Bose to go hawking.
Because of her desire for education, especially seeing young men and women defy the odds and doing very well essentially on account of being educated, Bose resolved to begin afresh by enrolling at the LEA Primary School, Jikwoyi, a working class suburb of Abuja.
Although that bold step did not immediately yield the desired result, Bose said she remained focused and refused to give up.
According to her, the teachers and indeed the pupils at LEA Primary School, Jikwoyi, did not offer her the littlest chance of beating illiteracy, claiming that she was already too old to learn.
“They [teachers] come to class and just begin to write on the board without caring if you understand or not. Most times, they just give the class captain the notes to copy for us. At that point, I could neither read nor write anything aside from my name,” Bose said.
Bose said in undermining her strong desire to learn, almost all the teachers were more concerned in her skill of hair braiding and the female teachers would instead ask her to plait their hair even during school hours.
“A lot of them advised me to focus on my business of hair braiding and forget about education,” Bose said, adding that under that circumstance, she finished from LEA Primary School, Jikwoyi with a certificate she couldn’t defend.
Bose told National Record that she was however not the only one in her situation in the school at the time.
Because her inability to read and write negatively impacted on her business, she was incapable of communicating effectively with some of her customers, and would always have her cousin respond to SMS and chats on social media on her behalf, her desire to be literate persisted.
Bose said her prayers to be literate was eventually answered through her hair-braiding trade when she met with a customer who learnt about her situation and directed her to Hill Christian Academy (HCA), and adult education centre owned by the ECWA Church located in Maitama District of Abuja.
At age 29, Bose enrolled at the HCA, activating a new phase in her life; attending the school every day of the week for four months.
According to her, she was taught the basic curriculum from the scratch and she responded quickly.
Within the period of intensive learning, Bose reveals, she had to shut down her shop to focus and be able to achieve her goal.
“Even though I had the challenge of money to fund my activities with my means of income closed during that period, I still endured until I made it,” Bose said, modestly acknowledging that the ‘little’ education she received lightened and broaden her horizon, and changed even the way she mingles and interacts with people who patronise her trade and the society at large.
She says she has achieved her dreams of being able to, to some degree, now read and write, a situation that has greatly improved her business, and above all, building her self-confidence.
She called on out-of-school youths to be focused, and adults who missed childhood education, not to be discouraged.
“Illiteracy is a disease that should be terminated by all means,” Bose advocates, adding that her desire is to go beyond her present level of education even as she is ever thankful to God for being “a better person than I was years ago.”
Another beneficiary of the HCA’s Adult Education Centre in Ado, Karu LGA of Nasarawa State, Mr Obagu Elijah, said he missed out on early childhood education because his parents couldn’t afford to see him through school.
Elijah said at the age 24, he was motivated to go to school and he did. He said because of the decision to go to school even though late, he is now a better person. He wishes, and is highly optimistic, that he will attain Ph.D. He calls on all adults without education to go to school as he is glad he took that step.
“Education is an eye-opener and brings about civilisation,” said Elijah, who now teaches at a private school, Bill Clinton Nursery and Primary School, New Nyanya, Nasarawa State. He said his major goal is to impact knowledge to children who have the opportunity that he didn’t as a child.
Elijah said he now walks about with confidence in himself. According to him, though the decision to go to school as an adult was not an easy one to make, he is glad he did and succeeded in getting rid of illiteracy from his life, making him vaster and rational in thinking.
Tinted with stigma
There are uncountable Kamals, Marises, Boses and Elijahs groomed and being offered a second chance in life through either adult or vocational education or both by the FCT Department of Mass Education (DME) and ECWA’s Hill Christian Academy (HCA), National Record discovered.
Many of these are doing well on account of their social and economic redemption, majority of them, encountered in the course of visits to the zonal centres in the area councils were unreceptive to being interviewed as beneficiaries of the centres as a result of what some of them referred to as stigma associated with adult education.
Of the many asked to share their experiences, only Kamal and Maris conceded to having their pictures taken, while the others declined to either be photographed or interviewed.
The redemption centres
The FCT Department for Mass Education (DME), established in 1991, is a centre for formal and non-formal education opened to the general public. The centre’s authority said its mission and vision are to eradicate illiteracy in FCT and environs by reaching out to vulnerable out-of-school youths and adults in order to make their lives better in the society.
DME programmes, naturally structured to fill the gaps created by denial or lack of access in early life formal education, range from the basic literacy, post-basic literacy, continuous learning, women education centres, language centres, and vocational skills training centres.
DME is decentralised with presence in the six area councils of the FCT, tagged zones, and has over 100 centres in each, National Record gathered. Its non-formal education is open to both teenagers and adults as it trains them on a variety of skills which include catering, fashion design, cosmetology, and even Agric-tech for farmers.
DME says it has so far recorded a high level of success as they graduate not less than 200 students every year from all the six zones. To be properly positioned to accomplish its mandate of re-educating the uneducated masses, it said it has on its employment a huge number of teachers and facilitators.
But the DME, like other government functionaries, has challenges that impede the fulfilment of its set goals, says the Zonal Coordinator, for the Abuja Municipal Area Council, AMAC, Mrs Victoria Nnodim.
Mrs Nnodim, who spoke on behalf of the DME’s Director, identified poor infrastructures/ facilities, paucity of funding from government, lack of visibility due to poor awareness and enlightenment by the agency, among other impediments.
She told National Record that most infrastructure and equipment on ground have been in use since inception of the department. She also noted that the curriculum has also not been reviewed since inception to take into context modern trends.
“We use to be an agency before, but was reduced to a department therefore cutting down the budget we get from the federal government,” Mrs Nnodim said, as she further expressed bitterness on the poor budget allocated to education in general.
“Even when there is a good budget, they focus more on the formal education system thereby ignoring DME. In the area of teachers and facilitators, we are okay, as same body in charge of employment in the conventional schools are also in charge of employment here,” Mrs Nnodim stated, adding that it was the sole reason for the high quality and standard of its graduates.
Hill Christian Academy (HCA), founded in 2001, uses what its principal, Mrs Evelyn Idah David, calls the ‘Accelerated Christian Education’ (ACE) curriculum.
Initially conceived to teach uneducated wives of pastors of ECWA Church who were supposed to assist their husbands in the leadership of the church, HCA has evolved to now serve both children and adults, all with the purpose of empowering those unable to read and write.
Mrs David told National Record that HCA has recorded 80% success since its inception. The rate of success and failure, she said, is measured from the feedback gotten from recipients.
The 20% failure rate, according to the principal, is mainly due to those students who found it difficult to combine their work with the learning process thereby not giving full attention. Another challenge, she said, resulted from lack of access to materials used based on the methodology of ‘learning-to-read’ which, she stressed, works with sounds.
The Accelerated Christian Education (ACE), Mrs David also noted, is a set of 12 for children and set of 12 with video phonic for adults, which “makes learning faster and uses sounds.’
Pastor Danladi Jeji of ECWA Church, himself a beneficiary of ACE, told this reporter that despite having been already educated, he still had a lot to learn using the ACE curriculum. “They teach you from the scratch and uses sounds and phonics to help you learn faster.
Pastor Jeji admonished the federal government to make education compulsory for every child, arguing that doing so will reduce the crime rate in the country.
All pictures by Peace O. Aboje.
This report is supported by the MacArthur Foundation through the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ).
