For over one hour in his office at the St. Francis Cathedral, Otukpo on the morning of June 3rd 2022, Reverend Father Francis Atama, the Education Secretary of the Catholic Diocese of Otukpo, Benue State, fielded questions from our Editor, Iduh Onah, on the state of secondary schools in Benue State. Father Atama neither hid his dismay nor anger in decrying the role and attitude of the Benue State government in the mismanagement of schools over the years. For anyone who had the misfortune of visiting a handful of these schools, Father Atama’s anger is justified. Excerpts.
National Record (NR): Good morning Father. National Record is an Abuja-based online newspaper. We have been in Benue since the beginning of this week visiting secondary schools, and what we have seen so far is quite appalling. The Church, especially Catholic, NKST and Methodist, have historically been very instrumental in the provision of education in the state overtime with so many of their schools producing very important personalities. As a result of this, we feel we need to get the views of the Church on the state of secondary schools.
As the Education Secretary of the Catholic Diocese of Otukpo, we are sure you must have interacted with Catholic schools under your purview and must have heard, just as we did, that rather than government providing funds to the schools, both government-owned and grant-aided schools; it is literally taking from them in the form of levies. What is the view of the Church on this trend?
Fr. Atama: Thank you. First of all, I am Reverend Father Francis Atama, the Catholic Education Secretary, Diocese of Otukpo and also the National Chairman of all Catholic Education Secretaries.
I have been privileged to interact with Catholic Education Secretaries across the country even before becoming the National Chairman. I have also the privilege of being principal of some of our schools, both grant-aided and non-grant-aided, before assuming this office in 2018.
I had the privilege of interacting with the state government on several issues bothering on education in Benue State. To state that the state of education in Benue State is dilapidated is an understatement. It is a real understatement in the sense that the government of the day, and when I say the government of the day, I meant specifically the current administration, has no plan for the growth of education in Benue State at all!
Whatever you have heard from any source or anywhere at all is very correct because, one; from my own observation, appointments into key education offices in Benue State are like compensation for political support and not based on merit. Somebody may be a professor of education or professor in a particular field but the person is not a professor in educational management. And there is a difference in being a lecturer in the classroom teaching a specific subject and being an educational manager. So when the person comes in, the person is not able to manage the education system and so in that aspect fails. That is one aspect I have noticed.
Secondly, you have this chunk of corruption already existing in the education system that when you pick somebody from outside to climb on top of a pack that is already existing, the person may not know what is happening because the house under the person is already rotten; it is the system that persistently continues.
If I have my way, if I get the permission of the proprietors of education in Benue State, I will sue the government of the state, even as a priest.
NR: You will sue the government; for what?
Fr. Atama: Yes, I will sue the government because, since I have been in charge of education getting to five years in the Catholic Diocese of Otukpo, I have seen enough! May be you must have heard that before 2016, around 2012, the government of [former] Governor Suswam, decided to enter into a discussion to hand over schools back to the missionaries and private proprietors so that the government can manage what is called purely government established secondary schools.
NR: I got that hint when I visited schools, but couldn’t get the details.
Fr. Atama: Good. It is a very noble intention. The chairman of the committee set up to discuss this was Bishop Avenya of Gboko Catholic Diocese. For us as far as mission education and education generally is concerned in Benue State, he is the godfather; he knows so much about education in the state and has been doing brilliantly with successive governments. The committee brought out a white paper on how the education of Benue State will be turned around. One of our education secretaries here in Otukpo Diocese; Very Reverend Father Donatus Peter Ochayi, was then working hand in hand with Bishop Avenya on the part of the Catholic Church in the negotiation team. A wonderful white paper was ready and by the provisions of the white paper, there was supposed to be five years handing-over-and-taking-over period.
“Secondly, you have this chunk of corruption already existing in the education system that when you pick somebody from outside to climb on top of a pack that is already existing, the person may not know what is happening because the house under the person is already rotten; it is the system that persistently continues.”
It was agreed in 2016 that whenever the handover period begins, which they gave the missions and private/community proprietors five years, in the first instance, to begin preparation towards the handover. This means that in that five years, there will be no deductions of whatever form from these schools. Within those five years, whatever the government was supposed to supply to the schools will still be supplied, while the proprietors look for teachers to fill in for the government teachers that will eventually be withdrawn.
The five years, calculating from 2016, was supposed to begin by 2021. Now, when they eventual handover begins again, there is supposed to be another five years of gradual withdrawal of teachers, that is, implementation was to begin in August 1st 2021. This is so that what happens from that five years, every year, government withdraws some specific number of teachers without replacement. And how is the withdrawal done? Retirement or death. That was the agreement. Once a teacher retires from the mission schools, the person is not replaced and when any dies, the person is not replaced [by government], and then the government is not going to post new teachers to the mission schools beginning from 2021 implementation period.
When the current administration came in with all the deceptions and lies; by 2019, it began to calculate the implementation period of 2016 when the white paper was ready. This means that the death without replacement; the retirement without replacement, was, for them, begun in 2016 instead of beginning in 2021. That is the first issue.
Then, the other things captured in the white paper that government was supposed to renovate the schools it collected from the proprietors, at least to a near condition before it took over. Government refused to do that.
Now, we sat down; there was supposed to be what we called the Anambra model of handover and takeover of mission schools. If we are going to handover schools back to the original owners in Benue State, it was supposed to be the Anambra model of which the then Governor Peter Obi restructured the whole schools, renovated the whole schools, gave the schools mobility and gave them take-off grants running into millions of naira before he said we are stepping out, we are giving you. In Benue State, it was like “we took over what belonged to you; we bastardised what belonged to you; we are handing over in the condition it is today without any sort of partnership or renewal.
So the mission proprietors came together and said no, it’ll not work that way! You can’t make one of us to chair a committee and draft out a white paper, which government accepted part and rejected part and you abandoned the white paper; you want to just handover; let’s go back to the white paper!
NR: Can you give us some key highlights of the white paper?
Fr. Atama: Part of what the white paper stated was that Benue State has no education law even up till today, even as we are talking. Without an education law, what guides the running of education in the state is the whims and caprices of whoever is in charge of the Ministry of Education become the law that operates! So we asked for a law.
“To state that the state of education in Benue State is dilapidated is an understatement. It is a real understatement in the sense that the government of the day, and when I say the government of the day, I meant specifically the current administration, has no plan for the growth of education in Benue State at all!”
When Anambra State was going to handover schools, there was an education law to say, this is what we are using to operate now. Benue State has no education law to the best of my knowledge till this moment we’re sitting down here. The white paper said first of all, let there be a Benue education law so that when there is a handover, it is captured in the law so that nobody comes tomorrow to say that thing that was done was just a private arrangement or a play and so it doesn’t hold. No education law was done.
Two, the then Commissioner for Education, Prof. Dennis Ityavyar, who chaired this committee we’re talking about, wanted to do it in a kind of private arrangement sort of, and he said he was consulting with the mission proprietors and that he feels it. He brought out a book; “Time Line for the Handover.” In that book, he said he had consulted with all the bishops and the heads of the churches; and I asked a question at the meeting: “When did you come to Otukpo? Because if you want to consult with the Bishop of Otukpo on education in Otukpo, he will sit me there with him, even if I am not contributing, I should hear what is being said because I’m his eyes and ears when it comes to matters of education; so when did you come to Otukpo?” He then replied; oh, that they will come. Till this moment they have not come!
So, we, as education secretaries, formed ourselves into Forum of Mission Education Secretaries in Benue State of which I’m a member, the Secretary, and NKST Education Secretary, Reverend Moses Akem, is the chairman. We called our proprietors together when we discovered that they wanted to short-change us. We said no, you set us on a mission; this is the extent to which we’ve gone. We have reached a stage where we can’t on our own take decisions again but that they want to force this handover down our throat without adequate ground preparation.
“Now, we pay for workshop, and I can say that for more than five years now, the Ministry of Education has not organised any workshop for which we’re paying every term. Each school in Benue State, whether grant-aided, non-grant-aided, each school pays N15,000 for workshop levy and we’ve not had workshop for more than five years. I’d been a principal before becoming Education Secretary; so what’s the money used for?”
So, we met at the Anglican Cathedral in Makurdi with all our proprietors and bishops; the NKST, protestants and Pentecostals, all of us gathered with their education secretaries and we presented our position to our proprietors; what and what have taken place underground; this is the level to which we had challenged what is there and then now what we’re coming up with, and that if you can help us to talk to the governor at the level of a meeting.
The meeting was fixed with the government for July 2020 so as to discuss the issue of the claimed handover of 2020 not even 2021; that is why I said the man wanted to use backdoor. Even if you are calculating that the handover process began in 2016, 2021 is supposed to be the handover not 2020. I represented the Bishop of Otukpo Diocese at the meeting with the governor on 27th July 2020 and we gave them our position. At the time we were talking with the governor, private proprietors had taken the state to court over this issue of the handover as at the time Mission proprietors were discussing with the governor.
At that meeting when we stated our positions, Governor Samuel Ortom categorically said his Commissioner for Education, Prof. Dennis Ityavyar, had not briefed him on the issues of handover of schools. Whoever was telling the truth, we didn’t know. So a new committee was set up with the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) as the chairman, with seven members from the Mission side and six from the government to discuss the modalities for the handover; and the possibility of Benue State education law. At the Banquet Hall of the Government House in Makurdi, we had, after the governor’s address, we had the first meeting.
I represented the whole of Zone C Mission proprietors, and the then Catholic Education Secretary of Makurdi Diocese was another Catholic among us; then we selected five other persons. After that first meeting, a second meeting was fixed for August, therefore suspending the issue of handover on August 1st 2020. We met at the office of the SSG and assignments were given to look at the education law of other states and then we can come back. After that second meeting, we never met again till today in 2022. That’s how the issue of handover was suspended or died on arrival till today.
NR: Aside the issue of gradual withdrawal, were there other demands?
Fr. Atama: What were we demanding for? Simple; we have…; the children in the mission schools are Benue children, not mission children. Amongst the children in mission schools you’ve traditionalists, you’ve Catholics, you’ve Pentecostals, you have other faiths, so it’s not about the Catholic Church. Secondly, according to the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, ours are not for profit schools; we’re not running for profit. So if we’re not running the schools for profit, there are things that we should ordinarily be exempted from which the government is not doing.
Thirdly, since the arrival of Governor Samuel Ortom in 2015, the mission schools have not been given as much as a whistle for sports. We pay sports levy, we pay quality control by which they are supposed to come and check what’s happening in schools but when they come, they arm-twist the principals to collect money again from them for transportation.
“Like I said, if I have my way of suing the government, I will join WAEC and NECO as defendants in the case because they are accomplices. Every year, the government will collect monies for services not rendered; and if you don’t pay, and they don’t sign for you, WAEC and NECO will not register your candidates. What is the connection between WAEC and the state? If I have fulfilled the required conditions for registration of candidates to WAEC, why will they not register, why will they refuse to register my students? So the WAEC in Benue and the Government of Benue State are accomplices!”
Now, we pay for workshop, and I can say that for more than five years now, the Ministry of Education has not organised any workshop for which we’re paying every term. Each school in Benue State, whether grant-aided, non-grant-aided, each school pays N15,000 for workshop levy and we’ve not had workshop for more than five years. I’d been a principal before becoming Education Secretary; so what’s the money used for?
So we’re saying that if you’re going to handover our schools to us, we should manage our resources and then we pay for quality control. We’re left with the choice of whether to join your sports fiesta or to organise our own and then we’re left with the choice to, if you organise a workshop and you invite us, we have the choice of attending the workshop and pay at the venue of the workshop or not attend at all. Quality control, we have no problem with that. So those were our demands.
The government probably saw that it was going to be on the losing side, and then, the greatest demand again that came when the proprietors met was that if you’re handing over our schools to us, give us from the primary schools. Character formation begins from the primary school. All the things that we’re having – cultism, other vices – don’t so much begin from the primary school as from the secondary school but if we mould our own kind of brains, our own kind of character from the primary schools, it becomes easier for us to check them even at the secondary school level, so give us from the primary school.
“Now, Benue State tells you every child in our school pays a compulsory ICT levy of 500 naira to the government; but there are no computers for the schools. Some of our schools don’t even have access to power.”
But as you may know, the primary school is a conduit pipe for the government; Universal Basic Education (UBE) supplies money and other things and so there is no way they will hand over the primary schools to us and if they are going to handover the primary schools to us, government won’t have any primary schools in Benue State. It may be the UBE is going to deal with us directly and fund our schools directly because government has no primary schools. Go to whatever they call government primary school in Benue State, it is either RCM, Methodist, NKST, etc; government didn’t establish primary schools.
So when they saw that they are going to lose on what was coming, then the whole idea of handing over our schools died. Until this moment that we are seated here, my diocese, Catholic Diocese of Otukpo, every single year, with our about 24 secondary schools and the Junior Seminary, pays the government of Benue State 22 million naira every year.
NR: Why, what for?
Fr. Atama: It is for different deductions, compulsory deductions. Like I said, if I have my way of suing the government, I will join WAEC and NECO as defendants in the case because they are accomplices. Every year, the government will collect monies for services not rendered; and if you don’t pay, and they don’t sign for you, WAEC and NECO will not register your candidates. What is the connection between WAEC and the state? If I have fulfilled the required conditions for registration of candidates to WAEC, why will they not register, why will they refuse to register my students? So the WAEC in Benue and the Government of Benue State are accomplices!
NR: Is that what is obtainable in other states?
Fr. Atama: That is what we don’t know but from what I have gathered from other states, such clearance is not done. Now, Benue State tells you every child in our school pays a compulsory ICT levy of 500 naira to the government; but there are no computers for the schools. Some of our schools don’t even have access to power. Some days ago, the Ministry [of Education] came to Otukpo for an orientation on the programme and I told them; you’re talking of ICT; are you realistic? Before you run ICT or portals for learning, there is what we call micro-piloting, before the actual piloting, before a large scale acceptability and building. But for Benue State, they are collecting rentage before building a house. Why do I say so? The government has collected ICT levy for two years running.
NR: When did the government introduce the ICT levy?
Fr. Atama: I think they began collecting from the 2019/2020 academic session. Principals are required to pay before they sign your clearance. Now, you are building a gutter for a community that has no land. Without providing computers…, I mean, I run in this office an e-learning package for my schools. First of all, what we did was that we went round the zones within my diocese, an ICT company came, discuss the package it has, we entered into negotiation on what each child should pay them per term, and then they said because we are running en bloc of students from Catholic schools in Otukpo Diocese, we are to pay them 200 naira per child for schools that will join.
While we’re still doing that in our own system, Benue State is part of it. So if my students are paying 200 each, Benue State should pay 50 naira; if it is the more the number. The ICT company that we are into business with is the same ICT company that is about running the package for them.
What we did with the company is, one, first of all, in the piloting system, they gave us one term free. That is, they will build the portal for us, we will use it for one term and we will come to seat down to look at the merits and demerits then you choose if you want to key in or not. We talked of micro-piloting also. We said, select some government-owned secondary schools in Makurdi first, test it, if it works, then may be you go to government-owned schools in the headquarters of the three senatorial zones and pilot, that becomes a wider pilot. Then all the government schools are brought in. Then, when we the proprietors – mission proprietors, private proprietors see how you are going about your working, then we will beg you to key in, not an enforced collection of money, forcible deductions of money without building what is needed, which you have not done and you’re collecting money already.
When we pay the sports levy of 80 naira per child per term, the government does not give any of our schools even a whistle; so what happens to the money? When Akume was the governor; when Suswam was the governor; I can vouch that schools went to Makurdi with 18-seater buses to collect chemicals for chemistry labs, to collect fertilisers for school farms; to collect footballs, jerseys and other things for sports. What has happened to the money? The money is still being collected, and even collected double!
Now, in 2016, they came up with the issue of school maintenance levy and they said, every child again is to pay 500 naira per term to be used for maintenance. The Catholic Bishops in Benue State went and discussed with the governor to say, we are not refusing that our children should not pay, but we know the kind of children we are working with in rural areas and their parents are not even being paid their salaries; for those who are workers. We’ll collect not 500 naira but we’ll collect 300 naira from our own students.
Secondly, we will keep what we collect to use to maintain our schools, don’t come and maintain the schools for us; we will use our money to maintain our schools. We’ll keep receipts, if you want to come and check or audit, you’re free to come and if you come and we didn’t use the money for the purpose collected, you’re going to transfer all the money into your account. This was agreed and then the Executive Secretary of the Teaching Service Board left.
When they felt it was slow in the implementation and collection of money from schools he brought somebody who has no respect for even God Almighty; and then the Ministry will come and tell you…and then in the list if your school has 100 students, they will allocate 1,300 students to you for JSS 1 to JSS 3; 1,300. They allocated 300 to over 3000 students to St Francis College Otukpo. They allocated 1,200 to Fatima Girls Secondary School, Aidogodo at a point when we were pressed and we don’t have up to 27 students, and the said the principal should just sign approval. This is so that when UBEC is going to allocate money, they allocate based on number of students and we said no; the money is not coming to us, don’t use us to manufacture figures, moreover, we are a Church, we can’t support such a thing. I said no principal should sign that document. Whatever happened later, whether they were able to generate the figures and signed, I don’t know, but we refused to sign such document.
Those monies are not involved; what we pay for quality control, workshop, maintenance levy, sports levy, biometrics, ICT, if you put together for what they deduct, what they hold our schools to pay before the registration of WAEC is about 22 million naira every year. What comes to this office, what passes through this office, from our schools every year is less than 1.8 million naira. So who owns the Catholic schools or who owns the Mission schools?
Another problem we are having with education in Benue State, especially the grant-aided schools is that those who’re manning the ministries and parastatals don’t even understand the policy of granting aid as it was entered into from the beginning.
NR: What is the core aim behind the policy?
Fr. Atama: The policy was simple. The proprietor provides administration; the government provides teachers. What we are crying about is that if the government will give us all the teachers we need, we’ll pay them whatever charges they are asking for but where is the justification for the government collecting this huge amount of money when you go to some of my so-called grant-aided schools, you don’t have more than one government-paid teacher, in some you have no single government-paid teacher; the highest you get in some may be three.
You come to town like St Francis, perhaps you may get ten, twelve government-paid staff. It means that within St Anne’s Secondary School, which is operating with about 80 staff and government pays 10, St Anne’s is paying the remaining 70 staff and we are paying government this huge chunk doing what? Doing nothing; for doing absolutely nothing! So the school enters into trying to generate money at all cost because the pays [salaries] that should come from the government are not coming. No infrastructural aid, no teaching aid, no sports aid, no facility, nothing at all is coming from the government. If the government is going to deny it, they should show us the record of what they have done, of the maintenance they have done. Thank God you said you passed near some of our schools; do they look like where maintenance has taken place in the last ten years?
The government of Benue State in the past 12 years has not employed anybody as teachers; nobody has been employed. As you know, teachers keep retiring; teachers keep dying, so how do you use the left over to satisfy the schools. And even the ones that are remaining, sometimes out of the blues, from nowhere, somebody’s salary is stopped for three months. Tomorrow if they have rectified it, what is taken for three months is not paid. So we as the proprietors have to begin to look for means of keeping the person since the person is a family owner; so you begin to assist the person because the government has failed the person. That is what we have in Benue State.
It has affected every aspect of education. When you go to some of the schools, what you find in some of the schools that government claims to be controlling quality is examination centres not schools. So you go to a school, from JSS 1 to JSS 2; you’ve 7 students all together. But in JSS 3, you have about 200 students for BECE.
You go to a secondary school, from SS 1 to SS 2, you have about 14, 15 students, in SS 3, you are having about 400, 500 examination candidates and government is still checking quality!
Once you go to the ministry, at the end of the period of registration and such owners of the school go to pay for students’ ICT; they have paid this, they have paid that; you just sign for them without looking where the students came from.
Today, the most thriving industry, the two most thriving industries in Benue State is, as compared to other states, are beer parlours and examination centres. I will not call them schools – beer parlours and examinations centres – are the two thriving industries, not even churches as they claim in other places. You can’t count in Otukpo town today the number of secondary schools you have in uncompleted buildings in this town. How they manage to get their phase one, phase two and phase three approval and licence to operate, I can’t understand when government claims it is checking quality.
Parents today don’t have control over the education of their children again. So the child says, I want to go here, the parents don’t ask. Gone are the days when discipline was given higher premium than even educational qualification; where a parent takes a child to school because a child could be disciplined from there. In fact, today, if you discipline a child, you are in trouble. So a child from JSS 1 migrates to about four secondary schools before finishing; nobody checks the quality. A child can leave primary 4 and go into JSS 2 in schools in Benue State. When you deny them admission in our own mission system; the next time you see the child, he or she is about writing junior WAEC, and the government said it is checking quality and we’re paying for quality!
So, as far as I’m concerned, the government of the day has failed us as far as the matter of education is concerned in Benue State. Instead of the state to provide education for her children, the parents and proprietors are left to feed the state. If I have told you about the Catholic Diocese of Otukpo paying 22 million naira, what about the Methodist; what about community schools, what about private proprietors in Zone C, before you go to Zone A, and Zone B. 22 million naira from only one establishment! At the end of the day, give and take, you are talking of almost 60 to 70 million naira from only Zone C; and you know that Zone A and Zone B may have larger chunk of students and schools.
So this is what we are operating in Benue State. Give me my 22 million naira, I will employ whatever quality of teachers I want and out of my 22 million naira, I will be able to say; every year, I will take 5 million naira out of the 22 million and face one of my dilapidated school and do some renovation there every year. Once I bring it to standard, the population of the students there will increase. It means more money to renovate another one.
With this that is happening, the Bishop is sinking millions into some of the schools at least to keep them afloat. Based on my office, I am privileged to know how much that has been sunk into a school like Fatima Girls’ Secondary School in Aidogodo, how much has been sunk into a school like Holy Ghost Girls College; I am privileged to know how much has been sunk into St. Francis College in the neighbourhood here in Otukpo, I have been privileged to know what the Bishop, outside the school fees, put into Emmanuel Secondary School, Ugbokolo, and other schools.
But in all these, parents do not understand; they come up with this issue of your schools are too expensive. My schools are too expensive, and St. Anne’s here in Otukpo collects about N55,000 a term, a boarding school. That is where the students are going to be fed from; that is from where maintenance is expected to be done; that is from where payment to the government is going to be made; that is from where salaries of over 70 staff are going to be paid from. From N55,000! If you sit down and make calculations, there is no way in the current reality of Nigeria that 200 naira will give any child a decent meal.
If I am going to manage even 500 naira a day, not 2-200 naira; 2-200 naira will give me 600 naira; if I am going to manage 500 naira a day, I will be left with, and I keep the students in school like 90 days a term, I will be left with about 49,000 naira for the feeding of 98 days out of the 55,000 naira. The government is taking well over 2,000 naira per child, that gives me already 51,000 naira; then other things like sports and whatever; I have to provide water to the students, I will provide light – how much will that take? And you expect me to still do renovation before I talk of paying the teachers who render services to keep the children here.
NR: What you are saying in essence is that there is no subsidy from government to education. In Jesus College, Otukpo, we were told that Catholic schools have refused to make some payments, and that now the Methodist schools now hide under the Catholic umbrella to also defy the state in making some payments. From what you have said, it is like even Catholic schools are still being arm-twisted to pay the levies?
Fr. Atama: That’s the language, that’s language. In the past, what was agreed between the government and our Bishops was that, one; three things that we pay the government, and we accepted to pay; quality control, workshop levy and then sports levy. Quality control is 500 naira per student; sports levy is 80 naira per student, and then the workshop levy is 15,000 per term per school. It was agreed, we have documents; we agreed that for these ones, we’ll pay because we see the government organising the sports and it is organised by local government representation and our students could also represent whatever local government they are in.
Quality control; yes, the government is supposed to come and take a look at what is happening in the schools, so let us just pay that one. Workshop; once in a while they may organise workshop and invite us; we pay that one. But when you bring ICT and I am supposed to provide the computer, provide the teacher, so what is the ICT levy meant for?
When you say you’re doing ID card; can’t I handle ID card production for my students? The ID card I paid for never comes! Another scam in Benue State, another worse of scams in Benue State is this thing called State Mock SSCE.
NR: Schools still pay for that?
Fr. Atama: Yes! This thing called State Mock SSCE is a scam!
NR: Why?
Fr. Atama: Why do I say it’s a scam? When Prof. Ityavyar came in, he granted us a waiver to go and conduct it ourselves, to go and conduct for our own schools. Here in Otukpo Diocese, I was spending one thousand naira per student to prepare for the examination. From what I was collecting, I set up a committee to set the questions for me; I have question bank; I get those who will do the typing within the office here; I have a DI machine to print all the subjects according to the state’s standard.
At the end of the examination, I pull out teachers from schools; they converge on a particular venue and mark the exams for me and return the scores to me; I return same to schools. I have certificates that I printed, if you want I can give you a sample; which I give to the students. All these we do out of that one thousand naira, and look at the number of students I take care of.
Government is taking care of, whatever number I have, that of government is twenty times what I have, and the government is going to be collecting almost 7 to 8 thousand naira per student; this same exam that I conducted for one thousand naira. That is not the pain of it. Those exams are never marked; quote me anywhere, they exams are never marked and recorded correctly. Even what is marked is not used.
NR: How do you mean; the results are not sent to schools?
Fr. Atama: What gets to us is that, you Mr Iduh Onah, writes physics but you’re given animal husbandry or fishery. An exam you never sat for; you get an A or a B or an F, in an exam in what you registered for, it was not part of your examination; so how do you tell me they are marking it.
You go, you register 30 students, they bring you the results of 75 students; manufacture names and put for you and bring 75 results for you.
NR: What is that intended to serve?
Fr. Atama: Do we know! That tells you that nothing was marked, they just recorded and brought for you, such that the school is having a number of candidates more than the entire population of the senior arm of the school. So what is the mock achieving? It is not achieving anything!
NR: In all the schools that I visited, I asked about these levies being paid; for instance, the one for sports, and we wondered and asked if the government supplies sports equipment to the schools as was the case in the past, up to the 80s. We were told schools no longer get these things from government.
Fr. Atama: All those things, even up to 2011 and 2012, we enjoyed a bit of that. At least for the sports, they will organise coaching clinic for games masters without you paying. They will supply may be, one or two footballs; one or two rackets; one or two nets to schools.
NR: But now, they don’t supply anything?
Fr. Atama: Nothing, I said totally nothing! I left the office of the principal in April 2018. Till now that I am in this office, none of my schools has received anything from the government in terms of provision of subsidy until recently. There were sets of school furniture, plastic desks and chairs, they were supplied to the state under Suswam. It was only recently that they were distributed and that distribution, many schools didn’t get. In Otukpo town here, only two of my schools – St. Anne’s and St. Francis – got. St. Monica did not get; Holy Rosary, Adoka, under Otukpo did not get. So even at that, it was not distributed evenly.
Those who founded the idea of granting aid to schools and put them into gazette have noble intentions. Those who are collecting levies these days don’t really know; that is why I said whether the know the policy that brought about the granting of aid; they don’t know why these things are being collected; it is just an opportunity to enrich themselves.
NR: The N22 million that you pay, is it inclusive of examination fees?
Fr. Atama: No! I said this is money is meant for the government to…, if I am going to include, may be the Junior WAEC fee, I include the Mock fee; forget about WAEC and NECO because nobody knows to where the money is going. If I am going to include Junior WAEC and Mock fee to this amount, we’re talking of close to N40 million naira. It does not include any exam fees! I’ve told you, if you want; I can still itemise what we paid for – I said we pay for ICT, we pay for maintenance, we’re paying for biometrics; we are paying for sports levy; we’re paying for quality control, we’re paying for all those things. And we’re not getting anything out of it, and like other schools, I have told you, where a school is not able to raise this money from the students, they look for the principal of the school who is a government staff to deduct from his salary. Where the principal is not a government staff, they look for the most senior government staff in that school to deduct. When they deduct, the school is meant to pay back to the principal or the senior staff.
And now, where a school, for instance, I was telling the government the other day when they came to Government Model Secondary School (GSS Otukpo); imagine my school, I have a school in this diocese that the school fees is N2,000 per student because of the location of the school, and this N2,000 children pay may be by three instalments, because we want them to go to school.
I said from the beginning, ours are not-for-profit schools; we’re not after what to get from the schools, but once we’re able to get the teachers, maintain the school environment; we’ve not been able to maintain the environment of our schools; enter any of our school; you won’t see the aura that you used to have of mission school, apart from our Junior Seminary; may be, St Joseph, Ito is beginning to thrive out of the hard labour of the Principal there who has some foreign connection to support him here and there, you won’t have the real aura of what a school used to be during your time because nothing is left for the school to maintain the school. The school will have to borrow!
I have principals who had to serve in our schools, have retired and our schools are owing them on deductions made from their salaries that they were not able to recoup from the schools before they were retired. We have them! At least I have three of them now!
If you have a way of going to St Vincent, Anwule, go and see whether that place should be called a school. It is our school. But then, if not until recently that the Anwule Community in Otukpo decided to give them a block of two classrooms, they had a launching on Easter Monday and they want to begin a block, you wouldn’t have seen any building standing that should accommodate human beings.
That is what we are going through in Benue State and the government is not willing to make a change because they have tested the juice of this fruit. So in allowing it to go is like; what others have enjoyed before me, should I also not enjoy it? So this may continue until somebody comes with a sound mind and is able to look at the situation.
If the EFCC is to come to Benue State Ministry of Education and Teaching Service Board, a lot of people will be involved, for salary deductions, for where students are…if people are willing to talk; if people are willing to talk, there is going to be a lot of problems, for those at the head on ministries and parastatals…
NR: […cuts in] Don’t you think the Church should champion that?
Fr. Atama: We’re doing it in our own way. Most times, when our situation, with the situation of the parents, is like somebody sent you to the market to go and sell salt for him and then ask the rainmaker to cause rain to fall on the salt. The parents you are fighting for, are they behind you? We can boycott WAEC for one year, boycott NECO for one year in protestation that this thing we are asked to pay, we are not generating this thing, we are not going to pay; will the parents support us? That we pay maintenance levy to the tune of this amount from the school where you are a PTA member and government has not brought a bag of cement to patch anything, for that reason, this year we’re not paying, let our children not write WAEC; will the parents support us?
But if we do that, the whole world will hear us. If I do that in Otukpo Diocese and Makurdi decided to join me and Gboko decided to join me, and Katsina-Ala decided to join me, it is simple, the whole world – four dioceses come together – may be before you know it, like the Methodist told you, which is very correct, that they are hiding under us; that is the reason for the Forum for Mission Education Secretaries. If they come under us and all of us in mission schools in Benue State say, this year, because of these charges, we are not writing WAEC, let the private proprietors write and pay what they have been asked to pay.
In Benue State, we have a state PTA chairman that has no child in school, who is like more or less a government functionary. So how does he speak on behalf of the parents? He is the PTA chairman, before it was one Hausa man that was picked from the middle of nowhere to come and bear the name of PTA chairman. He had no child in any school in Benue State. How do you fight for the right of the parent when you have no child in any school, so you don’t know what they are facing!
By the constitution of the PTA, anybody who has no child; if you are elected maybe for a three-year tenure, and your child happened to finish in your first year, the school may give consideration for you to finish your tenure but electing somebody who has no child in the schools is not done. He will be speaking in the language of the school not the language of the parents.
NR: When you were speaking earlier, you talked about taking the government to court, don’t you think that is the most viable option that the missions should take?
Fr. Atama: Before you take the government to the court, normally, because we co-exist, because we exist in the same state, and you know, from history, the relationship between the state and the Church is not such that you wake up and take the government to court; you have to explore all other options, until all the other options fail. The other options we are going into cannot come to the public domain now. It cannot come now because we have not finished exploring it yet, so I cannot bring it to public domain yet.
NR: Do you have a timeline for that option?
Fr. Atama: We’re working on it. Now, you know very well that we’re entering into the period of politicking in Benue State. We are going to lay our cards on the table too. Yes, because a government has failed us. Nobody seems to be talking. Are we going to allow the same government to continue? What is the change we are going to make? For example, let me be very plain. Assuming now, the person who won the party primaries for PDP wants to become the governor of Benue State, PDP is still in power, can the government of the day reverse those things that are affecting our schools and our children? Let this be done before the election, I am only given an instance. If I talk, it will seem as if now that we have a Reverend Father contesting election, it will seem as if because I am a Reverend Father, I am bringing that; no!
PDP is in power; PDP has done this to us; PDP has collected this, collected that; can you reverse that? I am not saying give me back the money they have collected, but can you sign a law within the period before the election that this and this and this are the things that can be collected; that this and this and this are the minimum number of teachers a grant-aided school must have.
If a grant-aided school does not have up to this minimum number of teachers, nothing should be collected from the grant-aided school, let them even collect to service the payment of teachers and other things. If the government in power can enforce that, sign it into law, not just to make a political pronouncement but sign it into law, then we can begin to take them serious. This is just my own perspective, it is not part of what we have in the pipeline; it is me, Father Francis Atama, saying this as an example; we have other ways, we have other ways!
So what have we benefited from the government in power for these years? Are they going to reverse what have been affecting the parents? The same government that has not been able to employ teachers to fill our schools; the same government that has not been able to pay our parents so that the parents can pay the schools fees of their children; the same government is presenting another candidate to us? They should think about it!
They should think about the marketability of their party and themselves based on what has happened so far. That is why it may be very difficult. If Benue State listens to me, if Nigeria listens to me; whoever is part of a failed government should not be presented for any election. What do you want to give now that you were not able to give when you were there? Speaker of the House, things are done contrary to the laws of the state, what have you done about it? That is my own position as a person, it is not the Catholic Church’s position; it is not the Education Secretary’s position, it is my position as Father Francis Atama.
NR: Thank you very much Father for this very useful insights you have provided us. They explain a whole lot of issues that we couldn’t comprehend while going round the schools. In virtually all the schools visited, we were not able to get these detailed information. A major reason, and which you could practically feel by merely looking at some principals, is fear; they are filled with fear; a sense of powerlessness is visibly etched on their faces. This is contrary to those days when principals move around with authority. We observed that this is no more, even with their students
Fr. Atama: That is true, because they are hungry. Secondly, because they know the truth; they know what is happening but they are not able to help; yes, they are not able to help. It is said that he who pays the piper dictates the tune. The government pays these principals, so the government decides what they should collect even when the principals are not convinced about what they are collecting and they are making submission of what they have not taken, and they are left to face the parents.
Another thing is that, like I said, if you have mushroom schools everywhere, if you become too hard on a student, the next day you come but you will not find the child in the school again. That could be one of the things affecting the psychology of the principals too.
NR: In other words, you’re throwing the problem of mushroom schools back to government because it is its responsibility to regulate schools.
Fr. Atama: I can take you to secondary schools, I am not talking of nursery or primary schools, secondary schools in uncompleted buildings everywhere in this Otukpo. There you don’t have sporting facilities and so many other mandatory minimum facility requirements for operating a school, and then you want to use these places to train entrepreneurs by book alone. Here, they will be taught A is for aeroplane and they never saw an aeroplane until you grew up to some extent before you see one and you will say, oh, this is an aeroplane. They drew it on the board and you thought it is a very big bird that is flying. So that is the situation.
NR: Thank you very much Father for granting us your audience
Fr. Atama: You’re welcome.