Commentary: Anambra And Homage To Education

WRITTEN BY C. DON ADINUBA
The golden prize won by students of Regina Pacis Model Secondary School, Onitsha, who participated in the ten thousand dollars 2018 Global Technovation Challenge in which students from one hundred and fifteen countries participated on August 9 in California, came to most Nigerians as a surprise. The girls emerged victorious by designing an internet application to detect fake drugs, which has been a social scourge globally.
Nigerians were also surprised to learn of the bronze medal clinched by Tochukwu Anyigbo, a student of Lagoon Secondary School, Lagos, but sponsored by Governor Willie Obiano because she hails from Anambra State, in the International Robotics Competition held in Mexico, a few days after the world competition in California.
Noteworthy is the infectious enthusiasm which Governor Obiano, winner of the 1974 John Kennedy Memorial Essay Competition, organized by the American Embassy in Lagos when he was in CKC, has been demonstrating towards educational excellence. The governor had invited to a meeting of the State Executive Council students of a public school who had just won the first prize in a Mock World Debate in South Korea as part of the preparation for the contest in Germany where they were also to do very well. He repeatedly called them heroes and heroines. The lads received rock star treatment which is reserved for mostly victorious football players in Nigeria.
Anambra has, in recent times, been excelling in various competitions. Loretto Special Science School, Adazi, for instance, last year, won the first prize in the Senior Secondary School category of an intensive assessment of schools throughout Nigeria, while Queen of the Rosary Secondary School, Onitsha took the first position in the Junior Secondary School category. Ave Sancta Maria School, also in Onitsha, made the best result among primary schools, and Clement Okodo from Abagana in Njikoka Local Government Area was judged the best primary school teacher in Nigeria.
A teacher in another school in the state won the previous year the award of the Best Teacher in a nationwide competition sponsored by Nigerian Breweries Plc. Olusegun Adeniyi, former presidential special adviser who now chairs Thisday editorial board and participated in the teacher’s award, said he found Anambra teachers very competitive in every area.
Anambra is the only state in Nigeria where teachers generally earn higher than civil servants. Science, English and Igbo teachers receive an additional 10% of their salaries because these subjects are considered key. Those who teach in hard-to-reach places like Anambra West Local Government Area, which is a riparian place, are paid an additional 20%. In other words, a science or English or Igbo teacher in a hard-to-reach place earns not just his or her monthly salary like the civil servants but an extra 40%.
Governor Obiano pays great attention to both basic and higher education. He made it possible for medical students of the state university to graduate for the first time since they were admitted nine years earlier into medical school. They could not graduate because the medical school, hitherto, failed to get accreditation from the Medical and Dental Registration Council of Nigeria. Obiano quickly provided the needed funds, with a directive to the authorities to get it accredited for training, not just medical doctors, but also specialists. Gynaecologists, pediatricians and other consultants are today trained there.
In the State Executive Council, the two education commissioners, both incidentally female, are professors. Kate Omenugha, Commissioner for Basic Education, is the hardworking Nigeria’s second mass communication female professor and Theresa Nkechi Obiekezie, the young Commissioner for Higher Education, is a geophysics professor who, in 2010, won the African Union-World Academy of Science National Young Scientist, following a ground breaking research in life and earth sciences.
No doubt, any government, national or sub national, who places premium on knowledge, is most likely to do well. Therefore, it is no surprise that Anambra has been doing exceedingly well in various areas in the last few years. Just a month ago, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, assisted by Health Minister, Isaac Adewole, presented the first prize for excellent immunization campaign to the Anambra State government. Of course, the state remains Nigeria’s safest, and is recognized as the most peaceful and socially harmonious in the country.
Equally, Anambra has the best road network in the country and the rate of its agricultural and industrial development is very impressive. The only state to increase workers’ salaries in the past six years, Anambra always pays workers and pensioners before any other. These are, indeed, good times for the government and people of Anambra State.
It says a lot about Governor Obiano’s attitude towards education that a number of his commissioners and other senior officials have just returned from a leadership programme at Harvard. Another set will soon leave for the Lagos Business School. In the meantime, other states can borrow a leaf from Anambra, which has proved to be truly the Light of the Nation.