PMParrot, in this no-holds-barred interview rubbed minds with Professor Dahud Kehinde Sangodoyin while he was the Oyo State Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology. He was recently, moved to the Ministry of Establishment and Training. He is the first lecturer to be promoted to the rank of full Professor of Statistics at the University of Botswana in South Africa. The reputable data miner is also the Vice President, Botswana Statistics Association and President, African Statistical Association. He was our very first guest on Parrot Xtra Hour on Radio. He was with us on January 7, 2020. Here is an excerpt of the interview session as recorded by Olaitan Ige. He was interviewed by Olayinka Agboola and Toyese Oyebode…
Professor Sangodoyin, please tell us more about yourself sir…
First and foremost, I want to wish you a happy new year and also wish you all good things in the year 2020. I’m Dahud Kehinde Sangodoyin. I’m from Ibadan in Oyo State. I’ve traveled wide and near and God has helped me to actually tour the three corners of Nigeria. My son is a Professor at the University of Ibadan, Head of Department right now, that’s my second son in statistics. My daughter is also a Professor at the University of Technology, Owerri. So I’m a miner, so to say, I’m mining data. It means quantitatively, my mindset is always looking for how to draw facts from figures and how to use figures to read policies and how to make policies to work and that’s why I’m right now the Head of Statistics Association in Africa.
Being a statistician, we know that the government cannot do everything, what then are the parameters for rating a good and successful government?
Thank you. For every government, you must have strategic directions and for those directions, you must have a performance rating. Then for you to rate any government, you should look at its performance and target to rate it, you must check if the target and performance correspond. Now, to the parameters, it depends on individuals and government. For Engr. Seyi Makinde, his government is centered on the people. Everything related to people in terms of health, education, security, infrastructure and economy are the things he’s focusing on and everyone who is in charge have keyed into this, we have our focus and plans so that on quarterly and monthly basis, we rate what we have done and know what is left to do.
Being highly successful from where you came from, why take up a political appointment?
I will call myself a techno-politician. Techno in the sense that I’m coming from the technocratic world. The political aspect is the administration and when you look at the English word of politics, it is the segmentation of management resources as per expertise. So it’s not that you have to be cunning before you can do politics. No. So, I’m coming here to help my people and friend, Engr. Seyi Makinde to succeed in the area of education and mind you, I’ve been in this business for over 33years.
I’ve been to Botswana and Botswana has excellence in terms of education and economy, go and look at it. Therefore, bringing back home anything I learnt there is good for my people. So, I am not going to say I am a partisan politician but I am going to say I am a techno-politician.
For our people, we want you to expressly tell us what Engr. Seyi Makinde’s free education is centered on and what you’ve done. We saw some school bags you hope to distribute to students, so we want you to tell us what you’re planning to do.
Our secondary school students have been given science textbooks; we’re at present collating the ones for Arts students because we can’t do all at once. We have to know the total number of students before we can do things and by God’s grace, this year it shall be possible. Even the ones we’ve given, we’re still doing reconciliation because as at when we collected data, the verifiable population of students was 381,000 but now students are more than 400,000. Our enrollment is at present reading 11.3% growth as at November 26, 2019 because of Engr. Seyi Makinde’s free education. We’ve collated and gotten the numbers we need, what we have to do now is to compile the books and move forward from there.
For the primary schools, the executive chairman is making plans on that. It shall also be possible this year. As regards the schools bags, they were provided for indigent students by some admirers of our administration who are in the Diaspora. They’re also doing some other things that we can’t announce on air; it also corresponds with what we are doing now.
You see, in government, we need to have PPP (Public Private Partnership), the government can’t do it on its own. The people that want to do this without adding politics should come to us. I must add that the education we’re running is without politics, if you ask our governor he’ll tell you to remove politics from education. We shouldn’t be partisan about the education system in Nigeria because when our students go out, they’ll make us proud and we’ll all be congratulated regardless of or political leanings. The students won’t be announced by party names but will be recognized as a citizens of Oyo State, therefore I beseech every one of us to remove politics from the education we run.
The second thing our ministry focuses on is the rejuvenation of funding of educational sector. Thanks to our government, we’re the first to get the largest budget share for education in any state but nevertheless, we’re still expecting people to support us be it philanthropists, corporate organizations or alumni associations that can help safeguard our posterity.
Sir, can you tell us about the education trust fund that the erstwhile government provided?
Yes, ETF (Education Trust Fund) is part of our agency. All the funds we collect are going there, even the help we received and still receiving from our loved ones abroad are also going there. There’s also a percentage donated by companies, institutions and firms in Oyo State. That money can’t be enough. If you visit a primary school in Botswana, you’ll think it’s a university, we also need to get to that stage because God has given us greater opportunities and resources than these countries we’re mentioning.
The second is participation in education. Students who have everything needed to use in school like books, sandals, school uniforms, school bags, etc will be eager to go to school. Even if there’s transportation to get to school, such a student will be very happy going to school. Now our students are going for intervention classes every evening, if not for our governor, most students will just get home after school and sleep and I know that will not augur well for the future of these students.
The third is what we call administration of schools. We discovered that when we came, the administration of schools in Oyo State was nothing to write home about. So we have plans to make our schools in Oyo State compete with schools in the United Kingdom, and we’re going to achieve this. To bring this to our notice, Niger State is now copying what we do in the educational system of Oyo State. So every state will also follow suit because we’re always setting the pace in Oyo State, we’re not meant to follow people, they should follow us.
The fourth is that we want to improve the skills of our teachers. We’ve been doing it, our teachers now go for seminars and workshops. We also want to increase our student’s performances in Oyo State to the point that we’ll rank between 1-10 position in the country.
How are you hoping to block saboteurs with all the plans you have at hand? Also, how do you carry all stakeholders like the House of Assembly, PTA, and others along in your plans?
Last year, we had a workshop for PTAs and SGB and we introduced them to the plans and roadmaps Engr. Seyi Makinde has and they all keyed into it. We also have good rapport with the house committee of education. We meet with the chairperson of the house on a weekly basis to discuss our progress. SUBEB, TESCOM, we actually share our ideas and they’ve keyed into plans we’ll be running with. What we need to block these saboteurs are strong monitoring and evaluation process and I’m happy to announce to everyone that apart from our LIEs, ZIEs and all, we also have consultants who are going round the schools to monitor the administration of schools and infrastructural developments in our schools. So whether I’m there or not, people are on the field working. So we’ll minimize to the barest minimum what saboteurs are planning to do.
Last year, the governor said more teachers needed to be recruited but till date nothing has been seen or heard as regards this. Can you shed more light on this?
Thanks for that question and I’m glad to tell you that by Gods grace we’ll make headways with that this month. This is because of the data we’re collecting and we also need to follow due process. We need to know the exact subjects we’re recruiting teachers for. TESCOM’s chairman, Mr. Alamu and I have taken all things to the head of service and our excos will sit on it, after that we can then advertise. All advertisements on the social media now are all fake, anyone who pays any so-called employment or government agent does so at his or her own risk. The Oyo State government will never ask for money. In due time, we’ll advertise and everybody will know we’re recruiting teachers by God’s grace.
Before you leave, we’ll want you to say one or two words of admonition to parents, teachers and students.
We are all stakeholders, parents, guardians, and students. I’ll advise the students to study hard. To the parents, please monitor our students to study and to the teachers, I’m appealing to the teachers also to do their work diligently. Just recently, I told a school that if they have a slot for Further Mathematics teacher, they should call me and I’ll come and teach because I’m a teacher. It doesn’t take me more than 30mins to teach because I’ve been doing it for 30years. So, if you have a slot for me, call me and I’ll come either on Monday or Thursday. One of my friends, the Commissioner for Works is teaching as well online with his students in America, I’m equally grading my students’ PHD theses so why can’t I teach as a commissioner. If you see any of our students roaming the streets during school hours please give us a call, our help lines are there and we’ll come around. We don’t want any child out of school between 8am and 2pm, we want each child to be given quality education. Transporters should also come to our aid here. If you see any of our students who needs help going to school, please help them to school.
Our help lines are
09063696494-MTN
08074679279-GLO
08021728287-AIRTEL
I’ll want to remind you that the thrust of this program is to identify extremely brilliant indigent students in Oyo State and select the ones we can help. We’ll like you to put in one or two more for words to show the people that we have your backing.
I want to appreciate the people God has used for this program to help brilliant indigent students in Oyo State, thanks so much for helping the government out, may God help you. We also beseech teachers not to show favoritism in the choice of students because after giving us these students we’ll do our own research to know if really they deserve our help or not. After the research, we’ll now have the final selection of the students we want to use. The Ministry of Education will also work with you to ensure that the selection doesn’t have any form of discrepancy.
