This web page analyses the
creation of the Kano State Science Secondary Schools as an educational change
strategy aimed at the more effective production of scientific and technical
manpower. The analysis is guided by the research question whose focus is: What
are the factors that led to the establishment of the Science Schools? What
objectives were they meant to serve? What are their most fundamental
characteristics?
The analysis is divided into four
sections. Section I analyses the social and economic background of Kano State
as prelude to the origin of the Science Secondary Schools Project. Section II
analyses the structure and constitution of the Science and Technical Schools
Board, which is the agency responsible for the development and implementation
of the Project. Section III analyses the Science Schools in terms of their most
fundamental characteristics, paying particular attention to the students, the
teachers and the instructional facilities. Section IV concludes and outlines
the major findings of the analysis.
Kano State was created out of the
then Northern Region of Nigeria in 1968. The emergence of the new state was not
without some problems for the State administration because Kano State lacked
indigenous (i.e. of Kano State origin) expert scientific and technical manpower
considered essential for social development.
This situation arose because
schooling, as the main agency of manpower training in Kano, was still to gain
wide acceptance among the populace. It was still viewed with suspicion as a
forum for conversion to Christianity. And through the decade from 1968 to 1978,
two successive Kano State governments had tried all sorts of strategies to
ameliorate the situation.
This was the situation in Kano
when the oil boom era exploded in Nigeria in the early 1970s, and which saw the
initiation of many developmental projects all over Nigeria aimed at bringing
about rapid social transformation. As a result, the Kano State government
launched a very ambitious developmental programme in 1971.
The strongest feature of this
plan was its attention to agriculture and industrial development. As the
introduction to the Plan stated,
But agriculture and industry were
not only areas of social development which received attention. Other basic
social infrastructures such as transport, telecommunication, electricity
generation and distribution and health development, which all require heavy
investment, received the appropriate commitment from the Kano State government
in the Plan.
These commitments manifested
themselves in the establishment of many government parastatal agencies charged
with implementing the Development Plan, as well as with continuously carrying
out activities that will bring about rapid social progress in Kano State. These
included the creation of Health Services Management Board, Urban Development
Board, Rural Electrification Board, Water Resources Engineering and
Construction Agency, and the Hadejia-Jama’are River Basin Development
Authority, which, between them covered the vital social concerns of food,
health, environment and general social welfare. These agencies were all in
addition to existing various Ministries (such as Health, Agriculture and
Natural Resources, Works and Housing).
The tasks of co-ordinating and
seeing to the implementation of the various developmental projects in Kano were
given to the Ministry of Economic Planning. As stated in the Plan,
The only major obstacle to these
ambitious plans - or, as the Plan identifies, “bottlenecks” - was the expert
manpower in science and technological fields. While with a vibrant Nigerian
economy the Kano State civil service could afford facilities where the required
manpower was recruited from overseas, the government gradually realized such
manpower could not be relied on to remain for a long period.
To confound the situation, local
substitutes (i.e. those from Kano State) that can be relied to stay on a
permanent basis were not available in the quantity or in the disciplines
required. This is reflected in the overall manpower situation in Kano in the
period in Table 5.1, which reveals a shortage of indigenous manpower in all
fields of social and economic development at the creation of Kano State.
The gravity of the Kano State
manpower strength reflected in Table 5.1 is emphasized when it is considered
the total estimated population of Kano State at the time was over 6 million,
indicating, for instance, in the case of doctors, the patient-doctor rate was
far from adequate for the population of Kano State. Further, it is significant
to note in every manpower discipline, there are more expatriates than
Nigerians. And even then, the number of Kano State indigenes was not much more than
‘other’ Nigerians.
What was politically disturbing
to the policy makers was the awareness of the vulnerability of the various
development projects in Kano should all the expatriates and other Nigerians
decide to withdraw their services for whatever reason - as indeed did happened
during the Nigerian Civil War (1966-1970).
This situation was complemented
by the general feeling among government officials in Kano that schooling was
not functioning in a way which identifies with social and economic development.
As a government document stated in retrospect,
This trend has disturbing effects
on the overall economy of the Kano State government, not only in terms of
contribution towards implementation of social projects, but also in its effects
on the general welfare of the society where highly trained scientific and
technical manpower is needed for social advancement. These thoughts were
further reflected again by the Kano State government where it observed,
It was under these circumstances
that a new Military government came to power in Nigeria in 1975. One of the
first acts of the newly appointed governor of Kano State was the reorganization
of the Kano State Civil Service. But because of the importance of the Ministry
of Economic Planning in the implementation of the various projects in the
State, its functions were further widened to include a ministerial committee
called the Manpower Development Committee.
The Committee was made up 18
members, each representing a Ministry or department in the Kano State civil
service. These included the State’s Chief Agricultural Officer, Chief Medical
Officer, Permanent Secretary Ministry of Works and Chief Education Officer, as
well as the Secretary of the Kano State Scholarships Board, then Alhaji Ado
Gwaram who was later to play a very central role in the establishment of the
Science Secondary Schools in Kano. The Commissioner for Economic Planning, then
Dr Ibrahim Ayagi was the Chairman of the Committee. The functions of the
Committee included
In the few months immediately
after its establishment, the Committee concentrated on trying to determine the
best ways the various development projects started could be provided with
proper technical guidance. The powers to do so were already mandated to the
main Ministry of Economic Planning in the development Plan which stated,
But during the meetings of the
Committee in late 1975, it eventually emerged that in every project, there was
a conspicuous lack of scientific and technical manpower, especially from Kano
State as reflected in Table 5.1, and the agenda of the Committee began to focus
on the most viable strategy for producing more technical manpower from Kano on
a long term basis to enable implementation of the projects initiated, as well
as provide expert leadership to the maintenance of these projects in the
future. And as Dr Ibrahim Ayagi, the Chairman of the Committee recalled,
“A member of the
Committee just suggested that one of the best ways of dealing with this kind of
situation potentially is to set up a Science Secondary School which will be a
specialist school with nothing concentration in science training...so that
instead of dissipating all resources in all the secondary schools, we would
have a concentration of science students. We wanted Kano State to concentrate
on the production of science students who would now go to the universities and
various institutes of technology and do engineering, medicine, do all kinds of
science related subjects which we were lacking at that time. We had to go
abroad and recruit the people needed. We therefore saw the need for constant
and regular supply of science related disciplined students. So therefore we
said let us look at this idea of Science Secondary Schools.” (CTV 27/2/1986,
and Interview 7/1/1987; see Appendix 5 for further information on the CTV
interviews)
But the precise way in which this
strategy emerged was quite spontaneous rather than structured. As recalled by
Alhaji Ado Gwaram, a member of the Committee
“Problems were identified. There was this problem
of manpower shortage, problem of science based subjects, and that something had
to be done about it. So ideas were floating about. We used the principle of
radiation effect in education. That is from the nucleus of whatever you are
doing, you can assort a group of people, say ten of them. They graduate as best
as they can graduate, and then you spread them around. Now the ten will become
40, 80, 120 and anything else. So there was this idea of saying you select the
best students you can, put them in one place and train them and you put a few
in Medicine, a few in Agriculture, few in Vet and allied fields. And as you go
along the thing is becoming bigger and bigger and over a period of 30-50 years
you are likely to make a very serious impact.” (Interview 22/2/1987)
Using the argument forwarded by
this principle, the Committee arrived at the tentative conclusion that
extensive and specialist schooling which has to be different structurally from
the existing conventional schooling in Kano State was the most viable solution,
although the Committee was not exactly sure of what form it will eventually
take.
But it was clear to the Committee
the then existing system of schooling in Kano State was not adequate in the
production of the quantity, at least, if not quality of the scientific and
technical manpower required for social advancement. As Dr Ayagi further
recalled,
“We thought: what were we aiming at? We wanted
Kano State to concentrate on the production of science students who would now
go to the universities and various institutes of technology and do engineering,
medicine, do all kinds of science related subjects which we were lacking at that
time. We had to go abroad and recruit the people needed. We therefore saw the
need for constant and regular supply of science related disciplined students.
So therefore we said let us look at this idea of Science Secondary Schools.”
(Interview 7/1/1987)
These observations were further
rationalized by Gwaram who also recalled that as a whole, the Committee decided
“the best thing will be to do something about
science in secondary schools. And obviously you cannot do the best in every
place in all the schools we had at that time. The issue is doing something at a
particular central point.” (Interview 22/2/1987)
The suggestion of the Science
Secondary Schools as that particular central point which will eventually emerge
as strategies for long term manpower development in Kano could only have been
possible if there was some basis, no matter how slim, in believing such
strategy would yield the desired outcomes, or that Kano State - an
educationally disadvantaged State in Nigeria - could handle such organizational
concept. Certainly, the evidence strongly indicates the Science Schools project
was an original idea, and not borrowed from somewhere else; its spontaneous
emergence during the meeting of the Manpower Development Committee alone
attests to this.
But at that time in Kano, there
was a more organizational basis for building up on the Science Schools. In
1969, a regional primary science (and other subjects) teacher training project
was established at the Institute of Education, Ahmadu Bello University Zaria
with the assistance of UNESCO/UNICEF. This was the Primary Education
Improvement Project (PEIP).
The PEIP (science) was started in
1970 following the recommendations of the Nigerian Educational Research Council
which suggested the production of science materials using the “process
approach” originally proposed by the American Association for the Advancement
of Science (AAAS), and recurrent as a basic theme of the science curricular
reform. The materials were written and tested in project schools in many parts
of Northern Nigeria from 1971-1974 (Brown and Reed 1982).
The science component of the PEIP
aimed at developing scientific thinking among primary school children using the
inquiry approach of teaching, as advocated by the African Primary Science Programme,
which was launched in Kano in 1965 (Lockard 1967); but using different
strategies. As Young (1973) commenting on the PEIP stressed,
In their structured nature, the
lessons differ considerably from the units developed for the African Primary
Science Programme (APSP). The APSP units provide ideas for the teachers, but
leave them free to interpret these ideas as they please. Most teachers here are
unwilling or unable to make such interpretation. We feel therefore that such
detailed guidance is essential if the teacher is to make any progress in the
handling of a subject like this.” (Young 1973 p.19; see also Kolawole (1978),
and Oyebanji (1975).
One of the main features of the
PEIP in Kano was the production of mobile science teacher trainers who supervised
the project in various primary schools around Kano on motorcycles. By 1976,
many such mobile teacher trainers were in operation in over 50 trial schools in
Kano which, because of their emphasis on teaching science were seen as science
primary schools by the Kano State government.
The overall responsibility for
the PEIP in Kano was given to the In-Service Training Centre, later the Kano
Educational Resource Centre. The Director of the In-service Centre at the time
of the PEIP was Alhaji Ado Gwaram who was later made the Secretary of the Kano
State Scholarship Board - and subsequently a member of the Manpower Development
Committee in 1975. As he recalled,
“When we were thinking of doing this (suggesting
the creation of Science Secondary Schools at the Committee), we said something
has to be done in the area of science right from the primary up to secondary
and then of course on to the universities. And because of the commitment of the
Kano State government in allowing the Ministry of Education and the In-service
Centre to experiment on this science project (PEIP), we made very very serious
inroads in Primary Science. Between 1972 and 1975, there is no state in the
North that was doing better than Kano in the area of primary science. And
through the PEIP, between 1971 to about 1975/76 we were able to establish very
good science programmes in about 50 primary schools in Kano State. And I made
sure that they were staffed with Grade II teachers who could handle science,
they had facilities, good supervision, mobile teachers - graduates from British
Universities (members of the Voluntary Services Overseas) who go on motorbikes
to supervise them. We had that kind of stage to begin from.” (Interview
22/2/87)
Thus the existence of this,
though little known, project has provided a stimulus for considering the
possibility of expanding its strategic features as basis for the production of
future scientific manpower in Kano State, and interestingly enough for the
change analyst, has provided an answer to the issue of carrying out trials for
the new project. As Gwaram further recalled,
“So then the thing came from the Ministry of
Economic Planning saying we should do something on the base of what we (in
Education) were doing on primary science. The strategy was the graduands of of
these science primary schools have to be gotten some place to continue with
science. So you select from the very good science primary schools already
established under the UNESCO/UNICEF project. You select them, put them in
special science secondary schools where they continue.” (Interview 22/2/87)
But I must state here any
possible links between the PEIP and the suggestions by the Manpower Development
Committee to start a Science Secondary Schools Project was made only by Gwaram
whose unique position made it possible for him to make such links. The links
were not made by the Manpower Development Committee. Eventually, however the
PEIP stuttered and fizzled out until it finally disappeared. As Bray explained,
“The PEIP programme could and should have been a
vehicle for considerable improvement. Unfortunately, limits were imposed on its
impact by the same political and manpower constraints that caused problems
elsewhere.” (Bray 1981 p.110).
But it was also likely the demise
of PEIP was accelerated by the appearance the Universal Primary Education (UPE)
project in 1976 which, being a federal concern, overshadowed and finally
stifled the more regional, but potentially powerful PEIP.
But the decision to initiate a
system of schooling in Kano separate from the main conventional process with a
specific focus was made possible by non-conservative membership of the Manpower
Development Committee who were aware for schooling to be more productive, it
has to be given a different emphasis from the conventional system.
But although the Manpower
Development Committee has arrived at the conclusion that specialist training
facilities were needed in Kano to produce the quantity and quality of
scientific manpower needed, the Ministry of Economic Planning was not
responsible for education or training. That was the responsibility of the Kano
State Ministry of Education.
In the next step the Ministry of
Economic Planning sent a memoranda to the Ministry of Education in early 1976
stating the observations and recommendations of the Manpower Development
Committee concerning scientific manpower training and production in Kano,
through as it proposed, the establishment of Science Secondary Schools with the
detailed plans for such project. The memoranda was discussed at the
professional level by the Ministry of Education, and according to Ayagi,
“they came back and said they were not interested.
In fact they were kind of saying well this is not your business: this is our
business and we know what we are doing. So in fact the idea almost died at that
time.” (CTV 27/2/1986; also Interview 7/1/1987).
And because the Ministry of
Education has indicated non-willingness to consider the proposals establishing
the Science Schools, and since there was no other mechanism for crystallizing
the idea, that, effectively would have been the end of the project in Kano.
It was at this point other, more
arcane and little understood facets of educational innovations not often
considered or explained by theoretical models of educational reform, began to
have their influence on the development of the Science Schools, providing
further insights into the mechanism of policy evolution in Nigeria.
This was because in April 1976,
the Commissioner for Education in Kano resigned. The Military Governor of the
State then appointed the Commissioner for the Ministry of Economic Planning, Dr
Ibrahim Ayagi who was also the Chairman of the Manpower Planning Committee as
the new, albeit acting, Commissioner for Education. As Dr Ayagi recalled,
“So from April/May 1976 I was holding these two
responsibilities, and of course the initial memo that I sent to the Ministry of
Education (about the Science Secondary Schools) which was almost dead, was
resuscitated at that time for me. But I discovered at that time there was a lot
of opposition, both in the Ministry (of Education) and in the Executive Council
because people were arguing that that kind of idea was not for us here. Why do
you want to set up a special secondary school to cater for special students?
They said it was an elitist kind of thing. What we needed to do, they said, was
was actually to improve science in all the secondary schools. So that instead
of having one or two science secondary schools, you will have all of them to
improve.” (CTV 21/2/1986)
But Dr Ayagi and others in the
Executive Council who supported the idea of the Science Secondary Schools
Project did not accept the rationale of this argument because as he further
explained,
“The argument of course was weak. I said things
were extremely limited, the science teachers that you can find now are of
course not available. They are not easy to get. It would be impossible for us
to man all the secondary schools, provide excellent equipment in science,
excellent teachers, and upgrade all of them. But we have seen now that
education, perhaps, has to be elitist in nature because we cannot provide
everybody. We don’t have the resources. And therefore we have to establish
specialist schools to concentrate on what you need to develop immediately.”
(CTV 21/2/1986)
But now having total executive
control over the Ministry of Education, it became possible for Dr Ayagi to
present his proposals for the establishment of the Science Secondary Schools at
the Kano State Executive Council Meeting. Before presenting the idea, however,
he wrote to the major universities in Nigeria with the proposal for their
assessment and comments. And as he recalled,
“We had to go to Universities, get professors to
examine it and tell us what they thought about the system. They were in favour
of it. That was part of the arming we had to do to get the government and to
get it accepted, because with the civil service bureaucracy, the civil servants
will fight anything outside it.” (CTV 21/2/1986)
And even though the proposal was
now firmly a Ministry of Education concern, this remained the only time an
attempt to gain an academic assessment of the project was attempted. And when
all the necessary, and favourable comments were received, the proposal was
placed on the agenda of the Kano State Executive Council in late 1976. But it
was not easy to get it accepted because of strong, and anticipated oppositions
from the Executive Council generally and the Ministry of Education in
particular. This was more so because of the nature of the proposal presented
concerning the Science Secondary Schools.
There were four main points of
the proposal. First a new body called the Science Secondary Schools Management
Board should be created to implement the project, and it should be totally independent
of the Ministry of Education in all aspects of its operations. As Dr Ayagi
explained,
“In order to avoid the problems of the Ministry of
Education, the government bureaucracy, and to give the scheme the best chance
of success, we said the best way is to take it out of the system. Not to
operate it within the Ministry of Education, but to create a parastatal that
would be independent of the civil service and the bureaucracy of the Ministry
of Education. So that it would be on its own. It would have its own rules and
regulations, about employment, about conditions of service, completely apart
from the normal civil service or the Ministry of Education. We realized we
couldn’t get the best teachers, the best equipment under those conditions of
the Ministry of Education. We therefore got it through with the normal
conditions we expected to make it a success.” (Interview 7/1/1987)
However, financial control of the
Board will be under the Commissioner for Education (who at that time was Dr
Ayagi), who has to approve its estimates before submitting to the Ministry of
Finance. To provide a legal backing to this Board, a Science Secondary Schools
Management Board Edict was promulgated with effect from 1 January 1977.
Secondly, the Ministry of
Education should provide three secondary schools which will be converted into
Science Schools. Two of these schools will be for boys and one for girls. All
the schools should have Boarding facilities. This was to provide the students
with full opportunities of concentrating on academic work under structured
supervision. The Ministry of Education should also, in future, release any
school the Science Board may wish to take over for the purposes of conversion
into a Science School as part of their expansion. This was easier and more
cost-effective than building completely new Science Schools.
Thirdly, the Science School
students will be drawn from academically excellent students selected from Form
II cohort of all secondary schools in Kano. This will be after a selection
examination. This would mean the Science Schools, starting with Form III, will
be Senior Secondary Schools under the newly envisaged National Policy on
Education (although only implemented in 1982) which splits secondary education
in two tiers of junior and senior of three years duration. At the end of the
Senior year, the students will take the General Certificate of Education
ordinary level examinations.
In the initial stage, each of the
Science Schools was expected to have 720 students when fully operational at the
rate of 240 students per year. The proposal further stipulated the
teacher-student ratio should be 1 teacher per 20 students (instead of 1 teacher
per 35 students obtained in conventional schools). And subsequently, each of
the Science Schools should have eight laboratories (instead of the three for
the main science subjects available in conventional secondary schools), two
each for Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, and in the boys school Technical
Drawing Studio and a Geography Room.
Finally, each student must offer
the following subjects: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics, English,
Geography, Hausa Language or Islamic Religious Knowledge, and for girls, Food
and Nutrition. Boys will not offer Food and Nutrition, but an elective of one
from Technical Drawing, Further Mathematics, or Agricultural Science.
The Kano State Executive Council
accepted this proposal with all its attendant conditions, but persistent
opposition was quite strong, mainly from the Ministry of Education, which saw
its power being eroded by the Science Board over which it had no immediate
control. The First Executive Secretary of the Science Board (1976-1978), Alhaji
Ado Gwaram, analysed the nature of these oppositions,
“All the opposition we had in the Ministry of
Education at that time - and there were very very strong oppositions - was
surprisingly from people who should not oppose the idea of Science Secondary
Schools at all. Their oppositions, I am sure, had nothing to do with science
being anti-Islamic. I think the opposition was primarily for two reasons. One
was the fact that they think we were trying to hijack some bright students from
their schools and putting them in these prestigious schools - schools that one
of us called elitist because he said we were only going to put the sons of who
and who in the schools. That is from a fathers’ point of view. From the
intellectual point of view, it was only students who scored IQs this much you
are putting in the schools, therefore from this level it is elitist, and they
will have none of this. This, when I know very well they themselves represent
elitism in this country! So the opposition was primary because of the fear of
the unknown, coupled with the feeling that, and I don’t like to say this, that
I (Ado Gwaram) was personally associated with the project.” (Interview
22/2/1987)
And to confound the situation,
another dimension of oppositions emerged. This was because views started to
emerge that the very concept of the Science Schools was an attempt to de-emphasize
the Islamic nature of Kano State. As D S Ibrahim, the second Executive
Secretary of the Science Board recalls,
“Part of our problem was that when it was started,
there were really some moves by some people who felt very strongly against the
sciences; rightly or wrongly, we don’t know. There were very very powerful
religious groups who felt that having a school called Science School is
becoming un-Islamic. That was at the early stages of the Science Schools. Their
influence was through their positions in the society. Some of them are even
placed in our Ministry of Education. Some of them are Commissioners elsewhere
who have this myopic attitude. But we were really lucky to have Members of the
Board who really tried as much as possible to liquidate this anti-Islamic
feeling about science.” (Interview 29/9/1986)
And the opposition to the project
became such that Ayagi and Gwaram decided to hold a meeting in December 1977 to
sell the project to the opposition. Gwaram further recalls,
“All the Principals of the schools in Kano were
called to that meeting. All the top brass of the Ministry of Education were
also called. They were asking questions. I was replying. Not many people will
recall the meeting, but I still recall it because it was a meeting which if you
were to mention names, some of us (there) will feel ashamed of themselves,
because they were really opposing. They made it personal, this terrible man Ado
Gwaram is associated with this thing. If somebody else was the Secretary (of
the Science Board), they would have allowed it to pass. I said look, no matter
the way you churn this thing over, Kano is being served. And Kano is being
served in Kano. And Kano is not only served in Kano but the over-riding future
interest of Kano is being safeguarded by what we are doing. And if you don’t
understand now, for goodness sake just come along, and time will come when you
will understand.” (Interview 22/2/1987)
However, by then the Military
Governor of Kano State had already accepted the proposals for the establishment
of the Schools. Indeed the schools had already started functioning. As the
governor announced in April 1977 during a policy broadcast to Kano State,
“Two existing secondary schools have already been
converted to schools of science. These schools will emphasize science in their
curriculum so as to enable us compete favourably in gaining university places
in the field of science in which were very deficient” (Kano State 1977b p.4;
See Appendix 5 for the education component of the policy statement)
The establishment of the Science
Schools marked the beginning of a vendetta between the newly established
Science Board and the Ministry of Education, even though under the original
blue-print of the idea, the Board was answerable to the Governor of Kano State
through the Commissioner for Education. The oppositions to the Science Board
were carried further with an attempt to make the Military Governor scrap the
Science Board. As recounted by Gwaram,
“After we had been in operation for about one and
half years, the Kano State government decided to rationalize government
departments and a Committee was set up. This was asked to examine government
ministries, departments and parastatals and rationalize them so that where
identical services are provided organizations will be merged together, to save
costs in terms of manpower and finance. So this rationalization committee of
course requested for list of parastatals, and the list was given to them
including a new arrival called the Science Board. And they heard of the so
called in-fighting in the Ministry of Education. Principals don’t like the
Science Board, very many people don’t like the Science Board. And the fact was
the Science Board was not known, the law was not established - because all this
time we were working exactly from the Council Memoranda submitted by Ayagi. So
it became an easy target to scrap. Too many people were opposed to it, you see.
It was providing science programme and everybody believed any secondary school
can provide a science programme, therefore one of the things you can
rationalize is definitely this Science Board.” (Interview 22/2/1987)
That this did not happen was
partly due to the influence of the then Commissioner for Education, Dr Aminu
Dorayi - the only member of the Kano State Executive Council at the time with
science education background (Chemistry Education) - who immediately succeeded
Ayagi. As Gwaram further recalled,
“Aminu Dorayi was a scientist. He supported the
idea of the science schools right from the word go. And I am telling you
support was crucial at that time. So anybody who was supporting us was like a
convert to Islam! So the fact that Dorayi was supportive was itself a very
helpful thing to have. One, he was a science man, two, he was Commissioner (of
Trade and Industries then, but immediately succeeded Ayagi in Education). So in
the Council Meeting Ayagi had the support of Dorayi, because if Dorayi did not
like the idea, Ayagi will have tougher time to get it through the council.”
(Interview 22/2/1987)
And with his new post as the
Commissioner for Education, Dorayi continued supporting the idea of the project
long after Ayagi has even left the Kano State civil service. The stage was then
prepared for the operation of the Science Schools.
Section II: The Science Schools
Board
Based on the recommendations of
the Kano State Executive Council, the Science Secondary Schools Management
Board was established in March 1977 by the Kano State government. The first
appointment made was that of the Executive Secretary who, as I indicated
earlier, was Gwaram and personally recommended for the post by Ayagi, who
recalled the initial start as being quite difficult,
“There was no office, there was nothing! And there
was no place to go, and bang, we started! And what happened was, in our first
month we were operating from the Conference Room of the Ministry of Education.
I had no office. I went to Ayagi and told him we needed money to get started. A
cheque was prepared and issued to me in my name - Ado Gwaram - for something no
one could understand, for something called Science Secondary Schools Board.
Nobody knew what the Science Secondary Schools Board was up to. Very few people
knew about it - the Council and myself. That had to be done that way because
the moment you leave things within the civil service, they end up there. So I
opened the account in my name. It was government money, but I opened the
account in my name.” (Interview 22/2/1987)
This was naturally without some
form of resistance from the Ministry of Finance which had to approve the
release of the funds. But because of the fellowship network that existed within
the establishment - the then Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance,
Alhaji Isa Dutse, who had to finally approve the release of the funds was a
personal friend to Gwaram - the new Executive Secretary was able to get the
funds released. Eventually various administrative staff were either recruited
or mostly enticed from other places by the Executive Secretary.
A Science Secondary Schools
Management Board Edict by the Government was published and made retroactive
from January 1977, although the schools were expected to start off in September
1977. The Edict formally listed the objectives and working mechanism of the
Science Board as follows:
a) To provide Science Education
at Secondary level
b) to set up and manage special
Science Schools where the Science Education is to be provided
c) to ensure that course of
instruction given in the Science Secondary Schools conform to the broad policy
of Secondary education and satisfy the heads of other institutions where the
students are likely to go after the completion of their studies
d) to appoint, promote, dismiss
and exercise disciplinary control over its staff
e) to determine and approve
schemes of service for all categories of staff and their emoluments
f) subject to the approval of
the Governor, to preserve and implement conditions of service for all
categories of the staff
g) to acquire any equipment,
materials, furniture and other properties required for the purpose of the Board
h) to maintain premises forming
part, or used in, connection with the Board
i) to prepare and submit to the
Commissioner for Education an annual report on the administration and
activities of the Board, and
j) to carry on all such
activities and do all such things as are necessary for the good government,
control and administration of the Board and the management of the assets of the
Board” (Kano State 1977a p.4)
Once the Science Board was
established as an administrative organization, its objectives became much more
clearly formed. According to an internal communication dated 5th April 1984
which gives the details of the organizational structure of the Science Board
(see Appendix 5 for a copy), the Board is vested with
“the
responsibility for providing science education at secondary level, with the
following hopes and aspirations in mind:
1. that more
Secondary School leavers with Science background will eventually be produced
2. that the
majority of those so produced will proceed to higher institutions of learning
3. that in the
long run, a crop of high level manpower (doctors and engineers) will be
available
4. that the
expected insignificant few that might not necessarily be doctors and engineers
might find themselves in the Polytechnics for HND/OND courses in:
i. Engineering (civil and mechanical)
ii.
Agro-allied, food
technology, lab technology fields, Health and Nursing care Health and Nursing
care.”
It is significant to note the
nature of expectations placed on the Science Schools by the government, which
should provide a source of reference when discussing the extent to which the
Science Schools attain their objectives.
Because of the powerful
sentiments the Science Schools project generated in Kano, the choice of
membership was at the discretion of the Kano State government and those
directly in charge of the project. It was absolutely necessary to survival of
the project to pick only those who clearly sympathized with the rationale of
the project both in its initial conception and its subsequent existence. In
addition, it was decided some of them should also have scientific background,
although it was never made clear (both from the documents and my interviews
with the key informants) how such background is expected to contribute to the
Science Schools.
Because Ayagi was the
Commissioner for Education then, and in keeping with the tactic of selecting
only those sympathetic to the project, appointment to the Membership was at his
own recommendation. He did not, however, forsee that when he eventually leaves
the post of the Commissioner for Education, not all his successors will share
the same degree of enthusiasm towards the Science Schools. Certainly, under the
set of circumstances the Science Schools project emerged, placing the schools
under the final control of the Ministry of Education (through the Commissioner
for Education) has high element of risk to the future survival of the project.
Also in the directives for the
membership, there were no representations from the very large Industrial sector
of Kano State, any of the higher institutions of learning in the State, or,
interestingly enough, the Manpower Development Committee of the Ministry of
Economic Development which was the main force behind establishment of the
project. These representations should help co-ordinate the output of the
Science Schools with the Kano State economy, to ensure the outcomes of the
project are consistent with the developmental aspirations of Kano State
government.
An analysis of the first
membership of the Science Schools Board for 1977-1979 shows the distribution
and background of the members. The full membership was as follows:
1. Dr Sadiq
Wali, Chairman (Ahmadu Bello University Teaching Hospital)
2. Dr A T
Abdullahi, Member (Principal, Kano Polytechnic)
3. Alhaji Ali
Mukhtar, Member (Chief Pharmacist, Murtala Muhammad Hospital, Kano)
4. Alhaji Imam
Wali, Member (Director of Education, Ministry of Education, Kano)
5. Alhaji Adamu
Ilyasu, Member (Principal, Government Secondary School, Birnin Kudu
6. Alhaji
Dahiru Ibrahim, Member (General Manager, Nigerian Television Authority, Kano)
7. Alhaji Ado
Gwaram, Executive Secretary
Thus in the first Membership of
the Science Board, three members had scientific training. First was the
Chairman, Dr Sadiq Wali who was at the time a lecturer in the Faculty of
Medicine, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria (and, importantly, became the Kano
State Commissioner for Health in 1979). Then Dr A T Abdullahi, a Mechanical
Engineer who was the Principal of Kano Polytechnic (who also became a
Commissioner for Works and Housing in 1979, and Commissioner for Education in
1983), while Alhaji Ali Mukhtar was at that time the Chief Pharmacist of the
Murtala Muhammad Hospital in Kano City. Alhaji Imam Wali, the then Director of
Education, later became the Commissioner for Education in 1984.
The rapid mobility of this
initial membership up the ranks of the Kano State civil service was the major
factor that kept the flame of the Science Schools project going, because as
Ayagi recalled,
“The first Chairman was Dr Sadiq Wali, a science
person, Dr Abdullahi who was a Commissioner later was also a member, and that
had good repercussions later, because during the political days (1979-1983) the
idea would have been killed again, if not for the fact that we had these people
who had become Commissioners in the State.” (CTV 22/2/1986)
Another, very significant feature
of the Membership of the Science Board at this time was its fellowship linkage.
As Gwaram explained,
“It was a collection of committed Kano indigenes,
working as a team because we all knew ourselves and everybody knew who was on
the Board of Members. There was no question of suspicion. For example the
Ministry of Education representative was Alhaji Imam Wali (who was the then
Director of Education). He knew me right from infancy. And the Chairman, Dr
Sadiq Wali was not only a personal friend, but also someone who knew what I
could do, and he knew I had confidence in him, absolutely that much.”
(Interview 22/2/1987)
Thus negotiating from their
status as powerful members of the Kano State civil service, as well as being
close friends, the first Members of the Science Secondary Schools Management
Board were finally in a position to start off the Science Secondary Schools
Project in September 1977.
Autonomy and control
From the way the Science Board
eventually evolved, an uneasy relationship was established between the Science
Board and the Ministry of Education. The Board had autonomy in virtually all
aspects of its activities except the most crucial - financing. Although it was
deemed an independent parastatal of Kano State government, subsequently after
its establishment the Board had to request for funds from the Ministry of
Finance through the Ministry of Education, and this, naturally, was not without
consequences.
For instance, on 17th November
1978, the Board sent to the Permanent Secretary Ministry of Education for the
attention of the Ministry of Finance, its advanced proposals Recurrent
Estimates for 1979/80 in accordance with the stipulation of its charter. The
Board insisted
