Human capital development, important to Delta State Government - Professor Hope Eghagha

Professor Eghagha

The Delta State Commissioner for Higher Education, Professor Hope Eghagha has been working tirelessly to ensure that Delta State students in higher institutions excel in their studies.

The poet, author and a lecturer in this interview with ADA DIKE sheds light on numerous issues including his career and what they are doing to ensure that bursary merchants are checkmate.

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Eghagha sheds light on what Delta State Government is doing to ensure that her youths are well read: “One of the cardinal points of Delta State Government administration is human capital development. Because this administration realizes that if you develop other resources and fail to develop human capital resource, then you would run into problems because you won’t have the persons to drive the other resources. So Delta State has recognized the importance and the centrality of developing the human capital to achieve its development goal.

“Education, generally, comprising basic, primary and university levels, are the key because you have to train the personnel who go to school and learn basic concept, that is, the primary and secondary levels, so that when they get to the university, they are exposed to subjects that could change their perception, that could make them understand their environment, that could make them appreciate what they are doing and could also make them interrogate whatever they encounter. Whatever social changes or social challenges they have, if they have educated minds at the tertiary level, then they can interrogate and also contribute to development. It is when they interrogate that they can contribute to development. It is when they contribute to development that they can bring change to the society,” he said.

Speaking further, he stressed that: “Why we in Delta State are concentrating in tertiary level is that we are creating opportunities to admitting as many Deltans as possible by the numbers of institutions that are available.  We have Deltans studying in 160 institutions across the country excluding the ones outside the country. What it means is that we have the need for our boys and girls to study there. If they have the opportunity, they would prefer studying within the country to running outside. We know they have advantages because leaving their geographical environment and studying elsewhere gives them exposure, different perspective to life but it is better to study in Nigeria. So, we want to create the options for our young boys and girls and we have introduced different measures by which we do that. We have scholarship and bursary schemes for undergraduates, law students, aviation students and so on. All of these are parts of what we do to ensure that education is stable, accessible and my counterparts at the basic and secondary levels will tell you that the state government pays the West African Examination Council (WAEC) fees for all Deltans who want to write their certificate examinations. The state has also said that pupils should not pay any fees at all from primary one to primary six. All these policies are put in place to strengthen education in the state for developing human capital resource of the state.”

So far, would you say you have been able to achieve your goals? He was asked:

“Yes, there are short term goals, mid-term goals and long term goals. We can say that we have been able to achieve our short term goals and we are achieving our mid-term goals. The long term goals are on-going because we are creating one new polytechnic in order to create wider access and locate these institutions in areas that have been deprived of higher institutions since the creation of Delta State.

 “In terms of short term goal, we have also been giving out scholarship and bursary. Delta State government has commitment as well to tertiary institutions by funding three existing polytechnic, two colleges of education, one college of physical education and a university that has three campuses, so that is quite a handful for any state to contend with. The wage bill every month for the university gulps about 450 million naira, so we spend almost a billion naira in two months. So we are meeting all goals towards research, accreditation and other challenges they have. It is left for you to assess how far we have done. Right now, the state has subjected itself to a United Nations (UN) assessment scheme. They are with us right now.  The Governor of Delta State, Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan invited them to come and assess Delta State in terms of education, agriculture, health, infrastructure and water resources.”

Speaking on the numbers of students that have benefitted from the scholarship scheme, he explains, “We have a first class scholarship. That is the star of this programme. Any Deltan who graduates in the last three years and made a first class is entitled to a scholarship of five million naira – from Master’s to doctorate level. So far, we have about 280 persons who have benefitted from the scheme. Some stopped at the Master’s level, and some have proceeded to doctorate level. For the current year, we have 200 persons that have applied. We also have foreign scholarship. In the last two years, we have not funded that very well. We gave to about 15 persons the first year we did it and it later reached up to 17 persons. Some have completed their Master’s degree, then one or two are doing their doctorate degree and we are funding that. We also have aviation scholarship that is five million naira. At the moment, we have about 20 persons who are studying piloting across the world. Some are in Ilorin, one or two person are in Zaria, others are in the United Kingdom and America.

“We also have a bursary scheme which is for all comers, so to speak. Any Deltans who is in any tertiary institution and have a cumulative grade point average of 2.2 is entitled to that bursary. This year, about 21,000 persons have applied and screened. So far, 19,000 have been given. The first time we did that, about 53, 000 applied and we found out that 33,000 applications were fake. The second year, about 23,000 applications were fake. What we have been trying to do is to ensure that students who apply, once they are true Deltans, should get the money so long as they follow the rules by registering correctly. We do know that it is free money for some people so they try to break in and hack into the system.

“I have always said, in every system, inside and outside, they are persons who are trying to hack into the system and they are insiders who connive with them. So if we get such people, we remove them. What we are trying to do in the system is to say, workers in the scholarship board don’t stay beyond two years so that people don’t stay too long in a position, that is part of what we are doing to ensure that there is accountability, transparency and minimize the incident of fraud. The board has been very active. Delta State Government has given us support through approval and we do hope that by the time we complete the circle during the next exercise, they will be sanity in the system.”

Can students help others to register for bursary?

“That is why we are trying to remove the middle man. Register yourself, don’t ask people to register for you. Some people are internet lazy, computer shy and so on. They don’t want to get into the process of buying a scratch card or going to computer to upload their information. So they contract it to some persons that come in as merchants and they are the ones who register people for Join Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB). To get a visa, you ought to go the system and book online, but some people go through some agencies, so that mentality is still there. We have said that they would be sensitization for next year’s application for bursary.  With fliers we will reach out to students across the country. They don’t need a third party to register. Those third parties we are trying to remove of course, are trying to create scenes for themselves to remain relevant. That is a big challenge we have.

“We heard of accusation about insertion of fake names. We are doing our best to make sure that all those fake names don’t collect bursary, though we have not gone round to fish out the person who did it. But the matter has been reported to security agencies. Indeed! When we looked at those names and those accounts, we didn’t have to believe that one person did that. It is not easy for one man or two persons to open 23,000 fake accounts. So what we believed is that different persons did it.

“What to do is to go there and see who opened the accounts, if the accounts were opened and who benefitted. At this stage we have not established who did it but we believed that different persons attempted it. The fact that we stopped it was an achievement. It was an attempted fraud, they didn’t succeed. We have tightened the loopholes. If peradventure they succeeded in one way or the other, that is the reason we go to Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and there is a review process every year. Working with the board in 2009, we decided to be transparent. Check the newspapers of 2011 between July and September, you will find that we made announcement of fake names trying to benefit from the bursary. We found it amusing when students said they discovered the fake names. Let those who want to be thorough in their investigation go back to their archive and look at when the news came out. We briefed the executive arm of the government and they know that they are persons called ‘bursary merchants’. I don’t know whether they have been able to really confront that issue before. But this time, with the support of the government we decided to tackle it. And each year we did the bursary, we refunded money back to Delta State Government. This year, although we received 580 million naira, we expended 500 million naira. 80 million naira is there. We did that for four years. A board that is returning money is now accused of fraud. What we have always said is: “this money is meant for students.” Some students don’t register well. Some use wrong bank account. Some, the name of the applicants are different from the account holders’ names. In the first year, when we confronted them, they said it is their mother’s account and we advised them to open their own accounts.

“Our people have a proverb that, if you catch a thief in your farm in the morning, and call him a thief, he would call you a thief. That is what is going on. It is very sad that persons who have been doing funny things in the system are the ones crying aloud now more than the bereaved and some persons believed them. Some people in the social media and bloggers just lashed into that without even getting the other side of the story. It is very sad.”

Some blogs published that nobody knows the where about of Ambrose Ezenwani, the man claimed he raised alarm about the bursary list after he was transferred from Sabo Police Station to Delta State. He explains, “The Delta State Government did not arrest anybody, neither did the Delta State instruct any agent to arrest anybody. I did not arrest anybody. Apart from the formal complaint that we made in 2011, we have not set out to arrest anybody but what happened was that one of the fellows that were mentioned has been a beneficiary of scams that have been in the system. He is a graduate that has finished his national service who brought some ex students together and they converged in the University of Lagos with a big poster and accused the board of fraud. It was amusing looking at the man who was accusing others.

Prof Eghagha

“I implore you to go to the University of Lagos and ask some students from Delta State who are in their final year and those who have graduated about the bursary.

The National Association of Delta State Students in University (NADESSTU) was very enraged about the accusation so they travelled to Lagos, made formal complaints and he was arrested and detained. Then the police in Delta State rearrested him and charged him to court. He was remanded in prison by the magistrate until the next hearing which is June 9, 2014, and some people went online and accused Delta State Government of arresting him whom they described as the whistle blower. I blew the whistle in 2011 that is the reason we have been putting all these mechanism to stop fraud.  If I ordered his arrest, I would be man enough to say so. He did enough to be arrested but I just ignored him, feeling he is a young man that is just starting his life.

“If we had gone after the 23,000 names that were fake, people would complain and accuse us of disturbing innocent students. But that has changed. Subsequently, when we find names of persons trying to implicate the board, we will report and let the security go after one or two of them.

The narrative was altered. The persons who discovered the infraction within the system were now being accused and most of those touts went to town without doing proper investigations. It is important for the press to get the other side of the story before they publish any story.”

Lecturing is Eghagha’s first love and he intends to go back to school, pick a chalk and start teaching literature, drama and poetry when his days in government are over as the Delta State Commissioner for Higher Education.

In his words: “I like engaging young minds in the classroom, interacting with them and trying to draw out things from them. I remember when I got into class, each text we were going to read, students must read it and tell me something about it. Even if some say stupid things, I won’t say it’s stupid. Students are usually shy in Nigeria but when you go abroad, you find that teaching is interacting. So the students must learn and I enjoy doing that. I love keeping in touch with the younger minds – the next generation.

“Though I don’t believe that I am going to stay in government forever, I leave my fate in the hands of God because He directs my life. He gave me this position I have through His Excellency, governor of the state, Dr. Uduaghan. The final thing is that I will do what God says I should do. I may also go into consultancy and advise people who want to set up higher institutions and also advise the existing tertiary institutions on how they can maximize their resources. Those are the ideas I am thinking about, but it is Unilag that gave me my professorship, I have an obligation to go there and give my inaugural lecture when my days in government are over. So I am looking forward to that.”

He shares the lessons he has learnt from this his position as the Delta State Commissioner for Higher Education: “There are many, but I will not mention some of them (laughs). The first lesson is that the demands or needs are many but, the resources are very scarce. Government cannot do it all. That is the very first lesson. As somebody in the social sphere and as a critic in the media, you find out that people always complain, wanting this and that to be done, but by the time you joined government and look at the available resources, you will know that government can’t do it all. I have also realized that people value what they pay for and truly, there is nothing like free education. Somebody must pay for education you don’t pay for.

“I also learnt that one should be more patient in dealing with people, especially when you are in a position of leadership, when you have directors, heads of institutions, and people with different psychological makeup, different histories, experiences and different backgrounds. They are all they and they interpret different issues differently. So you found yourself having to interpret and reinterpret.

“I have also learnt that you have to be personally involved in whatever you want to be done. Inspect what you expect. And they are persons who never see anything good when you are doing well. Be focused, push towards your goal so that you will achieve success. In the words of our governor, “You will finish strong.””

It seems he is always busy. How does he relax?

“Once in a while, I create time to play table tennis, use the gym and so on. Well, I am not a party man neither do I go to club. But sometimes, I relax in my study and read books.”

Is there a particular thing he missed about the classroom?

“I missed the interactions, being a teacher – make research, write papers, attend academic conferences and so on. All these things engaged me. At the peak of my career, sometimes, I wrote two academic papers at the same time. Sometimes I would be writing a poetry collection and doing the play. Sometimes, I get to my office by 7.20 when I have a class at eight, to write at least two poems. And then, I missed the simplicity of life on campus. I don’t look forward to returning to mark 200 or 300 scripts because it is tedious, coupled with the fact that some students write very badly and you are not excited to read their scripts. I do hope that by the time I return as a professor, I will have people who will be working with me. No class should be bigger than 100 or 150 students. That way, I should be able to give assignments. By regulations, we are supposed to give one or two assignments per semester. During my undergraduate days, we were 23 students but one died. That way, your lecturer would know everybody and it won’t be tedious to mark assignments.”

Does he have any regrets so far?

That was when I was kidnapped for 15 days without knowing what would happen the following day. The kidnappers asked me: “What of the scholarship money?” They did not believe that I did not have three million naira in any account. They asked me “Why?” I said: “Because I am not a thief.” They asked me why I didn’t give my wife a contract and added that my wife would have given them money if I had given her a contract.

“I was kept in a house in a secluded area within Delta State where you could hear birds chirp. There was a farm close by. And there was a church. I was kept in a room blind folded and tortured for 15 days. The agonizing aspect of it was the fact that my orderly was killed in my presence. They hit me with a butt of a gun. I lay on the bed and they lay beside me in the night, threatened me and said they would shoot me first if the government tries to rescue me. I didn’t eat for eight days, I was just drinking water. I lost a lot of weight when I came out. When they demanded for the scholarship money, I told them it has not been released and they said they knew it had not been released. I was close to death but God brought me out and gave me a second chance to live.  I strive to do good to humanity, follow my conscience and leave the rest to God.”

 Many people believe that the safest place to hide money or any valuable item, is in a book, which means that a lot of people don’t read books, but Professor Hope Oghenerukevbe Eghagha’s penchant towards education and books explains his vision for Delta State to become the hub of educated and enlightened Nigerians.

Born on September 4, 1959 in Delta State, Eghagha hails from Mereje in Okpe Local Government Area, Delta State.

The columnist and former member of the Editorial Board of The Guardian newspapers attended Academy Boys Primary School (Now Okotie Eboh Boys Primary School) before he proceeded to Zik’s Grammar School where he did his Higher School Certificate in Port Harcourt at Baptist High School.

He got his first degree from the University of Jos, and after completing the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), he went to the University of Lagos (Unilag) where he registered for the Master’s degree and was engaged as a Graduate Assistant.  While there, he registered for the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D). He later got his first job as a Lecturer at the then Ondo State University, Ado-Ekiti. 

Revealing the number of books he has written as a poet, author and a lecturer, the Delta State Commissioner for Higher Education says, “I am writing a novel on my kidnap but I have written many books and six poetry collections namely: Pepper In My Throat, Mama Dances Into The Night and Other Poems, Premonitions And Other Dreams, Death Not A Redeemer and The Governor’s Lodge, among others. Onowawi Can Rise Again (a drama) is a story about a man who is fighting a king who is a dictator, so dictatorial that he asked another indigene that he should fell a tree and make sure that the tree does not get to the ground. So people try to get that king out of the office. That is the focus of the play. I also have a novel in the market – Emperors of Salvation published by Mudhouse. I also wrote a novel about the bomb blast that happened in Ikeja, Lagos,” he said.

Does he agree that Nigerians don’t read?

“Yes, the environment is so difficult that people don’t read, but they read the Bible. What it means is that many people don’t read books outside the Bible. They can recite all the Psalms and some powerful verses in the Bible including some verses in the New Testament. They also read books that are motivational. They also read books written by big pastors in Nigeria.

“In our days, reading novels by popular authors was part of socialization, but these days the youth watch movies and dancesteps on Youtube. They also play video game and don’t have time to read, but reading is important because it helps the mind to grow. Some people read but they don’t read the right thing. When I was growing as a young man, through reading books, I knew a lot of things about America. I could describe life in America. If I read a novel by an English writer, I would know that the language is different from an American writer.

“We need to encourage people to read the right book, although, there are so many challenges. How many people can afford to put generator in the night just because they want to read a novel? Light was constant when I was growing up and Electricity Company of Nigeria (ECN) used to announce when light would go off and when they would bring light. And then, because of so many distractions we have these days, people are thinking about what to eat, how they are going to pay their rents. You need a settled mind to be able to read. All of these are telling on the society and we must recognize them.”

He suggests ways to get people to be reading books, “People need to form book clubs, encourage people to read because reading develops the mind and books are everywhere now so hard copy books are being challenged. You read books with your smart phones, iPad, laptop and so on.