SOMETIME in 1996, during a private interview, I inquired from the late Chief Bola Ige how his administration as Governor of Oyo State provided free text books, note books as well as chairs and tables to all secondary schools.I should know. I was a beneficiary of the policy as a secondary school student in that state between 1979 and 1984. I was of the particularly lucky set: School resumed in September of 1979 and Ige took office as Governor on October 1, just about one month after. It was shortly after we left in 1984 that the rampaging Buhari/Idiagbon military junta, which had on December 31, 1983 sacked the civilian government, reintroduced tuition fees.In his inaugural speech at the stadium where he took the oath of office, Ige proclaimed free education from that day in the state.He was not alone. Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande, also of Ige's Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), as Governor of Lagos State, made a similar pronouncement. In Ogun, the late Chief Olabisi Onabanjo; as well as the late Chief Adekunle Ajasin of Ondo and the late Ambrose Alli of Bendel now Edo and Delta, all of the same UPN, made similar declarations.'From today,' the voice of Ige boomed, 'education is now free in all primary and secondary schools in Oyo State.'It was the beginning of a revolution in the state where I was born and raised, but of which by Nigeria's queer political arrangement, I am a 'settler'.I can keep paying taxes in Oyo, my businesses may be run there, I may employ thousands of residents and continue to contribute to the economic life of the state. But, hey, I am a stranger in the state. I must go to my home state, Ogun, if I hope to contribute to the political life of this country. It is irrelevant that my grandfather moved to the largely Egba community of Apata Ganga as a young man, long before the 1914 amalgamation of disparate communities that later formed Nigeria, and much longer before state creation put his household in Oyo State. It also does not matter that by virtue of place of birth and upbringing, I speak Ibadan and barely recognise my relations in Ogun State, I am just not entitled to any political aspiration in Oyo. Again, it does not matter that my relation who was born in the United Kingdom is a British citizen and can aspire to any political height in that country but here, I am a 'settler.'But, then, I digress. Parents in Oyo State heaved a sigh of relief. They had expected the pledge by Bola Ige, anyway, since it was one of the four cardinal programmes of the UPN during campaigns. What our parents probably did not expect was the pleasant surprise about the extent to which the UPN Governors would go in executing the pledge.In addition to building hundreds of new schools all over the state to accommodate the army of students who were sure to be admitted, at no cost to parents, the Ige government provided brand new chairs and tables. Not only that, it gave text books and note books to every student, free of cost.Those of us in Form One got free text books on all subject areas: From French, to English, Mathematics, Integrated Science, Religious Studies and Literature in English. Our seniors in Forms Three to Five were not treated differently. They received all textbooks that were required for their choices of careers. In other words, students chose to study Arts or Social Sciences out of interest and not for lack of opportunity to buy the very voluminous and expensive textbooks for Biology, Physics and Chemistry.Butchers threw away their knives and returned to school. They were joined by pepper sellers, spare parts dealers, palmwine sellers, and indeed all sorts of adults who quickly embraced the fresh opportunities that were provided by free education. Many of such persons who were my classmates are in the commanding heights of the country's economy today. A few that I know of are in excellent positions across the globe today; the street butchers of yesterday.The policy was the same in all the UPN-governed States of Ondo (which included Ekiti, then), Bendel, Lagos and Ogun. Parents in Kwara State, being mostly Yoruba and desirous of Western education, started relocating their children to Ogbomoso, the neighbouring Oyo State town, so that their children could also take advantage of the free education policy of the UPN government, since they were under the administration of the National Party of Nigeria (NPN).At the next general election, the people of Kwara State trooped out en masse to vote out their NPN government and to get for themselves a UPN administration, which would put an end to their toiling by way of regular travels to Ogbomoso to ascertain the welfare of their young children who they had had to leave with friends, and in some cases, total strangers; just in a bid to make their children have access to free education.That subsequent election of 1983 was regarded as most invidious at that time in view of the brazen subversion of the will of the people, as the then ruling NPN claimed to have won in Ondo and Oyo States. The mayhem and wanton destruction of lives and property by the people of the state who were protesting the subversion of their will, is yet to be forgotten, even today.So, to my question about how his government did the magic of providing all text books to all students, Chief Ige simply looked at me and smiled. He said that the decision was a tough one on the government of the day, but that it was a policy that the UPN was irrevocably committed to.'The first thing we did was to get local printers to do the job. We discovered that if we bought the books from their mostly United Kingdom-based publishers, we would exhaust virtually all funds available to us. What we did was to simply enter into agreements with the foreign publishers and pay tokens for the right to reprint in Nigeria. We then negotiated with local printers. They gave us quotations for each of those books, which turned out to be considerably less than what it would have cost us to import those books. In Oyo, we chose Onibon Oje Printers, and my colleagues in other UPN states also negotiated with local printers around them.'Then Ige added what, for me, was the clincher: 'We also refrained from frivolous and reckless spending. Whatever money was available to us, not just to me but the five UPN governments, we spent on the people. We would not, for instance, consider spending money to buy cars for traditional rulers like our Northern colleagues were doing then. We were in a hurry to prove to the world, as Chief Awolowo was doing as Premier, that the black man could have a First Class administration, that we could have a government that was better than the one in the UK, or America...'No wonder Jakande was regarded as 'Baba Kekere', little father, or heir apparent to Awolowo. That was before the hurricane called Sani Abacha.The words of Chief Ige came ringing in my ears yesterday as I read a report that Lagos State Governor, Babatunde Raji Fashola had increased the fleet of cars in the palaces of eight traditional rulers and high chiefs in the state to the tune of N46 million.Such profligacy from a government that has just raised school fees in the state from N25,000 to N250,000, and for some courses about N350,000' I can only imagine the number of text books that the N46 million would have bought for distribution, free, across secondary schools in Lagos; or the number of home-made computers for schools, or more books for libraries in the state, or boreholes to be sunk in rural parts of the state, or...To think that the government, which claims to subscribe to 'progressive' ideals is the one dipping its hands into the public till to deodorise the already overfed monarchs while ghettorising the poor!The children of the poor who trooped to schools under Ige, Jakande and the others are today members of the Nigerian elite. Those that the military kicked out of the school system returned to road transport business and other such vocations. Many of them became ready-made members of the army of area boys that were recruited for political thuggery and prostitution, among others. That is the fate that awaits many of those that will be kicked out of school soon, going by the tuition fee regime introduced by the 'progressive' government of Lagos State.Well, this new group of 'progressives' has for long cut its ties with the name Awolowo and his ideas of governance; in its place now rests a new name and a new leader who gets lionised and praised by both area boys and the educated for every crime to which his name is associated.Sure, there are progressives, and there are progressives.Article first published on December 10, 2011, reproduced due to public demand.
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