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Ladi Oke is the lead consultant at Connectone, a network of organisations working together to provide bespoke solutions to institutions in the education sector. In this interview with IKECHI NZEAKO, he speaks on what his organization is doing to improve the quality of education in the country. Excerpts:
What service do you primarily provide?
We believe that the private education sector and market needs a lot of support; so what we do for them is that we build programmes and products that will help them reduce cost of operations; we help them with workforce management; we help them with procurement; we help them with funding.
We help them with building alliances with other organizations that can help strengthen their value proposition.
What motivated the creation of the organization?
We want to provide a soft landing for private organizations in the education sector because the quality of education in Nigeria is not where it should be.
Private schools are the ones bearing the torch in terms of education service delivery. Example, for example, Lagos State has over 17,000 private schools and only 1,700 public schools.
So we feel that working with the private schools, we can help strengthen their arm to be able to perform for the sake of our children. So that is the vision behind our collaboration.
And how has it been over the years?
We’ve been able to impact the quality of education positively; once a school is running very well, they’ll be able to provide quality education and our children’s life will be better for it.
So for us, bridging that gap is something that’s given us a lot of excitement. And we believe that a lot more still needs to be done.
But we’re humbled by what we’ve achieved so far.
And how will you assess the education system in the country?
The education sector is part of Nigeria; it’s what is happening in any sector that is happening in education.
The only thing that makes education more concerning is that that is a bedrock of quality of skilled workforce that will drive the future of the country.
So, when you say it’s challenging, we should be more concerned with private education because that’s the driver of the sector.
If you were to advise the government, what policies or programmes do you think the government can introduce to make the education system better?
Is there anything government has done and done successfully? Is there any project that managed effectively well? Probably you score them two out of 10. I think the government should just be a facilitator of education and allow the private sector to manage the education space. What do I mean? The government should put up the structure, put up the main infrastructure, and then call the private players who have the KPI orientation to do the rest. How do we make sure that results are achieved? The government needs to get the private sector more involved so that we can be more accountable for outcomes. There is no accountability in the sector, and it’s affecting performance.
The real outputs of education are our children, the future of Nigeria. So I’m not so crazy about infrastructure. I’m more concerned about the quality of teaching going on in those classrooms.
If I have a classroom that is not air-conditioned and is providing good learning resources, I think we would have achieved more. So I feel that there’s a lot of wastage when it comes to the government and its engagement in education.
If the private sector is brought to bear and you can hold them accountable, I’m sure they will do a lot more with a lot less.
There is evidence to show that when the private sector gets involved, there’s more accountability. There will be checks and balances. Who are you? What’s your track record? A private player will be more engaged.
A private player will want to show results because he knows that if he doesn’t show results, they will yank off his agreement.
As a player in the education sector, what’s your advice to parents, teachers and students?
Parents should get involved in the education of their children. A school is not an outlet to emotionally hand over the future of your children.
Parents should get involved and parents getting involved simply mean that they should engage the school, they should engage the teachers, and they should engage the community.
Education is everyone’s problem and until we start seeing it as our problem, then there will be a problem. It should be all engaging and everybody must play their role.
