THE NATION, SATURDAY, APRIL 7, 2012 missioner. Was the transition easy or difficulty? Well, the transition, I should say was not so smooth because one moved from the realm of theory to practical. As a columnist or social critic, looking at the way things in the society run, for you to be able to evaluate things, you have to look critically and closely. So I was very conscious of my environment and I had my ideas about certain things – institutions, development, road construction, child development, religion and so on. So when I then came into government, we tried to implement some of these policies and lead by example. It is not so different in the sense that one was psychologically prepared for it. As a member of the Editorial Board of The Guardian, every Wednesday, it was like a post mortem of the previous week. Events that occurred from the Thursday of the previous week, sometimes till Wednesday morning were x-rayed by intelligent minds across religious, ethnic and political divides in the Boardroom of The Guardian. Besides, I was very interested in society. In fact right from my Secondary School days, I was buying The Time Magazine, listening to VOA, BBC, VON, reading newspapers because of my attention to society. So that actually prepared me for the present job. Although when it came to developing memo, going to executive council to defend, it was a different kettle of fish and one has to learn that. Criticising policies is easier than implementing them. When implementing policies that are well thought out, well written, you run into all kinds of obstacles. The ability to overcome all these obstacles is what makes you a successful person or not. And beside, as a writer, someone who has written poems, novels, plays, I was very conscious of injustice in the society and very conscious of why society should be fair, you know, all those things were at the back of my mind and I do hope that I will be able to bring all this things to bear as a government person. Aside from these three things, what else would you have loved to be? Well, my very first dream, you’ll surprised, was to be an Intelligence Officer. Perhaps, that was influenced by reading novels and books about high level Intelligence gathering, being involved in Espionage and all of that. So, I thought that I would do well in the diplomatic circle as an Intelligence Officer, perhaps largely influenced by the foreign ideas which I had read until much later I then focused on myself and decided that I would be a lecturer. I took that decision very early. Read up till PhD, go to the university and start teaching. I mean by the time I was in Form Three in secondary school, I started addressing myself as a professor, oh yes! If you go back to the books I had at that time, I addressed myself as professor. There was a day about three, four years ago, I was looking through old books in my father’s collection and I saw Prof. Eghagha and I smiled. Here you are today a Prof., how do you feel about it? It is a life long achievement. For me, that is what I wanted to be, to be a Prof. and when you become a Prof you discovered that there are other challenges. Of course at the time, my father would have loved me to read Law. Every Urhobo man at that time wanted his son to be a lawyer. But that was not for me. Indeed when I went to read Theatre Arts, the arrangement by dad was that make sure you change into Law after the first year. But in Theatre Arts, after year one, I had found fulfillment, I could write, I could read, I could act, I just decided to go on with it and that was it. For the Masters, I then went in for English and Dramatic Literature. In the days of Encyclopedia before the advent of the Internet or Google, that kept people busy. Encyclopedia Britannica or
INTERVIEW
•Prof. Eghagha
Encyclopedia Americana were my companions. So that was it for me. Would you say you are a perfectionist? I don’t think so. I would have love things to be perfect but I don’t think I do things perfectly, no matter how I try. Yes, I would have loved to have things done perfectly but I do know that anybody in the human world as much as he strives for perfection runs into all kinds of errors because the human instrument, the human equipment, the human organs, even in terms of implementing ideas are not perfect. The environment itself is not perfect, the instrument of communication, methods of communication all of these are not perfect. However, one really tries to do his best. If you want to say that one should always do his best, and if you talk of perfectionist in that regard, yes. I don’t like messy narratives. I like narratives that start well, driven through the middle and then get concluded well. To that extent one can say he is a perfectionist. Today, you are in a leadership position what kind of philosophy underscores your approach to your day-to-day assignments? Service to humanity! When you are in this kind of position, it is one of service to people. It is not just a slogan, I mean in a Nigeria of about 140 million where you have 36 states and a Federal Capital Territory (FCT), let take an average of 30 commissioners per state, if you multiply that by 36, you can see the figure and know that we are very few. So it is a privilege position. It therefore im-
poses some responsibility on you to be of a service to people. It is not a position where you just raise your shoulders that you are better than every other person. And because of the privilege position, you have access to all kinds of things. You can be influential in your community, your local government, you can make things happen, you can intervene on behalf of the under privileged. You can assist in different ways. Often we are on duty 24 hours. Sometimes you get a phone message by 3 am, sometimes by 4am, you have to move. At 2am you are still exchanging messages with some persons in government because you must get something done. For me, it is service to humanity. What do you consider to be the difference between the world of today and when you were growing up? I really don’t know whether one can describe the difference in absolute terms because the world for me is a continuous narrative. At which point of the narrative I am standing at a time? What are the dynamics of the narrative? Have they remained constant, have they changed? Are we building on foundations from the early part of the narrative to the middle until it gets concluded? So I don’t think I can describe the world of my youth and the world of today as diametrically opposed. I will also like to say that people tend to glorify the past; that the past was better than the present, but mind you, the current present will
51 be past of the future. When we were in the 70s, we complained about a lot of things. I remember in those days that it took two to three days to get to Lagos from Sapele by road. But it was life. And there was this saying “To go to Lagos no hard, na to come back be problem.” Life then was not bed of roses. To get to Lagos took three days, now you do it in four hours. The roads were not good then. The Highway robbers after the civil war made life difficult for travelers. You know many people had access to arms after the war. People tend to look back and say those were the golden years. But I am not so enarmoured with describing the differences, I do it advisedly, looking at certain aspects one at a time. For instance, political development and I can say we have made some progress. I look at education and I say we have made some progress. Whatever we say, in terms of access to education, in terms of availability and affordability. I do remember when we were growing up that communities come together to pull funds together to send a child to the university. It is no longer a communal responsibility. Families can now do that. I also know that when we were growing up in the whole of the Midwest there was only one university, the University of Benin. And when it came up, a lot of people were cynical about it. Now the University of Benin has come to stay. If you wanted to go to school then, it had to be Ife, Ibadan or Lagos. Now, the old Midwest have been split into two - Edo and Delta. In Delta, we have a state owned university and three polytechnics. The closest Polytechnic then was Auchi Polytechnic. So for my generation, we kept dreaming of going to a university outside of this state. But now, there is access, a lots of people have come into the system. The half of the old Midwest, now have three polytechnics here, two colleges of education and a College of Physical Education; we have a Federal University of Technology, we have a Petroleum Training Institute (PTI), we have Western Delta University and Novena University. You don’t have to go to kilometers away before you have tertiary education. We are also aware that because of the large number of people going into the system, there has been the challenge on physical structure; the human capital has also been challenged. While a lot more people come into the system, there are no enough funds to fully develop the structure to make them commensurate with the influx of people. And that is the reason when you go to universities or polytechnics you still find people battling with the fundamentals – accommodation, inadequate lecture halls and so on but in all of these, we have the Ministry of Education that is setting goals that in 10 years time, we would like to have enough lecture halls, we would like all our students to be in halls of residence etc, we want the state and federal government to move towards the UNESCO prescription in terms of budgetary allocations. We will be moving from 10 to 15 to 20 and so on. When I say I want to compare, there is certainly this increase in knowledge right now. Take for instance the notion of news, it has been redefined. In the past that we are talking of, somebody in the same community we are
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I mean by the time I was in Form Three in secondary school, I had started addressing myself as a professor. Oh yes! If you go back to the books I had at that time, I addressed myself as professor. There was a day, about three, four years ago, I was looking through old books in my father’s collection and I saw ‘Prof. Eghagha’ and I smiled...
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living in could die three days, four days and you don’t get to know. But now, immediately somebody dies you hear the news within five minutes. You can send photographs; news is no longer what happened yesterday, news is what is happening now. And all these affect culture; they affect behavior, work ethics and everything about us. So I don’t compare the past. As an individual, I don’t romanticize the past. I look at contemporary society; we do have challenges, all societieshave challenges, I mean all without reservation. America, said to be the mostpowerful nation on earth today has its challenges. But while some are grapplingwith fundamentals others have gone beyond that. Tell us the challenges in the ministry? When you are outside government you have a very broad look at things even though you don’t have access to details. So when you come into government you begin to see the details. The things you want to do and the things you can’t do. Sometimes, funding could be a challenge, way of thinking could be a challenge, where you are coming from could be a challenge when certain persons think you are not of the mainstream and sundry issues. For instance, I would like to have all our students to be well accommodate in decent hostel accommodation; have access to electricity supply 24 hours; access to internet facility. That is the modern world, the IT world. I want to produce graduates in our institutions who can fit into the global market and economy and the question is how you can achieve all these within two years or three years. And education is not the only social service that we have to offer. It is just one of them. We are grappling with road construction, residential accommodation, water supply, all these are there and the resources are not as enormous as people think. Those are some of the things we encounter when we get into government and they are part of the challenges. So far, how far? We have raised consciousness about the issues on the campus. As Commissioner for Higher Education, my brief is to serve as a bridge between the institutions and government, bring to the attention of government the situation in the institutions and also let the institutions know some of the challenges the government is facing. Government can’t do it all. I think that given the situation on ground, it will be a great thing to see stakeholders in the education sector play greater roles in the development of education because government can’t do it all. Stakeholders must be prepared to give more assistance and support in the drive for excellence and the ideal, knowing fully that government alone can’t provide everything. Take for instance the Delta State Government releases N420 million every month as the wage bill of Delta State University alone. And sometimes adds 60 or 70 million for gratuity and pension. So in a month, we talk of almost half a billion naira. That is enormous. Yet an average student of the institution pays about N25,000 for an academic year. A rough mathematics will show that the government subsidizes each student of Delta State origin in Delta State University to the tune of about 85%. You can see the challenges that will pose. How is working with Governor Emmanuel Uduaghan? He is a man that is well focused; he knows what he is doing. He is firm and I have enjoyed working with him. In him you find a man who knows what he wants to do, he has been in government, he is experienced and for most of the things, you don’t have to make much noise or push so hard once those issues are clear.