PERSONALITY: Ambassador Doctor Hadimkemdi Njoku

Ambassador Doctor Hadimkemdi Njoku is the National Dean of Ambassador for Peace, President and Director General of the International Institute of Leadership and Governance. The immediate past President of the Institute of Chattered Mediators and Conciliators, a Chairman of the Fellowship of Partners for the Protection of Ethics and Values, the Chairman Governing Board of the National Examination Council (NECO), a loving father with four children, a caring husband with one wife, a community leader, former President General of the Imo Community in the FCT, and a very respected Chief of Mbaise land of Imo State, precisely Uvuru Autonomous Community, with a chieftaincy title of Omenuko of Uvuru, and of course a Knight of the Order of Saint John International of the Catholic Church.

As a renowned educationist, Professor P. K Njoku stands out. As we close up on him in an exclusive interview in his Asokoro Office, (FCT Abuja), looks deep into His guiding princples, the history of his success, talks on the education system, pointing at the missing gap and how we need to reconnect to catch up with global competitiveness.

His Guiding principles:

My guiding principles are simple. I did not creat myself, I did not fight for the opportunities that I have been able to grasp. Some people say that I am intelligent, I don't know but what I know is that if I am, I did not open this head to put intelligence inside it and therefore the superior force that is called God that created me, that made me everything that I am today, that force must be gratified and respected, and as a result I should not oppress any other human being because every human being that God created, He felt very well before creating that human being, that human being is important and deserves to be given respect and space, that is my guiding principles.

A brief history of how he got to this level

I ascribe everything to God. Being in the right place at the right time is only orchestrated by God. I mean in my village for example, my peers look up to me, members of my age grade look up to me for guidance. I did not fight for it, I think it's God that made it all possible for that to happen. But my guiding principles have also helped me in making sure that I do not abuse that privilege that God has given me. So I tried to go to school like others even under very difficult circumstances. I passed some others during class not because they committed any crime, and so this is where I feel I am more privileged. I did well in my studies probably not because I studied more than others, in fact there was this joke we had during my secondary school days about one of our class mate who said that he used to read like a "Dimba", you know, even with all his mind and energy put into reading, he did not understand in the same proportion as he read. He tended to put in more effort and energy reading but others who put in less understood more and succeeded more. So, much as it is absolutely important to do your best, you must pray that, that your best is blessed by God.

Looking at education in Nigeria, what is the missing link between then when you went to school and now?

It's an interesting subject which we may not finish in this interview because I have done a lot of thinking. When we now say that failure rate is very high, I ask myself this question 'Is it because the children have become less intelligent or that the teachers have become less committed, and are these children not the product of our own genes? Are our genes that are producing these children now devalued so much so that the Intelligence Quotient (I.Q) that we possess, our children no longer possess them? There are also other questions we should ask that is part of what I have arrived at. When I was in primary school for example, my only source of information were my books, my teachers, and my parents. I relied on this three major factors for information and because my parents were not educated, I relied much on my books and my teachers and my role model was my teacher. I wanted to be educated like him. I wanted to do whatever he did to get to that level where he was. You see, my best friends then were my class mates with whom I did assignments and all other things, but my little child/kids today, their best friends are the Tom and Jerry in the cartoon network. They now establish online relationships. They learn a thousand and one things that I didn't learn. They are watching three hundred (300) channels on the DSTV and jumping from one channel to the other. They see bill boards scattered all over the place advertising one product or the other, and the radio is on. The television is on too, and so even the personal relationship they are supposed to have with their brothers and sisters, they don't attach as much importance to it as they attach to their friends on the screen even to the extent that if there is no light in the house, they feel miserable because they would miss their friends. So, they are getting so much information that has now occupied their mental spirit and define what we are teaching them as boring. One, they have little time for it. Two, they have little interest for it, and three and very important I ask myself 'Are we really testing them on what we know and feel that because they don't know what we knew, they are not intelligent? I believe you are getting the question. I use to know the arithmetic 2 times 3 is six, 2 times 6 is twelve, and 3 times 6 is 18. But now they do what they call Quantitative Reasoning. So if I subject them to my arithmetic of 1963 and say they must pass, and unless they pass that, they are not intelligent, am I being fair to them? Also am I taking them into consideration on the fact that they have a thousand and one other things occupying their minds? Look at their smart phones. I am not as smart with the smart phones as you are because I usually tune the transistor radio, but now they use a remote controller and press. Secondly, in a remote controlled age where you just sit there and touch this and the air conditioner (AC) is on, and you touch that and the television is on, it's a supersonic age. But if I, as a teacher, would want to drag them back to my analogue age where I had to stand up to switch on and off everything, then there is a disconnection, and why I said there is a disconnection is a matter for another day. I think I have discussed this with the honourable Minister of Education. I discussed it on television with them, and I think we should also review our system to know if we are carrying them along in all that we are teaching them.

The impact of NECO since inception:

NECO is fifteen years old now. It is the National Examination Council as against the West Africa Examination Council. The West African Examination Council is owned by five (5) different countries with their five (5) different educational backgrounds. The only thing that brings them together is that they are all Anglophone countries, but just like we have a West African parliament that moves at the legislation in the African Order, we also have our National assembly that makes specific laws that relate to our national authorities, for example, when the former president Yar'adua took ill and didn't properly hand over before going to the hospital, the National Assembly came in quickly invoked the Doctrine of Necessity to make sure that there were no vacuums. So that's why it's necessary to have your own national bodies to take care of your own national problems. Supposing we were depending on the West African's parliament for national decisions, then we would have gotten into chaos before the five countries that make up the parliament arrive to settle our problems. I'm just giving that as an example. So, the National Examination Council was created when we started experiencing problems with the West African Examination Council. Luckily, after the creation of NECO, it existed side by side with WAEC and there has been no friction. It now gives our children the opportunity to enter for both WAEC and NECO exams so that if you take your WAEC and you don't have enough credits to make up to enter the university, you don't have to wait till the next year when you will have to take WAEC again and wait for the result to come out the other year before reapplying. So this time, the results comes out. Your NECO result comes out and your WAEC result also comes out, and you can combine the two and have your five credits and move on. So, to a very large extent, it has eased the 'Further Education' problems of our children, and what I mean by 'Further Education' is post-secondary, because in the past when I took mine in 1972 if I had failed, I would have waited till I retake it in 1973 before I could think of what to do. You understand what I'm saying. But with the presence of NECO now, you are at ease because you have choices. If you take NECO and you clear your papers, you take WAEC and you yet clear your papers, you can move on. But if you have problems with any of them, you can combine the results and still move on. Secondly, we are able to cure malpractices to a large extent. Like I said, WAEC is a very large body and if you have problems somewhere they probably wouldn't be as concerned and committed as you know. Then NECO being what it is, makes sure that we know our people well. We know how to supervise them, and know how to invigilate them, and we know how to monitor them to ensure that there are no stories, and this has been going on creditably well and we used different layers of monitors and supervisors to ensure this, and I think that having examined nearly two million students since inception without any untoward stories, I think NECO is an example of the Nigerian success story.

On exam malpractice: His take;

Firstly, I will say I have heard of these ‘magic centers’ but I have never seen one, and probably that's why it is magic, you don't openly see it. We condemn the whole idea and notion of teachers trying to help their students to pass inordinately. We NECO are an examination body. We are here to certify that the students who have worked well passed and that those who do not work hard failed. And then by the failing, we sensitize the government and the state that 'Look! Our education system is sick.' I believe you understand the analysis. If we don't do our job well, the government will not get the correct signals about how our education system is performing. So, when we see anybody trying to fault our test process, we consider that person an enemy of education, an enemy to NECO, and an enemy to the government, because the person is preventing government from seeing exactly the impact of the education it is giving to the children. So, what we do is use invigilators for the exams. There is a possibility that because the invigilator comes from around a certain vicinity, he may have to overlook certain things, so we impose supervisors on the invigilators. We also deplore the Nigerian security forces to the different schools in addition. Finally, we use external monitors, ninety nine percent of who are university lecturers and professors. We tell them to go and fill the rooms wherein the raw materials which they themselves used during their university days are produced, so that we can get independent assessment and independent opinion. Most of the time, the university professors are from a rather different environment. They come in and give us very objective analysis of what is going on. So, what happens is when people blame the Nigerian Customs for corruption, or blame the Nigeria Police for corruption, I say 'No! It's a Nigerian corruption!' Once corruption is in the system, it is like Air Roshell insecticide. If we spray insecticide here now, it will kill the mosquitos, kill the cockroaches and give us breathing problems because even we ourselves will be affected. So, there is corruption in the system and that corruption tries to permeate every sector. But there should also be sectorial fighting of corruption which is what we are doing. For example, we know that all the people we use as invigilators may not be angels ok! Some schools will want to get the record that all their students came out hundred percent. So, we send out external monitors to go there and figure out the 'In and Out' of what is happening. So, exam malpractice exists but we as much as possible try to bring it to the barest minimum and we have been succeeding.

The success that always gives him satisfaction:

The success that gives me huge satisfaction is only one, and that is see that each time I move one or half a kilometer in this country, I see someone who knows or recognizes me. In the Air-port for example, they will come to greet me. When I'm in any location, I see people who know me, and most of the time, younger people, people I have mentored, people I have helped to find direction in life always come to acknowledge me. Most of the time I don't even recognize them. They are now big people. From my time in the university as stood as an administrator, trying to help children get on, and through my teaching time as well as through my community leadership and so on. I was the president of the Institute of Chattered Mediators and Conciliators for six years. All these are processes that involve bringing people up, teaching and mentoring, so, I feel like a very wealthy man. Wealthy in the sense that I have so many people who at one stage or the other met me, and I was able to give them some sort of guidance and direction, and they have made success in their lives and those success I still claim as part of my wealth and success.

Was there any breaking point in his life?

I imbibed in my very early stage of life the philosophy that opportunities are wrapped in difficulties, and from that very early stage, I knew that the easy way out, may not after all be the best way, and I think I will want your readers especially the young ones to beware of the easy way out. Most of the time when people land in crime, difficulty, punishment and regret, it is because they were seeking the easy way out. I rather liked confronting difficulty and unwrapping them to see the opportunities they have been hiding, and so with that type of mind set, I never saw the breaking point that you are talking about. I rather saw it as a stepping point. Each time it looked like the road was blocked I ask myself, I said 'God what are you trying to teach me, what do you want me to discover from this seaming difficulty, and most of the time you see that when you scale through it, you move higher. It's like your examination for example. You could very well say sorry I'm not going for this examination because it's going to be difficult, but it is after you have passed that examination that you can go to the next level. I mean, it's like the life we are living. I believe strongly that this life is an elementary school, if you live it well God will promote you to a higher school, if you live it badly because you think it's difficult and opt to indulge in crimes and all kind of things, you will end up not passing and not going any step higher. So, I have always believe that. I use to do a lot of reading, and I still do a lot of reading and that's my greatest pleasure (reading), and from my early stage, I imbibed a lot of things. There's this magazine that was called 'Psychology', in those days when we were in primary school, my primary teacher 'Mr. Kelvin Dike' used to subscribed to it, so whenever he came, we would go and read and read even as primary school children, and that helped to form us, and I developed a life time philosophy that makes me look at difficulties as opportunities.

Finally, what do you see as the future of education in Nigeria?

The future of education in Nigeria is challenging because life itself is challenging everywhere. The education we acquired, the one I acquired for example in those days may not be adequate today for the dictates of the present economic situation. You are now doing an e-economy, an electronic economy where you stay here and do transactions. You order stuff from Dubai and they come, and you pay by e-payment and all that. So we must equip ourselves with the type of education that can cope with the demands of development because we can't isolate ourselves from the rest of the world, and that's the biggest challenge we are going to have. How do we educate our children to be at par with other children in other countries and continents so that we won't be rejected in the new economic order? Can we educate them to compete well? Can we equip our laboratories and teachers well enough to be able to equip our children mentally so that they'll be able to cope with the education of the future? That is the biggest challenge!

What he will like the President Burhari's led Government to do for education.

The next president should be very conscious of the fact that the new world will not be ruled by how much land marks you possess and how much is under the soil, but, how much is inside your head. Look at Bill Gates today, he is richer than so many states in Nigeria put together. One man who because of what he has in his head is moving the world, and that is imperative for the future, that you will be relating with people not necessarily because of where you all come from but because of the intellectual link that you have, and so our children should be prepared to start looking not necessarily for raw materials but for gray matter, and it is with this gray matter that you can develop raw materials.

Parting words to the students:

My dear student, please remember that there is no gain without pain, and whatever temporary pain you are going through now please be comforted that they are preparing you for the future things. If I had decided at a very early stage of life not to go through any pain at all of going to school, I wouldn't have gotten to where I am today. I used to walk five kilometers to school and five kilometer back the same day. If I had not gone through that, I probably won't own a car now that takes me through the same distance in five minutes. That is because I persevered, and about what I told you of turning difficulties into opportunities (stepping stones), when my parents couldn't pay for me to live in the boarding school, I walked long distances to school. So, what I use to do then was to balance my bag on my head, carry my books and be reading while I walked to and from school. At the end of a few weeks for example, I had the whole of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in my head, from act 1 (scene 1) to the end. So, instead of feeling miserable that I was walking while others were riding their bicycles, I was making use of that time and it paid off, and up till now, those quotations are there and since you want me to give them a parting word, I would say that 'they should remember what Shakespeare said in Shakespeare Julius Caesar, that there is a tide in the affairs of men which taking at the flood, leads us to function, omitted, all the voyage of our lives leads us to shallow miseries!' So, that tide that you should take at the flood is your youth, the opportunity that you have to go to school, you must take it now if you omitted it otherwise the voyage of your life will be bound in shallows and misery. Thank you.