The election saw the president of Benin Republic, Mr Thomas Yayi Boni emerging chairman for the next year, as he took over from the president of Equatorial Guinea, Mr Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, who graced the occassion was among the first speakers at the new AU headquarters.

The new AU headquarters was financed and built by China, an African trade partner.

Mrs. Ojo Akijide, a Nigerian business woman reiterates’ the difficult position of women in the fight against corruption but reaffirms the positive contribution of women in the fight against the ugly menace. She clearly states that a key step will be the involvement of more women who are educated, equipped and supported with necessary resources. Besides women are not as materialistic as men, hence the desire to embezzle public funds running into billions of Nigeria currency is difficult.

As N’Dour made clear as he announced his candidacy for President on his own TV channel on Monday, he views as a real problem attempts by the elderly incumbent, 85-year-old President Abdoulaye Wade, to stay in power. Under Senegal’s constitution, Wade is not allowed to serve a third term. Wade argues, however, that he should be allowed to stay on as President as the constitution did not exist in its current form when he was first elected. When Wade tried to change the electoral rules in his favor last June, riots swept Dakar in which 100 people were injured. The violence was the culmination of years of frustration, said N’Dour during his announcement on Monday. “For a long time, men and women have demonstrated their optimism, dreaming of a new Senegal. They have, in various ways, called for my candidacy in the February presidential race. I listened. I heard.”

Culled from Time Magazine

Her determination to bring about a change has pushed her beyond limits she never imagined, despite continued opposition to her work in the home front. To her any form of opposition is in principle because those who oppose her work are directly responsible for the destruction of the environment, privatizing the forest, public lands and disrespecting human rights.

As an environmentalist the first thing is to ensure that the right thing is done to protect the environment. This gave birth to the planting of trees several years ago. Some of the reasons, at the time was the reelection of her husband into public office. The realization of the huge problem Africa will face if its environment is not protected. There is no doubt that the resources available to the continent have made it susptible to conflicts, as access to the resources and its distribution continues to be a problem. Another reason is the attraction people from outside the continent have to the existing resources, resulting in exploitation quite often at the expense of the African people.

After the colonial period many African leaders changed positions with the colonial masters so Africa ended up with leaders who instead of exploiting the resources to the benefit of the people rather exploited the resources to their benefit accumulating resources quite often excluding large numbers of Africans either because of their ethnicity or political affiliations resulting in conflicts that have caused damage to the economies of the continent.

Her message, which the Norwegian Noble Committee recognized is that Africa, has a lot of resources, a rich continent that must use its resources to the benefit of its people. Africa has to ignore the system of governance to better manage the resources more responsibly and sustain ably for the benefit of Africa, only then would Africa preempt many of the reasons why she and its people are fighting.

Furthermore, Africans should have an obligation to plant trees to help the environment. If each person has a responsibility to plant at least ten trees, the environment is beautified and cooled. This ensures that our planet stays alive.

With the many challenges facing Africa such as poverty, dependence on primary resources is the norm as such majority use energy from the world therefore contributing to the emission of carbon monoxide, making it difficult for poor people to think of tomorrow. They worry more about survival and tomorrow never arises therefore it is the responsibility of the leaders to address the issue. But, a problem arises when leadership trivializes the environment, and then of course the rest of the environment does not care.

Scientists tell us that Africa has not contributed very much to the emission of green gases, nevertheless, because of Africa’s geotropically positioning within the tropics, poor technology in agriculture dependency is on the subsistence level as such agriculture tends to destroy the environment and bring very little yield. Examples are the encroachment of the Congo forest and National forest, because value is not added to the timber, many companies try to access it to sell at give away prices.

Desperate measures are needed within Africa to ensure that Africa appreciates and takes care of its environment. To counteract the negative impact of climate change, better methods must be adopted. Knowledge, skills, more technology and capital are needed.

However if African leaders open their eyes to understand the threat of climate change, a lot can be done to reduce its impact.

If everyone is involved in the planting of trees to protect the forests; investment in alternative sources of energy is a priority. Implementation of these factors will make a lot of capital available to Africa and Africa will follow in the path of fossil fuel and invest in other sources of energy like solar.

WHAT IS THE SINGULAR IMPROVEMENT IN NIGERIA SINCE THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES?I think probably the fact that we now have more people who can be described as having gone through an educational experience that makes them better able to relate to their situations that should enable them to take some meaningful initiatives in helping to add some value to situations. We have people who are now better developed, better prepared than before, not just in numbers which is one thing but also in quality of preparation and that is a fact and this is one way Nigeria has improved but then am not saying that we have realized the fruits of that improvement, am just saying that this is a fact of life.
WHAT DO MEAN EXACTLY BY FRUITS?
ALL right when people actually develop, when they grow in their capacity for doing certain things, now that is a plus, it is an advantage but it is an incomplete plus because what you are looking for, is for them to be able to apply the capacity that they have now developed so it is in the application of that capacity, of that potential that you can begin to look at the fruits of the process of development, what am saying is that we have not managed to bring people to a place where they feel that they must apply the capacity they have developed.
WHAT ABOUT AREAS THAT HAVE NOT IMPROVED SINCE THE FIFTIES AND SIXTIES?
The most singular area in my view is in the area of acknowledging and expressing corporate identity as a nation. The term Nigeria is the name that is used to describe a geographical location, geographical entity but that gives you only what I call a country. Now if Nigeria is going to improve, if Nigeria is going to do well then we have to move from being a country to being a nation. To be a nation means we have to identify what our shared interests are and agree on the terms on which we will try to pursue those interests for the achievement of the most beneficial results, now that is what I call corporate identity. We have not yet developed a corporate identity that helps us to get the best advantage from our being together.
WHY IS THIS SO?This is so because after the colonial days when we actually now got sovereignty for some reasons the first crop of political leaders because they were the ones that brought us through the fight for independence were able to keep Nigeria, the nation in their focus very soon after that if you remember the military came into governance and unfortunately the military were not prepared for governance, they did not know what being a nation really meant. They believed that the best way to govern was to play to the narrow interest of individuals or small groups and that was the best way to get people to respond to their leadership and you shouldn’t be surprised about that because in the army in any of the armed forces the relationship between leadership and followership is not one that wants to get the followership to band together in one psychological entity rather they want each soldier, each person to respond to authority on the basis of you do this or else. Therefore people in those forces tend to play to their leader on the basis of I know this is good for me if I obey this man.
When you come to the governance of a nation, people who are not under any obligation to obey you when you give an order, people who in fact in expressing their democratic status should be able to challenge you if they think you are making a mistake, should be able develop their own initiatives, add their own value, now you couldn’t bring that about under military governance because they just didn’t not have that system, unfortunately we were under military governance for about three decades and that is a long time so people who were born into that period came into that system and that is why they have found it so difficult to return to the concept of nation where you are prepared to fight for the common good because you know that if our corporate existence is positive then you own individual interest will be protected. Whereas if you pursue your own individual interest alone the corporate one may never happen, that is the situation we are in.
WHAT SHOULD BE DONE TO CHANGE THE MENTALITY?
Right, the thing that can be done is that first of all as a human beings, when you find yourself in a position that is negative and is not yielding the right results, the first thing you do is to stop and ask yourself some questions, where did I go wrong, what am I doing that is not right, and so on, you have to identify why the situation is like this. Today because the constitution that we following now in the nation was handed over to us by the military we are finding it difficult to express nation therefore most people have not identified the problem and you cannot even begin to solve the problem unless you know what the problem is so what can be done I believe we should go back to the educational endeavor of this nation and get our young people to learn what actually makes a country a nation. I will give an example; it is not possible to have a vibrant nation unless each of us is willing to make some personal sacrifice in order to help to realize the corporate objectives. Now, you will find that today most people want to pursue their own interests and they are not prepared to make a sacrifice to get the nation to work well that is why you have ethnic conflicts, religious conflicts, all kinds of conflicts are turning up because people are sitting in the position of defending their own interests, now you need to get young people educated to see how negative and sterile that is for the future, it will not produce any results, that is item 1.
Item 2, is that we need to review the systems we have put in place for bringing people into management of responsibility, again let me illustrate this, look at the companies in the business sector, most of them are doing very well , most of them report to shareholders every year and you can see the results they are achieving why because they have set up systems that put the focus on company results rather than individual results, now if we borrow a leaf from that, we will see that it is important for us to come back to situation in which people understand that if Nigeria is unwell then any individual that appears to be in good health can be deceiving himself so that is why I say go back to the young people and start teaching them and also go back to how we give people responsibility. In this business sector companies that am talking about, if you want to appoint somebody your chief financial officer for instance, you don’t just go and pick someone you like or someone that says Yes sir to you every day, No!, pick somebody who has the right qualifications, who has the right experience, who can demonstrate a track record of success in what they have done before you say to them this responsibility is now yours and you also give yourself the opportunity of monitoring how they perform, if even in one year they do not perform well , you say to them at the end of the year I cannot give you an increment in salary because you have not fulfilled your objectives and indeed you know if you have another year of that performance I may have to send you away altogether, now that is the system that works with human beings but if you now bring somebody into a position of responsibility whether as a member of the national assembly, as a governor , as a president and you do not set up a system that is similar to that, it will not work because people need to know that they will be called to account effectively for what they do especially when they are using the resources that belong to the nation, they will have to account, if you are not sure or if you are sure that nobody is going to call you to account or they call you to account and so what, then you do not have the encouragement to perform well and basically if you came into that position with inadequate preparation then of course anybody who complains when you do badly should ask himself what else should we expect so those are the things I think we ought to do we ought to learn to set up systems that respond to basic human behavior. If somebody is not ready for a position do not let them get there and if they get there and they are performing badly set up a credible system for separating them from that position. We do not have either.
ACCORDING TO THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION, TEN MILLION CHILDREN ARE NOT IN SCHOOL, WHY?
First, ask yourself why those ten million children are not in school because it is not an impossible task for us to set up enough schools, train enough teachers that would teach our children and make sure those children go to school so why are we not doing it. You see a minister of education actually says ten million children are not in school and he or she is the minister of education and so you are waiting to hear what he or she has decided to do about it, have we got it No! because the handling of that responsibility is wrong, not only are those children not in school, the ones who are in school are performing badly and if you look at some research information that I have seen where even on the African continent the performance of our children in educational exams were ranked number 22. If you have that situation somebody must take responsibility for getting us out of this mess but do we have people who have sufficient experience and who themselves know how to handle the situation, handling a responsibility is not something that anybody can do, you have to have the right preparation, you even have to have the right level of interest, commitment and passion for what you want to do. This must not be just another job for you; it must be a calling, a commitment so that you say to yourself until I get this situation right I will not rest. Is that what our leaders are like?
WHY DO OUR LEADERS NOT HAVE THAT LEVEL OF COMMITMENT?The manner of entering into leadership does not call for commitment. If you read the constitution, I think section 62 which says if you want to become President of Nigeria, you have to be 35 years old at least, you have to have passed school certificate or its equivalent and you need to find a political party who would sponsor you, no mention of anything you have done, no mention of any experience you have had, no mention of the fact that we want to see what you have managed successfully before we are going to give you this entire nation to manage. How can we get good leaders when those are the provisions we have made and tell me something, if we know that under our political system you do not have to be a person of good character to be successful in politics and I am not guessing am just going by evidence that is available, you do not even have to be a person of good character to succeed in politics so if you as an individual are a person of good character, why would you want to expose yourself to that. Anybody who is looking at Nigerian contemporary history should see that when people of good character have offered themselves for political leadership they have ended up with their noses in the dirt. Who wants to expose himself or herself to that kind of life, so you see we have to set up a system in which we are saying in this school, in this university we will never appoint somebody dean of this school unless they have shown us clear evidence that they could handle the responsibility and that they were the best of the people we had for handling that responsibility. This is not a matter of politics, it is a matter of leadership, it is a matter of responsibility and what we seem to have forgotten in Nigeria is that a position is not just a title and not just the siren or allowances. A position has been created so that certain responsibilities can be managed and if the person that we are looking at for that position has not demonstrated clearly and visibly the requirements for that position why should we put them there. Therefore, what am saying is, let us agree that this is the problem and let us create a system where even political parties will be forced to look at certain things before they would offer us a candidate.
In this country we have this thing called the quota system, federal character, you want people from different parts of the country but we did not state in that policy that if you, from your state or from your zone are going to offer us a candidate for this position, these are the qualifications, these are the requirements, this person must have done the following things, we do not say that, we simply say send us somebody from your zone so who are you going to send? You are going to send somebody who is your political friend, somebody that you feel comfortable with, most people will feel comfortable with somebody who is not as intelligent as themselves.
YOU ONCE SAID THAT AS MANY CHURCHES AND MOSQUES CONTINUE TO SPRING UP IN NIGERIA; CONFUSION WILL CONTINUE TO INCREASE WHY? WITH SO MANY CHURCHES SPRINGING UP IN THE COUNTRY WHY ARE MORALS GOING DOWN? Ok! What really is a church? A church is an association of people who believe in Jesus Christ, a mosque is an association of people who have decided to follow Mohammed but that is where the thinking seems to end. Now, the thinking should go beyond that and say so what does Jesus Christ represent, what does Mohammed represent, why am I following Jesus Christ, why have I decided to follow Mohammed. Therefore if I get it right I do not actually need a church in every other house on my street because Jesus Christ is only one and Jesus Christ’s principles and standards are clear. Of course, now we set up denominations and one denomination will tell you that what the others are doing is not right or inappropriate. I say let us maintain the oneness of the body of Christ, the oneness of the Muslim faith and let us understand the principles and the values that Jesus Christ or Mohammed taught us to begin with. If we were to do that, we would understand that for instance if somebody of another faith disagrees with me or something, I have to approach that disagreement from the point of view of what my leader has taught me and you will not find in either the Bible or the Koran that it says that I should go and kill him or burn down his house. So, you see with churches and mosques springing up all over the place, we have actually diversified to the extent that we now believe that it is all about us but of course, it is not about us. It is about Christ and it is about Mohammed.

The Christian religion is the one to which I belong and Christ actually says when I have a disagreement with my neighbor I should first tell him that he has done something to me that I don’t like and seek ways of resolving this peacefully, nowhere does he tell me that it is right for me to go and attack him physically, treat him with violence and I believe that it is also true for the other faith. So, what are we practicing? springing up of churches, are we creating just human organizations? That is why I said if we focus just on springing up one church here one mosque there and so on and so forth, we are missing the point because we now identify that this is Pastor so and so’s church. It is not about them it is about the body of Christ or the body of the Muslim faith.
IN NIGERIA CAN THE CHURCHES ADDRESS THE CRITICAL ISSUES AT STAKE AND HELP SOLVE THESE PROBLEMS?The same problem we have with political leadership has now infiltrated the churches and mosques. How do people now become Bishops and Archbishops, what system do we have in place for making sure that these people are actually servants of Almighty God. They are not just the leader of some faction or the front man for some movement. The moment the leader of a faith becomes more popular, more visible than either Jesus Christ or Mohammed he has lost it because he is representing those people, he is a representative and a servant of God through the Christian faith, through the Muslim faith. As long as you see yourself as a servant, a steward of God’s resources on earth, then your focus must always be on your principles and say what really does God require of me here, as a human being I will have my faults and weakness but God will help me to put those away so that I Can serve him properly so if our leaders in the different religious movements forget that this is all about Jesus Christ or about Mohammed or about who ever their leader is then of course it does not work, that is why morals are going down because we are not relating our behavior to the real thing. In the Bible Paul warned the people, I think it was Corinth some times, some of you say I belong to Paul, I belong to Apollo’s, he says it is not about us it is about Jesus Christ.
HOW CAN NIGERIANS DRAW THE LINE?That is where you go back to the basics of religion. Fortunately or unfortunately, your faith is a personal thing. It did not start as a mass movement. You are either a believer as yourself or you are not. Therefore, if you are a believer for whatever

The Nigerian woman must recognize the fact that she has the potential to succeed. The society does not define her true worth. The subsisting issues which try to keep her down are numerous, but her desire to excel has seen her in recent times occupying sensitive positions. Truth be told, the Nigerian Woman is new in these positions as it takes a while for people to get into positions of authority but I must say that women who are into important positions like the finance minister etc in this country are doing quite well. That is not saying that a lot of them too, do not understand what the whole thing is about. Our worry is that women represent ing Nigeria in various public offices and I want to say it is not only a Nigerian experience , this is an experience that has being recorded everywhere not just in Africa because I read about a similar thing in the United Kingdom. We discover that because of not being grounded in gender issues, a lot of the women when they get into public offices do not really understand that besides the general issues there are women issues. If women do not take up their issues, who will take it up. This is a crucial point that women in positions have overlooked. Some of them because of lack of knowledge and understanding do not think it necessary to take up these issues, issues in the area of health, certain health issues are peculiar to women simply because they are women, an example is high maternal death rate in Nigeria; it is the second largest in the whole world.
These women get there and believe because she is either Minister of health or she is being elected by her constituency, her entire duty is about the whole community, so she starts talking probably about health clinics all over the place and never really talks about maternity, she is not asking questions on how the ugly situation can be erased, neither is she concerned as a woman to make sure this high maternal death rate is reduced. The truth is death arising from complications of pregnancy and childbirth is very common in the country. Rather, when you listen to them in parliament they are just rehearsing some of the issues that are quite general whereas women issues suffer.

Even in some cases when civil societies bring up a bill and it gets sponsors into parliament, you find the women are either scared or not very equipped to take up such issues. There is an example of the bill to demonstrate the convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women in Nigeria. Nigeria rectified it as far back as 1985 when former President Ibrahim Babangida came into power. The chairperson of the women’s committee in the National Assembly was working on it, until she got to a point where she was overwhelmed by religious issues and she back peddled and up to now I do not think there has being any person bold enough to chairpion it. There was also the health bill, which Daisy Danjuma who was representing a senatorial district in Edo state took up. She was called all sorts of names; they called it the abortion bill. The whole thing was about women’s health rights, and it was actually meant to address the maternal death rate and other complications women face because they are on women and of course, she was alone. They were writings in the papers abusing her, saying she was promoting prostitution and abortion. The other women could not care less.
At the moment I can say there is an emphases on women participation but it is not just increasing the number of women in public offices, there is also the need to create awareness in them, to sensitize them on women issues because we know there are some gender sensitive men who will stand firmly and defend women issues and bills that concern women matters.
EDUCATION AND THE NIGERIAN WOMAN?
They are having the education and because of education, so many areas are being opened up for them because like in politics we have minimum education to qualify for any position that you want to aspire to. Having said that, I think that public office seems to be most glaring. On women economy, it is not improving even with education, and we think the education is somehow skewed because you see with science and technology; education is actually deteriorating in Nigeria because of traditional attitudes that say it is not for women. If it is deteriorating, it is more for women so at the end of the day you will find that it is not easy for women to get what you call decent work even though they are educated. So, their economy is going down because economic position is not commensurate with increase in education. Again, it has to do with the general economy of the country , at the end of the day men have a head start, they inherit property from their parents, they have many opportunities here and there, chronism and school matism which women lose by changing their last names. So men are still doing better.
We had hoped that 2011 political landscape for women would be better. Unfortunately, it is worse when compared to 2007 because we did not see a spectacular increase in the number of women participation in politics. At least at the national level and this is very sad because public office is where decisions are made about our lives and it is important women participate and their participation should reflect in whatever decisions are being taken
WHY WAS THIS SO?
Like I said earlier, women are not even familiar with women issues but the sad situation is the decreasing number of women actively involved in public office. The important issue at the end of the day is to give support to women in their aspirations particularly in the area of creating awareness. If I begin to talk about political parties in Nigeria, you will understand why women have no chance. For instance, the lack of democratic practices within political parties is an issue for concern. That dictatorship thrives in Nigerian political parties where this is supposed to be a democratic society (country) is sad, In any case, how do we run the political parties and how do we pick candidates. We have spoken about affirmative action because affirmative action has been practiced in other countries and we know by research that it is the fastest way to increase women participation in public offices but somehow in Nigeria there is a very serious opposition to it because in Nigeria, politics is a do or die matter. If you decide to give women whatever percentage, it means you have excluded men from there and the men are so desperate about this thing.
However, some discussions have been held with each party claiming that they do not charge women nomination fees, that they are generally favorable towards women. Women on the other hand prefer to pay the fees so they would be regarded as full-fledged members of the political parties that the fact that the political party says they should not pay this or that is quite patronizing. When the time comes they actually look to the side of the people who have been financing the political party so women who have been having things easy in quote, are not looked at as candidates. There are also issues of societal expectations why do they think a woman cannot be Governor or President for instance? The solution is women should be groomed from their political parties.
HOW FAVORABLE DISPOSED, ARE THE POLITICAL PARTIES TO FEMALE CANDIDATES THEN?
If you look at their manifesto, it is like every political party virtually promised that they would do something to empower women to enable them contest but we have not seen that. Parties have the usual practice of giving appointments here and there; women are not remembered so how do you empower them.
IN THE AREA OF ECONOMIC EMPOWERMENT, HOW ARE WOMEN DOING?
In the area of economic empowerment, we took up promoting agriculture, export based agriculture and we took up cassava. Are women really involved in cassava export? We found out that women are mainly processors, they farm and they process into garri etc. We found that men are into the export of cassava and we did a research to find out if women are aware of the policy in cassava export. Unfortunately, they are not aware of it. Again, women are the people that plant cassava but the men are aware of the policy, so they buy the cassava from the women at ridiculously low prices and they export the cassava and make huge profits. So, the economy of the women has not improved even with the incentives on export agriculture.
Having worked with open society initiatives of West Africa on trade, women and gender trade particularly trade policies. The general idea is finding how responsive Nigerian women are and how they are profiting, benefitting from this policy. It is an ongoing process.

I was born in Warri, now in Delta state. I was a rather sickly child and did not get to school until I was almost seven in 1939. I enjoyed learning and I moved on quickly in class, though we did not have any Science teachers at my level so we could not do any science courses. I finished my primary school in Warri, and then attended secondary school in Queens College, Lagos and went to university college Ibadan. In those days going from one school to a higher institution depended on two things, one if your parents could afford it but quite important for the government schools if you could get there on scholarship because many parents could not afford it and Queens College was the only girls’ school. When I left Ibadan with an honor’s degree in mathematics, I taught at Ede for three years. Then I got a job at Vermont in the United States as a graduate assistant in mathematics. I taught for three years and for two years got my masters in education from there I was lucky I got a fellowship at the University of Chicago where I went in the summer of 1959 to start a course in comparative education but it was necessary to work part time in some colleges to put body and soul together. The University of Chicago was a big boost to me and it afforded me an opportunity to do a doctorate and then I carried out a research in the development of education in the late fifties.
Most important I aligned myself with the changes in the curriculum of mathematics in the United States. In the late fifties before I came back to Nigeria I carried out a research on methods of improving the teaching of mathematics. I eventually carried out the same experiment in Lagos. At the same time I worked with the African mathematics programme, Machechusts where every summer from 1963 on we wrote textbooks in mathematics and tried them out in schools.
HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE STATE OF EDUCATION IN NIGERIA TODAY?
In 1969, we went into deep discussions on the state of schools in Nigeria. Some of us who had been abroad and had experienced another system of education felt that many of us where privileged to have had parents who could pay for our school fees and had gone to secondary school because then the secondary schools were geared only for those who would get a degree and go on to white collar jobs in future. At about that time, the issue that secondary and primary education should be free to many people if possible began to take root, so we started working on a policy of education for Nigeria. It took some time but the ministry of education was keen on building up a philosophy of education for Nigeria and what came out of it was that we must have primary education that was useful for everybody at the primary school level.
We must remember as much as that was possible, at least 40% of the children should go into secondary school. In some areas in the western region of course it was more. but we now saw the curriculum as providing not just for the grammar school type as we had copied in the colonial days but the comprehensive type of education as in the United States and that was what we recommended, that we should have two layers of school, what you might call a junior school, the first three years of education at the secondary level where there was options especially in practical work to do secretarial work, to do home economics, to do carpentry but above all to make sure we that we could train artisans and we could learn to be artisans, all of us and then after that you could have those who would go into technical education, those who could go into more education, that would lead one into the university but many people who could have a general education and could perhaps not go on into higher education immediately but there would be room in future to go on to higher education but many of us wanted to go into teaching but the changes that where taking place in Nigeria at the time did not allow many of the changes that we had envisaged to take place.
For instance our technical section was very weak , we did not build technical schools and our science areas were not so bad so most people felt it was necessary to have every person who had school certificate to have five, six areas which must constitute English, mathematics and a Nigerian language. After that you could have three other areas that would enable you go into any of the professions, In our grammar schools then we had work in physics, chemistry and biology but we did not have areas where people could go into technical work, into carpentry etc. that was directed mainly at practical education and physical education that would make sure that we could apply our hands as well as learn our theories. It became a bit of a letdown because even though many countries helped us we did not emphasize sufficiently teacher education in these areas. Even with one good example we had in the late fifties and sixties, a comprehensive school set up by Ford foundation at Aiyetoro in Ogun state, we did not build up on this and so it has become a recurring decimal.
We have people who are ready to go to school but we do not have teachers’ sufficiently in science and technology and it has bothered us all along. So, this is a major problem; we have in our educational system. Though, many of our teachers are still very good, however when you consider that we are all going to the same market, given the position of our teaching and perhaps our inability to comprehend that it was necessary to review the position of the teacher’, salary wise and benefits wise etc. we lost a lot of people.
For instance, when I was finishing school it was a pride and joy to go into teaching, the difference between what you got in the teaching profession and what was outside was not so great but ten years after it was quite a bit and in addition we had not built our polythenics as much as we should have done. So it was not a question that our teachers were not good, it was a question that the people going into education, we could not get the cream of the lot because there were other more useful , more newer areas, more challenges outside of education, very soon the medical profession was beginning to feel the heat.

THE MINISTER OF EDUCATION RECENTLY SAID OVER TEN MILLION CHILDREN ARE NOT IN SCHOOL, WHAT IS THE PROBLEM HERE?
Several, they are not in school because their parents are not wealthy enough to send them to school. They work with their parents at home, so the parents do not feel the need to send them to school. Second, if you say you have a free and compulsory education then you must have an arm that actually makes it compulsory. We cannot afford that arm we need more people to actually teach and we have not got enough of them. Then of course there has been a lot of discussion as to the disparity between those who have gone into some industries and have become quite wealthy as opposed to people who have not done so and the disparity is getting greater. Again, we have a lot of private schools, very well set up where if you cannot get your children admitted into the unity schools then you can get your children into these schools and this has been a major problem in our education. Well I should not say a major problem; it is a way that is open for people who can afford it to go into private education, private schools. However I have not done the research, I cannot afford to do it, although I would like to do it, there is a feeling that that a large number of the private schools are not as good as they tend to suggest and we ought to do something about ensuring that the standards are upheld in these schools. Whatever it is you can see that even with the government schools expanding and the private schools burgeoning with private initiative helping in various government schools, the schools show a large number of pupils who cannot get the basic five subjects, get five credits in five subjects that is one step towards getting into a good tertiary institution

AS THE FIRST FEMALE VICE CHANCELLOR NOT ONLY IN NIGERIA BUT IN SUB SAHARAN AFRICA WHAT WAS IT LIKE?
Mixed, very challenging to get the position and right from the start I had this feeling that I had to show that women could occupy positions where responsibly you take decisions that are good for everybody and that in a military regime of course, it is a different thing where you get a situation where there are strikes in your university everyday but I had quite many years in Nigeria as a university teacher before I got the position, twenty years in Lagos, two years in Ibadan, ten of that I had been director, institute of education where I had managed a substantial unit that was interested in working with the university and getting a good douse of relationship with the teachers colleges.
Therefore, at the University of Benin, I saw a bigger base, diversities of teachers, diversities of subjects in various areas and the university had quite a number of faculties. We had medicine, Dentistry, Engineering, social sciences, the arts, the humanities, creative arts etc. At the same time we had other challenges like the number of students who could be admitted into the university every year because we had no space. There were opportunities for the university at that time to start part time courses and we took advantage of that quite well. There were two major areas I concentrated in, in terms of part time courses; one was part time in business administration where we had classes set up Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. Young men and women with first degrees in any area working in various industrial sectors could come in and work towards a master’s degree in business administration. To start with we had to fund it ourselves and we managed to do that.
There was another challenge, one I had always had in mind that young men were needed who had sometimes not a first degree in law and with most of the changes coming in after the colonial period, you needed people who understood the law, understood the law that pertained to business , that pertained to financial institutions, pertained to growth and if you needed such people faculty of law producing 30 lawyers a year, even 60 lawyers was not enough so the other area I went into was part time studies in first degree law and that was most welcome

TELL US ABOUT EDUCATION IN RELATION TO THE GIRL CHILD IN NIGERIA?
At the University of Benin if we could get 20-30% of the students in the universities as girls it would be a move forward and at one time given the part time courses, the diploma courses in education, post graduate diploma courses also in education we came near to it. I think we were approaching a place where we had as many as 30% of the students as females, girls in the university. I don’t think this was good enough because if you look at the distribution you would find girls where mainly in the arts and in the humanities. We were increasing the number in law but we were not getting the same increment in the sciences and medicine but even in medicine we were making progress.
Later on, there were many more girls coming into medicine, parents were bringing their daughters hoping they would pass and they were passing, they were doing well in their courses so this was a cause of satisfaction to me. It was a cause of satisfaction because you know when you look at the hindrances that make it not possible for the girl child you find quite a number socially we have hindrances, politically we have hindrances, religious wise we have hindrances but mostly economically we have hindrances. The girl child is the best helper in the house and where the mother is a trader she is going to be the stay for her mother to make more money and if she is off to school then there is an economic problem. Many women seeing living examples of a university vice chancellor as a woman, university women lecturers, would now make the sacrifice. If this is the one thing I have to do, I would do it, my daughter will go to school and I will make sure she goes to the university and this was a rather difficult time for Nigeria, It was the era of SAP (structural adjustment programme) with all this, we did make progress.
Though, I can’t say this without coming back to the fact that all over Africa, women were beginning to feel that the question of girl child education was not being properly tackled and in 1992 the year I finally left the university, the African ministers of education were meeting with their male counterparts in mash ester in the United Kingdom, at the meeting they listened to the men talking about girl education, education generally and they felt that the men did not understand the problems of the girl child so they came out and decided, five of them, none from Nigeria and said No! We have to meet and see what we can do about the girl child and so they set up an organization known as the forum for African women educationalists. Starting with five ministers, pretty soon that same year joined by two female vice chancellors from Africa, Prof. Makubu from Swaziland and myself.
We started in earnest, pushing the organization forward, each of us had a task to go back to our countries and build up. In Nigeria, a large country with a large population we introduced it, particularly where women were interested, something would be done. Quite often too, it meant that in parts of Nigeria we had 80% girls in schools, in other parts of Nigeria we didn’t have. It was slow but steady and the organization helped us. We had enormous help from the United Nations; we built up the forum for African women Educationalists. This we also did at the university of Benin and many more girls where in schools and today you can still see that surfacing and it is going more and more into the northern parts of our country, where particular example is being paid to the girl child because the disabilities and the challenges she has in going to school are a lot more complex than the challenges the boy child has. Many of our families accept that the boy must go to school but it is not quite the same as the girl because they see the future of the girl that by 15 she should be married, luckily we are not doing that in Nigeria

HAVING BEING INVOLVED WITH SO MANY PROJECTS, HOW DID IT REALLY COME TOGETHER FOR YOU?
Well, first and foremost my mother did not give me a second place in the family because I was a woman. She got my brothers into schools and got me into schools. Another thing was the female influences from the girls’ government school I attended. That was especially useful because in this girl’s school you saw girls from different parts of Nigeria in school. We did not speak what was referred to then as the indigenous languages, you came to school and everyone spoke English except in your lessons were you were learning Yoruba, Igbo or Hausa. The language of exchange was English and that was to put us all on the same level. I think that was good and we had some teachers that were good. Like I said the policy in education then was female teachers in female schools.
WHO WERE YOUR INFLUENCES BACK THEN?
There were some Nigerians who had a lot of influences on me, just looking at them and knowing what they had achieved was very important to me My mother took me to lady Ademola, she was not lady Ademola then, she was Mrs. Ademola inWarri when I was a little girl but when I came to Lagos I met her as lady Ademola, Mrs. jibowu, Mrs.Doherthy and women of her type taught music, mathematics and religious studies and they were exemplary. They worked hard they were all married. The English teachers were very good, they upheld discipline and somehow you felt that being in school you didn’t but emulate these characteristics of discipline, hard work, fairplay using your time well, distributing your time between sports and learning and hoping and achieving and looking forward to doing more things. Then we had Mrs. Hobson, who was principal of my school and Dr. Whitiker, also principal of Queens College when I was in form two. They were both women of high quality characterized by smiles and hard work. You could see direction in what they did; you could see they wanted to increase the population of the schools. There were constraints but they must have worked hard to ensure the constraints were eased by the colonial government. So in my time at Queens College, a small school but by the time I left it was quite a large school. Lady Abayomi was an example too; she had a boarding house where people from other parts of Nigeria could stay.

WHEN YOU LEFT SCHOOL WHAT FOLLOWED?
By the time I came back to Queens College following the mode of administration at the time we had regional governments so we had queens school in every regional area. Queens in the North, West, East, and one in Lagos. They existed before the unity schools and they still are the same sex schools today. Those in authority, felt that especially after the World War 2 that something had to be done for the girls in Nigeria because people were talking about independence as such they would need partners, if they needed partners this was a ready pool to choose partners.
HAVING BEEN INVOLVED IN DIFFERENT PROJECTS OVER THE YEARS WHAT HAS GIVEN YOU THE MOST FULFILMENT?
It is rather difficult to say , in the sixties I was head over heels in love with modern mathematics and I thought every teacher must also provide spare time for us to have at least one workshop(seminar) lasting two weeks every three months so that the teachers would be well involved in this. With the African mathematics programme that I told you about it was easy for me because it dovetailed into my work, I could write and this was a great benefit to the community. It also was of great benefit to me because that was how I got my professorship. I thought this was the end of the world. Then a little later I became director of the institute of education, university of Lagos, and I said to myself am I not being selfish we have to spread this, science is badly taught and at that time in 1988, I think when we first thought of the first organization for women in science. This was important because we knew we had to do something for women in science. At the same time we did not have women in science to help us but there were other areas that where important, for instance early childhood education, one thing was happening , the young men who went through these classes got the basic ideas in mathematics and improved their way of teaching mathematics and left. They improved themselves and we lost them to education. However the older women were not lost, but the older women wanted to retire to something. I thought I was making progress. What I am trying to say is, each phase has had a particular excitement for me. This was a boost to teacher education at the same time Lagos for instance was upgrading it teachers training colleges. What was Bendel state then was starting teachers colleges, I happened to have being the chairman of council for one of the colleges and later on for all of the leaders there. So teacher education was most important to me.

There was another area again concerning women, in the civil service, as a typist when you get to a particular level you can’t go any further, level seven I think it used to be and only few people get there except you are a graduate so to have women who learnt to use the computers, you could not choose them all without putting the men. Again, we put the young men and women to learn to use the computers. If you had a group of say ten of which four were women and six were young men. The six young men would disappear within three months, the banks took them from us but the women would continue, so something to be said for training the middle aged woman who has children of secondary school level and many of them were not ashamed, they braced themselves up and went to the university and got a first degree, went into computers, they were a different breed altogether. This was a step forward and as far as I could see, it was the height of my career.
WHAT KIND OF BOOKS DO YOU READ?
THE books that talk about character, the books we read in school, 19th century novels, Georgetta hayett, I still read those books. Today, I read anything I find my daughters reading but I can’t remember their names. I also try some of the modern author’s men and women it does not matter.
WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES?
Oh! I don’t have very much, well, I don’t know if can call this a hobby but having worked with NGO’S in the spread of mathematics and the spread of better treatment in early childhood education, changing the policy there and so forth. At the moment we have a project we refer to as city prompt academy, a few of us old women are involved, all teachers, former teachers and administrators. There are lots of poor children in school who cannot have very much to do after school as far as learning is concerned so we started this two hours of working, getting some teachers to work with them and the whole idea is to do a bit more mathematics with communication, reading spelling and writing English and we have done this now since 2007.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE REMEMBERED FOR?
I like to be remembered for the work I have done in mathematics I have written books. I still can teach if I am called at a moment’s notice, Pre University teaching. I only taught at the university up to the second year because my work was in the teaching of mathematics than in pure mathematics. It is a bit hard to say because each time I have worked with girls and with women I have found them exciting I have found them ready to go the extra mile and it is always a great pleasure for me when more women are breaking the glass ceiling because as you learn more, you may not remember the bits and pieces of mathematics you learned but when you have built up your character, you have a clear understanding of what can be done and what should not be done and that builds up your character . If you face any other challenges you know how to go about it. Once you can do that for any other human being I think you should be extra grateful to God that you have had such an opportunity.
LOOKING BACK, DO YOU HAVE REGRETS?
NO, NO, NO, I lost my husband almost two years ago. We were a bit separated before he died, separated about twenty years or so before he died, but we were good friends. The children are doing well. God has been faithful. I have ten grandchildren.