Unusual, Unexpected Things I Discovered During My Trip To Cyprus-TETFUND Board Member, Nurudeen Adeyemi
Chief Nurudeen Adeyemi Balogun, an aerospace engineer, is a member of the Board of TETFUND where he represents the North Central geopolitical zone.
In this interview with Team@orientactualmags.com, Engineer Nurudeen Adeyemi Balogun, talked about the plight of Nigerian students who have gotten scholarships to study abroad, and the unusual and unexpected things he discovered during his trip to Cyprus last year which will definitely be a useful information for those who may wish to travel to the country in question.
He also assessed the Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq administration.
Read On:
This is the first time you would be holding a public office, what has been your experience so far?
We are barely five months in office and the public office you are referring to is being a member of the board of trustees of TETFUND representing the North Central geopolitical zone.
The board was inaugurated towards the end of August last year, we have just spent five months and within that five months we have done our bit because the agency was without a statutory board for a long time, I believe the last board was dissolved in 2022 or thereabout.
After getting inaugurated, we set off to a good start and held the inaugural board meeting that allowed us to address issues that were inherited from 2022 /2023/2024 to date. It was a learning experience, we took home a lot of reading materials, and we took home the acts guiding our agency to understand the nuances of the various issues that we are supposed to tackle. And again, as part of the monitoring, there were a lot of issues found in respect of the AST&D programme which is the programme that creates a platform for offering of scholarships to employees of the nation’s universities and while we were there, we were able to get a lot of things done I had the opportunity to visit North Cyprus and I interacted with the students there and in addition we had a stakeholder engagement that gave me the opportunity to meet and interact with the various stakeholders in the North Central geopolitical Zone and subsequent to that ,we had a board meeting where we began to look into the 2025 proposed budget.
Interacting with the Staff and management of TETFUND, I gained a new insight and encouragement in respect of the activities of the agency and how public officers and civil servants do a lot of daily activities. I would say that I’m learning quite a lot about the public sector and the inner workings of the public sector, the beautiful thing is that TETFUND has close to 250 institutions which implies having 250 Management teams and 250 governing councils and many of them are experienced and senior men and women and one can also learn from them emotional intelligence on how to navigate issues.
You have to also understand that even though TETFUND is under the Ministry of Education, most of the works they do are done in collaboration with Ministry of Innovation, Ministry of Trade , they do so many things with other ministries and these are all the things that have given me insight into inter-working relationship of multiple organizations within the government circle.
This is the first time you will have the opportunity to interact with Nigerians from diverse backgrounds. You have people representing each of the geopolitical zones. What has been the experience?
A quick note of correction, you have forgotten that I had a stint in the military which means I had to interact with people from different parts of the country, I was a member of the 41st Regular Course of the Nigerian Defence Academy, so, I had my early formative years mingling with cadets from across the country and you know the bond we had.
Coming to the current realities, I will say my background has prepared me for what to expect, unless you visit and interact with people, you cannot claim to know them. Being on the board, we are all advocating for our respective geopolitical zones, what is happening in North Central is different from Southwest, South-south or Southeast, so, when everybody is advocating for their people and trying to bring attention to the issues affecting them, we can basically learn from one another to know that our challenges are not the same, they are different across the geopolitical zones, however, whatever happens in North Central or South-South is Nigeria’s problem, that is how we look at and deal with issues.
You were recently in Cyprus and the trip had to do with young Nigerians who have gotten scholarships to study there, we would like to know if there were unexpected things that you discovered during the trip?
Yes, we have always talked about Cyprus as if it is one country; my trip to the place was a rude awakening.
Most of our students are in Northern Cyprus which is only recognized as a country by Turkey, the rest of the world does not recognize Northern Cyprus as a country, and this was a rude shock to me.
I made a mistake of landing in Southern Cyprus because that was the only way one could get a flight outside Turkey, the only way to fly into Northern Cyprus is through Turkey but I did not know about this. That was what I discovered because I had made a mistake of landing in Southern Cyprus and I wanted to go to Northern Cyprus but I was initially hesitative and felt a little bit unease because once the taxi drivers discovered that I was going to Northern Cyprus, they were having conversations and were contemplating whether to drive there or not , they began to remove the number plate, I found all these very strange, however, during the trip I learned a lot from the taxi driver about the wars of the 1971 that basically separated the country and the Northern part is largely controlled by Turkey.
Those from southern Cyprus will be required to present documents to the border guards and immigration officials at the borders before crossing to Northern Cyprus, the Southern Cyprus are mostly Greeks while the Northern Cyprus are Turks and they only speak Turkish.
They spend Turkish lira in the northern Cyprus while they spend euro in the south being a member of the European Union.
So, in one island, two countries exist.
Coming back to the students who we visited, they are academic staff of various institutions in Nigeria that are sponsored by TETFUND as part of the capacity building and overseas scholarship programmes, and what I found out was that this Northern -Southern Cyprus dichotomy is really affecting them because many of them will need to travel to France and other places for conferences and others, but they could not do so because there is no embassy on the island.
They will need to go Turkey to get those visas, but Turkey doesn’t give them the necessary visa to go from northern Cyprus to Turkey in order for them to be able to apply and this is creating a conundrum for them and I did the best I could to talk to the various administrators of the institutions that we visited, I raised it as an issue, and we may actually need to talk to Nigerian in Diaspora Commission as well because it is becoming a major issue, due to a major diplomatic row a lot of the embassies moved out of northern Cyprus and they are only in Turkey but our students do not have easy access to Turkey in order to visit the embassies , even people traveling from Nigeria to northern Cyprus will need two visas , they will need a visa to get to Turkey and need another visa to get to northern Cyprus and this is creating another problem for people it wasn’t a smooth ride, that is one problem that we had to face.
Secondly, based on all these various issues, TETFUND has got to pay tuition fees for three years but will pay for four years stay for a PhD degree programme allowing them one extra year so as to complete their dissertations but I found out that even under the best circumstances and the best situation, most students can’t even finished with their official school programmes within three and a half years which means that they are immediately incurring additional out of pocket thing , they will pay their tuition fees because technically TETFUND can’t pay for tuition fees for more than three years while they may contend their stay within the stipends for the 4-year period, it is becoming a problem for some of them ,and because of that issue some of them overstay and have visa issues and things like that and then when they come to collect their certificates, they are required to get clearance from about three different ministries to make sure that they have not over stayed ,they have not broken any laws and this creates a conundrum because once you have overstayed, you cannot collect your certificate, so, the student loses, the federal government and Nigerians lose, so, a lot of problems crop up here and there , Master’s degree programmes are supposed to be for one year, you get there and you found students who have overstayed like four years, five years.
I met a student that was there since 2018 for a master’s degree programme and she is still there and I asked her if her own university is still paying for the programme and she answered in affirmative, so, we need to address all of that in order to make sure that things are put under control as expected, so, those are the some of the challenges that have led to a lot of radical policy changes within TETFUND up to and including the suspension of foreign travels for now, we are encouraging our academic staff to consider seeking admission to Nigerian universities, we want TETFUND to explore areas that are very critical to the national development and national growth , the board is looking at constituting committees that would study those aspects and create programmes to support them, so, that is where we are now
Meaning that TETFUND also offers scholarships to people who study at tertiary institutions in the country?
Yes, the programme is not only for those who are at institutions outside the country, actually, TETFUND does not sponsor students each of the institutions is provided with funds, I mean statutory funds based on the laws, one of the things they do is the capacity buildings and scholarships for their staff, so, it is now left for the universities to decide on how to use it, they nominate the students and everything, the students can either seek admission to Nigerian universities or go overseas.
Majority go to Nigerian universities but what they try to do is to make them get exposures, for example, you did your first degree programme at the University of Ilorin, your Master’s degree at the same university, we encourage them that your PhD programme should not be at the University of Ilorin, so, go and do it in ABU or UNILAG so that you can get additional flavour otherwise, you will end up like inbreeding what you knew is what you know and you never got additional input from somewhere else, so, that is what we encourage them to do.
Yes, TETFUND pay for all these because it holds funds in trust for the various institutions , the tertiary institutions cannot go and open their own bank accounts for this purpose, so, the agency manages all these funds for them but they do control how to spend it.
You have been known for having passion for skill acquisition, innovation and other things, so, how helpful has your new position been in this respect?
Well , like you rightly said, education has become something that is dear to me I believe that without productivity we cannot enjoy prosperity in this country and that was one of the factors that motivated me to establish the ENACT Innovation Hub, Ajase-Ipo which came into being in November 2020, since then we have trained thousands of people in various areas of skill acquisition and we even pay them stipends at the end of the training ,it is a hundred percent -free training that is what we provide for them and we try to focus on the skills that you can acquire and put to use immediately that you may not need additional tools to make it useful for you, so, that is what we have been doing ,so, what the new opportunity has done for us is that it allows us to gain experience and insight into challenges that our people face every day and we are able to bring this to bear on a national scale as you rightly pointed out, the same thing we are trying to cure locally is what are trying to cure nationally, so, knowing that education does not stop in the four walls of classrooms, TETFUND is actually creating a lot of specialized programmes for the universities, we have centers of excellence in order to specialize and contribute to the national economic and for the students, various programmes will be announced by the Minister of Education like the ‘earn while you learn’ programme, where they teach them IT skills so that while in school they can actually use such skills to work overseas in terms of online work experience in a way that will not affect their study.
They will be more self-sufficient and they will create skills and I learned that this was the model that was introduced in India in order to become an IT power house , it wasn’t that they waited for university students to graduate and they start sending them for IT jobs, they started those skills while they were in school and they were earning money directly from it and this will make us productive from the get go.
Talking about the polytechnics, the government is doing a lot in respect of skill acquisition centers that are well equipped so that people can learn ,actually, the Minister of Education is likely going to announce some programmes that the Federal Government has come up with like taking people off the streets and having the polytechnics trained them as skilled workers and even partner them with business outfits that can hire them and give them an opportunity for an internship training so that they can get real life experience and be able to put their skills into use.
If the business outfits find them valuable, they can employ them and they can stay on their own because they have already acquired the skills, experience and the business know-how.
And for the colleges of education their own is mostly the teaching practice aspect which has always been a problem for them because the students do have a huge out of pocket experience for their teaching practice because they are basically paying to get experience, and government is looking at making people understand that education is the bedrock of any society ,we want to make education sector more attractive ,so, part of it is to offset the cost of teaching practice, so, we may even have to pay the student to go and do teaching practice so that they themselves can earn money during the teaching practice phase and it takes away the out of pocket experience and it becomes an in pocket experience and this will motivate them and they will know that they do not have to become a graduate before they can start making money ,so, that is what we are trying to do.
You are a politician and now that you are occupying a public office, what has happened to politicking?
Well , I am not a professional politician I am a professional in politics, so, I still engage in my day to day work which is aerospace engineering business and also the various philanthropic activities including the ENACT Innovation Hub and on the issue of politics I make sure that Iam never far away from home and I make sure the impact of my presence is continuously felt by the grassroots, it is an ongoing engagement , politics is about constant communication , constant engagement to understand the pains that people are going through and see what you can do and even get better knowledge from them to know what policies you should introduce, so, the board appointment has just enhanced the capacity that we have built over the years.
There is time for work, there is time for politics and there is time for governance , we are in the governance mode right now, the time for politics will come at the right time we have to solve the problems and challenges facing the country, there are a lot of issues on ground that we are trying to come up with policies and programmes for, like I like mentioned earlier , the various programmes that affect students at the universities, the polytechnics, colleges of education and also some of the young men and women that are not even within the four walls of the school that we are trying to bring in for a quick intervention that will make them acquire skills that can be useful to them immediately, so ,right now, it is about solving problems, let us look at issues ,let us come up with the right policies to solve problems, politics will take care of itself at the right time, but again, you know that politics is art of communication and engagement and it is an ongoing thing because you can’t push people to the side and come back every four years and hope to still stay relevant, no matter what, even if you get your nose bruised from the battle you stay the fight and keep on going , otherwise some people will just be there for the position and not for the people, if you are there for the people you have to stay with them in good times and bad times.
You are a man of the people and I will like to know if the number of calls you do receive has increased after the appointment? How are you coping with the pressure from the people?
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Well, if you are man of the people like you said , the number of calls and all those things should not really bother you, because you asked for it, people will definitely get in touch but in most instances, it is just about giving a listening ears and not about what you are made to part with, I find myself playing a lot of mentoring role over the phone ‘why don’t you do it this way or that? ‘, ‘What have you done about this? What were you supposed to have done?’
So, those have become coaching moments for me more than ‘my wife is in the hospital this and that’ obviously, you cannot intervene in all cases but you do within your means and you should never pretend to be what you are not, people know what you are and what you can do. but if you pretend to be something that you are not obviously you will put yourself under undue pressure, so, I will like to think that Iam still the same person they have known for years now, I don’t think anything has really changed drastically , obviously everybody is looking for some kind of patronage that is the new addition to things they can mention but it is part of the game, it is part of the calls everybody should look into developing people around them because you never know when you are going to need them , I have always attached importance to the development of the people and I will continue to do this.
You are one of the main supporters of the Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq administration, and you readily defend his administration, why do you love him? How would you assess his administration?
Well, in past interviews, I have talked about the journey so far from the ‘O to ge’ to where we are now, ‘o to ge’ means different things to different people but for me it means changing the ways of doing business, for many, it means keep doing the same thing but try to change the players around the table and say it is their turn to have the spoons so to speak, but for me that is not what is important, what is important to me is what ‘O to ge’ is, which is to have fundamental changes and one of the fundamental changes that I have seen is that the governor came into office and he ensured that teachers were recruited on a merit basis which is a new thing in the state it was not like that in the past, everything used to be done through political patronages which means there were a lot of people outside the fence ,how many people are actively participating in politics probably less than 5 to 10 % of the state population which means 90 to 95 % of the state population were not involved that is not how to run an inclusive government everybody should have direct access to the state common wealth, it should not be reserved for an exclusive club that is one important issue.
The second issue for me is the concentration of development around the metropolis, it is like that everywhere, capitals always enjoy infrastructural advantages because in most instances greater number of people live within the capitals, and if government has 100 naira and that (100 naira) can serve hundred (100) people within the metropolis and that same 100 naira can serve only twenty (20) people in the suburbs, you will spend on the metropolis because more people will feel the impact of the 100 naira ,whether you build a hundred kilometers road in the city or 100 kilometers road in the suburbs, it still costs the same amount but what is the number of people plying that road daily?
So, government by its designs wants to impact the greatest number of lives with the littlest amount of money, they will generally gravitate towards the capitals, Iam not advocating for equality but what Iam advocating for is equity and that is quite different , if you look at every strategic investment that the governor has made, it has economic component and the investments are designed to reshape the economy of Kwara State , what he is doing right now will not pay off immediately, but five years, ten years down the road, we will come to hero worship him , look at the garment factory for example, probably about one thousand people are likely to be employed there, that is one thousand people that did not have jobs and instead of becoming nuisance to the public,
They will now become part of the economy base of the state paying taxes and everything and the state generates IGR through them, we talk about sugar film factory and others, they will become revenue generators and we have seen films come out of sugar factory whether they shot the films there or not , some might be shot there , and some might not be shot there but some of the post-processing things were done there and that is using local talents actually using local talents in developing new skills in such a field will be advantageous to us, just like we have Nollywood, Kannywood , nothing stops us from having Kwawood and the last BON awards that was hosted in Kwara showcased what we have to the various players in the industry and I am sure many of them will come back and do their work there because we have shown them what we are capable of and so I expect many new films to be shot in Kwara State that means bringing more economic activities to the state.
So, there are a lot of things like that if you want to know a government, you look at its priorities, what does it spend money on? Immediately the governor came into power, he prioritized education by paying counterpart funds for UBEC, and accreditation of courses for all the tertiary institutions, before then, many of these were lacking which means that students could not graduate because their institutions did not get the required go-ahead to offer the courses, so, we had a lot of congestions and challenging situations that were corrected by the governor.
You can see that putting 14 billion naira into the state education system had over 600 schools renovated or newly built which was a good development.
In the health sector , first of all, the governor made sure that all the allowances due to the medical personnel were paid and because of the japa syndrome in the health sector, you can see that the state has continued to employ people I think recently over one thousand people were employed in various categories of the health sector , and all of those are the people who will manage our primary healthcare sector which is the most fundamental part of the health care system, ‘prevention is better than cure’ they say , and those are the people who will be in charge of the health facilities ,most of the PHCs have been upgraded to ensure that the people we are bringing have an enabling working environment and the right tools.
Recently, you heard about the dental chairs that were brought to the state, we had little or nothing when it comes to dental chairs before now, oral hygiene is very important because if care is not taken it can lead to other diseases that can lead to death because once you cannot eat, there is a problem , just watch a lion that cannot eat , give the animal a week or two, it will die and the same thing with human beings, if you can’t eat certain foods anymore, your diet starts to change and you start to lose the nutrients that you need to absorb in your body, so, people don’t prioritize oral hygiene and that is very important, what they have done is to start bringing to the state all the equipment that can help to diagnose and solve problems for our people.
That is a government that cares about the people , yes, the infrastructure and others are important but it is the same people that are going to use those infrastructure, so, let us take care of the people, he is investing in the people, he is investing in infrastructure but most importantly he is investing in the economic activities that will generate future economic values for the state.
My love for the governor is not out of blind loyalty , it is based on the capacity that he has brought to bear and his achievements and most importantly for me, Kwara South is a very important problem or issue and this is the first time that I will see a governor that actively tracks every project that goes to every ward to make sure that there is a kind of balance, he tracks every appointment to make sure that there is a kind of balancing with respect to women ,men, Christians, Muslims people from every senatorial district ,every ward he ensures that everybody is represented.
To me, that is inclusive governance. He has ensured that everybody is involved, once there is lopsidedness and he notices it or his attention is called to it, he takes corrective steps.
For him to have such a number of women in his cabinet was not by accident, he felt that you cannot legislate that you have to vote for women but we can appoint them to positions and I think Kwara was one of the first states that signed it into law, so, future governors do not have any option than to sustain the lasting legacy . If you look at him, he likes the underdogs, and what did he do? He celebrates his birthdays at the orphanages, celebrates his birthday with people with disabilities because the people that society does not want to see he wants to be with them and brighten their spirits that is genuine love.
If you want to know how a society looks like, take a look at how the less privileged are being treated? How animals are being treated? So, the governor has given attention to the underdogs, conversing with them and interacting with them and attending to their needs.
They call him ‘oko opo’ , because he has continued to care for them. Who among his successors got such a nickname? Every underprivileged segment is being cared for and that is one of the reasons why I like the governor. I like Mallam Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq period! – Team@orientactualmags.com Do you have any information you wish to share with us? Do you want us to cover your event or programme? Kindly send SMS to 08035023079, 09094171980 or get in touch via orientactualmag@gmail.com. Thank you
