Examination of Witnesses (Questions 90
- 99)
TUESDAY 7 JULY 2009
MR ABOUBACRY
AND MS
JULIA AJAYI
Q80 Andrew Stunell: That leads me
on to my next question which is how effective is DFID's programme
in Nigeria. Are you saying it is a little bit superficial, it
needs to be more closely embedded with, say, federal provision,
or how do you see it?
Ms Ajayi: From what I have seen
with the state-level programmes implicit in the funding of the
different programmes is the need for those programmes to work
together, and because there is the overlap in the lead states
that gives the opportunity for PATHS, for ESSPIN, for ENR to all
work together and that allows the joining up of the programme
and the integration of those different elements of it. Certainly
from what I have seen of emerging ENR and PATHS too there is collaboration
and so the more of that that we can have the more those responses
could be joined up.
Q81 Andrew Stunell: If VSO had more
support from DFID would it be able to do more? Is there a capacity
issue as far as VSO is concerned about how you can contribute
to that?
Ms Ajayi: Within SNR we were one
of the partners, we are not in the consortia for ENR so that will
mean that some of the activities that we were able to do under
SNR we will no longer be able to do unless we have additional
funding from elsewhere.
Q82 Andrew Stunell: Could you say
what the difference between the SNR and the ENR is?
Ms Ajayi: SNR is Strengthening
Nigeria's Response and that is coming to an end in August; ENR
is Enhancing Nigeria's Response and that is the five-year programme
that is in its inception year now.
Q83 Andrew Stunell: And you are not
included in that?
Ms Ajayi: No.
Q84 Andrew Stunell: Was that your
choice?
Ms Ajayi: No, we joined the wrong
consortium. We were part of a consortium that bid for those funds
but it was not the successful one. We still feel that we have
a role to play in that and we are talking to ENR about how we
might take that forward, and to DFID. We also through SNR have
established relationships with the SACAs themselves, so there
are some requests coming from the state agencies for support from
VSO, and what I am keen to do is to make sure that that is all
joined up, because at the end of the day it is about ENR helping
to continue the support to SACAs. If we are doing it, whether
it is through ENR or not is slightly irrelevant because actually
what we need to do is to all work together to make sure that the
SACA can implement the programme more effectively.
Mr Tall: Maybe I could make two
additional points. The first one is to just draw attention to
a category of possible victims of HIV/AIDS and those are the orphans
and other vulnerable children. They may not be infected themselves,
but they are certainly affected because of the loss of a parent
or both parents in some cases, or because of a number of other
factors. There is therefore a protection dimension of the HIV/AIDS
pandemic that I just want to underscore so that we keep it in
mind as we talk about response and access to retrovirals and other
things. That is one point. The second point is around the way
that funding is made available, particularly in Nigeria, through
consortia bidding. There I would like to suggest that maybe within
a given programme where things are outlined for NGOs like VSO,
like Save the Children, like local civil society organisations
in Nigeria, some of those resources could be earmarked separately
and not as part of the overall competitive bidding so that NGOs
can access them in line with the larger programme that DFID will
have developed jointly with the Government of Nigeria such as
ENR or PRIN or education and the like. That would make it a bit
easier for NGOs who are not necessarily competitive at the level
of those big consortia to be able to bring in that community dimension,
that LGA dimension that those bigger actors have a hard time getting
control of. It is to have separate earmarks for NGOs to come in,
lined up with the overall programme, without going through commercial
processes. There should still be some competition but not of a
commercial bid type where you are in one programme but you cannot
continue because camps get formed and people will "go to
war against resources."
Q85 Andrew Stunell: The ENR programme
is a DFID-driven programme, is that right?
Ms Ajayi: It is one of the suites
of state-level programmes. I also just wanted to mention about
FLHE (Family Life and Health Education) which is a new part of
the curriculum in Nigeria which some states have adopted and some
have not. Just in talking about a co-ordinated response to HIV
and AIDS and joining up between programmes, something like that
which is within the educational sector but actually is part of
the curriculum that looks at sexual and reproductive health, HIV
and AIDS and general health awareness for secondary school children,
is to me something that is very important and cuts across the
different programmes. Being able to support that within the rollout
and delivery; we are trying to do that and also advocating for
that to be taken on board is another example of where we can use
vehicles that are already there within Nigeria to actually make
sure that we are delivering lots of different elements, not just
through education or health because that cuts across.
Chairman: We are moving to education
now. Mr Marsha Singh.
Q86 Mr Singh: Education in Nigeria
is in a pretty dire strait, is it not, in terms of service delivery
and Nigeria tops the world list of countries with the most out
of school children, which is pretty poor, and the majority of
those children are girls. I must express a slight disappointment
that in neither of your submissions has gender equality really
featured as a part of your submissions, but I would like to try
and speed it up by asking three questions in one. What, in your
experience and in your view, are the major obstacles that prevent
girls accessing education? Do either of you know about the UNICEF
Girls' Education Project which has succeeded in increasing enrolment
of girls in northern Nigeria—if you can comment on that
then I would be very grateful for your views. Then a thorny question
really—DFID is supporting in the North Islamiyya schools
which are trying to run some form of integrated Koranic and secular
education. But should DFID be doing this or should DFID be concentrating
on state schools?
Ms Ajayi: In terms of major obstacles
for girls accessing education, certainly as you say the gender
disparity is mainly in northern states. There are areas of Nigeria
where actually the figures are completely reversed, so the culture
in some areas is that actually the girls go to schools and not
the boys—so there are particular and regional differences
as we have talked about before. Overall, obviously, the picture
is that girls have less access to education. There are many reasons
for that and I know that there is a programme in northern Nigeria
where they are looking at bringing girls who are hawking on the
streets back into school, so often in the North you will see many
young girls outside school hawking things in markets or walking
around the streets and so on, so that is one reason they are often
taken out of school, to earn and to help contribute to the family.
We know that there are problems with water and sanitation in schools
so when girls hit puberty and there are no facilities in school
it can be very difficult for them to stay on, and I know that
Water Aid have been addressing some of that through their work.
Obviously in the North there are areas where early marriage is
part of the culture and girls are not expected to stay in school
and some of them are not even starting school. Also, the aspirations
for many girls from the family are that they will be married and
therefore in terms of education, with limited funds to invest
in children's education, the boys are seen as a better bet and
more able to have a reward from the investment needed. Although
we can talk about universal basic education we know that in Nigeria
there are many fees attached to sending a child to school, so
there is really not a totally free education system—there
is uniform, books, often PTA levies and so on if not school fees.
All of those factors are contributing to girls not being in school.
I cannot specifically comment on the UNICEF programme, I do not
know it well enough to be able to do that, but I want to pick
up on your point about gender not being addressed in the submission.
It is something that within our programme in VSO Nigeria we are
very well aware of and I think I made reference to it earlier
in that we know we need to do more in terms of our gender programming
as well. As I said earlier we are looking at gender audits within
our own office and our own staff and then within our partners
to look at first of all what is going on before we then look at
ways in which we can address those imbalances within our organisation,
within our programmes and within our partner organisations. I
take your point there, I think you are right and as the debate
about gender continues I do not know if it is louder than it was
before but certainly for us in VSO Nigeria and VSO generally it
is becoming a much louder voice that we want to respond to.
Q87 Mr Singh: I make the point because
women actually suffer the most from poverty and empowering women
may be the way out of poverty as well which is why I think it
is important.
Ms Ajayi: We have three programmes
in Nigeria—we have education, HIV/AIDS and secure livelihoods—and
within all of those programmes women are the target group. In
HIV/AIDS it is also orphans and vulnerable children and in secure
livelihoods we are going to be looking at rural women and support
there in terms of access to markets. Although it is not specifically
there, it is also running throughout the programme because we
realise that we have to address those issues in Nigeria for it
to make an impact.
Q88 Mr Singh: Do you have any comment
on the Islamiyya schools?
Ms Ajayi: Islamiyya schools are
not an area that we have worked in. My only comment would be that
any interventions that can be shown to have some success are worth
doing. It is a brave move by DFID and we need to be creative in
our response. I do not think we should carry on just doing what
we have always done, so it is a good move so long as it is properly
evaluated and learning is taken from that. Islamiyya schools are
certainly there to stay in northern Nigeria, they are not going
to go away, so whatever one might think about whether they should
or should not be there it is a very important part of the local
education system, so a certain proportion of children are going
to go to Islamiyya schools. We were talking about religious leaders
and we know through other work how important religious leaders
are and what a strong message of support to programme interventions
they can give, and we certainly had experience of that in our
HIV/AIDS work through SNR. If religious leaders—imams—are
able to encourage girls going to school into Islamiyya schools
and there is support to widen the curriculum that is a very positive
move.
Mr Tall: Just two quick things,
one on UNICEF's Girls' Education Project. Generally it has three
elements: one is distance to school, where there is an issue that
girls are not going to school because you have 10 kilometres to
go to school. That is one factor that they try and address and
get the schools as close to the community as possible—that
is one. The second one is the presence of female teachers in those
schools and the third one that Julia mentioned is water and sanitation
facilities. Those usually are three of the factors that you would
find in a number of girls' education initiatives that UNICEF would
implement. If you look at those three, you have got at least the
distance element often taken care of through Islamiyya schools
because usually those are inside the community so they do respond
to that factor, number one. Number two is that they are integrated,
they are not just focused on learning the Koran, the curriculum
is opened for students to do a little bit of maths, a little bit
of English, a little bit of French, a little bit of history—that
is literacy as well. If our objectives in part are to widen that
young girl's horizon and to increase the number of years of schooling
with an anticipated impact on fertility, on maternal mortality,
on the health of the child, if we are able to cater to those objectives
through public schools as well as other community schools, Islamiyya
schools, it participates towards the same objective and it is
a bold move that I think is worth supporting.
Q89 Mr Sharma: When we were talking
about health we said that due to the financial difficulties people
do not take it up and a similar thing happens when the priority
becomes food or education and it is education which gets cut.
How can we assist to meet the cost of that education for those
families who cannot afford it, and are social protection programmes
likely to be an effective mechanism in this respect?
Ms Ajayi: The support that DFID
has given to some of the livelihood programmes, which we have
not talked about, is very important because we need to look at
being able to strengthen the livelihoods of the poor people that
we are working with and for them to be able to access education
and to have opportunities when they finish. I know that there
is some DFID work going on with the private sector in connection
with some of the agricultural programmes, and that is certainly
something we are looking at within VSO as well, so to me it is
very important that we carry on doing that. Unless we can have
some of the other interventions and social protection in place
the value of education is lost so I cannot see that we would only
support those without the other programmes around, so maintaining
the integrated approach through looking at support to health,
to HIV/AIDS and so on is very important.
Mr Tall: Definitely social protection
should be one of the mechanisms, social protection defined as
protecting or supplementing family income, social protection defined
as—this all goes in the same direction—maybe certain
fees being removed and families not having to pay them, whether
that is bringing your own bench to school or bringing your own
set of textbooks to school or, if it is a school lunch programme,
there are a number of initiatives within the social protection
programme that would be aimed at reducing the out of pocket expenses
that families would have to put in to support a particular child
going to school. There are other elements of the social protection
programme where, for example, families choose not to send their
child to school because the child has to work to contribute to
the income of the family and where some substitute mechanisms
mean the family might be able to engage in activities that would
make that income while the child is going to school and leverage
the going to school for whatever that supplementary income would
be. Those would all be elements that can be part of the response
to low involvement rates. The gender dimension we have covered;
we have mentioned earlier today the need to hold other levels
of government accountable for transfers that need to be made within
the system. If the federal government is putting X amount of money
in education in State A that, as part of the Publish as You Pay
initiative, needs to be very specific and very transparent and
cascaded down all the way to community level to engage communities
in the management of those schools in partnership with the school
authorities.
Ms Ajayi: I did not make any comment
on the cost of education and you talked about fees. There are
lots of hidden charges and some of the work to help support states
to be able to draw down funds that have not been accessed by states
through increasing the capacity of ministries of education at
state level is commendable because obviously the more funds they
can draw down the more will reach the school. One point that has
been made by many heads that we have talked to is that they do
not feel in control of their own school budget and often they
do not have a budget deployed to them to be able to manage the
school, so looking at that and again advocating for support at
school level to be able to do that will then reduce some of the
pressure on children and families having to contribute. One could
make that assumption, but starting to have more funds coming down
at the school level would be a positive move. When we talk about
possibly supporting school fees we do need to talk about the quality
of education at the same time.
Q90 Chairman: We are coming on to
that.
Ms Ajayi: Okay. Obviously, there
is varying quality and quality is a real issue in schools at the
moment. Many children are paying money to go to schools, sometimes
in classrooms with very few teachers, so deployment is also an
issue. Deployment in the health sector is an issue as well.
Q91 Mr Sharma: Before you go on let
me put my question. We identified, as you said earlier, poor quality
teachers, lack of school buildings and materials as the three
major areas of weakness.
Ms Ajayi: Yes.
Q92 Mr Sharma: What action should
donors be taking to support the three tiers of government—federal,
state and local government—to address these three areas?
You started answering the question rather than me putting the
question first.
Mr Tall: Do you want to continue
on that?
Ms Ajayi: Building the capacity,
working with state ministries of education to implement the changes
and reforms that they need to. I know some of those are going
on in colleges of education and we are involved with volunteers
in colleges of education in some of the DFID lead states in looking
at entry qualifications for teachers into colleges of education
and looking at teacher salary scales so that the professionalism
of teachers and the teaching profession is raised again. Merely
building schools, we all know, is not going to be a long term
solution, and although there are infrastructural problems the
actual school management is important, with support to heads to
be able to better manage their schools, looking at continuing
professional development of teachers and of heads, building up
the capacity of inspectorate teams to be able to make schools,
heads and teams accountable and also deployment. We have not mentioned
deployment before but we know there are schools where they are
overstaffed and rural schools that are understaffed, and we need
to actually take that as a point of advocacy really to try and
have a better spread of teachers into different areas.
Q93 John Battle: Could I ask about
something we have touched on, perhaps as our last topic, and that
is civil society, because there is a general view that there are
a lot of organisations in civil society, but the question would
be how effective and how representative they actually are. Would
you like to say something about their effectiveness in Nigeria?
Ms Ajayi: Yes, I would love to,
because civil society is key to what we all do. I do not think
we can only work with civil society, we have to work with government—and
we should do at different levels—but the fact is that many
civil society organisations, and if we include within that religious
organisations, though we might not call them civil society organisations,
are carrying out service delivery in Nigeria.
Q94 John Battle: When you say "religious"
do you mean churches and mosques basically as formal organisations.
Ms Ajayi: Yes.
Q95 John Battle: Not the subsidiaries
of those organisations.
Ms Ajayi: No, as formal organisations.
Together much service delivery is happening because of those groups.
Yes, there are opportunistic civil society organisations or NGOs,
yes there are some that do not have legitimate constituencies,
but we know that there are also organisations which are working
at community level delivering holistic programmes that are really
making a difference. We need to know who they are, we need to
work with them and we need to make sure that the work we are doing
with those organisations complements the work that often other
organisations are supporting them with. There are legitimate civil
society organisations and having worked in Nigeria 12 years ago
I have seen a growing movement which is very positive.
Q96 John Battle: Quite clearly when
you look at civil society organisations you look to NGOs and groups
who are campaigning under health, the walking group, the group
that deals with racism, but you would not go to the mosques and
the chapels and the churches. Advocacy groups are different from
the religious groups but is it these churches and mosques that
are actually directly providing services in Nigeria?
Ms Ajayi: Some of the bigger churches
do. Thinking about ECWA, COCIN and some of these very large churches,
they have very big social protection programmes in all areas and
some of them are providing services. We talked about their congregation
volunteering in home based care and so on, so they are doing a
lot of work and are supported obviously by some of the other organisations.
Q97 John Battle: To develop the capacity
of civil society organisations what should the donors, including
DFID, be engaged in doing practically? Should they be going to
the mosques and the churches and work with them or should they
be working with interest groups? I think of civil society as being
tenants' movements or residence groups and that kind of approach
really, community action groups. Is that the need, or how do you
see donors working to develop the capacity of civil society?
Ms Ajayi: It needs a longer term
approach. Developing the capacity of civil society organisations
cannot be done overnight so there needs to be a long term commitment
to working with civil society and a long term commitment to the
organisations being able to make a difference, and a recognition
that civil society has a role to play. That has not always been
the case and the first step in that—and it is something
that we are looking at—is organisational assessment of organisations.
We are doing that over long periods of time, to actually say what
is an organisation's need, not just is it an issue-based organisation.
Q98 John Battle: For example, I know
from work in my neighbourhood that there is a site for travellers
and gypsies, so I would ask are they included or are there some
groups left out? I am assuming that that is true in Nigeria as
well, that there are some groups that have not been developed
strongly enough to have a voice. Would you be in your assessment
seeking out those groups that are not represented and do not have
a voice? They could be rural migrant groups—I am thinking
of nomadic people and so on.
Ms Ajayi: Yes, we do, we supported
some work with nomadic schools in Nasarawa State so, yes, there
are and I actually think that the programme funding for us, for
example, through DFID and other donor funds, is where we are able
to support those organisations, because they are organisations
that do not have the income or even the organisation to be able
to do that. We are, through additional support, able to do that
and often with our volunteers that is sometimes an additional
involvement that they have, so they are doing it alongside their
main role.
Q99 John Battle: Bringing groups
together around themes nationally, do you get involved in that
as well?
Ms Ajayi: Yes, and again that
is something we have been able to do with DFID funding, to bring
our partners together within HIV/AIDS programmes to look at advocacy,
to look at work with certain groups, and in education as well
looking at skill-sharing between volunteers and their partners.
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