Issues
Why Rivers Schools Need Blended Learning Approach
Generally, Public Affairs Management is an institutional arrangement to solve societal problems and challenges. It is government’s response to social issues. In other words, public affairs management is geared towards solving issues affecting the wider spectrum of society as against smaller segments.
Thus, public policy is a set of actions government decides to take in approaching a problem that affects society or a segment of society as against an individual.
When it comes to public policy, doing the right thing is more important than doing it for the right reason, and the best way to get people to do what is right collectively is to make it the best thing for them to do.
Surprisingly, the biggest challenge in this regard is to know and accept when and how the world has changed. Indeed, the world is changing, and changing very fast.
What this means is that teachers, as a critical segment of public affairs management, must know and accept the reality that with the invasion of COVID-19 pandemic upon our land surprisingly coupled with the visible technological advancements dotting the socio-political and economic landscapes of the times and seasons, the learning approach is bound to change.
Never in history, at least from World War II, have so many countries shut down schools and educational institutions for the same reason and about the same time.
This unexpected scenario compelled educators worldwide to think of the need to rethink how this generation and, indeed, future generations can be educated. Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention. Ironically, this might just be the disruption that the education sector needed to get stakeholders to rethink how to educate and the best approach needed in learning crisis management and to better prepare the younger generation for the future.
In fact, according to World Economic Forum Report 2020, 65% of primary school children today will be working in job types that do not exist yet. In other words, with the reality on the ground, teachers in Rivers State and, indeed, in Nigeria are expected to catch up with the technological in-roads or milestone in the education sector around our clime.
Realising that schooling does not always lead to learning except pragmatic and appropriate learning approach and public policy actions are taken, the State Ministry of Education issued a policy directive to all teachers in the state to adopt the blended learning approach as the schools resume for the second term as much as necessary.
Faced with the global learning crisis in the education sector, doing nothing in the public domain allows much more to be done in the real world. Obviously, this directive is thus a policy action aimed at giving direction in solving an educational challenge confronting society.
With the over 280 public senior secondary schools in Rivers State, over 300 public junior secondary schools, and about 1,000 public primary schools, the school system require a strict compliance to global best practices in creating learning and consistent and clear demonstration of strategic leadership in public policy initiation and implementation.
This is commendable and forthright. Faced with several inequalities, the support for other alternative learning approaches remains the only pragmatic step to take to lessen the already existing inequalities to ensure learning continuity.
But the truth is the effectiveness of the learning strategies to be deployed is mainly determined by the level of preparedness of stakeholders.
Faced with this stack reality, the blended approach appears to be the available best option for system actors.
It is believed that the mixture of different teaching methods leads to better results, leading to both personalised and collaborative learning with clear goals-set for students and regular feedback obtained.
The post-COVID-19 outlook maybe bleak, especially in the midst of obvious education technology and infrastructural deficiency both at home and in the public domain, the current crisis presents an opportunity to rethink our perception on how to ensure learning.
This is the reason one sees the Ministry of Education directives to schools in Rivers State to adopt the blended approach in teaching and learning as a wise counselling.
Blended learning is a combination of face-to-face, traditional learning and online e-learning in a complimentary manner. It is the combination of offline and online learning in teaching curriculum content.
Blended learning approach which is also referred to as hybrid learning takes different forms. It could be deployed on rare occasions or adopted as a primary teaching method to deliver on curriculum content.
However, the best in blended learning is achieved only when students work in a collaborative setting; sharing information to enrich learning backed up with interactive, face to face class activities supervised or facilitated by the teacher.
Blended learning approach therefore allows learners to utilize the opportunity to learn face to face and online, using different available digital platforms.
The truth is, being able to learn independently and participate face-to-face in the class is not only empowering and enduring, but also motivating to mould a functional citizenship base prepared for the future.
It must be made clear that teachers and available educational applications, platforms, resources and there effective deployment by system actors only aimed at facilitating student learning. Thus student learning is paramount and a responsibility of the school system.
Teachers, as critical stakeholders, hold the hope of the student under them need more support. Besides, a mandatory assessment system is needed to ensure that students are actually learning and teachers are actually also performing their roles as facilitators of learning.
To ensure the continuity of learning during and post-COVID-19 pandemic, system actors must come to terms with the reality that how students live is not how students learn. There should be a marriage between how teachers teach and how students live to create learning both in the classroom or elsewhere.
Consequently, it is the process of learning not the content of learning that addresses not only the 3Rs but also the 21st century learning skills.
It should be noted that it is not about learning how to use technology or even teaching with technology, it is about adopting constructive use of available technology to create learning and how we teach. (Teaching them to explore and question themselves).
Besides, the adoption of the blended learning approach is to appropriately justify the fact that learning is majorly environmentally influenced. It is locally sourced but globally impacted. It is beginning from the known to the unknown.
Therefore, Rivers State as the Treasure Base of the Nation and the hub of Nigeria’s oil and gas economy is poised to ensure that learning and learning activities must not only be focused to gain competitive advantage, but also take the lead to appropriately create the right conditions for functional and sustainable future.
It is against this background that one sees the call for the adoption of the blended learning appropriate as timing, needful and a step in the right direction.
By: Emmanuel Kaldick-Jamabo
Dr Kaldick-Jamabo is a public affairs analyst in Port Harcourt.
This is an open letter to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Chief Nyesom Wike.
Your Excellency,
Sir, ordinarily, I would not be writing an open letter to you, but like a wise man once said, “Silence would be Treason.” So I prefer to stay alive than face the consequences of silence in the face of crime. With each passing day, and as the socio-political tides continue to turn, it has become more pertinent that more people speak up in a concerted MANNER to prevent the death of our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), as we appear to be, in the words of W. B. Yeats, “turning and turning in the widening gyre” heading for an end where the falcon will no longer hear the falconer
It is unfortunate that since losing control of the Federal Government, with the loss of President Goodluck Jonathan at the poll in 2015, our party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has continued on a downward spiral. It is much more painful, that where it is expected that leaders within the party should rise to the challenge and put an end to this decline of our great party, some have instead taken up roles as its undertaker.
It will be hypocritical to claim aloofness to what I believe is your grouse with the PDP and I am not a hypocrite. It will be uncharitable on my part to discountenance the role you have played in strengthening the PDP from 2015 up until the last Presidential primaries of the party. It is my belief that your grouse against certain members of the party who you perceived worked against the party and abandoned it in 2015 and then came around much later to take control of the party, is justified. Also know that your decision to remain in the Party and stifle its progress on the other hand, as a sort of payback, stands condemned. For a man of your pedigree and stature, it is a dishonorable act, highly dishonorable and stands as testimony against all you claim to stand for.
At least, it can be argued that those who you hold this grudge against, abandoned the party completely and did not sit back while actively working to destroy it from within. But what then can be the argument on your own part, seeing that those you are currently working with against your party are the same people who set in motion, and executed surgically, the plans that not only ended our Party’s leadership at the centre, but ended up dislodging the first Niger Deltan to occupy Aso Rock as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. Is this not akin to “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face?” That will be worse than folly. Let us not throw away the baby with the bath water because we do not like the soap used in bathing the baby. It will be a grave mistake.
Honourable Minister, sir, it is rather unfortunate that of all people, you have also decided to play the role of an undertaker not only for our party, but for our dear Rivers State.
I will like to take you down memory lane a little. Let me remind you of your emergence as Guber candidate of the PDP in Rivers State, against all fairness and justice in 2014. You will remember that despite the reality being that you as an Ikwerre man was poised to replace a fellow Ikwerre man in Governor Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi in our multiethnic state, Rivers people overwhelmingly stood by you and pushed for your emergence as Executive Governor of Rivers State in 2015. I dare say that your popularity in the entire Niger Delta region was at an all-time high at this point.
I want you to understand why you were loved across board leading to your eventual emergence as Governor of Rivers State in 2015; it was because when it looked like all were against the second term ambitions of the first Niger Delta man to emerge as President of Nigeria, you became not just a pillar but a beacon of resistance by standing for Goodluck Jonathan. Rivers people, as grateful and rewarding as they can be, paid you back by ensuring your electoral victory against the incumbent All Progressives Congress (APC) led by your predecessor. On your emergence, where there were second term Governors in the region, you, a first term Governor, was seen by the people as not just the leader of the PDP, but the leader of the entire Niger Delta region. You earned it, and no one could dispute it.
In 2019, when your re-election bid was being challenged ferociously, Rivers people once again stood solidly behind you. Many were killed in the process of defending your votes. Do you remember Dr. Ferry Gberegbe that was shot and killed while trying to protect your votes in Khana Local Government Area? There are many more unnamed and unrecognised sons and daughters of Rivers State who sacrificed their lives so that you could emerge as a second term Governor of Rivers State.
In 2022/23, Honourable Minister, you oversaw a party primary across board that saw some candidates imprisoned and internal party democracy jettisoned for your wishes, leading to the emergence of flag bearers of our party all singlehandedly picked by you. You have on more than one occasion publicly stated that you paid for all their forms. Even those shortchanged in this process licked their wounds and continued to play their roles as party members to ensure the success of the party at all levels. In what will go down as one of the most keenly contested elections in recent Rivers history, with formidable candidates like Senator Magnus Abe of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), Mr Tonye Cole of the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the vibrant youth driven Labour Party (LP), PDP emerged victorious across board except for Phalga Constituency 1 that was lost to the Labour Party. (Not that you did not loose in some other LGA’s but let’s stick to the official figures declared by INEC).
It begs the question, why then do you want to burn down Rivers State, when everyone who now holds political office emerged through a process designed and endorsed by you? Is it that you do not care about Rivers people and you are all about yourself? If so, I am forced to believe that those around you are not telling you the truth. The truth being that in a state where your words were law; where houses and businesses could be demolished or closed down without any recourse to legalities, where Executive Orders could be deployed to stifle the opposition, that your popularity is now at an all-time low. Probably because they are afraid of you, or of losing the benefits they gain from you, they fail to tell you that what you might perceive as a battle against your successor, has slowly but gradually degenerating into a battle against Rivers State and Rivers people. You know, there is a popular saying that, a man can cook for the community and the community will finish the food, but when a community decides to cook for one man, the reverse is the case.
LEAVE FUBARA ALONE
You have gone on and on about being betrayed by Governor Siminalayi Fubara. You point fingers forgetting that some of those same fingers quick to spot betrayals point straight back at you. It is not Governor Fubara that has betrayed the PDP by working against it in the just concluded General Election, and working with the opposition at the State and Federal level to destabilise the party. It is you, Honourable Minister. It is not Governor Fubara that betrayed Rivers people by instigating a political crisis with propensity to escalate ethnic tensions in Rivers State. It is you Honourable Minister. It is not Governor Fubara that has declared himself God over all in Rivers State and has no qualms with burning the state to the ground to prove a point. It is you Honourable Minister. It is you Honourable Minister who told the world that the APC was a cancer and you can never support a cancerous party. It is you Honourable Minister who ended up facilitating the emergence of the same “cancerous” APC that has accelerated the economic decline of this country and further impoverished our people with no remorse. All so you can be a Minister of the Federal Capital Territory? The lack of self awareness is gobsmacking.
Some days back I came across a video where you talked about death and how you do not cry when you hear about the death of some people because you have no idea what might have caused it considering many a politician swear “over dead bodies” and still go back on their words. Those words made me think, and I could see the reason behind them. You see, in chosing to be God in the affairs of Rivers people, you have closed your eyes and ears to reason; you see nothing and hear nothing that can cause you to rethink on the path you have chosen. In your quest to “show Fubara” you have unwittingly united a vast majority of Rivers people behind him, so much that even those who despised him because of you, now like or love him, because of you too. In your scheming, I will advise you not to forget that “the voice of the people is the voice of God”.
Note that the war which you have or are waging against Governor Fubara, has gone beyond being merely political as you might see in your minds eye. It is now one that, fortunately for some and unfortunately for others, has evolved into a war against Rivers people. It is good to point out that no one has taken a stand against Rivers people and won. No one has gone against God and won. In your defiant characteristic manner, it will be unfortunate if you believe your own hubris and that of those around you on the possibility of you being the first to successfully go against Rivers people. It will be a needless gamble; one where if you win you create more enemies for yourself than you can withstand on your political journey, and if you lose, your legacy becomes an inglorious and irredeemable one in Rivers State, the Niger Delta, and Nigeria at large. For your sake as regards posterity, it is my greatest wish that you have a moment of sobriety and a deep reflection and introspection on this path you have chosen.
Honourable Minister, sir, what is left of your legacy is on the brink of being completely desecrated and relegated to the dustbin of our political history, and it will be a sad end to what I will say has been a wonderful political career that many can only dream of. The ball is in your court, and may God Almighty have mercy on us all and forgive us for our shortcomings.
Gabriel Baritulem Pidomson
Dr Pidomson is former Chief of Staff, Government House, Port Harcourt and former member, Rivers State House of Assembly.
In 2015, I made a conscious decision to invest my financial resources, my time, and energy into supporting Nyesom Wike’s gubernatorial campaign. I poured my heart and soul into ensuring Nyesom Wike emerged victorious even at the risk of my personal safety.
Again in 2019, I doubled down on my commitment. I invested a significant amount of money to procure campaign outfits for all twenty-three Local Governments Areas of Rivers State. I spared no expense in supplementing Wike’s election efforts in my own local government, and once again putting myself at great risk to safeguard the fairness and transparency of the electoral process.
However, despite my unwavering loyalty and sacrifices, I found myself abandoned and forgotten by Wike. Throughout his eight-year tenure, he failed to acknowledge my contributions or fulfill his promises and agreements. Even as a former Deputy Governor, Wike denied me my severance benefit.
My investment in Wike’s governorship was not just financial – it was a commitment of passion, dedication, and belief in a better future for Rivers State. Yet, his leadership style of dishonesty, greed, drunkenness and rash abuse of senior citizens brought me nothing but disappointment, misery and losses.
By the grace of God, today I speak not as a victim, but as a hero. I have accepted my losses, and I have moved on. And as I reflect on my experience, I cannot help but urge Wike to do the same and allow peace and development to reign in Rivers State.
Nyesom Wike, when you speak of investing in Governor Sim Fubara’s election, remember those like me who also invested in you. Remember the sacrifices I made, the risks I took, and the promises and agreements you left unfulfilled.
It is time for you, Wike, to let go of the past and allow Governor Sim Fubara the breathing space he needs to lead Rivers State forward. Allow him to focus on the challenges of good governance and the aspirations of the people. Spare him these unwarranted and ill-conceived political manoeuvrings founded on personal agenda and not for general good of Rivers State and her people.
I may have lost my investment on Wike, but I have not lost hope in the future of Rivers State. And together, we will continue to strive for a brighter tomorrow.
Long Live the Governor to Rivers State, Sir Siminialayi Fubara!
Long Live the Good People of Rivers State!!
Long Live the Federal Republic of Nigeria!!!
Engr Ikuru is former Deputy Governor of Rivers State.
Tele Ikuru
