Opinion
2023 And Beyond: Unlocking The Binding Constraints To Policy Execution in Nigeria
Published
2 years agoon
By Tunji Olaopa
2023 is significant in the annals of Nigerian history because it does not only signal a change of government, but more fundamentally, it signals a year that Nigeria could potentially get her bearing right, especially in terms of a seamless transition from election, to governance, to performance, and to national economic transformation. Given the dismal state of governance and development in the country, it seems sufficient for the incoming leadership, going by current excruciating experience of poverty and underdevelopment that Nigerians are going through, to hold itself to an objective of absolute commitment to transforming the Nigerian state. Every successor government is often confronted with a possibility of making history, by putting in place structures and processes that facilitate good governance, rather than conforming to the expected mold of failure. And so that opportunity might meet preparation, it behooves the ever-optimistic governance and institutional reformer scholar-practitioner in me, to keep outlining the templates and frameworks that any incoming government with the political will might require to really achieve the necessary changes that Nigerians have been waiting for. And there is no better platform than the //NES28 where I shared platform with an erudite panel made up of, HE Dr. Kayode Fayemi, Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, Mrs. Ifueko Imoigui-Okauru and, Mrs. Ofovwe Aig-Imoukhuede as session moderator, which interrogated the sub-theme: “Unlocking the Binding Constraints to Execution”.
Unfortunately, the success of any administration in Nigeria is a factor of the extent to which such an administration could engage with the complexities involved in the policy process that feeds into governance and development. Since independence, Nigeria has been plagued with acute policy failure resulting from the structural gap between policy objectives, development strategies and policy outcomes. And this structural gap implicates other fundamental issues from change, program and project management to sustainable talent and knowledge management, as well as the all-pervasive productivity problem.
One important way of opening up this discussion is to apply a diagnostic lens to Nigeria’s policymaking and implementation dynamics and trajectories in the light of current expectations about governance and development, as the basis for explaining past successes and failures, and then to use this as the platform for extrapolating future possibilities. It is from this diagnostic lens that we can then outline a framework of binding constraints, especially in terms of what have been identified as gross impediments to reforms and transformation, elements that needed strengthening and consolidation, as well as the solution framework around new and potential drivers of national performance improvement and change management programme. Binding constraint is a technical term. It references a situation where an optimal solution to a problem is circumscribed or conditioned by a constraint. This means that the optimal solution would not be feasible if the binding constraint were to change even so slightly. In linear programming for instance, binding constraints constitute limitations to the feasibility of optimal solutions. Non-binding constraints, on the other hand, are equally limitations which have no effects whatsoever on the feasibility of optimal solutions. In administration, a constraint is binding if changing it also changes the optimal solution in terms of getting policy objectives translated into development dividends. What then are those issues that are really crucial for achieving an optimal understanding of reforming governance and development reforms in Nigeria, issues that are critical for putting 2023 and beyond in proper perspectives? I will identify and briefly discuss six of these binding constraints.
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The first, and most inevitably, is leadership. All over the world, leadership sophistication is required to build a change space that put together a coalition around which reform and transformation of politics is facilitated. In other words, it is the first governance responsibility of the government to assemble the cabinet and other supporting teams with the requisite IQ, credentials, commitment and wisdom to get the task of realizing the governance and development objectives done. This remains the first condition for good governance and development everywhere, and it is more so in a country like Nigeria. It is the leadership factor, with the necessary political will, that then further provides the backing authority, conducive environment, accountability framework and performance metrics that make it difficult for the cabinet and support teams to focus on the tasks ahead without undue interference by, chiefly, the Nigerian factor, located around ethnic and religious shenanigans or outright prebendalism, another word for corruption.
The second constraint is the tendency, especially in practice, to separate between policy design and implementation process. Thus, despite an increasing managerial sophistication in program and project management, backed by change and performance management instruments and metrics, as well as the M&E system with the attendant feasibility and modelling dynamics that have become standard practices for monitoring execution traps and landmines, attention is paid to all this more in theory than in real policy and program protocols for policy implementation in Nigeria. There is therefore lack of clarity on the complex reality of the policy space and the understanding of the iterative process involved in getting the policy process, from design to implementation right, through strategic intelligence and the capability to deliver the policy objectives through the tracking and removal of performance obstacles. Such tracking also involves the identification and prioritizing of possible sources of implementation failures that needed to be appropriately managed, and the gathering of preliminary evidence on possible challenges that are likely to arise and create most serious barriers to successful implementation. On the contrary, and unfortunately, policy makers often operate with the assumption that laws, plans, policy and projects automatically get implemented after they are designed or passed. Lots of available but scarce resources are then invested in policy development and strategy articulation, while implementation planning and analysis are neglected. This generates the implication that the contextual mapping of the implementation force-field is rarely done nor capability review of MDAs made an integral part of development planning and programming.
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Another major constraint is the public service application of a service-wide, one-size-fits-all, operating protocol, that effectively achieves regulatory control at the expense of limiting discretion and creativity in project management. This constraint harks back to the issue of leadership sophistication that opens up a change space for competent change agents, located in the cabinet and supporting management teams, to operate efficiently. However, it stands to reason that even if the government is able to assemble such efficient teams, their capacity to achieve performance would immediately be circumscribed by a system that discourages administrative discretion and governance creativity that allow thinking out of the box. This allows us to identify another major constraint: the palpable absence of a reward and motivation template that could enable high-performance in government, in general. The public service system lacks performance management protocols and machineries, like performance agreement or contract, together with dynamics of incentives and rewards, for pushing the boundaries of performance and productivity. It is within the systemic crack that labor unions institute their adversarial industrial relations culture that further undermines the capacity of the system to become performance- oriented, and hence efficient in technical-rational terms.
All these binding constraints only reiterate the familiar narrative about how Nigeria’s policy landscape is littered with beautiful plan documents and projects blueprints launched with fun fare. In pursuit of its effort to genuinely facilitate governance reform and transformation, government spends enormous resources hiring management consulting firms and policy experts to also brainstorm about the technical strategies that support policy programming and implementation. Unfortunately, all these efforts eventually end up being consigned to desk drawers and animated PowerPoint. Or else, the next government commissions a new set of feasibility studies and generates new blueprints and plans. All this inevitably culminated in gloomy statistics for the Nigerian economy and development efforts in almost all indices of human development. One suffices: the 2022 Multidimensional Poverty Index Survey, released by the National Bureau of Statistics, says that over 130 million Nigerians are multidimensionally poor. This figure represents a whooping 63% of the Nigerian population, and the highest poverty figure in Africa.
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And here we return to the fundamentals: the real issue in the entire policymaking and governance challenge reside in the urgent need to balance between doing the right things (decision making quotient) and doing it right (getting things done or execution). Policy execution is the critical step fundamental to transforming the policymaking and governance challenge in Nigeria. The days to keep multiplying governance plans, programs and blueprints are definitely over as we get closer to 2023 and the general election. The incoming administration really requires to get its act together on doing it right! Visioning, planning and programming can no more be discrete sequential tasks, done at the detriment of one another. It must rather be conceived as an integrated and holistic one rooted in assumptions about the operating environment, public service capability readiness, and performance management of the whole dynamic, among other necessities.
And the starting point on the way forward is to scrutinize the current reform implementation strategy of the present administration. The National Strategy for Public Service Reform (NSPSR), since 2007, has set the frame for reflection about transforming the Nigerian public service system into a world class institution delivering efficient goods and services to Nigerians. And under the current Head of Civil Service of the Federation (HCSF), the iterations of the NSPSR deserves some loud applause for their foresights. Two key dimensions of these iterations involved professionalization and deepening of performance management process. First, there is the deployment of KPIs-based metrics to replace cumbersome APER system. This is meant to enable results-based and M&E-rooted assessment of public officers through the critical utilization of the elements of continuous assessment, dialogue and multi-source feedback mechanisms. The envisioned critical shift will be underpinned by a robust M&E reporting system undergirded by the dynamic of performance agreement, with job evaluation cum restructuring enabled new pay and incentive structure firmly indexed to productivity.
The Nigerian public service is equally digitizing work processes across all MDAs by capturing and storing documents and outputs of the civil service activities in a digital repository. This is a critical advancement given the evolving nature of administration 2.0 in a rapidly digitalizing world instigated by various disruptive technologies that are aiding the modernizing desires of administration all across the world to achieve open government. There is also the ongoing professionalizing of HR function across the service. This is manifest, most famously, through the HR component of the Integrated Payroll and Personnel Information System (IPPIS). The system is also taking a path towards investing in a robust community of practice through capacity development that instigates a service-wide emergence of a network of experts and technocrats. This serves to beef up the service IQ, especially through the senior executive service, as concession to the wisdom to wit, the fish gets rotten from the head.
Of course, more effort is required to get Nigeria to a point where the cumulated bad governance of the past could be canceled by a concerted effort at ensuring good governance. We have gone too far in the wrong direction to think we could be satisfied with just the barest reform successes. We must keep pushing the bounds of reform effectiveness before we can dare to rest a bit on our oars. In the rest of this piece, I will outline five significant reform think points that could generate discourse around the condition of Nigeria’s governance and development objective, post-2023. These think pieces should also be seen as a means by which we could unbundle the binding constraints that have undermined Nigeria’s optimal reform solution for far too long.
One, and once again, we return to the irreducible challenge of leadership, and in this case, the need to create a change space for pushing the required governance change. Leadership serves as a regulatory and harnessing framework that not only generates a governing and governance vision that all can own, as Nigerians. But it must also crucially build a coalition of change agents and strategic teams all across the geo-political zones at the political, technocratic and bureaucratic levels. This readiness to create the change space already critically approximates the key points in arriving at a democratic developmental state. But even more, the cabinet and collaborative teams must not only be highly strategic, it must also be guided by performance agreement and contracts, circumscribed by a change management program, communication strategy, and monitoring and evaluation system that is strong enough to progressively identify and remove obstacles to performance, and configured to enable the different points of operations to work in harmony to achieve overall results and outcomes. This has the distinct advantage of preventing political jobbers and yes-men from undermining the resolve of the government. This way, the government can immediately identify the core functions and responsibilities that must be manned by high-end professionals in ways that cascade down the entire government. The performance agreement and accountability frameworks, grounded within dynamics of authority and incentivized support, are meant to guide the cabinet and strategic teams towards mediating the balance between “doing the right thing” and “doing it right.”
The second critical issue, which reinforces the transition of the Nigerian state into a developmental one, concerns the reengineering of the bureaucracy into a technically-reinforced institution that can achieve implementation capability readiness. Transforming Nigeria’s governance framework requires a public service that is intelligent, flexible, technology-driven, adaptable, forward-looking, entrepreneurial and accountable. Such a public service will: (a) work to deepen an evidence-based policymaking dynamic; (b) enable a policy management protocol that enhances collaborative sharing among MDAs, inter-sectoral synergy and inter-governmental relations; (c) better workforce and workplace planning that undermine hierarchies and remove red tapes, as well as manage talents and succession planning; (d) expand the post-COVID new normal work configuration through the institutionalization of remote working, flexible working hours, virtual framework for operations, and so on; (e) launch a rigorous waste reduction program that will instigate and enhance the national productivity paradigm shift through, for instance, the implementation of the Oronsaye report , productivity audits that free up resources for development projects, setting productivity targets for MDAs, and installing a technical-rational model for wage bargaining that is indexed to productivity, and that drives a democratic and developmental industrial relations.
Following the above as a correlation is the urgent need for Nigeria to develop, through its performance-oriented public service, a national service delivery model. Four years, from 2023 to 2027, are too little and too many to achieve great governance objectives if the incoming administration gets a better handle on time. The question is: what type of changes in four (4) years will translate to significant outcomes and dividends in the lives of the people? For instance, how many jobs can be created on an annual basis in the space of four years? What institutions will deliver these jobs, and how? What governmental procedures and processes will hamper the delivery of these jobs? These questions raise three critical issues. The first has to do with the administrative model the public service deploys in doing government business. The second concerns unbundling the cost of governance situation that disarticulates government’s capacity to deploy resources productively. The third issue is that of the requisite institutions that should be targeted to deliver jobs and create wealth. These institutions fall into three categories—those that implement national priority project; those that regulate rules-based market players like the SMEs; and the rule of law.
Restructuring the Nigerian federation is a fundamental issue that has gone through several thorny and controversial iterations and discourses. I presume, without going into the entire issue, that there are three significant areas that are indispensable to any restructuring framework. One, the idea of resource control. The question is how to stay true to the content of the 1963 Constitution, section 140(i), which provided for the regional control of minerals resources and recommended a 50% royalty to the central government. Two, the issue of state police cannot be wished away in the light of the degenerating levels of insecurity. Three, there is the crucial matter of how the sovereign wealth fund should be reconstituted to aid Nigeria during the rainy days.
Lastly, there is the issue of local government reform that harnesses grassroots governance through the principle of subsidiarity and the deployment of social capital dynamics. The shift from local government to local governance not only enriches Nigeria’s federal experiment, it also mobilizes a people-centered development that deepens citizens’ engagement and mobilizes bottom-up platforms for inclusive planning and programming, needs assessment, and project implementation reinforced with local accountability mechanism rooted in community development charter.
2023 is fast becoming Nigeria’s political, governance and development threshold; a critical point that defines Nigeria’s sixty-three years of nation-building. The incoming administration cannot afford to fritter the opportunity of four solid years away on the usual business of patronage and primitive accumulation that will not only further impoverish Nigerians, but also heat up the polity in ways that further drive Nigeria to the precipice. There are ways to achieve institutional and governance reforms. All that is wanting is the political will to make them happen.
Being Paper Presented at the 28th Nigerian Economic Summit – NES28th – on the theme 2023 & Beyond: Priorities for Shared Prosperity which held at Transcorp Hilton, Abuja on the 14-15 November, 2022)
.Olaopa is a retired Federal Permanent Secretary, and Professor, National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS), Kuru, Jos .
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By Leo Igwe
The Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) is concerned over the reported arrest of two men accused of being ‘witchdoctors’ in Zambia. The arrest underscores the potency of witchcraft fears and the connection between occult anxieties and the country’s politics. These individuals were accused of trying to bewitch the Zambian president, Hakainde Hichilema. The police claimed that they had charms. They planned to use the charms to harm the president. The report says the two persons have been charged under Zambia’s Witchcraft Act. The Act criminalizes “possession of charms”, “professing knowledge of witchcraft”, and “cruelty to wild animals”. The police found the two with assorted charms, including a live chameleon.
This development is utterly embarrassing and shows that the Zambian government is slowly losing its focus and bearing.The country has many socio-economic challenges. Suspicion of bewitchment or possession of charms should be the least of its worries at this time. There should be no place for witchcraft and possession of charms in modern politics because there is no evidence for these beliefs and practices. Zambian authorities should not weaponize the Witchcraft Act or use it to justify this incident. Zambian law does not recognize witchcraft. Zambia’s Witchcraft Act criminalizes naming or imputing witchcraft. It prohibits accusing or threatening to accuse any person of being a witch or a wizard. In this case, it is the police who are breaking the law.
Otherwise, how did they know the two individuals were ‘witchdoctors’? Did these persons identify as witch doctors? If not, the police are liable because they named and imputed witchcraft and have to prove that these individuals have witch-doctoring powers. The police claimed to have charged these individuals for possessing “assorted charms”, including a chameleon. Really?
The police in Zambia have questions to answer: What are charms? How did they know that what was in their possession were charms, not pets? Is a chameleon a form of charm? What makes possession of a chameleon possession of a charm? When and how does a chameleon become a charm? The police need to answer these questions and more before one takes them seriously.
Again, did the individuals describe what was in possession as ‘charms’? If they did, does confessing or designating something as a charm make it a charm? And if they did not, the police are liable because they need to prove how those possessions translated into charms.
In addition, the police claimed that the duo wanted to bewitch the president. What does that mean? How did they know? Are the police not contravening a provision under the Witchcraft Act by professing knowledge of witchcraft? Can one harm another person using a chameleon? They claimed that the two persons wanted to use the charms in their possession, including the chameleon to harm the president. How did they know that? What is the evidence for that?
The Advocacy for Alleged Witches calls for an end to this state-sponsored witch hunt. There is no evidence of harm through witchcraft or charms. The Zambian government should desist from witchcraft- related infractions and violations including arbitrary arrest, and detention of innocent citizens. These allegations are baseless and absurd. The arrest was politically motivated. This development demonstrates that Zambian authorities are out of sync with their duty and obligation to uphold the rule of law and protect accused persons.
Zambian authorities need to act in compliance with the 2021 UN resolution, which urged states to take measures to combat abuses linked to witchcraft beliefs and ritual attacks. End witchcraft allegations in Zambia. End witch hunts in Africa now!
Dr Igwe directs the Advocacy for Alleged Witches.
By Tony Afejuku
The other burning issue, apart from Farotimi and Babalola’s, which I wish to take a look at – and which I am taking a look at now – relates to what is happening in our capital territory. What is this burning issue – which our human rightists and civil society organisations and personages are surprisingly and un-satisfactorily not inclined to focus attention on and examine as they should? I may be wrong, but it surely seems to me that this issue, this burning issue, which is of more importance than Farotimi and Babalola’s – which has been given undue adulation – is deliberately being neglected and depreciated by proclaimers and heroes and heroines of human rights, justice, equity and equality of rights in your country my country our country. Why, why, why and why, why, why? Anyone who has any iota of patriotic sensibility, feeling and judgment well watered and buttressed by a very great influence upon his or her critical judgment will keep on asking the question I am asking.
Mr. Nyesom Wike, as almost everybody who can read and write a little knows, is the current minister of your, my and our Federal Capital Territory. His post or office is akin to that of a governor of a state. As the immediate past governor of Rivers State who was drafted, after his two terms there expired, to continue in the FCT as its new minister-governor or governor-minister under the auspices of a party he is not a true member of, Mr. Wike cannot but be seen as a lucky man. He is in every possible and impossible way. Minister-Governor Wike is a lucky man and a very fortunate one indeed. No former governor of Rivers State (or of any Nigerian state), as far as I know, has achieved what the famed political rouser of rabbles has achieved in one short gubernatorial life-time, and at a relatively young and fertile age. His dual achievement with and in two different political parties at this delicate point of Nigerian politics indicates to our politicians and us all that there is always time for a reminder that there are ready-made high rewards for arch-angels of betrayals. And Mr. Wike may go down in Rivers and Nigerian history as both an arch-angel and an emperor of betrayal of us all if we attempt to indicate what I have defined here as his dual achievement.
We can roughly divide, briefly, Wike’s political development into two periods. During the first, excluding his lower political positions before he became the governor of Rivers State, he quickly adapted his style to that of an emperor who became a rabble-rouser of rabble-rousers whose gubernatorial efficiency moved from stiffness to stiffness. He did not at any time feel that he needed suppleness to govern Rivers State. “Let the heavens fall if they must fall!” We are not there yet in this attempted analysis of the stiff-hearted and stiff-minded one. True? But he is already demonstrating this characteristic in Abuja. False? Judge and give the answer yourself.
Even after he left Rivers State a short while ago as governor, he is still trying to control happenings there to the political discomfiture of his hand-picked successor, his erstwhile “boy” and “son” – with whom he has fallen out. As the minister-governor or governor-minister of the FCT, Wike is occupied with the other taste of the emperor-juggernaut formulator – doing the work of two key political masters in one room and desk of political jugglery. Since his appearance in the FCT, minister-governor or governor-minister Wike has allegedly attempted to recover or transform for Abuja what is not traditionally or socially Abuja’s, for example, the city’s social idiom and landscape and terrain as well as its environs. In doing this he sometimes over-steps his bounds and mark of human/inhuman decency/indecency and psychological understanding of human nature, if you follow well what I am saying; he has so far become at best not really better than a typical pedestrian Nigerian lawyer and officer of political power: in his explorations so far in the Federal Capital Territory we have come to the realization, as T. S. Eliot would say, that “it is so often true that only by going too far can we find out how far we can go.” But one has to be a very negatively obstinate and self-serving emperor and a thorough-bred arch-angel of betrayal of the people and masses to justify such perilous and perfidious expeditions and adventures.
Last week, I saw on Arise Television “The Morning Show” Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, the dutiful widow of the late Nigerian supreme patriot and soldier, Colonel Ogbebor (of Benin stock) battling, so to say, to wrest the legacy of her late husband from the tight grip of the adventurous FCT minister-governor who has registered his name and signature in the hearts and consciousness of the people as the depriver of their possessions. The three anchors of “The Morning Show” were in their respective ways splendid in their structures of remarks and questions to Chief (Mrs.) Rita Lori-Ogbebor whom I have had occasions in times past to call patriotically Rita A-K 47 on account of her natural right to fire her beautiful tongue at any person, usually an enemy, of just actions. When she made the case she made to protect the estate of Paulosa Nigeria Limited, her late husband’s aforesaid legacy in the FCT, she was in her natural territory, habitat and element where even at age eighty-four, she never ever loses her stability – although she unusually restrained herself in the Arise Television appearance. Dr. Reuben Abati, Rufai Oseni, and Ayo Mairo-Ese clearly explored seriously but delightfully the mind of the mother-hen of Warri – my other coinage and appellation I gave her in my poetry. Her “The Morning Show” appearance enabled me to see the poignant cry de profundis of the FCT inhabitants whose property and residences in different guises have been demolished. She did not say anything that was out of joint. She spoke and came out as a mother, protector and symbol of the people who have suffered – and are suffering – from the state of affliction and anguish Wike’s demolitions have placed – and are placing – the people.
Ojy Okpe in her delicious and delectable “What is Trending” slot on the same show, showed without exaggeration but with further elaboration what people in and outside Abuja/FCT think of the mighty Wike’s demolitions, a burning issue that the Senate has asked “Let Heaven Fall” minister-governor Wike to halt as the committee the Senate set up on the issue starts its work. Of course, we cannot but assume that Chief Rita Lori-Ogbebor, Mrs. Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan as well as Mrs. Ireti Kingigbe, the senator representing the FCT in the Senate and other patriotic senators diligently did what they did on the floor of the Senate when the burning issue was tabled for debate with the gracious understanding and authorization of the Senate President.
I need to state further that the “The Morning Show” anchors did well and extremely so by giving the minister-governor the opportunity to air his anti-Paulosa story. His senior special assistant on public communication and social media, Mr. Olalere Olayinka, stood in for him. After he gave the reasons for the clamp-down, his responses to the questions the anchors put to him followed the usual pattern of denials by artificial men in power – denials that they always use to intimidate and betray the people. In fact, Mr. Olayinka’s ploy to ride easily over our dear Rufai Oseni, a wholesome representative of the deprived, that the chap (or is it guy?) and his boss always employ their colloquial speeches and remarks to dishonor, failed. Yes, the ploy failed woefully. In stanza after stanza of the exchanges between Mr. Olayinka and the Arise anchors, he deteriorated – and his deterioration was hall-marked when he unwittingly revealed that the Paulosa land had been acquired by his minister-governor’s close cohort, an act that was nothing short of gross abuse of power and authority.
Because the Senate is already using its authority, power and privilege to resolve the burning issue, hopefully, in a way that the late Colonel Ogbebor’s legacy and family will not be subjected to any kind of degradation, I will utter no more words for now. I trust, however, that the liberties the Senate is taking – or has taken – are for the sake of order to favour the down-trodden.
As for the minister-governor, the PDP emperor at large, here is an immortal quote from Marcus Aurelius, the magnificent and authentic Roman Emperor and philosopher (A.D. 121-180): “If it is not right, do not do it; if it is not true, do not say it.” You lose nothing by giving us a slice of your humanity by your right acts and correct words. Everything changes and passes. Be humane as a human being.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.
By Leo Igwe
Recently, I facilitated a critical thinking workshop at the Bay Wreath Schools in Lagos. The theme was critical thinking and teacher development. As the theme stated, the workshop was on teaching, about teaching, and for teachers. It highlighted the pedagogical value of critical and reflective inquiry. The workshop exposed teachers to critical mental habits and skills. It emphasized how critical thinking would enhance expertise in the learning and delivery of subjects in classrooms.
I used the opportunity to discuss questionstorm as a method of teaching and learning. Questionstorm is a way that I operationalized critical thinking for primary and elementary schools. Questionstorm is the ability to interrogate all objects and materials. It is a habit of questioning ideas and experiences in all areas of human endeavor. Simply put, questionstorm is a question-driven inquiry. Children are naturally curious. They thirst for knowledge and understanding. Unfortunately, the school system kills children’s curiosity and dampens their interrogative appetite. The school system places much emphasis on rote learning and memorization. It makes the generation of answers not questions or problems the test of knowledge, and the determinant of intelligence. Teaching is largely a drudgery, a monotonous exercise, and a process of depositing knowledge on passive recipients, the students. Teaching entails dumping information on learners whose duty is to cram and reproduce during tests or examinations.
This teaching praxis has been criticized and blamed for the poor performance of students post-school (college and university) and their inability to think independently, creatively, and innovatively. Other teaching methods have tried to address these gaps and limitations. There have been suggestions to make teaching and instruction more active, and more student/learner/child-centered. One such method is the Montessori method. The Montessori method discourages grades and tests as ways of measuring achievement or determining intelligence and excellence. It emphasizes hands-on learning and the development of real-world skills. While the Montessori method stresses the practical approach to learning it says very little about the authoritarian teacher-to-student approach that is the mainstay of teaching and learning in classrooms. Teaching follows a pattern that leaves students and learners in the margins and unable to question and contribute to the learning process. Teachers present what is to be learned such as a text, and then generate questions that students respond or address to demonstrate knowledge of what has been taught. The student’s or learner’s main job is to answer questions, to look for or find answers or solutions. The teacher’s work is to get students to look for, and provide answers, and reproduce what they have been taught or told. But students are answer-depots. Students are not memory banks or reserves. They are active minds and thinking agents.
With questionstorm as a teaching method, the mode of instruction would change. Teaching becomes a cooperative endeavor that actively involves teachers and students. What is taught in the classroom is a collaborative note, not the teacher’s note, not a handout to students. Teachers present or generate texts or objects for learning, in response to intense questioning of the object or material by students, teachers provide information as required for that subject, topic, level, and time frame. No two instances of teaching – of the same topic or subject- are or should be the same because the input of students and teachers is not predetermined.
This is because of an overlooked principle in teaching and learning, that I call the “uncertainty principle”.
The uncertainty principle underlies questionstorm because knowledge is not fixed. Learning is a fluid process. All that is to be learned is uncertain, it is unknown and never determined. No teacher can say beforehand what is to be taught or learned because no one knows exactly the questions and answers or replies that would arise when a topic is presented or taught in a particular class. A topic or learning material elicits unique responses and exchanges that both teachers and students cannot exactly know or predict a priori, before the fact.
Teaching is a shared task and responsibility. Class notes are fluid materials. They are not texts cast on educational stones and delivered by teachers to students to copy, cut, and paste as is often the case. Class notes are not written or produced by teachers for students but by teachers with students. Teachers’ notes are incomplete and insufficient. They account only for a part, not a whole of the learning process and material. Students’ input completes and complements the teaching material and learning process. Thus every class note is unique because it is a product of a specific collaborative endeavor, a product of particular teaching and learning agents and circumstances that cannot be repeated or replicated.
Thus, as a teaching method, questionstorm is set to facilitate teacher development and improve the quality of instruction in schools. Questionstorm will help realize a paradigm shift in education and learning. I hope educators, teachers, and school managers will embrace this method of teaching and learning.
Dr Igwe directs the Critical Thinking Social Empowerment Foundation.
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