I went to my children’s school the day it reopened after the pandemic and was surprised to see how quiet the classes were. I looked into the classrooms as I headed to the Headmistress office and couldn’t help but laugh at what I saw: the children were seriously trying to copy down what was on the board into the notebooks. It’s heartbreaking as I think of it now. But then, the amount of concentration I saw in those pupils clicked something off my brain: they have forgotten how to write.

I later approached my 7-year old son’s teacher and inquired of how the students were performing. She hissed, shook her head and said, “You won’t believe it if I tell you most of them have forgotten how to write A B C D to Z.” And this is Primary 2.

This young lady’s encounter is also faced by many teachers across the country; for those that have resumed anyway. Many students and pupils have forgotten what they were taught in school before the pandemic. Some are even beginning to readjust to the school environment. In fact, both teachers and their students/pupils are working hard to shake off the effect of the pandemic on education.

But then, the pandemic wasn’t the cause of this problem; it only created an opportunity for us to see it. Our education system has always had issues and that is why students struggle with their academics in this country. Academic activities are always made to look like war, our classrooms are given the face of a battle ground, and the students are made to believe that they must win those battles. We no longer send our children to school in order to pick up knowledge about the things in the environment; we send them to school to compete with their peers. For that, the only things they do there are to cram whatever the teacher said, pour them out on exam scripts, pick up good grades, and then forget everything that was taught. This cycle repeats itself the following term and the term after that and so it continues.

Today, teachers are paying for the mistakes committed by everyone: teachers, parents, pupils and the government. The teachers have their own share of the blame because they rush through their works in order to cover up their schemes. For that, they devise improper and outdated teaching methods that will instil sentences into the students and not knowledge. Hence, when these students forget the sentences, the underlying knowledge fizzles out with them.

We as parents have also contributed to this problem. We want our two-year old children in pre-nursery to start reading comprehension passages and writing two-paged compositions. If a school authority decides to take it easy with them so that they will learn at their pace, we either tell them to hurry up or we will withdraw our children to miracle-working schools, where teachers have mastered the act of mechanical teaching and learning. Hope we’re enjoying that now.

The government that packs up a lot of topics and subjects for children to study also has their share in the blame. How many times have their inspectoral bodies gone round to supervise how these children are taught? The Ministry of Education and Nigerian Educational Research and Development Centre (NERDC) should consider reducing the number of topics pupils in Primary 1 to 3 do in every subject. Five topics in a subject per term, as against ten or more that is obtainable now, is enough for these children. That way, teachers can spread a topic to two or three weeks and take their time to make sure that the students understood and assimilated what they learnt.

As for we parents, let’s concentrate on teaching our children how to improve on themselves and not how to compete with their classmates. Most of the great men and women in history were not the best in their classes; some of them were even marked off by their teachers. But look at them today, history remembers and will continue to remember them. Let your child learn to be a winner and not a competitor.

And then for teachers and school owners, I think it’s time we changed our teaching methods. Enough with teaching without aid; enough with asking students/pupils to keep repeating what you said until they cram it; enough with spending time to teach on making the students copy voluminous notes so that it will look as if you were very industrious. We all are paying the price of past mistakes; it’s time to make a change.

Sterling Bank has got the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)’s approval to move from stand-alone commercial bank to a holding company (holdco).The Nation reported that the bank is on the verge of obtaining the final approval to convert to a holding company.

According to the report, Sterling Bank, in accordance with banking regime requirement, has divested from its non-bank subsidiaries. The regime requires banks with non-bank subsidiaries to divest or adopt holdco structure.

Explaining the structure, Sterling Bank CEO, Abubakar Suleiman said the bank’s desire to operate as a holding company was driven by its plan to spin off its non-interest banking window which became operational in January 2014 into an autonomous entity.

He explained that the holdco structure enables the non-interest bank and other non-core businesses achieve greater results based on focused management of the distinct businesses while there would be improved efficiency resulting from the consolidation of key functions such as compliance, risk management and other support functions, yielding improved prospects for individual business growth.

Abubakar said Sterling Bank believes the proposed structure incorporates efficiencies around operations and financing efforts that will support the individual businesses in reaching full potential through increased portfolio diversification and improved efficiency among others.

He further explained that the group would also benefit from enhanced corporate governance, which serves to promote a consistent culture across the group and quality of service to customers, thereby facilitating sustainability of earnings.

Suleiman added that the holdco structure would also facilitate better access to capital by leveraging the consolidated financial strength of the group which would have been otherwise difficult for each individual subsidiary company.

“Going into the holding company structure, our desire is to entrench our business model premised on social capitalism where we believe that private sector capital and market-based tools will offer the best types of solutions to Nigeria’s most pressing social and environmental challenges. The holding company gives us the structure to explore our business model further,” he said.

Suleiman explained that the holding company is designed to operate on three major premises of specialization, partnership and digitization.

He said while the conventional bank will focus on building skills and using technology to provide solutions in the areas that are critical to development in the country including health, education, agriculture, renewable energy, transportation (HEART), the non-interest bank will focus on building partnerships that connect individuals and businesses leveraging technology to create business optimization while solving for individual daily financial need.

“The overall business will focus on social impact, corporate responsibility and religious compliance in its dealings. Our digitization drive will create an enabling environment for both financial institutions to grow while providing services and support to build efficiencies in different ecosystems. The execution of our plans is fully dependent on our interwoven operating model of agility, specialization and digitization,” he said.

Recent changes by the CBN, including the downward review of their charges for account maintenance on deposit money, have impacted the revenue generation of some Nigerian banks.

Sterling Bank is among the banks affected badly by the impact of the apex bank’s decision. Compared to its revenue in Q2 2019 (N4.1bn), the bank lost nearly half of its revenue (N2.4b) in the Q2 of 2020. For the first half of 2020, Sterling Bank made N5.4 billion in profit, below what it made (N5.7bn) in the same period in 2019.

However, the bank also went above the benchmark to record a loan to deposit ratio of 68.2% in Q2 of 2020, and met capital and liquidity requirements at 15.2% and 33.5% respectively.

The strains of COVID-19 pandemic took a toll on the financial industry, plummeting gains and prospects. But Sterling Bank’s Tier-2 improved its income by 9.6% between Q1 and Q2 despite the challenges. However, high interest rates became an obstacle that cannot be overlooked.

Naira Metrics reported that Sterling’s proportion of interest expense to interest income is at 40.9%, which provides insight that the Tier-2 bank failed to generate sufficient cheap deposits and borrowings to run the bank’s business with.

These developments of losses, including the need for digitization, emphasized the need for diversification for Sterling, and going ‘holdco’ which has been in the pipeline was hastened.