Agenda for Buhari (3): Social infrastructure

• The Buhari regime should note that education and health care form the basis of human progress

Like most other sectors, the Goodluck Jonathan administration is leaving the education and health sectors worse than it met them. The Muhammadu Buhari administration therefore has the onerous duty of reversing the decay in the two vital sectors. Like Siamese twins, both are inseparable: while education has to do with the development of the mind, health has to do with that of the body.

But first the education sector. The sector has not been spared by the general decay that has eaten deep into the fabrics of the society. Thus, we have a crisis of standards, from the primary school to the tertiary level of education. Poor funding is a major challenge. This reflects in the facilities in the schools. There are no functional libraries in many schools, including the universities, many of which still have on their shelves outdated books and journals; that is, where they have at all. Furthermore, the system is bogged down by frequent strikes by both the academic and non-academic staff unions. Matters are not helped by students and in some cases parents who cheat the system in order to secure placements in the schools, including the unity schools.

The incoming administration should federalise education. Local governments should be in charge of the primary schools while states take responsibility for the secondary schools and the Federal Government should concentrate on tertiary education, particularly universities. Although the outgoing administration created an additional six federal universities to reduce the number of Nigerians seeking university education abroad, these are still inadequate, even as the standards are suspect. This is why, in spite of the establishment of more tertiary institutions in the country, the number of Nigerians seeking the Golden Fleece abroad keeps rising.

Unfortunately, this does not come cheap. Mind-boggling billions of Naira is expended by these Nigerians seeking qualitative education in foreign countries. A Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) figure estimated that the country spent about N1billion on the 71,000 Nigerian students studying in Ghana in 2012. When we add these to the ones in other parts of the world – South Africa, United Kingdom, United States of America, and countries of the former Soviet Union, Canada – some have estimated we could be spending about a trillion naira annually on such students.  This has a lot of implications for our economy, particularly now that crude prices are crashing.

We need a substantial part of these funds to grow the country’s economy. So, the Buhari administration must be ready to fund the education sector adequately because a lot of the problems in the sector has to do with funding. With adequate monitoring and a sustained anti-corruption effort, the money would go a long way in providing the much needed facilities in the institutions. Staff welfare will be better addressed, thereby reducing the frequency of strikes that disrupt academic calendars in the schools. This strategic investment in education is necessary because its benefits are everlasting.

The Buhari administration has to qualitatively and quantitatively address the challenges in the education sector. It is not just by building more schools but by ensuring that the environment is conducive for both teaching and learning.

Almost everything that has been said of the education sector is also true of the health sector. Just as some of our universities were reckoned with globally in decades past, some of our hospitals too enjoyed similar status decades ago. It was the neglect by successive regimes that led to their present decay. Unfortunately, those who should turn things around in the health sector prefer going abroad for treatment of the commonest ailments in what is now commonly referred to as medical tourism.

The incoming government must see it as a national shame that common diseases like cholera, diarrhea are still killing people in Nigeria. We must revive the primary healthcare and the responsibility for this should revert to the local governments. Then, state governments and the Federal Government must be ready to invest in the necessary equipment that would lift our general hospitals and other centres of medical excellence so that they can deliver some of the services that take many rich Nigerians  abroad for medical attention.

Without doubt, governments alone cannot provide the much-needed facilities in our schools and hospitals. But they should provide an enabling environment for people to invest in both sectors. When our hospitals and schools are adequately funded and the welfare of doctors, teachers and other ancillary care providers in the sectors is enhanced, many of the medical personnel who left our shores for greener pasture abroad are likely to return and we can also stop many Nigerians from travelling abroad for higher education and medical tourism, thereby saving the much-needed foreign exchange for development.

Nigeria is blessed with skilled healthcare professionals as well as good teachers. What we lack is the infrastructure/technology and the will on the part of the government. And this is perhaps where the Buhari government has to bring its impact to bear.

‘When our hospitals and schools are adequately funded and the welfare of doctors, teachers and other ancillary care providers in the sectors is enhanced … we can also stop many Nigerians from travelling abroad for higher education and medical tourism’