With many schools now adopting virtual learning in response to COVID-19 for the benefits of their students observing the lockdown, Prof Bongo Adi, of the Lagos Business School, holds the view that it’s a laudable policy but may be counterproductive in Nigeria. Excerpts:
Schools are moving online. That’s a good way to manage the disruptions of the current containment measures. However, it is important for schools to recognise that the other side of the equation-the students and learners-need additional resources to keep pace. Without reliable internet access and constant electricity, learner participation in the online lectures is inhibited.
As things stand, reliable internet access and electricity are only affordable to less than 5% of Nigerians. The online education which schools are pushed to adopt in response to Covid-19 disruptions risks worsening the fragile state of marginalisation and inequality in the system. This is how a well-intentioned policy could yield an unintentioned, ugly, outcome.
This is the same way the lockdowns are currently generating so many negative, unanticipated, consequences or what economists call negative externality. People are forced indoors – a good safety measure against contracting a highly infectious disease – but without due consideration or compensation given to their livelihoods and survival strategies. In our peculiar situation where public utilities, especially electricity, is almost nonexistent, it is not strange therefore that most citizens perceive the lockdown as a draconian form of oppressiveness.
Schools going online is a great innovation but in a system where internet access is still extremely limited and very costly, in addition to costly, privately provided electricity, which is necessary to have computers or phones running the internet, such innovation may turn out to be another instrument of impoverishment and oppression as it threatens to expand already wide social inequalities.
I am in support of schools going online. But it is important for managers of schools to recognise that most students and their parents lack the resources to effectively participate in such programmes. Many do not have regular electricity; most cannot afford it. Most do not have internet access; some cannot afford it. But beyond all these, household incomes have shrunk in response to rising inflation, unanticipated and therefore, unprovisioned lockdowns and the varied anxieties of Covid-19.
Online education in our context and at this material time imposes extra costs on parents and guardians as they come under pressure to invest in computers, internet modem and running electricity generators. These are significant, additional, costs that are not negligible. It is important to give consideration to these in policy transitions so as not to worsen situations that are already hanging on the precipice-like social inequality and poverty in Nigeria.
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