The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Education

  • FEC approves N377b for roads, power, education, others

    FEC approves N377b for roads, power, education, others

    THE Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting yesterday approved over N377. 53 billion for projects covering roads, power, education, water, health among other projects, after over six hours meeting.

    Ministers of Transportation Rotimi Amaechi, Power  Works and Housing Babatunde Fashola, Water Resources Suleiman Adamu and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Mohammed Bello briefed State House correspondents at the end of FEC meeting chaired by President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

    Fashola, said council approved the completion of Police Service Commission headquarters in Abuja.

    He said: “That project was approved for variation to enable its completion over the next six months. The initial cost was N3.486 billion and it has been increased to 3.925 billion, it is a variation of N439.113 million.”

    He said council also approved Nnamdi Azikiwe Mausoleum in Anambra State. The project was started but not completed from previous administration.

    “Council approved the additional funding to complete it from N1.496 billion to N1.953 billion”.

    He said council approved road projects, which include Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria to Kano, at the cost of N155.7 billion and Efire-Araromi-Aiyede-Aiyela road to connect Ondo and Ogun State at cost of N14.4 billion.

    The minister said for the Amansia section of Enugu-Onitsha highway, council approved the variations of the cost of N38.74 billion to enable the contractor progress with the work.

    Fashola said council also approved  money for the intervention of education and healthcare.

    It approved the provision of independent power plant to nine universities and one teaching hospital as the first phase of the pilot programme to cover 37 universities at the cost of N38.965 billion to provide dedicated power to the universities, which include street lighting and  workshop to train the students post-completion.

    Adamu said council ratified augmentation of funds to complete Adada dam, Igbo-Atiti LGA in Enugu State, with the aim of providing water to the university town of Nsukka.

    It comprises of a dam, some kilometres of pipeline, water supply to some communities along the route and to water treatment plant.

    The Enugu State government, he said, is expected to take the conveyance system from where we stop from the water treatment plant into Nsukka town and provide the necessary distribution, storage and reservoirs.

    He said: “The project was started in 2010. This project has been augmented and council approved that the project be completed now at N5.6 billion by the end of 2018.

    Amaechi said council approved production and distribution of core text books for early education classes 1-3 and for primary 4-6 in public schools nationwide.

    According to him, the government has resolved to investigate distribution of textbooks to schools in the country between 2009 and 2011 before commencement of the distribution of the new textbooks.

    “Council also gave approval for Jos Central Library and the construction of the faculty of animal sciences and engineering,” he said

    Amaechi said: “For Ministry of Transport, we had approval for two vessels called pilot cutters to escort vessels into the seaport. Prior to this time, they were hiring now. We have approval for NPA to buy theirs at the cost of N1.9 billion.

    “Also council approved another two vessels of 17 meters in the eastern port that will help monitor and assist vessels into the seaport at the cost of N1.2 billion.

    “Council also approved the award of contract for direct procurement of installation and commissioning of Wide Area of multilateration for the Gulf of Guinea at the cost of N3.9 billion. This is to help capture those equipment flying below the radar, for us to be able  to pick them because it will be dangerous if we cannot because a lot of them use helicopters.

    “There was also an approval for the consultancy services to construct a new terminal building at Mallam Aminu Kano Airport. We just  want to complete the payment, which is at N621 million.

    “Council also approved the purchase of flight calibration inspection at the cost of N111.6 million.

    “One other key project that was approved is the engagement of consultants for the project management, monitoring and evaluation including media and public relations services of the UNEP report.

    “The president has also directed immediately that remediation should start and so the processes for remediation should come to council within the next six months so that we can commence the activities of reclaiming the land from the disastrous stage that it is now. The President reminded the cabinet that he was in Ogoni during campaign and had promise that the UNEP report will be carried out.”

    The FCT Minister said council approved the completion of the Goodluck Jonathan Way in the FCT that links traffic from Keffi-Nyanya into the city.

    “We got an augmentation of an additional N3.8 billion and with the funding the road will be completed any moment from now.

    Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity Garba Shehu said that the FEC which will continue today, has gone half way into the over 40 memos for consideration.

    According to analysis of the various projects later released by Shehu, the road projects are coming at a time when the administration has increased the pace of the completion of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway and is considering increasing the scope of work on the East-West expressway, Port Harcourt to Lagos, the Second Niger Bridge and other roads.

    “The first two years of the government have witnessed a drastic reduction of the number of stalled road projects and the commencement of new ones all over the country. At the rate it is boosting infrastructure investments, roads, rail and power, the Buhari administration has undoubtedly found the road to glory,” he stated.

    He said the meeting was extended to today to enable the council deliberate and take decisions on pending issues.

    According to him, the Federal Government plans to make Nigerians happy by providing tangible and meaningful projects to uplift their quality of life.

  • ‘PPP, education will unlock Nigeria’s potential’

    For Nigeria to compete in the 21st Century global economy there is the need for advanced skills development strategies and policies that are strong enough to adjust to changes in the economic landscape and the associated demands for skills.

    There is also the need for public-private partnership to enhance the quality of education and ensure that education system- from traditional structures, to vocational and new approaches, are producing the necessary skills for the country’s current needs while anticipating its skills needs in the future.

    These are key highlights of a new report by General Electric (GE) Nigeria titled: “The Future of Work in Nigeria; Bridging the Skills Gap: The Key to Unlocking Nigeria’s Inherent Potential.”

    The report highlighted skills requirements in critical sectors of the economy and formed part of GE’s global ‘The Future of Work’ series to highlight the need for investment in sustainable skills development. It recommended holistic private-public partnership to address the skills gaps and underscore the links between relevant skills set and industrialisation.

    GE commissioned a survey of four key industries namely: oil & gas, transportation, healthcare and power for insight from their key leaders, including Chief Executive Officers (CEOs), Human Resources (HR) and operations directors on the impact of skills shortage on businesses, as well as the ways to them.

    President and CEO of GE Nigeria, Mr. Lazarus Angbazo, said the GE was committed to building a world that works better. “We are committed to building skills to meet critical needs and fill skills gaps domestically and globally,” he said.

    He said the aim was to achieve success by building collaboration, increasing employability, and engaging the public sector and business community. “We understand that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to skills development. Indeed, it varies across countries and sectors,” he said.

    Angbazo, however, said what is constant is the need for both the public and private sector to come together to ensure that the education system- from traditional structures, to vocational and new approaches are producing the necessary skills for the country’s current needs while anticipating its skills needs in the future.

  • ‘We want to use culture to promote education’

    ‘We want to use culture to promote education’

    The Vice-Chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU) Ile-Ife, Osun State, Professor Eyitope Ogunbodede has said that the university is now poised to imbibe seriously the culture aspect of the motto of the institution.  Ogunbodede made this remark in an interview with The Nation during the celebration of the late Alagba Adebayo Faleti by the OAU in Ile-Ife.

    “It is our responsibility now to incorporate culture into the learning process of the University.  You know the motto of the school is learning and culture.  But I think in the past, we’ve paid more attention to the leaning aspect of the motto.  Now it is time to focus more on culture in order to make the training of our future leaders more comprehensive.  It is not the teaching that is the problem, but what you do with it when you are here or when you have left here.  When you leave here you’d know that culture is an important component of what you came here to learn.  So that is the idea and we hope to pursue this approach more vigorously”.

    Ogunbodede who turned out for the celebration in a colourful traditional flowing agbada with a cap to compliment it, told of how his White friends usually wonder how good and neat Nigerians appear when they adorn themselves in their native wears.  “I often tell them that it is the best way for us to show how beautiful our traditional attires are and they make us look elegant when we wear them.  Anytime we attend conferences or programmes together, I reserve my best traditional wear for the last day.  This is usally deliberate in order to tease them the more”, he said while addressing the audience made up of students, academics, artistes and dignitaries from far and near.  This was inside the Pit-Theatre of the Dramatic Arts Department of the institution.

    Reacting to the statement that Faleti, a great artiste known for his love for the promotion of the cultural ideals of the Yoruba race, would be celebrated every year, Ogunbodede declared, “We are not restricting this celebration.  Actually Baba Adebayo Faleti’s works cut across Nigeria.  So you have the ministries, the universities and schools that use his books.  Anytime we hope to celebrate him, we would collaborate with all these institutions to make it better.  It is still part of the ideals to propagate what Faleti stood for in his cultural evolution of Nigeria”.

    Almost every Yoruba person knows Faleti’s stage plays.  Therefore, it is time to start programmes that will keep his works in the memories of people.  This is part of what the Institute of Cultural Studies of OAU has chosen to do.  Ogunbodede inferred thus:  “So Baba’s works are not what you can restrict to OAU alone.  We are therefore inviting everybody – those who benefited from his numerous contributions to knowledge, to culture, to theatre, to film, to languages, to literature, all will always join us to ensure that we give him the best every year.  All those people interested in advancing the works of Faleti, we also hope to partner with them to do this from time to time”.

    But in all this, whether it is celebrated in OAU or not, the most important thing is that the centre of the celebration must remain Alagba Adebayo Faleti, his legacies, his ideals, his visions, his mission, et al.  “We can move the celebration anywhere.  That doesn’t really matter.  Our attention may be on any aspect of his works so long as the issues he raised thereto are fully eulogized and brought to the fore.  When we celebrate what he stood for, we will try to lay emphasis on his concept of culture – on Nollywood or on his own personal mode of dressing and so on”.

    Ogunbodede also vowed that this new concept of the promotion of culture would go beyond his tenure in office.  “What is most important is to lay the foundation for what is good.  Now that I have begun it, others coming after me would follow suit.  When you laid a solid and good foundation for something it would endure.  And you could see from the attendance and responses today that both the university community and outsiders love what we did.  Today we had the presence of his family members, fellow artistes from far and near.  So I have no doubt in my mind that this is something that will last forever”.

    He promised that henceforth the university will also be celebrating other renowned Yoruba artistes like Duro Ladipo, Ola Rotimi and many more in their category.

  • El-Rufai, teachers and the state of education

    It is natural to sympathize with Kaduna’s embattled teachers as I see pictures and videos of people taking to the streets to protest ‘the unjust decision’ of the governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai but the pain of having been a victim of this systemic rot would not let me throw away the benefits that this cataclysmic reform comes with.

    I share in the pain of the disengaged teachers, the zeal Malam El-Rufai’s decision, and the experience of struggling to undo the effect of this systemic rot.

    As typical of the Nigerians, the Kaduna state government’s decision to let go of under-qualified teachers will rule the media space for a while before Nigerians decide to take home the vital information hidden in this decision. Hence, the vital information will be lost again and as usual, it will all be relegated to politics, pettiness, and propaganda.

    Malam El-Rufai is not someone who will be pressured into bowing to the will of the people affected by this decision as it is in his character to get things done not minding whose ox is gored.

    But in the midst of this, the big picture hangs and shines brighter than the painting and coloration the people may portray of the governor. It also exceeds that of which the general public may make of the over 20,000 teachers affected by this decision. As Nigerians have been known for, kicking legs in the place of the ball is not a new phenomenon as it is a veritable mechanism that has enabled the nation to repeat the tragedies that come with not observing the context of history and learning its lessons. But the bigger picture is beyond El-Rufai; it is a composition of the system created by ineffectual policies that have refused to train workers engaged in a job, and ultimately accepting the crumbs that ineptitude serves as the ultimate balance diet, all to the nourishment of the grave of human development and progress.

    Before El-Rufai were several administrations that saw no need to engage those teachers in constant training to enhance and fortify their competence and to weed out square pegs in round holes or at most redeploy them to other ministries where they fit in. Presently, El-Rufai’s decision being hailed as heroic and a perfect attempt at overhauling a system infested by incompetent teachers is only but a challenge at the symptoms of the problem of free education in Nigeria as the cause will still linger if not taken care of. To know that a primary four test for primary school teachers generated such failure is to imagine what will be the fate of the remaining if a primary six standard test is set for them.

     

    • Caleb Ogbonna,

    Abuja.

  • Group canvasses more commitment to education

    A non-governmental organisation, the Human Development Initiatives (HDI), in collaboration with Universal Basic Education, (UBE), has called on education stakeholders in Nigeria to be more dedicated to the course of education in the country. Speaking during the 2015 Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) Action Plan sensitisation, Johnson Ibidapo, Programme Officer of HDI in Nigeria, made the call.

    Ibidapo lamented the unwillingness of many States in Nigeria to make their action plans known to the public, saying the action plans are public documents that should be regularly published. He encouraged stakeholders in Lagos State to take cognizance of projects being implemented in their localities and ensure strict compliance as well as prevent diversion of such projects to other locations not stated in the SUBEB action plan.

    Deputy-director at the Lagos State Ministry of Education, Ademola Lawrence, opined that Nigerians should go beyond criticism and engage themselves in personal monitoring of projects so as to be able to give feedbacks to the government. He tasked stakeholders to rise up and help the current administration to take education in the state to a viable position. Present at the event were parents, civil society organizations and other stakeholders in the educational secure.

     

  • Buhari restates commitment to massive investment in education

    President Muhammadu Buhari yesterday reaffirmed his administration’s commitment towards massive investments in education.

    The President insisted that anything short of that would greatly undermine the nation’s drive towards accelerated development.

    Buhari spoke at the 47th Convocation ceremony of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

    The President, who was represented by the Minister of State for Education, Prof Anthony Anwukah, said his administration was mindful of the role education plays in the development of any society.

    He vowed not to shy away from his responsibility towards the sector.

    He said it was for that reason that government has been making increased budgetary allocations to the sector especially the tertiary education.

    He said government appreciates the roles of the universities in the uplift of the socio-economic life of the country, adding “that’s why we shall continue to give the necessary support to enable them achieve the objectives for which they were established”.

    He asked the graduands to take advantage of various aspects of the economic programs of the federal government relevant to them by turning themselves into employers of labour rather searching endlessly for the white collar jobs which are not readily available.

  • UNESCO, World Bank to partner on early child education

    UNESCO, World Bank to partner on early child education

    The United Nations Organisation for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) has commenced talks with the World Bank to expand advocacy and supports for early childhood education in the country.

    UNESCO Regional Director, Mr. Ydo Yao, who stated that every Nigerian child has right to early childhood learning said there was need for partnerships to conduct needs assessment on the Early Childhood Care Education (ECCE) Play and Resilient project, aimed at promoting basic education and enabling easy transition to primary classes.

    He disclosed this at a stakeholders meeting, held in Abuja to discuss report findings on the ECCE needs assessment conducted in Adamawa and Ebonyi States. The China-Africa collaboration project is being implemented also in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

    Responding to commitments from the World Bank representative, Dr. Tunde Adekola, who charged stakeholders to extend the study to other states, Yao said UNESCO was ready and willing to work with the Bank.

    The project was aimed at supporting states and non-state actors, challenged with poor ECCE to develop their capacity and materials production.

    Yao said: “UNESCO is not a funding agency but when we heard about you saying money is not an issue, we are very happy. As you know, we are technical cooperation agency. We initiate some ideas on technical issues that we share with government and when government sees that it is good like this project, we are very happy.

    “The government has bought into this, so the second phase is to look for partners, who will accompany us to make maximum impact on children in Nigerian as much as possible because, you have really said it, the few states we conducted the study on are not enough and all Nigerian children deserve to be taken care of.

    “I can assure you that my team and others will meet very soon, come up with a proposal so that you can accommodate us in this scaling up and majority of the children can benefit from it.”

    Adekola, who is World Bank Senior Education Specialist, urged all concerned stakeholders to replicate the study in the states, especially Kano, Jigawa, Niger, and Sokoto.

    He called for consistent capacity building for teachers in order to deliver good and quality education to the pupils.

    According to him, the ECCD is a very sustainable strategy to reduce out of school children in Nigeria. “The experience has shown, when people get closer to education, it is like air. Once you breathe in, you won’t die. You can talk about the quality of air you breathe which will determine your lifespan but in terms of existence, you need air to breathe, the same thing with education.

    “If children start breathing in very early in life, many of us who are here it’s because we are part of the experience. I will like to say ECCD can provide equity of opportunity for everybody to have same opportunities to have access and better life in the future so that things will go on,” Adekola said.

    The representative, who lauded UNESCO’s effort on the recommendations in the report restated commitment of the World Bank to addressing the situation and to solve problem of inequality and guarantee better future for the children.

    His words: “I will advise Niger, Kano, Jigawa and Sokoto State to replicate this type of study in the states. Let’s meet with the SUBEC Chairman on this so they can use it as a tool for policy dialogue. It is not by coming to Abuja and talking to people here but the real people are over there. Anything we discuss here, we are just discussing between ourselves.

    “We are ready and we will support part of the meager resources. We also have resources in additional financing to states in the north east, so we need to do everything possible to ensure they also have this type of study.”

    “We are ready to support you in advocacy, capacity building of all the relevant stakeholders of the state actors and non-state actors, federal, state, local governments and the biggest of all caregivers, the teachers themselves, Adekola added.”

    He argued that the chunk sum of budget to the sector is being spent on the teachers, thus similar value should be derived from teachers to the pupils.

  • Fixing education’s woes

    Last week, President Muhammadu Buhari gathered his ministers, aides, heads of parastatals and others to Aso Rock to discuss the education sector.

    At that meeting, the Education Minister, Mallam Adamu Adamu lamented the poor funding of the sector over the years, saying budgetary allocations were nowhere near what even smaller countries spent on education.

    Between 2012 and 2017, the highest amount Nigeria has allocated to the education was 10.53 per cent of the 2014 budget, which came toN493 billion. The average has been six per cent. In 2018, the government plans to spend seven per cent on education.

    Adamu is asking for up to N1 trillion yearly which would bring Nigeria closer to spending double digits percentage on education.

    Former Education Minister, Dr Obiageli Ezekwesili is also supportive of increased investment in education. She said countries like Singapore, China, Malaysia and India have moved from the backwaters of under development to the superhighway of development because they invested in human capital development. She gave China as an example of one country that lifted 700 million of its people out of poverty in 30 years.

    She is positive that commitment to human capital development like these countries, will change the lives of over 100 million Nigerians currently living below the poverty line.

    I applaud President Buhari for setting time aside to discuss how to move our education sector forward. I also praise the Education Minister for being honest enough to lay the poor state of the sector bare to the President, warning him he would not fulfil his party’s campaign promises if he failed to commit more funds to the sector.

    My concern, however, is with the judicious use of whatever funds are allocated to education. I expect that with what he learnt from the retreat, President Buhari would go back to shake the national purse, checking what the nation could do away with so education could get more money. It is therefore of utmost importance that the money be expended well. It must achieve the purpose for which it was voted. It is not enough to budget more money; it would come to no avil if at the end of the day we have nothing to show for it. Before even voting more money, we must decide what direction we want to go with our education. What do we want to achieve? Where is the world going? What opportunities are there for us to take advantage of? What can we give that the world needs? How can we take advantage of our young population? To do these, the President and his team cannot work without data. Nigeria is notorious for not have trusted data to work with. We like to politicise everything – manipulating population figures, achievements, results, learning outcomes just to score political points. We don’t need that any more. We need the truth and data gathered the proper way will tell us the truth we need to take the right decisions for our future. So, dear President, do not vote more money without knowing what the data says about enrolment, retention in schools, number of teachers, number of schools, infrastructure, assessment of learning outcomes, and the like. And, please, let this data be gathered by our own people – not development partners.

    After budgeting on the basis of available data, the next challenge would be for the President to ensure that the budget performs. The funds have to be released in time – and – the funds have to be judiciously utilised. We don’t want to hear things like a classroom block that should have cost N20 million was built for 60 and yet requires major repairs within a year of use. We should follow the money. When what is budgeted can be accounted for, then we can say we have invested in education and our future.

     

  • Rescuing Kaduna’s troubled education sector

    Sir: It is no longer  news that  over  21,780  teachers  in   the   employment   of  Kaduna  State government could not pass the primary four examination organised to assess their competence for continuous employment. What is rather baffling is the attempt of the teachers under the state chapter of the Nigeria Union of Teachers to blackmail the state government into condoning mediocrity in a critical sector of the polity.

    The Kaduna saga again brought to the fore the rot in our educational system.  The latest   discovery reveals the quality of individuals who find their way into the noble calling of teaching. It clearly indicates that those we entrusted the future of our children are not the best of us.  Teaching nowadays has become the last resort for both the unemployed and the unemployable graduates. Hence, it is now a refuge for all types of charlatans.

    However as deplorable as the situation is, it is only a symptom of a more fundamental cause in our educational system. We are only scratching the surface if we think we can isolate the teachers as the only problem in the entire education sector.  We need to fundamentally address a situation whereby educational disciplines in our tertiary institutions are not attractive to students.

    How come our faculties of education suffer perennial poor enrolments? How come teaching does not ignite passion in our youths? Are teachers accorded the same respect with the bankers or other lucrative professions in our society?

    Why would landlords prefer to let their houses to bankers rather than teachers? What are the teachers’ remunerations like? How committed is the government to the training and retraining of teachers?

    These posers raise fundamental issues of funding, remunerations, motivations and recognitions. These are critical issues that must be addressed.

    The kind of premium placed on teaching profession in other climes is not replicated here. In Cuba, for instance, according to a 2014 report by the World Bank, the country has the best education system in Latin America and the Caribbean and the only country on the continent to have a high-level teaching faculty. Peter Dolton, Sussex University Economics Professor and author of the Global Teacher Status Index stated that attracting good quality and well-qualified people into teaching is accepted as the essential prerequisite to raising educational standards. In Finland and Singapore, teachers are recruited from the most-qualified graduates, all with a second degree. Here in Nigeria reverse is the case as recruitment into public service including teaching service is for “political settlement or compensation”. And because you cannot sow pepper and reap onions, the seed of years of inequities have now germinated and become full grown before our very eyes. Unfortunately it is the innocent children who bear the brunt of the recruitment error.

    This problem needs to be tackled holistically because we cannot be paying lip service to the sector and expects a dramatic result. The compromised recruitment system whereby selections are largely based on patronage as against merit need to be revisited. Only those who are competent   and passionate about the job should be recruited. The Kaduna experience is a clarion call to refocus on the sector. The opportunity it provides to get rid of the bad eggs in the system should not be lost to political consideration. Special attention should be devoted to teachers’ training. Special incentives should be created to stimulate interests in the study of education related disciplines. Teachers should be well motivated such that they would have pride in the profession. This would ultimately attract the best brains to the profession.

    As for the ‘casualties’ of the proposed reforms in Kaduna, they should assisted with training for other vocations while those who are trainable should be retained and made to undergo necessary skills acquisition  to  enhance their capacity for teaching.

     

    • Babatunde M. Tijani

    Isolo, Lagos State.

  • Education: summits and retreats (1)

    The three major issues about education all over the world are access, quality, and equity

    When all the talents in society are not fully developed, it is not the individuals that are adversely affected alone who suffer; the society as a whole suffers as well. Now, granting that every Nigerian is given an opportunity to develop his talents, it is imperative that he should also be given an opportunity to employ these developed talents. Full development of man and his full employment are not only social imperatives, but also inseparably inter-connected and complementary.-Address delivered to Ondo State House of Assembly (1980)
    Boosting education will be a direct counterbalance to Boko Haram’s appeal. In particular we must educate more young girls, ensuring they will grow up to be empowered through learning to play their full part as citizens of Nigeria and pull themselves up and out of poverty.- President Muhammadu Buhari
    My single advice is that we must take education seriously, and we must do much more to educate our children.-President Buhari after returning from medical treatment in London
    That the issue of Education funding is too important to be left in the hands of Government alone if we must achieve functionality in education. It must be the business of all stakeholders. That Government should fund education at the Primary school level while parents should be responsible for the education of their children at the Secondary and Tertiary levels.
    •From Communique of a recent Ondo State Summit on Education

    In the last three weeks, there have been two important meetings on education: a summit in Akure and a retreat in Abuja. These meetings show the importance the two levels of government attach to exploring and solving the myriad problems confronting education in the country. National and subnational debates on education had been regular in the country even before independence. The quotations from Awolowo, Buhari, and from the communique of the Akure meeting above illustrate how politicians and government leaders have been paying attention to education, especially in the last two decades. Undoubtedly, summits and retreats are some of the ways to address some of the issues in the troubled and troubling education sector. But before communiques can be transformed into policy, there are lots of issues that need to gain attention of citizens, governments, and politicians.

    Without doubt, education is a matter that has pivotal bearing on the future of the country, and its place in the context of globalisation. And education is too important for its reform to be settled at summits and retreats, unless other critical issues have been identified, studied, and agreed upon by all that stand to benefit from education and training that are becoming increasingly indispensable in the modern world. Pointedly, deliberations by “stakeholders” need to be supported by deep philosophical and ideological debate by citizens and their leaders. Such stakeholders summit also need to be supported by data assembled by professional researchers.

    If the national and sub-national governments have held several summits and retreats on education in the last two decades and are still holding such meetings even under governments of optimism and change voted into power two years ago, it means that summits or retreats by themselves are not capable of bringing needed solution to this sector. The multifactorial decline of education in terms of access, quality, and equity is too deep-rooted to be sorted out in a two-day meeting of stakeholders, regardless of how talented such stakeholders are, more so in an atmosphere that seems devoid of clear ideological thinking on the role of education in the 21st century.

    The three major issues about education all over the world are access, quality, and equity. All governments and stakeholders that had used education to improve the quality of life of their citizens and of people of other countries through trading of products of improved minds of people in Europe, the Americas, and Asian Tigers are in the habit of continually reviewing and renewing their education sector from these three angles. And none of the countries cited for political and economic success today: UK, USA, Canada, Germany, Russia, U.A.E., Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Japan, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, etc., had moved away from the model of reducing public education to just six years of schooling. Not even the United States of America, the world’s richest capitalist country nor China, the world’s wealthiest communist country.

    Without believing that the communique issued at the end of the recent summit on education in Akure was designed to serve as a policy document that to limit citizen’s access to free primary education to primary school in the state, this column believes that ‘summiteers’ were rather insensitive to the concerns of citizens in the state. Announcing what amounts to an end to a tradition of 67 years of free primary education and 38 years of free secondary education in the state at the end of a two-day meeting by a few wise men require more explanations on the part of government about a meeting that many citizens must have considered to be fact-finding.

    When the Action Group government of Obafemi Awolowo initiated free primary education in January 1955, revenue to the state then was not up to 10% of what comes to the state today, just as the population of school-age children then was not more than 10% of the people residing in Ondo State today. Awolowo and his advisers were also told that the Western Region could not sustain free primary education. But the government then believed in its vision and pursued it by raising taxes and establishing Western Nigeria Lottery to finance what now made it possible for millions of people of Western Nigeria now in diaspora to be sending to the eight states in the region to remit close $15 billion to the states carved out of the region. That vision that knowledge is needed to improve quality of life of the individual and the status of the society appeared to have been absent at the recent summit in Akure. But it is not too late restore that vision, especially that the governor has not commented on the summit.

    If President Obasanjo initiated free Universal Basic Education scheme for the first nine years of schooling in his first term,  former Governor Mimiko was able to upgrade many schools to mega level, and the entire country is coming out of recession caused in 2015 by collapse of oil price, what could have gone wrong to the point that Ondo State would want in 2017 to reduce access to free public education to six years, at a time that other countries are insisting that every child should add two years of pre-school to public education? Believing strongly that the recent Ondo State summit must have been designed to find out the extent of the problems in the education sector rather than solutions, it ought not to have presented a communique that smacked of a solution searching for problems.

    If the problem identified by stakeholders at the summit included government’s funding of  secondary education, the recommendation that free public education should stop at primary six certainly needs more data to convince citizens on the solution proffered by the summit. Citizens need more data: number of students in the state receiving free primary and secondary education; cost of providing this education per student; size of the cost in relation to the budget of the state; prioritisation of projects for funding in the state; etc. The reason for this information is that citizens have accepted that the only way out of individual and collective poverty in the state is provision of public education that guarantees access to free and compulsory primary and secondary education to citizens of the state.

    Even if Nigeria prefers to be the servants of the modern world, globalization has made (and is increasingly making) this choice impossible. All successful countries—socialist and capitalist—have a consensus about the importance of education in today’s world, and restricting access to free public education to six years of schooling is not part of preparing citizens for the society of the future. Fine-tuning the ideology of governance in the state is the first step in the task awaiting those charged to review recommendations by the Akure summit. Although the federal government is still at the incipient stage of turning its manifesto promise on education into reality, President Buhari is not in doubt about the importance of education:”My single advice is that we must take education seriously, and we must do much more to educate our children.”

    • To be continued

    Roposek@msn.com