The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Education

  • Education District honours 97 retirees

    Education District honours 97 retirees

    For their meritorious service in Lagos State, Governor Babatunde Fashola (SAN) honoured 97 teachers who retired from the state teaching service in Education District VI, Oshodi.

    The event, which took place at the Ikeja Grammar School Bolade Oshodi, saw the retirees being ‘spoilt’ at a lavish party.

    Speaking on the occasion, the Tutor General/Permanent Secretary (TG/PS) Education District VI, Mrs Iyabo Osifeso congratulated the retirees and thanked Fashola for acknowledging their many years in service by honouring them.

    “I feel great seeing people who have contributed to the development of education Lagos State being celebrated,” she said.

    Mrs Osifeso urged them to be more prudent in the management of their finances, and disengage in any business that can get them into trouble.

    One of the retirees, Mr Oloduro Godfrey, thanked God for sparing his life to witness his retirement. He also praised Fashola for investing in education.

    “In fact, we must thank the governor for a job well done. He has really transformed the education sector. Besides, with this honour, we also encourage those in service to do more as they know there is reward for hard work,” Oloduro said.

  • VC makes case for education in Southeast

    The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN), Prof Bartho Okolo, has urged journalists to join the campaign for restoring quality education in the Southeast.

    Speaking at the second edition of Southeast Media Summit at Nike Lake Hotel in Enugu, he lamented the decline in enrolment figure of male students in schools in the region, adding that the incidence must be checked.

    He said:“I am using this opportunity to invite journalists across the country to join the campaign for safeguarding the future of our people. There has been a steady decline in the number of children, especially boys, in our schools. This poses serious danger to the future of our region. I urge everyone to join the train of restoring the priority of education in Southeastern Nigeria.’’

    He decried the unwillingness of industrialists in the region to invest in education, saying its consequences were dire for the youths.

    Prof Okolo charged the journalists to be professional and ethical, noting that they have a role to play in the region’sdevelopment of the region.

    He said the Mass communications Department of the institution was ready to partner with journalists to promte the academic excellence of its students.

    “Such a platform has become necessary in the light of recent advances in journalism, especially internet-based publications and social media networks,” said.

  • Education: A tale of wobbling sector

    Education: A tale of wobbling sector

    As Nigeria celebrates its 53rd independence anniverary, its education sector lays prostrate. AUGUSTINE AVWODE examines the effects of underfunding on the critical sector.

     

     

    Perhaps, nothing illustrates more graphically, the dire state of education in Nigeria, even as it celebrates its 53rd independence anniversary, than the strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), which enters its fourth month today. ASUU’s action is predicated on alleged Federal Government’s refusal to implement the agreement between it and the union. Polytechnic lecturers, who started theirs two months before ASUU began its strike, also claimed non-implementation of agreements and lack of infrastructure in their institutions.

    Since it attained independence Nigeria has always expressed a commitment to education, with the belief that the best way to accelerate national development and growth was by overcoming illiteracy and ignorance. However, in the last four decades, specifically from the mid- 70s, education has been characterised by the lack of adequate funding, poor and deteriorating infrastructure, and insufficient teaching and learning materials as some of the major problems bedeviling the sector. This has resulted in a free fall for the sector, which should be the backbone of growth and development. It is rather lying prostrate, pleading for attention for the relevant authorities.

     

    Challenges

     

    Experts have noted that the biggest challenge facing education is inadequate funding. They blame government at all levels – federal, states and local governments.

    Speaking to The Nation at the weekend, former Vice Chancellor of the Ladoke Akintola University of Technology ( LAUTECH) Prof. Babatunde Adeleke, said inadequate funding remains the greatest threat to the education sector in the country.

    He said underfunding hampers intensive and extensive research programmes; provisions of better infrastructure; and lack of good teaching and learning environment. He said the strike embarked upon by teachers has done much damage to the sector.

    Adeleke warned that the nation faces dire consequences, if the trend is not reversed as soon as possible. “Without sincere support and sincerity of purpose in pursuing the best ideals for the education sector, we will continue to have problems. The first and perhaps, the greatest challenge facing Nigeria and making it difficult for the provision of quality education, which is capable of bringing about sustainable development is inadequate funding by the federal, state and local governments. I cannot remember when last the Federal Government met the UNESCO recommendation of 26 per cent of national budgets for education.

    “Nigeria needs a lot of financial support to take us to where we are supposed to be. In the country today, we have over 100 universities; but if you look carefully you will discover that there is the issue of under staff. Our research activities are not the best. If you take a head count of qualified lecturers, that is, those with PhD and above, you will discover that the system is highly under staffed. As long as there are no good research programmes going on, the possibility of producing enough Ph, D holders, to effectively man the universities will continue to constitute a problem”.

    A senior lecturer at the Department of English Language, the Obafemi Awolowo University Dr Chijoke Uwahomba, said Nigeria is not making any progress in the sector. “In terms of policy articulation and implementation, we are not making any progress, we are just wobbling. Any progress; we have made is as a result of the patriotic zeal of committed Nigerians to give their best to Nigeria.

    “For instance, during the Babangida regime, when the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP), was introduced, many people left Nigeria for greener pastures because the currency lost its value. The reason was simply because the salary was not competitive. That was how the idea of brain-drain came in.

    “If we look at the education sector generally, you will discover that government, over the years, has paid only lip service to the sector. That is why a landlord in Lagos always finds it difficult to give out his house to teachers. Let us ask ourselves why teachers, at all levels, are always going on one strike or another, from primary to tertiary levels? It is so because the government has not taken it as a serious business”.

    Also speaking to The Nation, Delta State Commissioner for Higher Education Prof. Hope Eghagha, said the challenges in the education sector have been fundamental. He, again, mentioned funding and infrastructure. He, however, argued that more Nigerians now have access to education than it was 50 years ago.

    “There has been increase in access to education, both in primary, secondary down to the university levels. The numbers of universities have risen from 9 in the 60s to over 100. But that also has its own challenges”, he said.

    Eghagha bemoaned the quality of education.“In terms of quality, we have a huge challenge. The quality of teaching, and the quality in terms of participation and response, which we get from students, is a thing for concern. So, when we look at all these things – funding, infrastructure, quality of teaching, response or the level of participation by students, we have serious challenges in our education sector. And, that is why, when people talk about standard, they are referring to the quality of response, quality of materials and the totality of the product that come out of the system. But people forget that there has been a huge leap from 1978, when the Joint Admission Board was established and now. Every year, we have over 1,000,000 applicants trying to become undergraduates”.

    According to Adeleke, the quality of education in the country is determined by many things. He argued that except attention is paid to the products coming from the primary and secondary schools, the quality of graduates will continue to be a matter of concern. He identified the primary and secondary schools as the stages where the greatest problem are encountered, which results in poor quality of graduate.

    “Unless we focus our attention on the primary and secondary, the quality of the final product, coming out of the university system in Nigeria will continue to be poor”.

     

    What future for

    education

     

    The question is what does the future hold for education in Nigeria?

    Eghagha said there are many things that must be looked into, if the future must be made bright. “The first is the quality of teaching. Then the issue of funding and the issue of infrastructure. The future in 10 years, certainly, will not be the same. There is the need to improve the quality of teaching. Any student who goes through the primary, secondary and the university without access to the computer, will not be marketable in the future.

    “So, there is need to improve the gadgets for learning, increase funding so that we can buy teaching aids, equip laboratories and ensure that teachers teach well. In other words, the inspectorate division has to be reinvigorated so that teachers can be made to teach what they are paid to teach. I must emphasis that the reward of education itself is knowledge. The idea of compelling people or students to read just to sit for exams is to say the least, obnoxious and retrogressive. It will not serve the overall objective of freeing the mind from the shackles of ignorance.

    “So, if all of this is taken into consideration, in the next 10 years, to get ahead, to be anywhere near where we should be, we need to increase funding, build infrastructure and maintain them, then the welfare of the teachers is very important, pay them the salary that can take them home, as they say. Imagine a principal on level 16, who cannot afford some of the basic things of live, how will he be able to put in his best”, Eghagha asked.

    He said incessant strikes is not good for the system and advised ASUU to find an alternative dispute resolution as the long time effect could be very damaging to the system.

    “In any society, paralysis, like the strike that is on now, is not good for its development. It is my view that strike should not be part of the menu of the universities and colleges of education. With strikes, education itself can be truncated; there could be negative consequences, if there are interruptions. We live in a global village, the people in Canada, U S A and Great Britain are following us; and when a Nigerian graduate shows up, they immediately pick him out. “, Eghagha said.

    Chijoke said the future of education may be in jeopardy, except the government does the needful without wasting any further time. “We are talking today now, students have been indoors for three months, and you know what that means for the system. Already, we have graduates that are not employable, who cannot construct correct simple sentences. If the future of education must be secured, if we must avert a bleak future, the government must stand up and do something today to salvage the current impasse. If it continues to play the “it does not matter card”, the future of education is bleak in Nigeria”, he said.

     

  • Education and democracy: training the future generation (4)

    Education and democracy: training the future generation (4)

    Apart from periodic panelbeating of the education sector, far-reaching reforms of this sector cannot be achieved without a national dialogue 

    In a six-part essay, today’s piece is still on primary and secondary education, for obvious reasons. Without a solid background in these two levels of schooling, all efforts to advance and achieve competitiveness in a knowledge-driven universe will come to naught, regardless of how prestigious tertiary education institutions appear to be. I, therefore, crave indulgence from readers who may be tired about reading my opinion on how to prepare Nigeria for the new world that is staring it in the face.

    We said, among other things, last week, that reforming education in our country will involve new strategies to ensure highly motivated learners/teachers, conducive learning conditions; qualified teachers; dedicated school administrators; etc. There is the tendency to think (the way most federal politicians and their administrators do) that promising to throw money at these challenges may be enough to keep citizens inspired to learn. Some may even argue that spending up to 24% of the country’s annual budget on education as recommended by UNESCO, instead of the paltry 4% that is usually allocated to the education sector will transform the nation’s education landscape. Given the parlous state of governance over the years, giving 24% of the nation’s budget to education is not likely to create a sufficient condition for improving the quality of education. Doing just that is likely to fuel the culture of corruption within the circles of politicians and bureaucrats put in charge of the sector.

    What must happen before the right percentage of annual budget is allocated to education is to have the right ideological framework for governing the country at all levels: federal, state, and local. Put simply, there is a need for political parties and their leaders to provide leadership in creating development vision and mission that can inspire and mobilise citizens. Such vision must include measurable and visible milestones that citizens can identify with. Using the mantra of unity and transformation to inspire citizens is too vague and devoid of measurable milestones for citizens to identify with. Leaders of other nations have in recent times created visions that have helped to transform their countries. South Korea, Singapore, Brazil, India, Mexico, and even United Arab Emirates have all created national goals that have kept both their governors and citizens moving towards progress, not only in education but in other sectors.

    Nigeria had even done something like that in the past. According to LadipoAdamolekun, BisiAdesola, and Chief BisiAkande in Legacy of Educational Excellence, the Universal Free Education Programme of Western Nigeria in the years before Nigeria’s independence and civil war would not have succeeded if there was no synergy between the government and the civil service that served it and without the mobilisation of the citizens done by the Action Group in the 1950s. With an ideological mission that set out to improve freedom and quality of life of citizens in the Western Region, the Action Group used the motto of “Freedom for all, Life moreAbundant” to mobilise citizens to support all its developmental projects including education. This explained why it was possible for Western Nigeria to create the Partnership Model for education provision almost half a century before it became popular in many countries today. The Partnership Model in Western Nigeria then recognised the government as the agency with superintending responsibility for education and of citizens, communities, and religious institutions as partners in a vineyard that was directed by politicians and administrators at both state and local government levels. Local governments, under the nose of parents with children in the schools, managed the schools while the state government provided financial support through revenue from taxation. The success in provision of primary and secondary education in Western Nigeria later turned into failure under the auspices of military dictatorships, as Adamolekun pointedly observed : “The unitary and centralised command structures of the military contrasted with the ‘true’ federalist arrangements within which the Western Nigerian ‘success story’ was incubated and implemented.”

    The institutional decay and educational decline that started with increased unitary governance under the military and that appears to have become an abiding aspect of federal governance in the post-military era have created a situation where states and local governments no longer have the powers to raise taxes to fund their own development. By depending on handouts from the federal government, many states and local governments have also sought and obtained support from the federal government in their direct and indirect efforts to alienate citizens. The result of decades of institutional decay and a national journey without destination under post-military rule is the failure that abounds in all levels of education, particularly in the most seminal level: primary/secondary education.

    Apart from periodic panelbeating of the education sector, far-reaching reforms of this sector cannot be achieved without a national dialogue that allows each part of the country to spell out what it hopes to achieve for its citizens in a highly competitive global market. Throwing money periodically and grudgingly at tertiary education and after long periods of strikes may not lead to meaningful education reform. We may not know what type of education to give citizens and how to do so effectively until we know where we want our nation to be in the future and what capacities we want our citizens to have.

    As Adamolekun has aptly observed, our citizens have been demobilised for over three decades. The demobilisation has arisen from an ethos of increased unitary rule and the disjuncture between government and citizens created by a system of funding through allocation of funds from a central purse constituted by rents collected from extractive industries and the spoils system that this has engendered during and after military rule. Local governments and states need to be autonomous enough to raise funds for their own development. This is not in the sense intended by lawmakers (now engaged in some form of constitutional amendment) to allow local governments to spend money donated to them by the federal government without any oversight by the states that compose them; it is in the sense of giving states and local governments autonomy to raise the taxes they need from citizens, the real owners of the country and its parts, and to collaboratively engage citizens in creating a functional education system from primary to postgraduate training.

    In other words, the ethos of nation building that was evident in Western Nigeria in the 1950s and that is evident in most federal states in the world today needs to be retrieved by those who make it their calling to rule Nigeria and its parts. Just as Chief Akande once observed, “At present, Nigeria has no educational system with adequate philosophical objectives as a backbone. It can be seen therefore that the major purpose of most Nigerian educational institutions is administration of an examination orientation.” Primary and secondary education has to be reformed urgently and given a goal that is larger than running elaborate examination boards. Creating good philosophers and plumbers (used here as metaphors for effective academic and vocational training) depends on agreeing on what kind of Nigeria and Nigerians the country and its parts desire to produce to ensure sustainable unity and development. Doing this requires paying more attention to primary/secondary education.

    To be continued

  • Access Bank mulls support for education

    Access Bank has announced the introduction of an innovative solution to support the education sector in the country. Speaking at the September Power Breakfast Series in Lagos, the bank’s Executive Director, Business Banking Division, Obeahon Ohiwerei said the lender designed the innovative financial solution with consideration for the dynamics of school business.

    He said the solution is comprehensive and will cater for specific needs of the various schools within the sector – primary, secondary and tertiary institutions as well as the constituents of the value-chain, which include teachers, suppliers, parents and other critical stakeholders.

    He informed the operators, particularly private school proprietors and other promoters that the forum remains an interactive one for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs. According to him, “the monthly Power Breakfast Series is the Bank’s way of integrating our SMEs customers with innovative financial solutions. Today, we are engaging operators in the education sector to proffer solutions that will address most of the challenges facing the sector.”

    The director noted that Access Bank has champions who understand the education industry, and with the support of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), it will offer low-interest loans to the sector, hopefully from the first quarter of next year. He hinted that the lender is collaborating with the IFC to attract long term funds at cheap rates for the sector.

     

  • Education and democracy: training the future generation (3)

    Education and democracy: training the future generation (3)

    The federal government and its agencies are too far from  local communities where education is provided.

    We sent our two children to Ghana, not because we are rich but because we believe that Ghana has a more reliable education system that Nigeria. Our education system in Nigeria has become largely a factory for manufacturing credentials, rather than laboratories or classrooms for disseminating and acquiring knowledge and skills. My wife and I went to school in this country in the early 1970s, after the civil war. I still remember that emphasis then was on mastering what we were taught in school, not primarily on the credentials that schools gave at the end of our courses. We were sure good credentials would come after mastering the subjects. Even as students, we created our own informal clubs in the boarding house or in the neighbourhood to demonstrate how much each student knew about whatever subject we chose to discuss. That hardly happens today; parents and their children show more concern for the academic grades to take to the university, and thus corrupt even the process of determining outcomes of learning. Comment from a couple who retired into business after thirty years in the civil service.

    Last week’s piece concluded as follows: “Like everything else, organising provision of education to respond to the fear that allowing states and regions more freedom to determine how to refine their culture and advance their development is not likely to achieve anything more than the organisation of the Nigeria Police Force has done: inefficiency and ineffectiveness. It is indeed safer to believe that encouraging all parts of Nigeria to develop ways of providing quality education to citizens without excluding any group or class directly or indirectly has a higher chance of enhancing the country’s unity than holding parts of the country down from embarking on creative steps to solve the problem of education provision for citizens.”

    The major challenge regarding the country’s education is how to ensure quality and equity in education provision. Many people would argue that the federal government’s policies of free-tuition in federal universities and of free education for citizens for the first nine years of schooling under the system of Universal Basic Education appear to have solved that the problem of equity. The UBE’s offering of free education for nine years is not enough to make the country competitive. Most countries of the world including those that are hundreds of years ahead of Nigeria in terms of industrialisation and technology have free and compulsory education for citizens until they complete senior secondary or high school. Even some countries, such as Sweden, Finland, and Scotland, have policies of free-tuition for citizens in tertiary institutions.

    To make Nigeria more competitive, it is necessary to make education free and compulsory for citizens until they complete secondary education and to create tuition-free adult education centres for citizens to attend after work or on weekends. For example, tuition-free adult education programmes were available in Western Nigeria in the years before the civil war, even at a time that the region had a free primary education. The policy was created to support sectarian or local community schools in creating a second chance for citizens who could not benefit from free primary education on account of age restriction.

    The major problem crying for solution is how to transform education to the point that public school education can have quality. At present, public school education, the only education provided for citizens with severely limited resources but not necessarily without high intelligence quotient, is without any quality and thus without any effectiveness. This is why more than half of those who went through secondary school failed to pass the number of subjects required to move to the next level. While government leaders are not found wanting in terms of waxing eloquent about the power of knowledge and the need for the country to have a better education than it has had in the last twenty-five years, there appears a clear lack of focus on how to transform the education sector, particularly the primary/secondary schooling system that generally prepares citizens for academic and vocational skills capable of increasing competitiveness of citizens and the country.

    It is on record that Nigeria spends less than 4% of its annual budget on education, despite the call by UNESCO for up to 24%, if the country is to be in a position to produce men and women of academic and vocational skills needed to compete in a world that is driven by new frontiers in science, technology, and management of complex organisations. Several decades of doing the same thing (throwing money sporadically and grudgingly at the education sector) ought to have proven that what is needed is moving away from the madness of doing the same thing and expecting different results. The country’s desperate problem in the education sector is, in the parlance of popular culture, calling for a desperate solution, one that requires thinking out of the box.

    The relationship between the federal and state/local governments needs to change, if the country is to transform its education system. A situation in which the federal government holds and allocates funds to various aspects of education across the country through various agencies is calling for creative and bold thinking. Making education an essentially a local government matter is more likely to create the ingredients needed to create excellence in education provision: motivation, enthusiasm for new knowledge, depth of learning, conducive conditions of learning, effective teaching, and community involvement in provision of education and management of schools, etc.

    The federal government and its agencies are too far from the local communities where education is provided. Local governments should impose taxes to run primary and secondary schools. Doing so will reinforce a social contract between the local government and citizens with respect to provision of an effective public school system. The federal government should have a system of giving matching grants to local governments for specific projects, such as creating of digital learning architecture, modern laboratories, etc. State governments should be free to raise funds through lottery to provide additional matching grants to local government authorities for measurable and verifiable education projects. The Western Region used proceeds from its lottery to provide additional funds for education in the 1950s, in addition to collecting taxes from citizens.

    Using taxes collected from citizens to fund education that is managed by the local government authority creates a space for direct and indirect involvement of citizens. Because citizens are principal stakeholders after providing the funds used to run schools by paying their taxes, they will be emboldened to call school administrators to order, much more than our present system that runs education from funds that citizens cannot directly claim ownership over. Apart from creating a core curriculum to reflect a national ethos, local governments and states should have a central role to play in curriculum design. For example, apart from making the teaching of English (the country’s national language and window to the global market) compulsory for students in the first nine years of school, each state should decide on which language to use to teach students in the first six or nine years of education. The current situation, whereby about 30% of the population is illiterate; only half of those who completed twelve years of education qualify for further education; and lack of lifelong learning provision for citizens, only signposts a country that is unwilling to face its future with determination and courage to position majority of its citizens to make direly needed contributions to levers of development through knowledge.

  • UBA university educational grant for students

    UBA university educational grant for students

    The Corporate Social Responsibility,(CSR),  arm of the United Bank for Africa,(UBA) has announced the commencement of the 2013 edition of the National Essay Competition amongst secondary school students in Nigeria.

    Winners will get educational grants to study in any African university of their choice.

    According to the announcement by the  bank, the winner will  get N1million. The first runners-up will go away with N750,000 while the second runners-up takes N50,000 all in the  local currency equivalent towards university tuition/fees and a laptop. Consolation prizes will be given to the finalists.

    The essay competition titled: ‘How reading has impacted my knowledge’ is a follow up of the Read Africa Initiative of the Foundation which involves giving out literature books to secondary school students to help rekindle the reading culture amongst the youth in Africa.

    To enter for the competition, applicants must attach photocopies of their original birth certificates or photocopies of international passport data page. It is open to students of  senior secondary schools in Nigeria. Handwritten essay of not more than 750 words on the competition topic should be submitted along with their complete contact information, (school name & address, residential address, phone number and email address)

    All entries should be sent latest before November 1 to the UBA Foundation, UBA House, 3rd Floor, 57 Marina, Lagos – Nigeria.

  • Boko Halal; Education and ‘Summer Renovation Budget’; Osun computers; Casualty painting

    Those who profess Boko Haram should identify as co-conspirators politicians, political terrorists, who ensured that too many Nigerians in schools graduate without knowledge and cheat. This has resulted in their needing retraining before employment. My friend Professor M Aken’Ova told me that in the old Zaria days the children sent to read book were called boko, a form of enculturation of the word ‘book’. Haram means ‘no’. Perhaps we should have ‘Boko Halal’ to counter the Boko Haram. The lack of educational activities of politicians in proportion to needs demonstrates that you do not have to blow up or ban schooling to get negative education. Schools, under political budget under-funding, have poured barely literate youths into the marketplace resulting in one of the solutions – entrepreneurship partly to cater for a poor employee: job availability ratio. But the entrepreneurial drive also addresses youths leaving schools as products of rubbish education neglected by education budgets. These youths are programmed to be ill-prepared and cannot get jobs so they are diverted into creating jobs for themselves and blamed if they fail –a win-win situation for the politician.

    We talk of system failure and that the system has failed the teachers and lecturers in need of staff space like staffrooms, books, equipment, skills, justifiable promotions and overburdening the teacher or lecturer with students. The gold standard is 30 students /class. Do staff also fail the system? Many blame teachers and lecturers for shirking their responsibilities by selling items on-duty and doing jobs in three universities at once. Even students are seen as being mediocre, too expectant of spoon-feeding and without ambition.

    Most Nigerian teachers, education politicians and students have failed the system in spite of 200 plus annual general meetings, AGMs, and education summits at Minister, commissioner, ASUU, NUT, STAN, NANS, and sub- group meetings like professional, ethnic, religious and subject levels. What little progress has been largely due to the unsung efforts of ASUU, the Old Students Associations and the high fees charged private students. The ASUU strike is on-going.    The ‘democratic’ period from 1999 is long enough for the 38 governments to put in place sufficient equipment and staff to achieve education equality across all states. The current abysmal performances in some states are due to fraudulent administration and abandonment of the youth. The education money has been misappropriated and lost to education middlemen, summits, consultants, retreats, hotel bills, honoraria, travel expenses and huge hall rental costs of Ladi Kwali Hall, with apologies to Ladi Kwali, the famous female Kwali potter who died in 1984. If that money had been spent on a ‘TEN BOOKS, ONE CHILD PROGRAMME’ and equipment, all Nigeria’s schools would be well equipped. It is this material that makes a school – books, library, equipment, laboratory, wall charts, sports opportunities, desks, chairs, toilets and sanitation. Leave one out and you have no school. This is why we are still talking of ‘disadvantaged states and students’, when we should be talking about disenfranchised students, disenfranchised by their political leadership – governments. Governments disadvantage their children. Most of the good students even in advantaged states had parents who spent up to 80% of income on education only to be checkmated at JAMB cut-off. States failed even with their own tertiary universities to rise above mediocrity. When Jesus said ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me’, He did not mean that the children must ‘suffer’ but come unto Him without any suffering. ‘Suffer’ means ‘allow’, not ‘suffer-head’.

    Around the world, the long ‘summer holidays’ of July to September are the time for needs assessment for the next year and refurbishment, repairs and repainting in preparation the new year. In Nigeria these activities are zero. And that is where the problem of education lies. No preparation for the New School Year from anybody. This week some 30+million Nigerian students arrive in government-run unprepared schools and classrooms untouched for three months except by vandals and religious meeting participants.

    We all live near government education facilities. Name one that had a face-lift between July and September. Of course some governors are making tremendous efforts. Years ago I campaigned for schools to set up summer camps. Now summer camps are everywhere. Today, campaign for budgetary provision for ‘Summer Renovation of Educational Institutions’. This is part of job creation as upgrade requires artisans, science equipment marketers and publishers of books and educational posters. No doubt during the 2013 summer political recesses multi-billions are routinely spent to maintain the offices of political power in Abuja and all state capitals.

    Nigeria’s children deserve more now, before the reckless spending on 2014 elections and political posters. Governments must insert ‘Summer Recess Renovation of Schools and Institutions’ into budgets. Nigeria’s children are not animals to be sent to pigsties. The children deserve a decent ‘Child and Teacher Friendly Learning Environment’, CATFLE. The cost of refurbishing one airport would upgrade 1,000 schools with 500,000 beneficiaries. Governments should get its priorities right from the foundation.

    A ray of hope from Osun State’s student computer introduced by Ogbeni Aregbesola. It is as monumental as Awolowo’s ‘Free Education’. It hopefully will be adopted with improvements if necessary, across Nigeria as it frees the students and equalises levels from village to Osun villa. We anxiously await the results of comparative performance studies across states.

    Alert! Alert! Most government and private casualties, wards and toilets are dirty, disease ridden and needing emergency annual painting budgets. Anyone listening?

     

  • Falana gives govt ultimatum on child education

    Lagos lawyer and human rights’ activist Mr. Femi Falana has urged the Federal Government to comply with the judgment of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court on the right of every Nigerian child to education.

    He said if a report of compliance with the judgment was not filed in the registry of the court by September 30, he would file a suit in the ECOWAS Court to direct the relevant organs of the sub-region to impose sanctions on Nigeria for failure to fulfil its obligations under Article 77 of the Revised Treaty of the ECOWAS.

    The activist wrote a letter, titled: “Demand for compliance with the ECWAS Court judgment on the right of every Nigerian child to education”, addressed to the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Mr. Mohammed Adoke (SAN).

    A non-government organisation (NGO), Socio-Economic Rights and Accountability Project (SERAP), sued the Federal Government to the ECOWAS Court to seek an order for the right of every Nigerian child to education.

    Falana, counsel to SERAP, reminded the minister of Justice of the failure of the Federal Government to comply with the relief granted his client over 10 months after the ECOWAS Court delivered judgment in the matter.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Malala and Ojonwa: Girls demanding education

    Malala and Ojonwa: Girls demanding education

    Ahead of the visit to Nigeria by Gordon Brown, former British Prime Minister and the UN Special Envoy for Education, the Malala Movement of Girl Education campaign  continues to spread with the signing of the petition demanding for education for all children.

    Last Thursday Gordon Brown, former British Prime Minister and the UN Special Envoy for Education brought two young women together in an online video exchange – Ojonwa Deborah Miachi has a BSc in Economics from Bingham University in Karu, and is Nigeria’s  National Youth Advocate for universal education and the Millennium Development Goals – and  MalalaYousafzai the sixteen-year-old Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban and who has also had to leave her country to be safe.

    Both are demanding what 57 million girls and boys like them cannot have – the right to go to school even in times of conflict and, as a result, both see themselves at the centre of a 21st-century civil rights struggle.

    This freedom fight – as Malala and Ojonwa show – is now being led not by familiar adult voices but by young people themselves.  For Ojonwa and Malalaare part of a worldwide movement of girls demanding education.

    From the Common Forum for KalmalHari Freedom in Nepal, to the Child Marriage Free Zones across Bangladesh, and including the Ugandan Child Protection Clubs, the Upper ManyaKrobo Rights of the Child Club, Indonesia’s Grobogan Child Empowerment Group, India’s Bachao Bachpan Andolan and the Global March Against Child Labour.

    As Malala says: “innocent girls only want to empower themselves through education. Obtaining education is every man and woman’s birth right and no one is allowed to take away this right from them.”

    Ojonwa and Malala’s missions- to get girls to school – are the inspiration behind Monday’s  Abuja  summit led by President Goodluck Jonathan and Nigeria’s state governors. This landmark event, which will be attended by Gordon Brown and addressed as UN Special Envoy for Global Education, will bring together cabinet ministers, state governors and state education commissioners together with global development partners to get Nigeria’s ten million out-of-school children into education.

    On Monday they will discuss how we can allocate new financial support for school building, teacher recruitment, teacher training and for new technology with tablets, phones and online school courses; this is part of a global initiative to get every boy and girl to school by the end of 2015.  The movement will build a world where for the first time no boy or girl is denied their right to education.

    Leaders will assemble from  USAID, Qatar’s  Educate a Child, led brilliantly by SheikhaMoza, from the Global Partnership for Education whose head is Alice Albright, and  from the global business community led by the Global Business Coalition for Education.  Each will pledge additional support. The UK is also ready to boosting its help this year with a visit from the Permanent head of DFID coming soon.   All want to applaud the President’s initiative and give practical support to the Nigerian government and states in their renewed drive to expand education opportunity for all children.

    Ojonwa, who spoke to Malala on the video link about her fight for education for girls in Nigeria, emphasises the scale of the uphill struggle the country has to face. This is to move from the country with the world’s largest population of out-of-school children in the world to universal education. 10 million children are yet to go to school because there is a teacher shortage of nearly 1.3 million, and we are missing 1.2 million classrooms.  Child labour, child marriage and child trafficking prevent thousands getting to school.

    And for those that do find ways to get their children into school, there is doubt as to the effectiveness of the courses.  Approximately 52 percent of young women who complete primary education remain illiterate. Indeed the large amount of illiteracy is now an economic problem as well as a social disaster, with the number of adults who cannot read or write up to 35 million.  Illiteracy is standing between Nigeria and its deserved success as an economic powerhouse of the world.

    But in the midst of the education crisis, President Jonathan is prepared to take unprecedented action.  He realises that getting every child into school and learning is feasible and achievable, and the key to Nigerian prosperity. Learning from what works best, financial incentives must be fine-tuned to help state governments deliver; teacher training and professional development must be effectively taken to scale by leveraging technology.

    The curriculum of all schools must be strengthened to develop literacy and numeracy skills and families must be supported in their demand for education through conditional cash transfers.  These transfers – now being pioneered in some states – can be taken up in all states and encourage enrollment and attendance particularly of girls.

    The delegation of business, educational and political leaders is working to present financing options and concrete proposals to support the implementation of state plans for education.  We will look at what more can be done to incentivize the education, and leveraging up resources, including the use of the Universal Basic Education Fund to provide central ministry incentives alongside investments from UK, US, Educate a Child, the Global Partnership for Education, and specific offers from the business community through the Global Business Coalition for Education.

    Nigeria itself is calling for the education it needs for the future.  Despite the violence and attacks on education from extremist groups, in addition to the peaceful civil society movements that have occurred over the past few months, Nigerians are signing the petition to support President Jonathan’s commitment to education, and are calling for safe schools for all of Nigeria’s children and for state level implementation of plans for universal education.

    But the greatest hope for the future is the demand of young people yearning for their right to be educated. Nigeria will succeed not just because of the commitment of the Federal government, the organisation of the state governors, and the support of the international community, but because Nigeria’s young like Ojonwa will not take ‘No’ to her education for an answer. The surest sign we will succeed is that boys and girls are demanding it.  You can sign the petition on www.aworldatschool.org/petitionnigeria