During his valedictory press conference in May 2019, reappointed minister of education, Malam Adamu Adamu said his inability to reduce Nigeria’ out-of-school children despite his pledge to do so was a shame on him. He apologised to Nigerians over his inability to fulfill his promise by half before the end of his tenure.
The minister said the status of Nigeria with the highest number of out-of-school children globally “was a big mark of shame to him as a person and to the entire nation.” According to the minister, the concerns of this administration have been two-fold: “to find an empirical means of getting the actual figures and best ways to reducing the number to the barest minimum.” He said Nigeria has one of the highest number of out-of-school children in Sub-Saharan Africa” and perhaps in the world and ranked only second to Pakistan.”
For the record, a 2015 Demographic Health Survey (DHS) conducted by the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and the Nigerian government showed that out of school children in Nigeria has risen from 10.5 million to 13.2 million.
I admire the minister for being frank and having the courtesy to apologise for not fulfilling his promise during his first tenure. Now another opportunity beckons and I hope he will make the best use of it considering the strategic role of his ministry in the quest for human development capital in a rapidly changing world. Beyond the out-of-school children issue, I will also expect a robust and honest intervention in our tertiary education sector.
Education is rightly recognised as the key to individual and societal development. Education does not only increase people’s knowledge, mindset and skills; it can also improve their world outlook and horizon, as well as their life chances. Most skills, attitude and performance abilities are acquired in some form from educational institutions. Little wonder that the contemporary society is often described as a “knowledge society” – one in which knowledge and skills are crucial for individual success.
As a former President of the United States, Barack Obama, once said, “In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity – it is a prerequisite”. It is in recognition of the importance of education that serious countries lay optimum emphasis on education and seek to enhance the quality of education that is provided to their citizens.
That the education system in Nigeria is facing severe challenges is to overstate a known fact and Adamu already has his work cut out for him. The challenge is being felt in many quarters with employers of labour complaining about the quality of the graduates – many of them being unable to operate the modern equipment and machines that they have in industries; or think through critical processes in 21st organizational settings.
Recently, a popular consulting firm in Nigeria placed an advert for job placements that went viral on social media for an obvious reason; it targeted Nigerians with foreign degrees only. Such were encouraged to send in their CVs for job openings. It was very specific on what it wanted and this drew the ire of some who questioned the place of graduates with Nigerian degrees.
Can we honestly blame them? We complain of the relatively poor ranking of Nigerian universities in the global rankings of universities. The truth is that desired ranking positions for our universities cannot be achieved without appropriate funding. Increasingly, the academic programmes in many public universities are being denied accreditation by the regulatory agency, the National Universities Commission (a government agency), often for lack of necessary equipment and facilities, which are not available because of poor funding by the same government that established the universities and the NUC!
Many scholars have bemoaned the “good old days” of the education systems in Nigeria, the immediate post-independence period, up to the 1970s, when the country’s universities compared favourably with those in Europe and America. A time when the nation’s universities were truly international and global and could attract foreign scholars to teach and do research in Nigerian universities. Foreign students were attracted to study in Nigeria, and teaching hospitals were of such good standards that foreigners sought medical treatment in the teaching hospitals.
The declining fortune of tertiary education institutions in Nigeria is becoming more apparent daily. Under-funding is severely having a negative impact on the quality of graduates. This is understandable when the students do not have access to functional, modern equipment and facilities for teaching and research. A clear indication of this is the increasing preference of employers of labour, especially in the financial, I.T., and oil and gas sectors, etc. to employ graduates of foreign universities, as opposed to those trained in Nigeria. The reason for this is not necessarily because of differences in intellectual capacity or competence, but as a result of different exposures and training process, an outcome of the incapacitation of Nigerian public universities, caused by severe under-funding.
Adamu did mention in his valedictory speech that the government approved N25 billion for public universities and that the “figures have nothing to do with personnel and overhead costs in the education sector, which are also well over a trillion naira.” But those in the picture said this amounts to throwing money at the problem without concrete and systematic monitoring. Under-funding stifles or stunts the intellectual capacity of youths. In many cases, the average Nigerian students, when they travel abroad for further studies usually excel leaving us with the conclusion that the Nigerian environment is toxic as it stifles the potential and prospects of the youth.
Against this backdrop however, it will be pertinent to point out that all the great universities in the world are not cheap. But that they are not cheap does not foreclose the fact that indigent but brilliant students cannot have access to them. There is a reason why they are accessible to the brilliant and ambitious: The government invests and the society plays its unique part in form of scholarships, infrastructure upgrade, provision of books and teaching aids alongside other sundry funds.
While this is the norm in sane societies, ours is farther from the truth because those that often secure these scholarships are those ‘connected’ to the powers that be, no matter how dull they are. It will shock many Nigerians the number of foreign scholarships that are awarded in the country to people who least deserve them. Herein lays another dilemma.
In Nigeria, the rich are not investing in our education because they claim they have no stakes, or where they have stakes, they invest for selfish reason of boosting their ego. They are least concerned because their children attend the Oxfords, Cambridge, Harvard or Yale of this world.
In July 2014, the Economist magazine ran a cover story titled “Creative Destruction.” It centers on how universities can reinvent themselves and remain relevant in a rapidly changing world. This goes to show that the problem is global and not restricted to Nigeria. But the difference here is that other are already thinking ahead of time.
In the report, the magazine argued that a cost crisis, changing labour markets and new technology will turn an old institution on its head. Higher education – it rightly pointed out – is one of the great successes of the welfare state which most western societies adopted to cushion the harsh effects of unbridled capitalism. What was once the privilege of a few became a middle-class entitlement, thanks mainly to government support.
It said: “in the emerging world, universities are booming: China has added nearly 30m places in 20 years. Yet the business has changed little since Aristotle taught at the Athenian Lyceum: young students still gather at an appointed time and place to listen to the wisdom of scholars. Now a revolution has begun thanks to three forces: rising costs, changing demand and disruptive technology. The result will be the reinvention of the university.”
Is Nigeria ready for such reinvention? All eyes will be on Adamu since it will not take him “one and half year to understand the ministry” this time around.
Welcome home Malam Adamu; and please continue to remind Mr. President about your ministerial strategic plan awaiting his consent.
