Nigeria has just held another summit on education. No, it is not just another summit. This is a presidential summit, initiated, attended, and addressed by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Therefore, it must be different than the others.
First, as a presidential initiative, there is hope that government is serious about fixing the collapsing edifice of our educational system. Second, it represents another down payment by the administration on its campaign promise of change in our approach to development. Third, and perhaps, most important, stakeholders can rest assured that the recommendations that come out of this summit will receive prompt attention at the highest level of government.
It is noteworthy that the president gave the Ministry of Education the directive to organize the summit in his address to the convocation ceremony of the University of Ilorin barely a month earlier.
At that forum, the president explained that the reason for the summit was to tackle major problems facing the education sector in order to “restore education to its lead role of human development game-changer.” He also vowed that his “government will not allow the country to miss the globally agreed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) train, the driving force of which is education.” Thinking aloud, and rightly too, Buhari noted that “any success recorded in education will have a ripple effect on every other sector of our life.”
The Ministry of Education acted promptly on the president’s directive and the November 13 summit was the outcome. Hope is kept alive! Except that nothing is new under the sun that shines on this land of wonders. For starters, this is not the first presidential summit on education. There was one in 2010, another in 2012, and yet another in 2015, at the instance of the Jonathan administration.
In its news of the 2015 conference in December 2014, Daily Independent reported that “the Federal Government has concluded plans to organise another National Education Summit, where it hopes to review progress and challenges still militating against the sector” (my emphasis). It added that “the Federal Government, under President Goodluck Jonathan, convened the last education summit in 2012 where most stakeholders reeled out various challenges bedeviling the sector since the attainment of independence in 1960 and came up with far reaching recommendations that could salvage the system” (my emphasis).
Why the emphases? First, the Jonathan administration summit proposed for 2015 was not the first education summit. Indeed, the same administration had held two previous summits on education. However, it could be argued, in the light of our traditional beliefs, that where a problem persists, we must assiduously seek for solutions. After all, an unceasing infestation of body lice condemns the fingernails to constant blood stain.
Second, however, the 2012 summit was supposed to have provided “far reaching recommendations that could salvage the system.” Obviously, those recommendations fell short; hence the need for 2015, and then, 2017, if we just limit ourselves to presidential initiatives.
There were of course stakeholders’ summits, state summits, and zonal summits on the Nigerian educational crisis. Sadly, the crisis appears to have only deepened, one manifestation of which is the recent decision of the Kaduna State government to fire almost 22,000 teachers for failing a competency test. That such a large number of primary school teachers failed a test designed for their students is a great embarrassment to the system and a grave sign of system collapse.
But Kaduna State is not an outlier and similar or worse ailment afflicts other states. There are teachers with serious challenges in the use of English language. There are parents and teachers helping their wards cheat in examinations. When stakeholders pressed school systems on the high rate of failure in WAEC and NECO, many teachers and principals, including officials of state education boards and others in high places, respond with corner cutting.
The result is that students pass external examinations, but they are neither employable nor admissible to higher institutions. Those who secure admission through an odious patronage system may buy their ways through the same means, but almost always end up as liabilities to themselves, their parents, and the community. When you input garbage, you get garbage as output.
A rotten educational system does not just hurt individuals; it is a national disaster. No sensible person will doubt that without the natural endowment of oil reserves, which we have apparently managed to turn to a curse, an outstanding system of education can take the nation to the highest level of development. Look at Israel and other resource-challenged nations.
What those nations have, that we lack, is a political system that creates strong institutions and throws up leaders with the right mix of skills, foresight and charisma, which enables them to identify development goals, thoughtfully plan and selflessly pursue their implementation with vigor, while combating challenges in their path. How else could a region implement free primary education with no oil revenue? And why, after enormous oil revenue since the early seventies, have we failed to move from free primary education to free university education? Why are we now contemplating charging fees for secondary education?
The answer is simple. With our oil revenue, we created a monstrous system of patronage that has turned public service into a private enrichment system. Awolowo had no security vote. He and his colleagues had no special allowance for personal constituency projects. They certainly had no luxury of personal emoluments that surpassed those of the most developed nations of their time. They invested their regional resources in the development of their regions and the nation at large was the beneficiary.
Almost all our present leaders from local government to state and federal levels are beneficiaries of the system that prioritized the education of citizens. Our educational system would not be in the dunghill now if every one of them had followed the example of those leaders who made it possible for their generation to step into their shoes.
The Minister of Education is right on point: “Nobody has the moral and resource capacity to intervene promptly, substantially and sustainably in all areas of education provisioning better than government.” So much for the copout of “government cannot do it alone.”
If there is will, the way is doubtless clear. The Minister pointed out that “from 1999 to date, the annual budgetary allocation to education has always been between 4% and 10%.” The recommendation of the United Nations for financing education is at least 26% of a country’s budget. As the Minister added, “none of the E9 and D8 countries other than Nigeria allocates less than 20% of its annual budget to education.” For 2018, Mr. President’s education budget is 7%. So, we know what the problem is.
But we are told that the funds are not there. Civil servants are owed months of salary and pensioners are starving. However, the sacrifices are not shared equally, and it is unfair. If justice is the first order of social life, every member must bear an equitable share of the social burden, from the president down to the littlest citizen.
For a start then, if education is understood as the means to a good life and a great society, its funding must be assured by society. We have an Education Trust Fund which is made possible by the sacrifice of corporate citizens. The political class also needs to make its contribution to that pool. This can be done by committing all security votes and all constituency project allowances to the rejuvenation of the education sector to get us to at least 20% of budget for the sector.
Surely, money is not the cause of every problem in the sector. Traditional values have broken down and parental neglect is the foremost symptom. Bringing children into the world and abandoning them to the vagaries of social life is highly irresponsible. So is using them as income generators at a tender age when they should be in school. The more than 8 million out-of-school kids in Nigeria is a national shame. We are already paying the price in various ways.
