By the end of April, we are proposing there will be a declaration of state of emergency in the education sector all over the country. We request all the state governors to do same in their states and we hope that once this is done our educational sector will improve. I will also meet with the governors to appeal to them to give special emphasis to address the problem of low standard of education especially at primary level.—Adamu Adamu, Education Minister
It will be no exaggeration to say that the current government has more social intervention programmes than anyone before it: National Homegrown School Feeding; NPower (Job programme for unemployed graduates); Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT); and Government Enterprises Entrepreneurship Programme (GEEP). But as expected, human societies are dynamic and do generate new problems that require new attention from governments from time to time. Relatedly, two news items surfaced a few days ago: millions of Nigerian children are malnourished, a source of cognitive malnutrition or under-nourishment for children below five years and many of the teachers in private schools are unqualified to teach, a source of cognitive underdevelopment of children.
The two problems do not concern the Minister of Education directly, but they are interrelated enough to be taken in one column, especially around a time that the Education Minister is expected to declare an emergency in the education sector and at a time that the Health Minister is signing memorandum with UNICEF to jointly provide malnourished Ready to Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) for many children.
The federal government has been active in the Social Investment Programmes it has set for itself since it came to power, spending billions already on the four SIP initiatives. But no serious government can afford to look away from news of children not having enough to eat to develop both physically and mentally as they should. It is, therefore, reassuring that the Minister of Health has enthusiastically signed to provide his ministry’s counterpart funding on provision of Ready to Use Therapeutic Food for children suffering from malnutrition and are at the risk of stunted growth—physically and mentally.
But the long-term response to malnutrition needs to go beyond provision of RUTF. Perhaps, Nigerians act as too sensitive when they feel embarrassed at news about UNICEF and many other global Good Samaritans being called upon or rushing into the country on their own volition to provide special nutrition packs for children growing up in extreme poverty. That international aid givers are needed to provide nutritious paste to deprived children in Africa’s largest economy without any natural disaster or war is what some ‘self-conscious’ citizens believe the country can save for periods of national emergency. Apart from children in IDP camps, no young ones should be denied the nutrients they need to survive without becoming a burden to society later in life because of extremely poor feeding. Child malnourishment is a quick cause of making malnourished children develop severely limited brain power to cope with cognitive challenges. child malnutrition. Assisting poor parents to feed their children is as important as giving N5,000 to indigent senior citizens who, like children, are part of the country’s demographic groups that depend on others for care and even for survival. This is the source of Food Stamps for pregnant women and young children in many countries. Seeking foreign assistance to solve nutrition problems of children ought to be left for capital-intensive matters, such as Malaria, HIV-AIDS currently being provided by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which volunteered to carry such burden, or to any group in periods of war or national disaster.
Similarly, the news from Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) about recruitment of unqualified teachers by private schools across the country portends danger for quality of education at all levels. The exposure in Kaduna much earlier that many of the teachers in Kaduna public primary schools were not trained teachers also indicates that with proper staff audit, many public schools in other states are likely to be populated by teachers without training for the job. Given the fact that the fashionable thing to do in the country now is for entrepreneurs to start private schools-pre-school, primary, secondary, and tertiary in the cities and even in the rural areas—it is important for the government—central, state, and local—to pay more attention to quality control in private schools. This is not going to be an easy job for governments to do for as long as public schools are also operating largely without standard control and quality assurance mechanisms. But the country cannot afford to leave schools—private and public—unregulated, if quality of education is to rise from where it is at present and about which the Education Minister is eager to declare a national emergency.
With respect to public school, unqualified teachers are accounted for largely by cronies of politicians in power who across the states hire their proteges as teachers as a quick way to distribute dividends of democracy. Meanwhile, hundreds of people with National Certificate in Education (NCE) are roaming the urban streets and village centers for jobs to no avail. Particularly in the rural area, private schools have been known for long to depend on unqualified teachers to teach children sent to them by their parents and guardians. There are many villages in which private school teachers earn less than the minimum wage. I personally know of relations on N5,000 per month as pre-school teacher in private schools. Public schools do not have programmes for pre-school children. In both cases, the victim are young Nigerians enrolled in public schools manned by sycophants of politicians working as teachers with no training for the job or individuals without training but who are ready to earn N5,000 per month in private schools in the countryside. The effect is the same: ‘Garbage in, garbage out’ in preparation for other education levels.
In the 1950s in Western Nigeria, special training was given to persons sufficiently literate and numerate to benefit from post-primary school of just seven years basic education. Such teachers received training to qualify as Grade III, went to earn teaching experience and returned to teacher training institutions for Grade II, and later Grade I, which at that time was equivalent to NCE of today. At that time, the government used this model to respond to the need for thousands of teachers demanded by its Free Primary Education Scheme. In the 1960s, a three-year NCE programme provided training for teachers. Since the establishment of many universities as from mid-1960s, all universities established education faculties for the training of teachers. It is, therefore surprising that teachers are still being trained in colleges of education in the first quarter of the 21st century when curriculum from pre-school to universities had become more complex and demanding in terms of content and method, especially teaching/learning technology. Even as we speak, it is students who are not qualified to enter universities and colleges of technology that are reserved as candidates for National Certificate of Education. There is no cheap way to attain quality in all levels of education—pre-school, primary, secondary, and tertiary, and those preparing the country for long-promised emergency in the education sector should take note. No country serious about its future reserves the teaching of their youths for candidates that are not admissible to universities and polytechnics. Like feeding children right while growing up, providing citizens education with quality, though expensive, is the only way to grow a nation with a future of dignity, prosperity, and tolerance. Good food, like good education, nurture a mind with force and a heart with feeling.
Three Sundays ago, I said in the piece “Solar electricity with tears in Nigeria” that the Minister of Power et al, Babatunde Fashola, had announced that Nigeria might not have uninterrupted power until 2038. This paraphrase of the minister is not accurate, and I accept responsibility for the slip. The minister had mentioned 2030 as the date for the country to benefit from ongoing plans for energy mix projects that can lead the country to uninterrupted power.
