The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Public education

  • Make public education state affair, says Mahmoud

    Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) President Abubakar Mahmoud (SAN) has blamed the deplorable state of public universities on a faulty federal system.

    He called for reform to give states and local governments more control over public education.

    Mahmoud recalled his university days when he ate a three- course meal free, studied in well- stocked libraries, and was taught by well-trained and highly motivated teachers.

    According to him, public universities are today a shadow of themselves and require “heavy investment” by the government.

    The NBA president, a 1979 graduate of the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, spoke at a fundraising dinner organised by the Dominican University (DU) Ibadan where he delivered the keynote address.

    The event drew several dignitaries, including catholic archbishops, business leaders and Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) led by Chief Anthony Idigbe, who is a member of the fundraising committee, and Chief Bolaji Ayorinde, who chaired the dinner.

    Reliving his university days, Mahmoud said he not only ate in very clean and well-managed cafeterias, it was always a joy to be at the new arrival section of the university library for the latest publications from around the world.

    “The university experience was dignified and conducive to learning and character formation. As a student, I could even afford to buy newspaper and periodicals. Not anymore. Nigerian public universities are now a shadow of what they used to be.

    “The campus experience for most students is brutal and inhuman. Students live in sub-human conditions in most public universities,” he said.

    Mahmoud recalled that when he resumed as Pro-Chancellor of the Kano University of Science and Technology, he visited the hostels and was shocked to find a “most undignified existence”, with 12 students living in a room meant for three.

    “The sanitary conditions were appalling, the entire corridors were littered with kerosene stoves and cooking pots for preparing what would hardly pass as decent meals by the students.

    “For most, life on campus was a dreadful experience,” he said, adding that the situation describes the state of public universities across the country.

    The NBA president was of the view that funding was a major constraint, as Nigeria’s budgetary expenditure remains the lowest compared to other African countries.

    He said while Ghana and Botswana spend about 10 per cent of their GDP on education, Nigeria’s hovers around three to four percent.

    He also decried inconsistent policies on education and a dysfunctional federal structure.

    “There is a view that the federal structure hinders innovation, flexibility in policy formulation and stifles responses to local conditions and challenges.

    “Too much power and resources are concentrated on a few hands at the federal level at the expense of states and local governments. This encourages abuse and corruption.

    “Education, it is argued, should be purely a state and probably local government affair. Undoubtedly, the Nigerian federal system is convoluted and in need of reform.

    “Nigeria’s federal system will benefit so much from decentralisation and will assist in making public institutions more functional, more responsive and more efficient,” he said.

    Mahmoud, however, said he did not subscribe to “the reductionist view” that true federalism and restructuring were the magic wand to address all development challenges.

    To him, such a position was “simplistic” and often an excuse for a failure to pay detailed attention to the developmental challenges the country faces.

    The NBA chief said the government must to invest heavily in education.

    “We must match and try to surpass the rest of Africa if we must retain our leadership on the continent. Any spending that is less than 10 per cent of total share of GDP in my view is not ambitious,” he said.

    According to him, robust policy review must be encouraged, adding that educational policies were too important to be left in the hands of government alone.

    “There is a great room for private sector investment in education, through public-private and private-private partnerships,” he said.

    He said other interventions could be through partnerships, scholarships, grants and endowments.

    Former Anambra State Governor/DU’s Governing Council chairman Mr Peter Obi, said Nigeria’s education budget was one of the worst globally.

    “The more educated a country is, the more you grow and the better the society. We have not invested in education,” he said, while emphasising that the world was moving away from “baggage economy to knowledge economy”.

    Obi said between 2010 and 2014, Nigeria’s budget on education was N1.8 trillion (about $11billion); in 2015/2016, it was N761billion (about $2.1billion).

    “Over seven years, our budget for education was $13.2billion. South Africa’s budget for education in 2015 was $15.4bilion, and they’re 55 million while we’re 186 million. Egypt’s budget on education was $13billion, with a population of 95million.

    “Our budget is not up to one per cent of our GDP. It’s totally unacceptable. We need to do something very aggressively. Nigeria does not see education as an investment but as expense,” he said.

    Obi believes the money is there; the problem was the misplaced priority.

    “We need to get people in government to invest money where we need investment, and that is in education,” he said.

    DU said the event was organised to raise N1.2billion for its administrative building, N1.3billion for three 100-capacity hostels, N168million for a cafetaria, N465million for its faculty building, N100million for network of tarred roads, among several others.

  • How Obaseki is retooling public education

    At a time all hope in public education is almost lost, Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki seems to have found the solution to the multifarious problems that have held Nigeria’s education hostage according to this report by Crusoe Osagie

    Nigeria’s blighted growth and development are perhaps more manifest in the quality of its human capital, thanks to a crisis-ridden education sector that parades over-populated classrooms, outdated school curricular that are far flung from current reality, incessant labour strikes owing to poor wages and inadequate incentives; as well as policy inconsistency.

    The resulting mass out-flux of Nigerian students to Europe, North and South America and sister African countries, where education receives premium attention, explains the failing faith in Nigeria’s education, amplified by the poor global rating of her tertiary institutions.

    Over the years, while so much efforts have been made to discuss the crisis in Nigeria’s education sector, successive governments at the federal, state and local levels have demonstrated tokenistic disposition to overhauling the sector.

    Curiously, at a time hope for educational excellence in the country is on a free fall, some shine is emanating from Edo State.

     

    Reforms in the Basic Education sub-sector

     

    Setting the tone for what was to come, Governor Godwin Obaseki, shortly after assuming office, disrupted the rendezvous that had characterised the Edo State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), which civil servants saw as one of the cash cows of the state.

    The restructuring of the dysfunctional agency repositioned it to execute its core mandate of transforming learning and teaching outcomes in the state, with the employment of technology-savvy and result-oriented staff, who are the avante-garde of the ongoing change in the basic education sector.

    For the first time in the state’s recent history, training and retraining of teachers, promotion as well as the institutionalisation of teacher supervision and monitoring are receiving their deserved attention.

    Known for educational excellence in the days of former governors; Dr. Samuel Ogbemudia and Ambrose Alli, Edo State, under Governor Godwin Obaseki, is on its way to re-enacting the great strides that earned her accolades in the 1980s. The building blocks for the renaissance or returning to educational excellence are being laid.

    The latest in the series of basic education sector reforms, is Edo Supporting Teachers to Achieve Results (EDOSTAR), a component of Edo Basic Education Sector Transformation (EDOBEST).

    EDOSTAR is a Teacher Professional Development Training that is building the capacity of teachers in the use of digital technologies in classrooms as well as new classroom management techniques.

    According to the Special Adviser to the Governor on Basic Education and Acting Chairman, Edo SUBEB, Dr. Joan Osa Oviawe, the teacher training programme will equip teachers with knowledge and skills in deploying new technologies in the classroom, noting that over 2000 teachers and Headmasters/Headmistresses participating in the exercise will receive computer tablets and smart phones.

    “Edo BEST is about imagining the education of tomorrow and starting it today. Governor Obaseki is committed to a holistic change in our basic education sub-sector. On the first day of training, we realised that the training was oversubscribed. Over 3000 teachers showed up. It was a herculean task to send some away because we have a set limit we can accommodate for this training. We will have more trainings as we expand Edo BEST to other schools,” she said.

    Two weeks ago, caches of textbooks were received by the Edo State Universal Basic Education Board, for onward distribution to public schools. Earlier, mathematical sets were distributed to public schools in the state.

     

    School Census

     

    To ascertain the number of schools, population of teachers, students, available infrastructure and the location of schools across the state, a census has been carried out by the Obaseki administration. As the findings of the ambitious project are being awaited, the state government has said that the data gathered from the census will guide critical policy undertakings in the sector such as the construction of new schools, deployment of teachers, chairs and tables, laboratories, libraries and other resources.

     

    Renewed faith in Technical education

     

    After years of neglect, Governor Obaseki has put technical education on the front burner owing largely to skills set obtainable from technical schools. The governor plans to re-skill Edo youths at the old Benin Technical College, that is undergoing revamp. On completion, the new Benin Science and Technical College will serve as a skills hub for vocational and technical training.

    Earlier this month, the Edo State governor assured a delegation of the European parliament who paid him a courtesy visit that the Benin Science and Technical College will be near completion before the end of the year.

    “The Benin Science and Technical College is a work in progress and we anticipated that it would be near completion before the end of the year. When the project is completed, it will enable victims of human trafficking and others acquire technical and vocational skills which will offer them hope,” he told his guests.

    Obaseki maintained that the state government embarked on the reconstruction and expansion work at the college which would also serve as a vocational centre in the state to engage youths on vocational skills and discourage them from illegal migration.

    According to the governor, the college, on completion, will supply technical manpower to the Benin Industrial Park, the planned Benin Modular Refinery and other enterprises that require technical and vocational manpower.

     

    Tertiary education

     

    The impact of the aggressive repositioning of Edo State’s education sector is more visible in the tertiary education sub-sector as the government has rolled out a new multi-campus architecture for institutions of higher learning in the state.

    Work on the merging of the Colleges of Agriculture in Iguoriakhi and Agenebode will be completed soon. The new institution will have specialised schools offering courses in the various areas of agriculture. According to Obaseki, the new institute will provide trained manpower in the agricultural broad spectrum “given the role of agriculture in advancing the economy of the country, and considering the status of the state as an agrarian state.

    The governor disclosed that a team is currently working on a new curriculum to ensure that graduates of the institute are trained to become successful agripreneurs.

    The state government is passionate about teacher training.

    During a visit to the old College of Education in Abudu, Orhionmwon Local Governemt Area, Obaseki said: the state is to operate the Tayo Akpata University of Education, Ekiadolor, as well as multi-campus College of Education with sites in Igueben, Abudu and Auchi.

    “While the Abudu campus is to serve as Special Training Centre for teachers at the Basic Education level, the campus at Igueben will focus on training teachers for technical and secondary education.”

    He said the state government has concluded arrangement to remodel the college in Abudu, noting, “After revamping this institution, it will serve as a centre for training and certification of new sets of teachers for the basic level of education. This will prepare the teachers to adopt modern teaching methods at that level of education.”

    The State governor has read the riot act to Ambrose Alli University Ekpoma to turn around its fortunes in four years’ tim.

    The governor recently gave the management of the state-owned university, Ambrose Alli University, Ekpoma, a four-year deadline to become the best university in Nigeria. He assured the university’s management of his administration’s support for the university to raise its profile and bring back the institution’s glorious days.

    The sustained tempo of activities at the Edo State University Iyamho, earned it the first position among state-owned universities and  3rd place among universities in Nigeria, in the first ever open educational resources ranking by the National Universities Commission (NUC) in conjunction with a national expert group and external experts.

    The new status of Edo State University Iyamho as a centre for academic excellence, barely two years after its creation, is indeed good news from the state.

    Those familiar with the workings of the Obaseki-led government, say the Iyamho varsity is the  model for every educational institution in the state, in the mind of the governor.

    A politician, who would not want his name in print, said “Edo State is set to witness a dramatic revamp of all its educational institutions, from basic to tertiary levels.”

    With the success story of the Edo State University Iyamho and the ongoing reforms in the basic education sector, the stage looks set for the re-enactment of the state’s glorious old days, (then Bendel), when it ranked number one in educational excellence in the region.

  • Restoring public education’s pride

    It is not uncommon for Nigerians to bemoan corruption, the collapse of moral values, insecurity, decaying public infrastructure, unemployment or the high cost of doing business in the country. What is most uncommon is the correct diagnosis of the disease rather than the symptom, which all these represent, or its origins.

    Once upon a time, Nigeria’s politics was relatively clean. Our best and brightest like Chief Obafemi Awolowo, or the golden voice of Africa, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, or Ahmadu Bello, dominated the political landscape of our country. Colossuses like the Great Zik of Africa, Aminu Kano, Chief Mike Opara, Anthony Enahoro, Uncle Bola Ige – the Cicero of Esa Oke – with their education set the pace. Politics was not for dropouts, 419 kingpins and drug pushers as it has become today. What then happened? How did Nigeria find herself in this mess? How did we become the basket case of Africa?

    The origin of Nigeria’s malady can be traced to the abandonment of public education that provided quality learning to ALL irrespective of their economic background.  Which can by itself be traced to the trauma of the 60s, when Nigeria zigzagged from various bloody coups to a civil war that severely damaged the national psyche.

    One need not be a psychologist to see how the ruinous civil war, that cheapened human life and left 10 million Nigerians cashless and desperate, broke the bond of communal responsibility that underlined the hitherto strong education system and brought upon Nigeria a generation of educated idiots who later made it into her state house in the last dispensation. If that result were not enough parable for Nigeria to pay more attention to the education of the common man, then one would wonder what will wake us up from our perilous slumber.

    Nigeria’s civil war was a traumatic national experience, irrespective of the vain glorious declaration of “no victor, no vanquished”.

    First was the traumatised and impoverished vanquished left with nothing but self and strove to nothing but self-enrichment to escape the throes of poverty that the war had brought upon him; of what use is community to such a man? Of what use is education, when material acquisition was the route to fame, recognition and honour? Thus a generation of the vanquished that have been educated by missionaries and community scholarships took to trading and selling of everything and anything including our values.

    Trumping the imperious circumstances of the vanquished was the traumatised victor, whose sense of entitlement to the articles of state led to the abandonment of enterprise and self-sufficiency. After all, he had lost friends and put limb at risk to keep the nation one, why should he not benefit from the spoils of victory? Seeing people die also have a way of making man realising the brevity of life to aimless acquisition to which end the Nigerian moral is now bankrupt and crying loud for salvation

    The emerging Nigeria after the civil war had no use for solid education system, for it negates the objectives of the new national mindset for materialism courtesy of a deep-seated trauma to which we were all in denial. Perhaps education shone a light of transparency on the racketeering group the new system purposefully developed.

    Thus developed, the Nigerian penchant for “sharing the national cake”, and creation of alternative truths to justify the privatisation of profits and the socialisation of losses now emblematic in AMCON, CBN intervention funds, subsidy payments, among others – for after all, the nexus of material acquisition in the absence of morality is corruption. So when we say corruption will kill Nigeria if we don’t kill corruption, we can only mean that until we reverse the trauma that led to the abandonment of education as a value system, Nigeria is dead.

    The inflow of dark money courtesy of mineral wealth post-civil war of course did not help matters. Who needs the community when the federal government can afford to pay for it? Thus went out of the window the basic building blocks of our education system. Nigeria is yet to recover from this nightmare.

    A generation of community or missionary school trained children decided to debase education for the poor, and instead set up mushroom private institutions for themselves and their children only to fall victim to the overall destruction of the nation’s value system.  The public school system was under funded, children went to schools without shoes and one of the traumatised fellas became president and came to inflict a revenge on the national psyche courtesy of our miseducation!

    The education system of any society is the only systematic instrument for transmitting its value system, the only framework for enabling the next generation, its economy and instilling patriotism. All these elements were missing in the post 1970 education system we signed on to, and which is why today Nigeria churns out unemployable individuals from glorified primary schools we call universities.

    Patriotism or history are not taught in our schools, most of our school curriculum is detached from the need of real society, and foreign curriculum aside from currencies are now the fad in fast rising puppet elite institutions that rot at their moral core. Of what use is British-American curriculum to a Nigerian child? Are we preparing these children to grow British and American economy?

    Our education sector lacks a plan, from the bottom-up and we instead have replaced this with grandiose centralised planning that has no bearing in the real world. It is time for us to say never again. It is for us to realise that no amount of time spent fighting corruption will be meaningful without capturing a whole generation untainted in our schools before the work-life in Nigeria pigeon hole them into vice.

     

    • By Micheal O. Oluwagbemi II

     

     

  • Rethinking public education in Oyo State

    Today, I offer my two cents on the ongoing dialogue on public education in the pace-setting state of Oyo. I recognise the agony of the Number One citizen of the state, Governor Abiola Ajimobi, on the unacceptable condition of the state’s public institutions and the future of the children that they produce. On this basis, the governor has presented a proposal on the management of schools to education stakeholders. Titled “Participatory Management of Public Schools in Oyo State”, the governor made it clear that it is “still an initiative, not yet a policy.” It is incumbent on every responsible citizen to contribute to the shaping of a progressive educational policy out of the initiative or to suggest alternative initiatives.

    There are two different issues that demand our attention. The first is the matter of form. Then, there is the question of substance. By form, I mean the process or the means of approach to the initiative. Is it democratic or dictatorial? Is it imposed without discussion or is it adopted as a consensus after dialogue? Substance refers to the content of the initiative. What are the key provisions of the initiative? One may find an initiative commendable with respect to form but condemnable with regard to substance. The converse is also true. One may commend the substance and reject the form. I would like to speak to both of these issues.

    We cannot overemphasise the importance of education as an indispensable factor in the development of nations and individuals. Beside the fact that education is a leveller and equaliser, it is also true that the nations that have excelled in development have been the ones that invest heavily in the education of citizens young and old. Examples abound in the East Asian countries that achieved independence at the same time that Nigeria did.

    By the same token, it stands to reason that if a nation is to maximise the full benefits of citizen education, it must deploy ALL its resources and mobilise all its forces—human, material and mental—toward the development and implementation of an optimum education policy. Deploying all forces and mobilising all resources mean engaging all stakeholders in productive dialogue and affording them the opportunity of contributing to the emergence of a policy and program of action which they can all buy into.

    Democracy, which we proudly affirm, functions properly and productively if and when no individual or group is left out of the market place of ideas, and if and when no one approaches that same place with a mentality of “my way or no way.” Democracy rewards open dialogue with near-perfect policy ideas which procure benefits for the greatest number of people.

    However, some entity has to initiate the dialogue. Proposals have to be placed on the table by someone. In a democracy, the entity that is entrusted with the responsibility to direct the affairs of the nation or state is also expected to initiate and lead the dialogue about which direction to go in the matter of the education of citizens. Should it be public or private? Or should we have a combination of both? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

    To initiate the dialogue with some ideas placed on the table of ideas does not mean that those ideas are sacrosanct. They are merely the starting point for discussion and other well-reasoned ideas are to be entertained. Between any government and citizens as groups, organisations, special interests, and individuals, this should be an article of faith, a mutually understood procedural template.

    This is precisely my understanding of what Governor Ajimobi tried to do with his administration’s new initiative on the management of public secondary schools in Oyo State. Inviting the public to debate the pros and cons of the initiative is an excellent example of respect for participatory democracy and it is a commendable approach.

    We must acknowledge the interests of segments of the state populations in the matter: parents, teachers, labor, religious groups, and whole communities. A sound education is the means to future happiness of each of these groups and its members. In particular, labor has a stake as parents and workers. Hence the invitation extended to these groups for dialogue.

    It is disturbing that organized labor allegedly decided not to take advantage of the opportunity for dialogue to present a reasoned opposition to the initiative but instead chose to disrupt the stakeholders’ meeting to which it was invited. It is alright to reject a proposal based on any ground of reasoning. But reason also requires that it be done in an atmosphere devoid of intimidation and physical abuse. Going that route is very unfortunate for several reasons, top of which is that it does not bode well for the moral education of the children on behalf of whom we claim to act. For it’s unclear the ways in which the uncontrolled violent aggression of adulthood is better than the temper tantrum of childhood.

    Now to the substance of the governor’s initiative, which I interpret as the force of reality over idealism. The present situation is unacceptable. The state does not have the resources to singly educate her children. Therefore, since it takes a village, she needs partners in the halls of public institutions. But realistically, these partners cannot be expected to act like CARITAS. They need to be incentivized. If they are going to put their resources into funding public education as government partners, there must be some return.

    Children in such collaboratively managed schools may have to pay some fees for their education that will not apply to children in pure public schools. And for many citizens, this doesn’t go well with their idealistic view of free education of all children by the state. Of course, there are still going to be purely private schools, including, ironically, the one established by the National Union of Teachers (NUT). Surprisingly, no one has sensed any contradiction in that venture.

    I find myself torn in this matter. I have an abiding belief in the responsibility of the nation to provide good education for its children. But the state has to have the resources to discharge this responsibility. Where the resources are unavailable, we must ask serious questions regarding why? And there are multiple culprits including limited tax base; tax fraud by businesses and individuals; inability of states to tax personal and business properties; proliferation of public institutions with avoidable running costs; low workforce productivity, etc.

    The fact is that there has always been a combination of school models even prior to the beginning of the first republic. When free education was introduced in the former Western Nigeria, there were public institutions, private schools, and grants-in-aid mission schools, including, Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Anglican, Christ Apostolic, African Church, Ansar-Ud-Deen, Ahmadiyya, Nawar-Ud-Deen, etc.

    These schools charged fees and received grants from the government which moderated the amount of tuition they charged. When such schools, including the purely private-for-profit schools, were taken over in 1975 by the federal government, many objected that it was a wrong step since the mission schools were doing a great service at moderate cost to the state and parents. Indeed, those grants-in-aid institutions were quasi-public institutions.

    In response, therefore, to the governor’s clarion call for input, my humble suggestion in the face of the reality that the state is faced with is this. The five models of collaborative partnership enunciated in the initiative document need to be packaged into one model. If it is going to be structured more like the grants-in-aid institutions of old, then it needs more tweaking and cropping.

    On the other hand, however, it makes sense to start small by inviting the former proprietors of grants-in-aid institutions to negotiate a new partnership arrangement. Those missions and communities that are so interested in the education of children may be requested to provide infrastructure and facilities management, while the state is responsible for the training, recruitment and payment of teachers. Those schools still bear the names of their various founders. It is time for the progenitors to shoulder some responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of their adorable babies.

  • Public education and the future of Yoruba civilisation (1)

    In order to attain to the goals of economic freedom and prosperity, Nigeria must do certain things as a matter of urgency and priority. It must provide free education (at all levels) and free health facilities for the masses of its citizens.Nigeria should be a secular State … As far as possible, there should be separation of activities between the States on the one hand, and religious bodies on the other.—Obafemi AwolowoThoughts on the Nigerian Constitution
    I rejoice with the biological Obafemi Awolowo family on the 60th anniversary of free education which is today. I also rejoice with ourselves, political offspring of the sage. His vision of quality education and development is the driving force of our government…Governments that seek immortality in the hearts of the people must pattern their policies after Awolowo as we are doing in Oyo State.—AbiolaAjimobi at the 60th anniversary of free education in Western Nigeria.

    Regardless of whatever recommendations come out of the ongoing consultative forum on Oyo State’s attempt to initiate ‘marketization’ of public education, citizens should insist on referendum before the current policy on education is denatured through transfer of public schools to contractors

    The states in Nigeria have certainly been experiencing difficulties in paying their bills since the decline in the price of oil. No further evidence is needed for this than the fact that several states have failed in paying their workers’ salaries in the last six months. The governor of Oyo State recently committed 100% of its federal allocation to payment of workers’ salaries, a sign of problems in meeting other demands in the public service sector.

    Whether a final decision has been taken by the Oyo State government to gradually transfer public schools to contractors or the government is just consulting with stakeholders in respect of the future of public education, it is palpably wrong for the state to advertise for buyers or partners in the state’s provision of public education. And it will also be wrong for any state in Nigeria in general and in the Yoruba region in particular to want to end the tradition of public education, regardless of the size of allocations from federation account or the inefficiency of the current civil service to provide education as it is done in successful countries. For the avoidance of doubt, Oyo State is largely functioning as a self-appointed scapegoat for other Yoruba states that had been nursing programmes of two public school systems: model/mega for the privileged and another set for the underprivileged. Therefore, whatever is wrong with Oyo State’s choice of action in respect of public school applies to other Yoruba states that had established semi-public or semi-private model schools or that are planning to do so.

    Education is a constant driver of the two core elements in Yoruba culture: tolerance and commitment to egalitarianism. In the modern era, Chief Obafemi Awolowo reinforced the Yoruba value of tolerance and egalitarianism through the policy of free public education.In the mid-1950s, Chief Awolowo’s Action Group initiated free primary education scheme by cooperating with pre-existing missionary schoolsto offer free education to citizens of the region. Mission schools then were treated more or less as grants-aided schools. Later in the late 1970s, Awolowo’s Unity Party of Nigeria embarked on a full-fledged public school system through government takeover of primary and secondary faith-based schools.

    The belief in the ideology that government’s primary responsibility is the welfare of citizens drove the consistency in the commitment of governments under Awolowo’s political parties to provision of public education, to the extent that even after Chief Awolowo and Chief Akintola had parted ways, Chief Akintola still kept to the policy of free education in the region while he was a member of a national party that did not believe in universal primary education.Even during and shortly after the civil war when Nigeria was not very liquid, Generals Adeyinka Adebayo and OluwoleRotimi, governors of the region at that time did everything to sustain provision of free public education in the region. The purpose of this longish return to history of policy on education is to remind those currently governing the region that whatever advantage that must have come to the Yoruba today happened because of two interventions: ideology of social welfare by past rulers under thick and thin in the years before petroleum revenue and the acceptance of that philosophy of governance by civil servants.

    Therefore, convening a special consultative forum to discuss attempts to sell or rent public schools to private business or transfer management of public schools to contractors is an unimaginative way to address the myriad problems facing public education in the region. Regardless of whatever recommendations come out of the ongoing consultative forum on Oyo State’s attempt to initiate ‘marketization’ of public education, citizens should insist on referendum before the current policy on education is denatured through transfer of public schools to contractors.

    The desire to improve the quality of education given to citizens in Oyo State is an excellent gesture, but the way to achieve qualitative education in Oyo or any other states in Nigeria is not for the state to abandon its own responsibility in providing equal opportunity of access of citizens to public schools that provide the same service to all students. Private schools are already providing an alternative to public education at a cost that excludes majority of the population. By attempting to transfer or share ownership of schools with the business sector, Oyo State is putting at risk the access of its citizens to education, as there is no business in Nigeria—secular or spiritual—that is likely to go into any enterprise without expecting profit. Before the advent of public primary and secondary schools in the Yoruba region, the so-called faith-driven schools—Christian or Islamic—did not provide free education. It was the denial of access to citizens without adequate resources to pay tuition charged in such schools that made the Action Group under Awolowo to initiate free primary education. It is, therefore, naïve to expect that making secondary education a PPP venture is going to improve quality without frustrating access.  Improving quality of education and providing access to such education are not necessarily mutually exclusive. What is Oyo State likely to gain by selling 30 secondary schools out of over 600 in the state to the private sector? And what are the criteria behind selection of the 31 schools to be passed to contractors?

    In addition, history has shown all over the world that the best way to provide a secular education in a country housing multiple faiths is to make provision of education the responsibility of government. While every citizen should always be free to have and express his or her own religious belief, selling public schools to missionaries puts secular education at a great risk. Thrivingin a modern society requires that citizens are not subjected to religious indoctrination or radicalization in the course of receiving education for the purpose of living in a modern society. Transferring control of public schools to propagators of any religious belief is tantamount to returning to the primitive or pre-modern system of tying learning to specific religious faiths.

    The decision to start transferring ownership of schools to private business unveils doubt on the part of political leaders of their role in modern governance.The claim by Oyo State’s spokesman that the objective of the state is to transfer public schools to expert managers for the purpose of providing qualitative education is puerile in the context ofa state that had run public school system for more than half a century. Does this policy suggest the government’s commitment to run two parallel public school systems: oneby contractors with capacity to provide qualitative educationin collaboration with the government and another set owned solely by government but without capacity to provide qualitative education?

    The problems facing education in Oyo and other states in the 21st century cannot be reduced to managerialism. To say that the government is not competent enough to manage public schools is in fact an indictment of government itself. With the ongoing dialogue in Ibadan on how to manage public schools,Oyo State is asking the wrong questions about how to provide qualitative education or creating a solution to a problem that has not been identified.

    • To be continued