The role of individuals and religious societies in education cannot be discountenanced. For long, they have been supporting the government in this critical sector. They started with the founding of nursery/primary schools; moved into secondary school and are now into tertiary education.
Private schools have their challenges, despite some of the good things people say about them. Their major challenge is funding, an area where they cannot match the government. The different tiers of government own most of the schools inthe country. The Federal Government is at the top of the ownership ladder.
Last year, it devoted 8.43 per cent of the budget to the funding of education. Many consider the vote may be inadequate because it is for the funding of public-owned schools and relevant regulatory agencies and parastatals of the Federal Ministry of Education, (FME)
Private schools do not enjoy government support. It is argued that since they charge fees and make profit, they do not need financial support to build infrastructure, hire teachers and provide equipment like their public school counterparts.
Now, they are beginning to agitate for a change. They are seeking greater recognition and financial support from the government. They are also seeking relief from paying high taxes.
They made their stand known at the 28th Annual Conference of the Association of Vice Chancellors of Nigerian Universities (AVCNU) hosted by the Federal University of Technology in Akure (FUTA). At the opening of the conference, some vice-chancellors of private universities protested claims by government representatives that private schools do not need support because they charge fees.
At the end of the conference attended by 60 vice-chancellors from public and private universities, the communiqué reflected the feelings of private school administrators that they deserve government’s support.
Part of the observations in the communiqué read: “Universities do not operate under the same circumstances having been established by various entities but inadequacy of funding by university proprietors is a major cause of declining educational quality in all universities.”
To this end, the AVCNU recommended that the: “Federal Government should increase funding of public universities and extend financial support to private ones.”
Prof Olusola Fajana, Vice-Chancellor of the Joseph Ayo Babalola University [JABU], attended the conference and was one of those who protested the claim that private schools are very comfortable.
Fajana told The Nation that private universities should benefit from the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) because it is funded by the private sector. TETFund derives its money from two per cent of the profit of private companies. The fund, the brainchild of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), is disbursed as grants to federal and state universities as grants to improve infrastructure, train lecturers and conduct research among others.
Fajana said it is erroneous to think that private universities exist to make profit because many of them charge well below the cost of education.
“A large number of private universities are not for profit. You cannot be charging 50 per cent of the cost and want to make profit. The cost of training an undergraduate as calculated two years ago was between N800,000 and N900,000. Our school fees is not N800,000 but half of that and the proprietors subsidise the money. Those universities charging N800,000 are charging close to the cost,” he said.
Fajana advocated for the return of grants-in-aid that was given to mission schools in pre-independence Nigeria to help cover the cost of education.
Even if the government is unwilling to develop infrastructure in private universities, Fajana is advocating support in training lecturers.
“The government should at least assist in funding our capacity development for staff,” he said.
Also making a case for government funding for private university, Aare Afe Babalola, founder of the Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti [ABUAD], said his university reinvests proceeds into enhancing education and should be supported by governemt.
He said: “I strongly believe government should fund my university because ABUAD is the only university in Nigeria today that was established as a non-profit making university. This simply means neither I nor my wife or children is entitled to a penny of the profit. Every profit that is made from the university goes back into the university.
“There are people that are wealthy in this country yet many fail to leave a lasting legacy. Some even decided to establish companies outside the country in the face of acute joblessness and poverty at the home front. But as God has blessed me so much through this legal practice, I one day now asked myself what can I do to reward humanity for what God has done for me, it was then the idea of ABUAD came on board. And I think people like us should be given kudos for bequeathing to humanity a lifelong asset.”
Rather than considering profit when thinking of private schools, Mr Mandy David Abulaya, proprietor of Nacabs Polytechnic in Akwanga, Nasarawa State, said government should appreciate the social service they provide.
“Private schools need a lot of funds. Education is not profit-oriented. You can only make goodwill and name but you don’t make profit,” he said.
At almost all levels of education, private schools are proliferating in Nigeria. At the university education sub-sector, there are 51 private universities, compared to the 40 run by the Federal Government and the 38 run by state governments. At the primary and secondary levels, there are close to 20,000 private schools in Nigeria – with more than 12,000 of them located in Lagos alone.
However, despite their increasing numbers, President of the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools, Dr P.C. Okoh lamented the lack of support or recognition from the government.
Okoh said at a Private Education Finance Summit held at the Excellence Hotel and Conference Centre, Ogba penultimate week that the private education sub-sector now caters for more children than the public education sub-sector.
“With the virtual collapse of public education system in many parts of the country, private schools rose to the challenge of bridging the gap. Parents prefer to send their children to private educational institutions to the extent that the private education subsector is today bigger than the public education sub-sector. Available records confirm that 98 per cent of secondary schools and 56 per cent of pre-schools, and 80 per cent of nursery pupils, 72 per cent of primary and 56 per cent of secondary school children are in private schools nationwide,” Okoh said in his speech read by the Chairman of Exam Ethics Marshals International, Mr Ike Onyechere.
Okoh however lamented that despite their significant contribution to educational development in Nigeria, governments have not extended support to private proprietors like it did to other sectors.
He said: “Despite its growing importance, government’s reaction to the private education sector is that of total neglect as all intervention efforts are focused on public education. There is no special intervention for private education as is the case in other sectors: Agriculture (Bank of Agriculture); Housing (Federal Mortgage Bank); Industries (Bank of Industry); Road transport (SURE-P) ETC.”
On the contrary, rather than support Okoh said government tax private schools unfairly.
“The private education sub-sector does not enjoy any fiscal policy incentives. To make matters worse, governments at all levels regard private schools as veritable sources for enhancement of internally-generated revenue. Private schools are further encumbered with all forms of taxation that include company tax, education tax, tax on signboards and stickers on school buses, etc.”
Okoh also said lack of funding forces private schools to seek loans from commercial banks which charge them cut-throat interest rates that force some to increase fees and engage in unethical practices.
“Of all the consequences of the financial pressure on private schools, weak adherence to best practices is the most dangerous. It is the driving force behind the weakening moral infrastructure as symbolised in the epidemic of examination malpractice and academic dishonesty,” he said.
Attesting to Okoh’s claims, Mukhtar Yunus Uthman, the sole administrator of Ibrahim Bello Memorial School, Zaria, Kaduna State told The Nation that it is time governments at all levels recognised the social role private schools play in the society.
He said annually, his school pays for renewal, signboard, tenement rate, personal annual income tax of proprietor and PAYE to the government. All this, he said, are taken without consideration for whether the schools can pay their workers.
“The truth is we don’t even have the money. In some private schools, when the end of term comes, proprietors have problems paying their workers until students resume, not to talk of paying these taxes. Recently, the Kano State government started charging private schools 10 per cent of their total annual income deductable before they remove tax salaries or any other expenses. Now in Kaduna State, we are battling with the plan of government to charge five per cent annual income as tax,” he said.
Complaining about multiple taxes from various agents of government, Mrs Temilola Afolabi, proprietress of High Gate Schools, Oshodi said the government regulation forces school owners to take loans.
She said: ”The tax imposed on us is much. The government sees private schools as if we collect a lot of money. We pay N63,000 for land use which is quite much but what can we do? We cannot fight the government; we just have to continue to manage. Sometimes we have to collect loans to pay these taxes. The personal income tax is another problem. How much is even the salary that they pay tax from when teachers are being paid maybe N15,000, N18,000 or N20,000?
“The radio and television tax is N10,000, then it was just N500. If you don’t pay up, the local council will come and threaten to close up your school. In fact we were even asked to pay N20,000 before we beat it down to N10,000. We just have two televisions; one for the day class and the other for the prep class. It is not as if we usually have light. We are always on generator and yet we pay for PCHN. We pay N20,000 monthly for light which we do not even see. By the time you put all these expenditures – tax, teachers’ salary, maintenance fee, LAWMA, PHCN and other expenses, how much do you now have as your profit for the year?
Mrs Oluokun Zainab, proprietress of Ansar-ud-deen Nursery and Primary School, Mafoluku, said the Lagos State Government should reduce the taxes.
She said: “Every January we pay some amount of money to the government which they call revenue and it is mandatory. We pay N20,000 to the Lagos State Signage Advertiment Agency, (LASAA) every year; LAWMA (Lagos State Waste Management Authority), Ministry of Environment will come; and N5,000 for fire certificate which is renewed every year. Land uUe, PHCN,TV and radio tax, teachers income taxes are there. All these taxes are just too much on us. Government should help us to reduce the tax because they are trying to push us out of business. They cannot provide for all so they should support us. When they collect all these amount of money from us definitely the profit has been drastically reduced.”
Mr Ayodele Ayodeji, Principal of SMA College, Isolo, said the taxes are ridiculous.
“Local government officials will come and harass you. Even the government officials will come to us and ask for withholding tax. If you want to paint your building yourself, they will come and say you must contract it out to them and you must pay tax. People are now moving away from education sector in Lagos to nearby places like Ogun State because of these reasons. The Directors tax that the owners also are made to pay is much. This will not help the country or people at all,” he said.
However, Lagos State Commissioner for Education, Mrs Olayinka Oladunjoye said at a forum with private school proprietors, that the government considers them as partners.
She said: “We have since realised that there is no way that government alone can move the education sector forward, we need to partners with the private sector and other stakeholders in the education sector because we realised that the largest number of our children are in private schools.”
She urged them to get the list of approved taxes from the ministry of education and desist from paying taxes to just any government official that shows up on their doorsteps.
