Apart from periodic panelbeating of the education sector, far-reaching reforms of this sector cannot be achieved without a national dialogue
In a six-part essay, today’s piece is still on primary and secondary education, for obvious reasons. Without a solid background in these two levels of schooling, all efforts to advance and achieve competitiveness in a knowledge-driven universe will come to naught, regardless of how prestigious tertiary education institutions appear to be. I, therefore, crave indulgence from readers who may be tired about reading my opinion on how to prepare Nigeria for the new world that is staring it in the face.
We said, among other things, last week, that reforming education in our country will involve new strategies to ensure highly motivated learners/teachers, conducive learning conditions; qualified teachers; dedicated school administrators; etc. There is the tendency to think (the way most federal politicians and their administrators do) that promising to throw money at these challenges may be enough to keep citizens inspired to learn. Some may even argue that spending up to 24% of the country’s annual budget on education as recommended by UNESCO, instead of the paltry 4% that is usually allocated to the education sector will transform the nation’s education landscape. Given the parlous state of governance over the years, giving 24% of the nation’s budget to education is not likely to create a sufficient condition for improving the quality of education. Doing just that is likely to fuel the culture of corruption within the circles of politicians and bureaucrats put in charge of the sector.
What must happen before the right percentage of annual budget is allocated to education is to have the right ideological framework for governing the country at all levels: federal, state, and local. Put simply, there is a need for political parties and their leaders to provide leadership in creating development vision and mission that can inspire and mobilise citizens. Such vision must include measurable and visible milestones that citizens can identify with. Using the mantra of unity and transformation to inspire citizens is too vague and devoid of measurable milestones for citizens to identify with. Leaders of other nations have in recent times created visions that have helped to transform their countries. South Korea, Singapore, Brazil, India, Mexico, and even United Arab Emirates have all created national goals that have kept both their governors and citizens moving towards progress, not only in education but in other sectors.
Nigeria had even done something like that in the past. According to LadipoAdamolekun, BisiAdesola, and Chief BisiAkande in Legacy of Educational Excellence, the Universal Free Education Programme of Western Nigeria in the years before Nigeria’s independence and civil war would not have succeeded if there was no synergy between the government and the civil service that served it and without the mobilisation of the citizens done by the Action Group in the 1950s. With an ideological mission that set out to improve freedom and quality of life of citizens in the Western Region, the Action Group used the motto of “Freedom for all, Life moreAbundant” to mobilise citizens to support all its developmental projects including education. This explained why it was possible for Western Nigeria to create the Partnership Model for education provision almost half a century before it became popular in many countries today. The Partnership Model in Western Nigeria then recognised the government as the agency with superintending responsibility for education and of citizens, communities, and religious institutions as partners in a vineyard that was directed by politicians and administrators at both state and local government levels. Local governments, under the nose of parents with children in the schools, managed the schools while the state government provided financial support through revenue from taxation. The success in provision of primary and secondary education in Western Nigeria later turned into failure under the auspices of military dictatorships, as Adamolekun pointedly observed : “The unitary and centralised command structures of the military contrasted with the ‘true’ federalist arrangements within which the Western Nigerian ‘success story’ was incubated and implemented.”
The institutional decay and educational decline that started with increased unitary governance under the military and that appears to have become an abiding aspect of federal governance in the post-military era have created a situation where states and local governments no longer have the powers to raise taxes to fund their own development. By depending on handouts from the federal government, many states and local governments have also sought and obtained support from the federal government in their direct and indirect efforts to alienate citizens. The result of decades of institutional decay and a national journey without destination under post-military rule is the failure that abounds in all levels of education, particularly in the most seminal level: primary/secondary education.
Apart from periodic panelbeating of the education sector, far-reaching reforms of this sector cannot be achieved without a national dialogue that allows each part of the country to spell out what it hopes to achieve for its citizens in a highly competitive global market. Throwing money periodically and grudgingly at tertiary education and after long periods of strikes may not lead to meaningful education reform. We may not know what type of education to give citizens and how to do so effectively until we know where we want our nation to be in the future and what capacities we want our citizens to have.
As Adamolekun has aptly observed, our citizens have been demobilised for over three decades. The demobilisation has arisen from an ethos of increased unitary rule and the disjuncture between government and citizens created by a system of funding through allocation of funds from a central purse constituted by rents collected from extractive industries and the spoils system that this has engendered during and after military rule. Local governments and states need to be autonomous enough to raise funds for their own development. This is not in the sense intended by lawmakers (now engaged in some form of constitutional amendment) to allow local governments to spend money donated to them by the federal government without any oversight by the states that compose them; it is in the sense of giving states and local governments autonomy to raise the taxes they need from citizens, the real owners of the country and its parts, and to collaboratively engage citizens in creating a functional education system from primary to postgraduate training.
In other words, the ethos of nation building that was evident in Western Nigeria in the 1950s and that is evident in most federal states in the world today needs to be retrieved by those who make it their calling to rule Nigeria and its parts. Just as Chief Akande once observed, “At present, Nigeria has no educational system with adequate philosophical objectives as a backbone. It can be seen therefore that the major purpose of most Nigerian educational institutions is administration of an examination orientation.” Primary and secondary education has to be reformed urgently and given a goal that is larger than running elaborate examination boards. Creating good philosophers and plumbers (used here as metaphors for effective academic and vocational training) depends on agreeing on what kind of Nigeria and Nigerians the country and its parts desire to produce to ensure sustainable unity and development. Doing this requires paying more attention to primary/secondary education.
To be continued
