Tag: United Nations Children Fund

Education has, in its characters, a formation of character, but to deny certain individuals access to it on the basis of sex is a crime against humanity. Education of a girl-child not only exorcises the society but also makes the world a better place to live.” – Anonymous.

Our Constitution clearly stipulates a free and compulsory universal basic education for every child of school age to primary and junior secondary. However, given the rate of poverty in Nigeria and coupled with our local cultures, the literacy level of girls in the country is nothing to write home about, compared with their male counterparts.

Statistics shows that about 67 per cent of Nigerians live below poverty line. As a result, low-income parents are faced with a dilemma of survival, thereby sacrificing the education of their wards for survival. When children are left uneducated, how do we expect the country to get to its dream land? Suffice to say that, the education of a girl-child is as important as educating a male child, who is held culturally to superior.

Denying a girl-child education undermines the role of women in human capital development. She is a maker of the society. She can make our society work if well educated – either formal or informal education. She can also “destabilise” the society if she does not have education. Hence the saying that “behind every successful man is always a woman” makes more sense here.

The roles of a woman in nation-building cannot be overemphasised. To a child, she is a mother, demi-god, teacher and a confidant. She holds the key to the indoctrination of a child into the society (say love, affection, care, dressing and most importantly, first form of education which is learned from mother). To what extent can she play these roles with no education to set the pace? There is a saying that goes thus: “If you educate a man, you educate an individual. But if you educate a woman, you educate a nation.”

To a husband, a woman is a confident, wife and a bed mate. How can a bed be celestial when proper hygiene cannot be assured? A girl is the foundation of a working family; she either makes it work or makes it worse.

Problems are like plants, they have roots. Child marriage is a major challenge militating against girl-child education. According to United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF), children, especially girls in northern Nigeria, make up the larger chunk of the 40 per cent of those that do not attend primary schools. The organisation also listed underage marriage as a factor for not attending or dropping out of school, adding a shocking revelation: “At the current rates of reduction, it will take over 100 years to end girl child marriage in West and Central Africa.”

The apologists of “no education for girls” would argue that, to safeguard their cultural beliefs in the age of immorality, the more educated a girl is, the more immoral they become. Also, they posit that the more educated a girl is, the more divorces and distorted children the society will have to cater for. I will counter these claims by reiterating that the world had had a quite number of divorces. Divorce is not an adverse product of education, it is all about dissatisfaction and disagreement which would better be managed if the parties involved are inculcated with the accepted norms and values of the society, that is education.

The opponents of girl-child education are enemy of gender equality who are afraid of losing their grips on their household. They believe that women are subordinates or slaves. Going back memory lane, a statement was attributed to a Nigerian leader, who said: “I don’t know the (political) party my wife belongs to, but she belongs to my living room, kitchen and the other room.”

The statement itches and causes aches for confining women, even if it is one, to the four walls of a house, particularly coming from the a leader who should show good example.

Nevertheless, the present is weeping, the future is not happy, but to resign oneself to it is to be crippled because man is the architect of his own tidings. Girl-child enrolment in school can further be enhanced if a down-to-earth orientation is embarked upon in order to change the mind-set of people particularly in areas beyond coverage.

A holistic nation-wide awareness focused at hamlets in the nooks and crannies of the federation should be carried out to throw lights on the defects embedded in denying girl-child education.

A renowned British novelist, Sir William Golding, said: “I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men, they are far superior and always have been.” Also, Hillary Clinton, an American politician and former First Lady, said: “Women are the largest untapped reservoir of talent in the world.”

To this end, for any woman to be able to play her role in the society, she needs to be empowered, and the most striking form of empowerment is education. This is because education breeds right mindset, self-worth and esteem, which can be explored to achieving economic independence.

• Jamiu, a 100-Level Political Science, UDUS

For as far as most Nigerians can remember, this country has been proudly referred to as the Giant of Africa. The appellation was earned by virtue of Nigeria’s intimidating size and population. However, the country is fast losing the respect, not only in Africa but across the globe. The factors responsible for this are not far-fetched: poor supply of electricity, poor state of infrastructure, internet fraud, corruption, and low quality of education, among others.

The state of education can be easily explained by the fraction of budgetary allocation invested in the sector. In Africa, Nigeria’s giant status is non-existent, particularly given the level of attention paid to the education. While other African countries seem to have recognised the importance of investing heavily in education as a vehicle for irreversible development and strong economy, Nigeria’s priorities are still found in sustaining an excessively expensive system of governance and national security. Rather than set the pace in implementing global standards, Nigeria evidently has a lot to learn from smaller and younger countries across the continent.

In Kenya for instance, education has traditionally received the major share of the country’s national budget to take care of teachers’ salaries and subsidise primary and secondary education. This tradition was set in Kenya’s 2015 budget. In April 2016, the Kenyan government tabled its 2017 national budget estimates before the National Assembly. The Budget Policy Statement (BPS) ceilings in all the sectors summed up to 1,498 Kenyan shillings; but the Gross Expenditure Estimates, after the increase by the Treasury, amounted to 1.667 trillion Kenyan shillings. Based on the BPS, education received a total of 346.6 Ksh, which in other words is 23.1 per cent of the entire budget. This figure is topped only by the allocation to energy, infrastructure and Information Technology.

South Africa spent R213.7 billion on basic education, which is about 15 per cent of the 2017 budget. According to the National Treasury, the allocation to education is projected to rise an average of 7.4 per cent yearly in the following three fiscal years. In terms of percentage, this allocation, according to data from the United Nations, trumps those of the United States, United Kingdom and Germany.

According to a United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) document titled: Education Budget, South Africa, 2017/2018, the budget for school children is presently 17 per cent of total government expenditure.

In Ghana, government has established itself to be a big spender on education. In 2013, Ghanaian government committed a whopping 31 per cent of national budget to education, as against Nigeria’s 8 per cent in the same year.

As for Egypt, one country whose universities always stand out on the continental ranking, the government spent EGP104 billion on education in the 2016/2017 fiscal year, which amounted to 11.1 per cent of government’s spending. This is an improvement on the allocation of EGP99.3 billion the previous year. The increment in the allocation is partly attributable to the Egyptian Constitution. According to the law, the government is required to spend at least three per cent of the Gross National Product (GNP) on healthcare and at least four per cent on education every year. It is noteworthy that the global average education budget in relation to GDP stands at five per cent.

Nigeria, the acclaimed giant and a home to the largest black population on earth, lacks regard for education, whether in the military era or democratic dispensation. An assessment of the trend from 1999 shows that the lowest allocation, 4.46 per cent to education was in 1999, and the highest, 11.44 per cent was in 2015. The average allocation in all 19 years of democratic rule is 9.14 per cent.

In the years of military rule, education did not fare any better as a study showed that the average allocation to education between the years of 1981 and 1998 was a meagre 4.18 per cent.

The situation has in fact worsened under the present administration. The first budget presented by President Muhammadu Buhari for the 2016 fiscal year was in stark contrast to the double digits legacy left by his predecessor. Education received N369.6 billion, which was 6.07 per cent of the entire budget.

In the 2017 budget proposals, N448.01billion was allocated to education, representing about 6 per cent of the N7.30 trillion budget. And in the 2018 Appropriation Bill, the government proposed an allocation of N435.01 billion to education, which is just 7.04 per cent of the total budget put at N8.612 trillion.

Across Africa, most countries are spending more and more on education by the year. In fact, government expenditure on education in sub-Saharan Africa increased from US$12 billion in 2000 to US$67 billion in 2013, representing over 450 per cent growth. This trend has resulted in higher literacy rates, lesser numbers of out-of-school children, improved quality of learning, and more foreign investments as well as greater industrialisation owing to greater availability of skilled labour.

Nigeria, on the other hand, especially under the Buhari administration, has yet to board the train of progress, despite cries from various corners. For this country, it has become an unending cycle of disregard for education, and complaints from stakeholders, accompanied by silence from the government. The same pattern is repeated year in, year out. This habit has affected us greatly, because not only are our schools not reckoned with on the international stage, the culture of academic tourism has seen our economy shed weight to the benefit of sane countries, including Ghana.

The country’s bland attitude towards education equally reflects in the ranking of universities across the globe and in Africa. According to the 2016 Times Higher Education World University Rankings, there was only one Nigerian university in the top 15 ranking in Africa, and that university, the University of Ibadan, is 14th on the list. On the same list, we have six universities from South Africa, three from Egypt, two from Morocco, one from Uganda (ranked fourth), one from the Ghana (ranked seventh), and one from Kenya (ranked eighth). A similar pattern happened in the last ranking.

It is high time our government recognised that investing in education is for the good of the country. We do not have to go as far as the extreme West or the far East to get examples of countries reaping bountifully from great investments in education. Right here in Africa, there are more than sufficient instances. The National Assembly should adopt the Egyptian legislative model by incorporating into the constitution a benchmark for budgetary allocations to education. This preferably must not fall below 5 per cent of the nation’s GDP or 20 per cent of government’s spending yearly.

Our schools are ailing; and it is not by scrapping post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) or quelling industrial actions that they will get better. We must make conscious, radical efforts by investing all we can to turn things around for good. Before we complain that our graduates are unemployable, we must ask first if our schools are universally acceptable.

Beyond just dumping huge sums of money into education, the government has to ensure a balance in recurrent and capital expenditures as well as an effective implementation of whatever plans are laid out on paper. If we can do this, then the return of Nigeria to its rightful place is not only inevitable but will happen before our eyes.

‘Kunle recently graduated from Faculty of Law, UI