If everything goes on well, the federal government will soon unbundle the 115 Unity Colleges across the country into basic and secondary schools. Consultations to that effect are already on-going between the relevant ministries and agencies of the government.
Minister of State for Education, Yusuf Sununu, while disclosing these at a meeting of principals of Unity Colleges with the theme, “Entrepreneurial Education: A Panacea for Self-reliance and National development” said the new measure is an integral part of the National Policy on Education. He further justified the unbundling exercise on the ground that it will allow more funds to go into the basic education level which is the basic foundation for learning.
“As at today, money accruing to the Universal Basic Education Commission UBEC is not being enjoyed by the Federal Unity Colleges. But the unbundling will allow them (Unity Colleges) to have the basic education component which will be funded through UBEC”, the minister argued. By the new arrangement, more money will go into the basic and secondary education against what obtained in the past.
Apart from additional funds that will be attracted by the schools, it was further canvassed that the unbundling will draw further benefit from the huge opportunities it offers for self-employment and self-reliance on the part of its products. Its effects in ameliorating the escalating unemployment level in the country is also put forward as further reason why the unbundling is a thing whose time has come.
Given the reasons adduced by the minister, the proposed unbundling of Unity Colleges would seem to draw considerable allure. This is especially so given the high unemployment level among products of our secondary schools. The socio-economic and developmental challenges that currently assail the country, further lend any policy capable of equipping graduates of such schools with the necessary skills to make use of their heads and hands to create employment a desideratum.
But there are grey areas in the minister’s presentation that require further clarification. There was no explanation on whether the basic and secondary schools would operate from the colleges as presently constituted or entail earmarking some of the Unity colleges as distinct basic schools running subjects up to the senior secondary school level while others are designated secondary schools with subjects running up to the same level.
This clarification is germane for clear distinction between the current proposal and the 6-3-3-4 policy on education around which the nation’s secondary school education revolves. This is more so as the proposed new initiative shares the same objectives with the 6-3-3-4 policy on education which came into place since 1983. When the 6-3-3-4 system was introduced, all the nation’s secondary schools including the Unity Colleges had to cue into it.
Ironically, the same reasons that had all along been adduced to justify the 6-3-3-4 policy on education are the very ones the minister is putting forward to justify the unbundling of the Unity Colleges. It was then argued that on completion of the six-year secondary school system split into junior and senior secondary schools, their products would have had vocational training inculcated into them such that will make them self-employed and self-reliant if they are not able to proceed to the university.
By this, the government would indirectly reduce the scourge of unemployment that has been growing in geometric progression with its associated social vices. The minister spoke along these lines when urged principals of Unity Colleges to cultivate the entrepreneurial mind-set on their students by integrating it into the school curriculum to empower them to become job creators than job seekers.
“Entrepreneurship education offers a solution to this challenge as it prepares students to think creatively, innovatively and develop the confidence to take calculated risks”, Sununu further eulogised the proposed initiative. This argument is nothing new. It was the lynchpin around which the 6-3-3-4 education system revolved.
After more than two decades of its implementation, facts on the ground indicate very appallingly that the policy has been unhelpful in producing school leavers capable of self-reliance or creating employment for themselves. The touted self-reliance and self-employment from its products have largely remained a grand illusion. This should not come as a surprise.
A combination of factors added up to rob the policy of its advertised potentials. Lack of adequate skilled manpower to see the students through vocational training, the absence of home grown technology, institutional corruption and dearth of supportive infrastructural facilities have remained the key obstacles to the high-minded goals of the 6-3-3-4 education system.
So when Sununu presented the unbundling of the Unity Colleges in the same fashion the 6-3-3-4 system was dressed but failed to deliver on promise, public cynicism was bound to greet it. There are reservations as to whether the unbundling will not suffer the fate of other policies before it. There has been no substantial change or improvement in the conduct of public affairs to give confidence that the unbundling will not suffer from the same systemic challenges that worked against the realisation of the goals of the 6-3-3-4 system.
It is not just enough to justify the unbundling of the unity colleges on the premise that it will allow more funds from UBEC to be injected into them. Neither is it enough to expect that once the schools are split and additional funds injected into them, all the necessary and sufficient conditions they require to deliver on promise would have been guaranteed. Far from that. How these funds are utilised in a system notorious for official corruption is at issue.
Moreover, it is yet uncertain how the government intends to address such systemic deficits as requisite skilled local manpower, the attendant technological base and such infrastructural facilities as the epileptic power supply that are sine qua non for the kind of revolutionary change in skills acquisition.
But then, the term unbundling throws up feelings that leave sour taste in the mouths of the citizenry. Nigerians encountered that term when the oil sector was broken down. They also saw it in action in the case of the National Electric Power Authority NEPA. Unbundling was dressed as the elixir to the challenges in those sectors.
But the efficiencies and economy of scale that were to be derived from those unbundling exercise have been hard to realise. Rather, they have brought with them the same inefficiencies that marred their predecessors and high costs which the citizenry have had to pay for their services.
So when the minister spoke of unbundling the Unity Colleges, the images the citizens got was that it would entail increases in school fees. But the explanation that the envisaged additional funds would come from the UBEC with the introduction of the basic education component seemed to have put that possibility at bay.
Before then, there had arisen speculations that school fees in the unity schools had been increased to N386,000. The Federal Ministry of Education was quick to deny it. It had in a statement; described a document to that effect, which it said was circulating among parents as fraudulent. It said the highest fee paid by students in the unity schools was N100, 000 only for new students.
It is good the speculated increase arose before the unbundling exercise was announced by the minister. We now know that additional funding for the new initiative will come from UBEC. That should be heart-refreshing. But the federal government must do proper homework this time around. It is not just enough to tout the advantages the unbundling of the Unity Colleges will bring forth.
This country has not been lacking in churning out policies designed to set the nation on proper developmental direction. But there exists a whole world of difference between policy formulation and its implementation to achieve the desired goals. Secondary education that equips their products to make use of their heads and hands to create jobs is the way to go.
But the fundamentals must be gotten right. The consultations presaging the unbundling must ensure all the supportive infrastructure and technological manpower to inculcate the envisaged entrepreneurial skills on the students are adequately in place. That will make the difference between the deficits encountered by the 6-3-3-4 system and the current one.
