The story of a young Nigerian girl named Success has gone viral on the social media. Success is an eight-year-old girl who lives in Sapele, Delta State. Delta State, as everyone knows, is one of the richest states in Nigeria, with a lot of income accruing from its status as an oil-producing state.
The story is emblematic of Nigerian society, warts and all. It also illustrates, with great eloquence, a lot of what is wrong with education in Nigeria.
But first, the story. It started with a young girl in school uniform being accosted on the street by someone who obviously knew her. The interviewer, an older person, perhaps armed with an intention to do mischief, was wielding a camera-phone.
Why was she not in school, the little girl was asked?
The listener would perhaps, at that point, be expecting a contrite and sober voice, choking back tears.
But no, the voice, when it came, was feisty and combative.
She had been beaten and driven out of class, she declared. She did not say by whom, but it was obvious she was referring to her class teacher. She had been caned because she did not pay some money that was demanded. She did not mind being caned, as long as she was allowed to stay in class. But she had been caned and she still found herself ejected from class. That was the bit that got her goose.
Her interlocutor was clearly impressed.
The little girl continued her narrative with gusto.
‘They’ thought they were stubborn by caning her. They could cane her as much as they liked. She would prove to them who was the more stubborn.
No commentary was required. It was a story with a very powerful message, and the public quickly got the message.
Many of those who reacted to the story of Success took it at a personal level, in the usual manner of the bleeding-heart Nigerian who cannot bear to hear a hard-luck story or see a fellow Nigerian suffer, though in actuality he lives his dailylife in the midst of untold human suffering – physical and psychological.
More than one person offered to give the little girl, by now everybody knew her name – a scholarship ‘up to University level’.
Some of the displays of compassion raised a strong whiff of suspicion that they had eyes on the publicity potential. Even the lady who accosted Success and put her story on Facebook insisted on ‘compensation’ and ‘empowerment.’
After the knee-jerk reaction, the sober questions began to come in. Was this supposed to happen in Nigeria? Was education for an eight-year-old Nigerian not supposed to be free and compulsory all across the land?
In the middle of the public discussion, another video emerged on the social media. A lady paid a visit to the little girl’s school. What emerged was truly shocking. The whole school environment was shabby and dilapidated. The roofing sheets over the buildings were torn and scattered, leaving much of the classroom space exposed to the elements. Students described how they had to huddle in those parts of the classroom where the roof was still intact whenever it rained. When the rain was done, they would spend time baling water out of the class with buckets. A teacher pointed out an albino child who suffered from short-sightedness. As the little boy blinked into the camera, the other children confirmed that he often had to move his desk right up to the black board whenever the teacher was teaching in order to see what was written on the board. The teacher had advised his mother to ‘get glasses’, but she had replied she had no money. Obviously, there was no such thing as ‘School Health Service’ in Sapele.
It is good that Success now has a scholarship and work is ongoing to fix her school. Somewhere in the mix, it is hoped that someone would remember the albino boy who could not see distant objects – no, not to donate money to him, but to set up a basic school health system that could help thousands of similar children who have simple health challenges that are easily remediable, but which continue every day to impair their learning and their future.
The story of Success is not just about Success alone, or even about Delta State whose government has served their children ill, and whose governor should as a priority move to create a minimum standard of aesthetics and functionality for all the schools in his state. Success’ whole behaviour expresses a cultural eagerness to learn,which is present in Delta State, but which cannot be taken for granted all across Nigeria.
Nigeria, in fact, has the largest population of out of school children in the world. It is an absolute disgrace for a nation that created a Universal Basic Education programme in 1999 which guarantees a compulsory minimum of 9 years free education (6 years Primary, 3 years Junior Secondary) to every Nigerian child. It is a law that has been respected more in the breach than in the observance, which is part of the reason for the crisis in basic education. Another part of the reason is that Nigeria in 2019 is spending only 7.05% of its budget on Education, while Ghana, her neighbour regularly spends 20-40% of its budget in the same cause.
As usual officialdom tries to spin failure to look like virtue. On the website of the UBECommission are a panoply of meaningless data about how many classrooms have been built across the nation and how many text books have been bought. The statistics would have been more useful if they reflected the size of unmet need – how many classrooms that were needed have not been built, and how many dilapidated, almost uninhabitable schools, such as Success’, were waiting to receive attention, whether from ‘federal’, ‘state’ or LGA resources.
Even the scandal of out of school children – the almajiri, the young beggars, street traders, is given a positive spin on the UBEC website. They are engaged in ‘out of school learning’.
A final note: Education is not just about classrooms but also about parenting. The framers of the 1999 UBE law gave a token recognition to this when they put the onus on parents ‘and guardians’ to ensure children got to school and stayed in school. What they failed to say was what the state would do where there was no active parent or guardian- which is the real problem at the heart of the Nigerian ‘out of school children’ problem. Talking about jailing parents, as the current Minister has said plays well to the gallery, and will work in Delta state, as in Lagos, and Enugu. Butit will cut no ice in Kano state and other places in the north where the real almajiri problem lies and festers.
It is an issue we shall have cause to revisit, because the current situation is a prescription for present failure and future disaster.
Femi Olugbile
