A very disturbing fad appears to have hit Nigerian leaders and elite who in recent history have developed the aptitude to train their children and wards in the most prestigious higher educational institutions in the West and other parts of the world.
In some conscious demonstrations of the poor faith in Nigerian education system by the Nigerian elite, pictures have emerged where the men entrusted with the power to make policies to improve education in the country have allegedly used public funds to send their children abroad to acquire higher education to the utter neglect of the country’s education system, which had remained in coma.
It is gradually becoming a status symbol for the average public office holder and politician-sending their children to school abroad despite the high cost of education there. On the average BusinessDay gathered that some spend between N15 and N30 million per session to train a child in some of these foreign universities, especially in Europe and North America. Some who cannot afford these high fees in the Western World have settled for higher education in some Asian and African countries such as China, Malaysia, India, Ghana, Egypt, South Africa, Kenya, even Benin Republic.
Over the years, higher education, especially the public institution has degenerated so much in content and value as to lose the attraction of the elite, in what one analyst aptly described as a “sector on the throes of death”. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) has been in a protracted ‘war’ with the Federal Government over poor funding. ASUU has embarked on countless number of strikes to press home this demand. The Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics (ASUP) has also merited little attention from the government even with their strike option.
It is on record that poor funding and the industrial actions by the higher institutions have paralysed the sector, reduced the standard, wasted a lot of manpower and prolonged the academic duration of students by some times over 3 years. These are perhaps; the fundamental reasons the elite and others who can afford it have abandoned the Nigerian schools to the children of the poor who cannot afford to train abroad.
Education is basically described as the bedrock of the development of any nation, the fulcrum of skill acquisition and a preeminent tool of industrial and technological growth; economic and social emancipation of any nation. That is why serious nations have been known to have invested massively to boost education some with significant budgetary allocation and strategic policy implementation.
It is in recognition of the critical role of education that the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in its ‘Education for All, EFA, 2000-2015: Achievements and Challenges’ report, recommended that 15 to 20 percent should be allocated to education in the national budgets of developing countries.
Part of the report reads, “In 2006, the High level Group on EFA proposed that governments should spend between four per cent and six per cent of GNP on education and that, within government budgets, between 15 per cent and 20 per cent should be earmarked for education.”
It is pertinent to state that no law prohibits any sitting president or any public office holder or private individual from seeking to educate their children outside Nigeria. It is however, mandatory for the citizens to demand improvement of the sector by those entrusted with the power to make such policies to provide equal opportunities and better skill for the less privileged.
However, it appears the policy makers in Nigeria in the sector, either do not understand how to make requisite policy for education or they do not believe in their own policies and the systems they preside over.
The situation is even more challenging for those trained in Nigeria because they obviously lack the skill set due to poor infrastructure and ultimately lack the logistics to compete with their foreign trained counterparts. Apart from these disadvantages, the less-privileged are also easily deprived of top jobs in government institutions and corporate entities that appear to be the exclusive preserve of the rich children.
Since the President Muhammadu Buhari administration came to office in 2015 with a promise of ‘change’, the fortunes of the education have hardly improved.
For instance in 2019 Budget, education got N620.5billion, which fell below the 15 percent to 20 percent minimum recommended by the UNESCO for developing countries. President Buhari had on December 19, 2018, presented N8.83trillion estimate to the National Assembly as this year’s budget. The summary of the proposal showed that the education sector got N620.5billion (about 7.05 percent); marginal rise over the total of N605.8billion budgeted for the sector in 2018. Over some years, the country’s funding for education continued to revolve around five percent, sixper cent and seven percent of the national budget.
Buhari had assured that the education sector will have remarkable improvement in funding in 2019 such that during a visit to France in November 2018, he promised the Nigerian community there that education would be better funded in 2019. He had said: “We are currently reviewing investments in the entire infrastructure of the country like road, rail and power, including investing more in education. We will certainly need to do more in education.”
However, in the 2019 Budget, the Federal Government still did not go beyond the five to seven percent abysmal benchmark. It had cited paucity of funds as excuse for the poor funding.
Even some countries in Africa have made better progress in education and now attract Nigerian students in droves. For instance, Ghana in the last 10 years, has never budgeted less than 20 percent for education. South Africa, Egypt, among others have also made significant investments in the sector according to the UNESCO recommendations and getting the desired results.
So, why is Nigeria trapped in this vicious cycle of poor funding for education and what are the consequences?
A senior lecturer with the Baze University Abuja, Sam Amadi decried the situation, saying “The reason for this sorry development is that the educational facilities in the country have collapsed. These leaders understand that our education is terribly assaulted by corruption and lack of commitment to merit. They don’t want their children to suffer the threat to future that the children of the poor face in Nigeria.”
He noted that the “consequence of this development is massive. It means that there is no incentive for improvement in the educational sector. They have no stake in the game, so they don’t feel the pressure of poor education. So, they will not work for the public good. There is little hope for the sector.”
Also speaking to BDSUNDAY, the Dean Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Abuja, and a Professor of Political Science, Yusuf Zoaka, said there is no way forward if the policy makers do not believe in their own policies. He stressed that the educational system in the country is supposed to be accessible to the people and affordable.
“But if you look at what Nigerians are paying for education I think it is something that the minimum wage earner will find very difficult to sponsor a child in the university because none of the universities has fees for less than N25,000 and you are paying somebody N18,000 minimum wage,” he said.
He also said that the leaders do not believe in the education system because they killed it. “Even though they got most of their training locally when the quality was so high, they have killed the system. May be, if the policy makes it compulsory for them to put their children in the schools in Nigeria that may make them to focus on how to make the schools better, but If that is not done I don’t see any head way,” he said.
Zoaka also warned of dire consequences of the continued rot in the system and the situation where the elite reserve the best jobs for their children. He stressed that the leaders will also be victims of it.
“The elite have no sense of enlightenment; they have created an economy that will not promote equity. We have even some jobs that fresh graduates earn as much as N500,000 per month and these are public sector jobs. That is where they put their kids and most time they do not advertise for these positions; it is based on connections and based on who you know.
“But there is severe consequences for all these things in Nigeria, that is why there is no peace and security because the people deprived have turned to violent crime such as kidnapping, that has made even the rich to be insecure even with all their looted wealth,” he said.
