As schools resume across the country from tomorrow for a new academic session, many Nigerian parents and guardians have slipped into panic mode over the imminent heavy spending occasioned by high school fees amid inclement economic weather in the country.
Many others also are bothered by the safety of their children and wards, particularly those that will have to make interstate journeys back to their schools, as a result of the increasing wave of kidnapping and rape on many Nigerian highways nowadays.
Checks by BDSUNDAY show that many parents have had to withdraw their children from schools far away from their location to register them in schools that are a stone throw from their residences, saying that it is better to see the children alive than to lose them in the bid to seek better education.
Aside from threat to life posed on these children by increasing level of insecurity in the country, some parents are also withdrawing their children from schools with high tuition fees to schools with lesser fees.
According to the Nigeria’s academic calendar, public and private schools are due to resume activities from tomorrow, Monday, September 9, 2019 while many others will be resuming on Monday, September 16, 2019.
Parents’ burden
“I have two kids in primary school that would be moving to new classes and their tuition fees as well as books stand at over N120, 000 while my third child will be going to Primary 1having been promoted from the reception class. For him alone, I am expected to cough out over N85, 000 to pay for his tuition and school supplies,” Kayode Adedoyin, an entrepreneur, said.
Adedoyin, who runs a small bakery business in one of the suburb areas in Lagos, said: “I know that there are parents, who pay over N250, 000 for just one child because people are not equally yoked. But the truth is that low income earners like us are finding it difficult to even raise this amount to pay for three kids at once.”
The current economic situation in Nigeria is becoming worrisome as salary earners, including civil servants, whose salaries are within the range of N70,000 to N100,000 are rarely able to take care of their pressing economic needs, and when payment of tuition fees and buying of school supplies, are added to these needs, it becomes a burden.
“I have started making plans to withdraw my two children from their present school because the school administration has increased the fees from N25,000 to N35,000 per term. This is on the high side and my husband and I do not have the financial power to cater for this addition,” Angela Ogbonna, a civil servant with Lagos State government, said.
Ogbonna however, said that she did not mind taking her children to public school because the economic situation has made things very difficult for salary earners.
Investigation by BDSUNDAY shows that parents whose children are in premium primary and secondary schools such as Corona, Greenspring Schools, Grange Schools, Avi-Cenna Schools, Greenwood House, Vivian Fowler, Meadow Hall Schools, St Saviours’ School, Lekki British School, Chrisland and others are presently the deep pocket spenders.
In schools that fall within the categories of the above mentioned schools, parents pay tuition fees that range from a minimum of N500,000 to N1million per term, and N1.5 million to over N3 million per session (per year) for their children in both primary and secondary school levels.
Gbenga Kazeem, a father of two, whose children are schooling in one of the premium secondary schools listed above, told BDSUNDAY that the amount one of his kids pays as tuition fee in one term surpasses the total of what his own father used in training him throughout the four years he spent in the university.
Kazeem, who is a Lagos-based entrepreneur, blamed the poor state of Nigeria’s education system for the huge sum parents are forced to pay every term and session to the private school owners.
He said that in the 70s and 80s, when Nigeria’s primary and secondary education were still of quality standards, parents were not forced to toil so much to be able to give their children quality education.
“Today, the story is different, we have to bear the brunt of government negligence of our education system in order to give our children the kind of education they deserve, which they cannot get in the today’s public schools,” he added.
Lawrence Adekoya, a parent and businessman, said that the cost of textbooks and stationeries was quite high. He said that he has set aside funds for the preparation of his children for the new academic session that is commencing tomorrow, but expressed worry over the skyrocketing market prices of books and other school supplies.
According to him, August and September are the most fearful months in the life of many parents that have children in school. He said that some parents have three, four or more kids to cater for, and this makes the spending a bit high and demanding for such parents.
“This season requires a lot of planning and discipline because most schools do not even allow part or installment payments from parents. Meaning that parents must pay the fees in full and give the teller to their children before they could be allowed into the school premises from the first day of resumption,” he said.
Parents in the informal sector of the economy such as Joyce Oluwatobi (not real name) who lives in Ajegunle, Lagos State, are probably the hardest hit. Joyce fries and sells yam for a living, makes less than $2 a day, and finds it hard to send her children to school.
It’s almost impossible for her to meet up with the school fees demand of $22 per term (a term is three months). Neither she nor her husband makes enough. Life is hard for them, as it is for many people in Africa’s biggest economy and the poverty capital of the world. With population explosion and falling living standards, Nigeria maybe facing a future where many Nigerian parents in the informal sector cannot afford to send their children to school and this has a devastating impact on human capital development in the country.
Worries about insecurity
In Nigeria today, the media is awash with news about kidnap cases involving travellers moving from one part of the country to another. Just recently, it was reported that some young men and women going to sit for post Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) in states far away from where their parents reside were kidnapped. Some of these girls, not only were traumatised by their abductors, but were also raped, despite hefty ransoms that were paid to secure their freedom by their parents.
Incidents of this nature(reported or otherwise) have put many parents in fear and panic such that many are beginning to seek alternatives for their children, especially those schooling outside states of their residency.
“My family lives here in Lagos, but my first daughter is presently schooling in the Federal Government College Nise in Anambra. She used to travel by road to Nise via Onitsha, but given the present security concern on Nigerian highways, I doubt if my daughter will go by road,” Emmanuel Nwabu, a Lagos-based businessman told BDSUNDAY.
According to him, “My initial decision was to withdraw her from schooling in the East but after preliminary search for schools in Lagos, for some reasons, I had to change my mind. That was why I decided that my daughter would be flying to Asaba from Lagos, which is not too far from Anambra State.
He said that it was easy to pay for flight ticket than to start running around in search of millions of naira to pay to hoodlums for ransom.
Intervention by financial institutions
In order to reduce the pressure on parents and guardians, as it were, financial institutions are currently aggressively marketing credit facilities online and on the streets, to facilitate the payment of school fees.
“Dear Sir/Ma, Trust your day is going on well. It’s back to school season, let Zedvance help you get that school fee settled and take the burden off you without stress,” Zedvance Finance Limited, a consumer finance company said in an email to random email addresses. “You can access our personal loan facility at Zedvance Finance up to 5million naira Only at a maximum tenor of 18 months,” it also informed.
Credit Direct Limited, a microfinance bank in a text message to customers quipped, “Back to School? No worries! Get an instant loan from N100, 000 – N5, 000, 000, no guarantor or rigorous documentation.”
Commercial lenders including Zenith Bank, Access Bank, Union Bank, Stanbic IBTC Bank, Diamond Bank,First Bank, and Polaris Banknow have products targeted at helping parents and guardians pay the school fees of their children and wards, respectively, in expensive private schools but many parents find it difficult to access these facilities because of the pre-conditions attached to them. Other banks that have educational products are: GTBank, FCMB, Sterling Bank, UBA, Fidelity Bank, Unity Bank, Wema Bank, Skye Bank, and Heritage Bank.
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is burdened by an alarming rate of out-of-school children (10.5 million) and recently tagged the Poverty Capital of the World by World Poverty Clock, and a projected 91.5 million of her people live below the poverty line as of March 2019.
“A large population is an asset, look at the biggest economies of the world, they all have large population: China, India and the United States of America are good examples. What we need to worry about is the quality of our population, which boils down to the level of investment in education, healthcare, and human capital development,” said Muda Yusuf, director-general, Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in a phone interview.
In order to pay the school fees, some parents are liquidating existing investments and drawing from their savings.
“We have seen increased enquiry for Short Term Loans, Salary Advance (SALAD) for salaried workers and payment cards that parents can easily access and use to pay the school fees of the wards,” a banking sector source told BDSUNDAY. Our source further observed that top on the list of most of their customers’ recent enquiries are the banks’facilities and products that could aid parents to pay school fees.
“These products are actually there, some kind of bridge finance that parents can access to pay school fees, pending when they are able to repay. It is like a salary advance and it is dependent on the parents’ income and creditworthiness,” the source further said.
“Creditworthiness means you need to look at the person’s income, the organisation they work for; you need to look at how sustainable the organisation is and the integrity of the person in question. You see, the repayment of such facilities is dependent on the income of the parents,” said a branch manager in one of the banks, who does not want his name mentioned.
Growing poverty in Nigeria to blame
Nigeria’s population has risen by 43 million in the last ten years; figures from the National Bureau of Statistics show. The figures captured in a report, ‘Demographic Statistics Report 2015’ available on the website of the NBS, show that the country’s population which stood at 140 million in 2006, had swelled to 183 million by 2015 and it is estimated to be over 200 million people currently.
Africa’s most populous nation ranked 25th out of 26 countries on the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) human capital optimisation index for Africa, coming in only before Chad, a country that has been destabilised by civil unrest since 2008.
The WEF’s Human Capital Index, which measures the extent to which countries and economies optimise their human capital through education and skills development and its deployment throughout the life-course, finds that Sub-Saharan Africa, on average, currently captures,only55 percent of its full human capital potential, compared to a global average of 65 percent, ranging from 67 to 63 percent in Mauritius, Ghana and South Africa, to only 49 to 44 percent in Mali, Nigeria and Chad.
Private investors cash in on government’s failure
Nigeria’s primary and secondary education has totally collapsed following low funding from government at all levels. This was why the running of both primary and secondary education is now in the hand of private sector people, who take advantage of government’s negligence to fill the gap, but at a high cost to parents. In many cases, the quality of teaching and learning does not match the exorbitant fees.
Pundits believe that poor funding has created huge problems for most public schools in recent years with implication ranging from low quality teachers, insufficient teachers, dilapidated school infrastructure,to poor learning environment for students.
This is why only pupils and students, whose parents cannot afford tuition fees in private schools, are left to learn in an unconducive and dilapidated environment in today’s public schools.
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE and STEPHEN ONYEKWELU
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