“With universal education and numerous scholarships, by then all the bright children of poor parents had made it to university.” With this statement, Lee emphasised the inevitability of human capital development for any society that genuinely seeks to make sustainable progress. So, it follows that if Lee were an Ebonyi man, he would have put education in the front burner of all his development plans for the State.
Unfortunately, since the state’s ‘independence’, only the first Executive Governor, His Excellency, Dr. Sam Ominyi Egwu, recognized this reality. During Egwu’s tenure, the state government introduced a scholarship programme in partnership with Higher Education Pact (HiPACT), a British educational organisation. Through this programme, many an Ebonyi man and woman was able to acquire undergraduate and post-graduate education in various universities in Britain, a feat they could not have achieved even in their dreams due mostly to their acute indigent backgrounds.
Upon completion of their studies, many of the beneficiaries of the programme came back to the State and were absorbed into the civil service; others joined the pool of academia in the State-owned University as lecturers. And I know one or two of them that have made so much impact in their various fields that they have been appointed professors.
The HiPACT scheme was embraced by the government of His Excellency, Chief Martin Elechi, who took over from Egwu. It may have been in a different shade, but some poor Ebonyi youths were funded to acquire education both within and outside Nigeria. Many argued that progress in this direction was slow, but there was progress nevertheless.
By 2010, significant progress had been made on the literacy turf, ranking 11th out of Nigeria’s 36 states and Abuja in an index from the National Literacy Survey Report released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and its partners. But then came a Pharaoh that knows not Joseph! And an existing scholarship scheme through which the State could have sustained continuous flow of properly skilled manpower to the civil service and other industries was aborted.
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It is noteworthy that the negative consequences of this have been felt not only in Ebonyi State, and not only by Ebonyi people, but also by other Nigerians, especially in the urban centers. For rather than have a pipeline of manpower supply, Ebonyi Government has now built a pipeline for the supply of itinerant traders (did you say hawkers?) across the country, as large proportion of the population cannot go to school because they can’t pay the fees; the scholarship scheme that used to help is no more.
Worse still, the cost of schooling in the state has become so high that it became prohibitive to even those who could afford it previously. At the secondary and primary school level, students have to pay for everything, including bearing the cost of such basic items as printing expenses for end of term exam question papers.
Ditto for the university level. The school fees in Ebonyi State University, where over 70 per cent of Ebonyi youths go to acquire education that will equip them to add value to their lives and to the society, have been increased to frustrating levels. The university has now introduced prohibitive ‘Development’ and ‘Accreditation’ levies that they cannot afford. And they are being robbed of their right to education in flagrant disregard to the provision of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 which mandates governments to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.”
Regrettably, a lot of the citizens are beguiled, or beguile themselves, into believing that the promise of highfalutin ICT, aeronautical, and other similar-sounding universities will solve the human capacity needs of the state. But evidence disputes this. For just recently, the news platforms inundated us with the news of the humane gestures of a benefactor of inmates in a Nigerian Correctional Service vehicle along the Ajah axis of Lagos State. That benefactor, Ekuma Jeremiah Iziogo, is an Ebonyi man. He was studying law in the state university. He dropped out of school because paying his school fees became herculean. And the State continues to lose ground in the area of human capital development.
Thankfully, there’s still room to recover lost grounds. The present and subsequent governments have to realise, just like Lee, that the younger generation is the State’s most precious resource. As such, they need to invest heavily in them by making education free and universal from primary to secondary levels, and affordable at the tertiary level.
This way, Ebonyi will eventually build an army of properly trained and educated workforce, which will lure industries needing such a workforce to come and set up operations in the state. This way, like in the established societies, we will have a fertile pool of future leaders, who will build an Ebonyi that will work for present and future generations.
Unah is a public affairs commentator writes from Lagos.
