Nigerian education system may wear another attire while the rot continues

At this year’s Extraordinary National Council of Education meeting, the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, proposed remodeling the country’s education system. Alausa is proposing a switch from the current 9-3-4 model to what he called the 12-4 model, that is, 12 years of basic education and four years of tertiary education. The minister says such remodeling becomes necessary to enable the country to “align with global standards in preparing students for better tertiary education.”

The proposal reminds me of a Yoruba adage: A kì í fi ẹ̀tẹ̀ sílẹ̀ pa làpálàpá. This means you don’t leave leprosy (ẹ̀tẹ̀) untreated while you are anxious about treating ringworm (làpálàpá). The implication is that when faced with challenges, you prioritise, based on the severity of each challenge, the challenge to tackle first. Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease that should take medical precedence over ringworm, a fungal infection. The minister’s proposal is a preoccupation with the education sector’s ringworm while leaving the leprosy to destroy the sector. This is typical of the government’s tendency to focus needless attention on the symptoms while leaving the real issues untreated – remember the equally unproductive debate about university age?

Same old script

For perspective, in 1983 the government changed the existing model of 6-5-4 (six years of primary education, five years of secondary education, and four years of tertiary education) under the Universal Primary Education (UPE) to 6-3-3-4 (six years of primary education, three years of junior secondary education, three years of senior secondary education, and four years of university or tertiary education) and that eventually took effect in 1988. Then, in the 90s following the introduction of Universal Basic Education (UBE), the structure changed to 9-3-4 with nine years of basic education, three years of secondary education, and four years of tertiary education. Government reforms of the education sector have always been superficial, changing structures and nameplates but never something holistic. The current Education minister is following the same script.

Any 10-year-old kid will tell you that Nigeria’s education is crumbling from systemic rot caused by decades of neglect and a lack of government investment in the sector. Alausa had argued that his 12-year basic education model would help promote “better standardization” and foster “quality assurance”, whatever those words mean. The critical issues with our education are well known and these include: poor funding, widespread corruption, high teacher-to-student ratio, dearth of qualified teachers, and decaying infrastructure. These challenges continue to lead to low-quality of education. The constant change of structure has not changed or even lessened the challenges. So, one wonders what the minister hopes to achieve with his latest efforts.

Lack of infrastructure

We are constantly assailed by depressing images of school children learning under some of the most atrocious conditions: classrooms without roofs, waterlogged classrooms, students sitting on bare floors because there are no furniture, windowless classrooms, schools without sanitary facilities, and absence of libraries or labs, the list is endless. Recently, an Igbo man singlehandedly renovated a rundown community school, Oluwo Ikija Community School, in Ogun State. While this story is unique in that a man from another tribe renovated a school in Yorubaland it is not entirely an isolated occurrence. There are several such private initiatives to provide infrastructure for government or public schools across the country.

Poor funding

It is no surprise that infrastructure are collapsing when the sector is reeling from inadequate or poor government funding. Government spending on education as a percentage of GDP has been very negligible for decades. A 2023 report by UNESCO that surveyed the African government’s budgetary allocation to the education sector as a percentage of each country’s GDP over a 50-year period showed that Nigeria spent the least, an average of 0.38%, on education of the 42 countries surveyed. Over the past decade, for instance, budgetary allocation to education has remained within the 5%-8% band, never above that. The 2025 budget allocated roughly 7% to education, far below the United Nations benchmark of 15%-20% to attain the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 4 of ensuring “inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” Smaller African countries continue to show seriousness in inclusive and equitable education for their citizens as reflected in the budgetary spending in the sector. Education budgetary allocations by Kenya (roughly 30% 24/25), Tunisia (20%), Ghana (17.8% in 2022), South Africa (19.8%), Namibia (20.7%), Botswana (22.2%), and Rwanda (14%, 24/25), underpin the seriousness these nations attach to their education sectors. The African Union (AU) had declared 2024 the “Year of Education” in a bid to push African governments to spend more on education. The effort and similar ones have had no impact on the Nigerian government’s spending on education, which remained poor.

High teacher-to-student ratio

Poor remuneration, poor or nonexistent teaching facilities, and lack of regular training programmes, among other issues continue to affect teachers’ morale and discourage others from joining the profession. Thus, there is a dearth of quality teachers across the education spectrum from primary to the tertiary level. It is common in public schools, primary through secondary and tertiary institutions, to see a class of 40, 50, 60,70, or more students being taught by a teacher. This is above the UNESCO-recommended ratio of teachers to pupils of 1:30 in primary schools, 1:35 in secondary schools, and 1:50 in the universities.

Corruption

Another issue is widespread corruption and this is manifested in several forms, including stealing of allocated funds, exam malpractices, and nepotism in employment. Corruption continues to rob the education sector of the little wins it could have achieved.

Out-of-school children

At the last count, Nigeria has over 18 million children out of school, according to a 2024 United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report. That is the worst globally. This is disturbing.

Nigerians know that the above challenges are the real issues the government must tackle. So does the minister. Changing the education structure is a mere soundbite by the minister and will benefit nobody. The minister must be told not to distract us with such soundbites; rather he should think up quality ideas to tackle these critical issues.