As Nigeria declares state of emergency in education

“Among the areas of attention are the issue of out-of-school children, promotion of adult literacy and special needs education, revival of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, Technical, Vocational Education and Training, strengthening of basic education, prioritising of teacher education, capacity building and professional development as well as ensuring quality and access to tertiary education and promoting of ICT and library services”

—Deputy Governor Phillip Shuaibu of Edo State  while briefing State House Correspondents on the outcome of the monthly NEC meeting on Thursday, October 18, 2018

It is heartwarming that the long-awaited state of emergency in education sector has now been declared with effect from November 2018. The National Economic Council presided over by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo recently urged governors to declare emergency on education in the 36 states of the federation. It also urged the state and federal governments to allocate at least 15 per cent of their yearly budgets to education with a view to revolutionising the sector. They were also enjoined to constitute a task force to manage the funds and ensure infrastructure renewal in selected schools nationwide.

Shuaibu said the resolutions followed the recommendations of its ad-hoc panel raised in June after a briefing by the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, on the state of the nation’s education sector.

Recall that  the Minister of Education had on June 28, 2018, made a presentation on the “National Education Policy: Prospects, Challenges and Way Forward” to the council.  He noted that NEC thereafter set up the ad-hoc Committee on the Revival of the Education Sector in Nigeria to review and submit recommendations.   The committee observed that a multi-pronged approach was required to tackle the various factors militating against the achievement of the nation’s educational objectives. The committee strongly recommended that the Federal Government, states and local governments should collaborate to vigorously implement and sustain action on the 10 pillars of the Ministerial Strategic Plan developed by the Federal Ministry of Education.

The Edo Deputy Governor noted further that, “Council decided that while the interim report is being reviewed by members, a more detailed report (should) be prepared and presented at the next NEC meeting when decisions would be taken on the recommendations.”

Well, for over three years, this administration has been foot-dragging to do the needful to resuscitate our ailing education sector; however, better late than never. The story of Nigeria’s education sector is a heart-rending one. Public education in the country has virtually collapsed while the private sector-driven education is also tottering. Since the liberalisation of private education in the ‘90s many government owned schools be it primary, secondary or tertiary have been allowed to decay. The facilities have become overstretched and dilapidated such that learning now takes place in classrooms without sufficient furniture while it’s also a common sight to see pupils being taught under trees. Non-teaching staff far outnumber the teaching staff in some public schools while the quality of the teaching staff is also suspect with many primary school teachers failing examinations they administer on their pupils as revealed by what happened in Kwara State and more recently in Kaduna State where the state governor has had to sack about 22,000 unqualified teachers.

Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Tambuwal, was very concerned with the deplorable state of education in his domain that he did not wait for NEC before he declared a state of emergency in the seat of caliphate.

In June 2017, Tambuwal set up the Sultan Sa’ad Abubakar-led 27-man Education Revitalisation and Strengthening Committee. The terms of reference of the committee included rehabilitation, expansion and construction of schools, with the collaboration of the schools-based management committees in the state. The committee was tasked to also work out modalities for grassroots mobilisation of parents to enrol their children in both western and Islamic schools. According to the governor, the committee was charged with the responsibility of shoring up enrolment, retention and completion of pupils, improved quality of teaching and learning, as well as equity, irrespective of gender.

The nagging questions begging for answers are: Will the government walk the talk? Are we going to see the promised 15 per cent of federal and state budget being earmarked for education from the 2019 budget? Is this declaration not mere sloganeering to attract votes for these elected public officials during the 2019 elections?

Curiously, funding is not a major challenge to Nigeria’s public education sector as some educationists will want us to believe. If it is, why is so much money being allowed to lie fallow? According to information gleaned from the website of the Universal Basic Education Commission, there is over N86bn (N86, 951,262,432.64) unclaimed money by the states under its matching grant scheme as of September 11, 2018. This is cumulative from 2005 to date.

Indeed, no state has yet to access its matching grant of N982, 555,230.13 for 2018. Under the Commission’s matching grant scheme, state governments are to bring equal amount of the sum allotted to them every year in order to be able to claim the grant earmarked for them. Many states have demonstrated lack of political will to claim this ‘free money’ from the federal government.

Similar thing is playing out in Tertiary Education Trust Fund where billions of naira still remain unaccessed by benefitting tertiary institutions. In May 2017, the Executive Secretary TETFund, Dr. Abdulahi Baffa, said, “Out of the N1 trillion allocated to benefitting institutions in the past five years, only  75 per cent has so far been accessed while 25 per cent remains unaccessed till date”. Out of an unaccessed backlog of about N170bn earlier allocated to some tertiary institutions, about N85bn has been accessed leaving a humongous N85bn.

By far my greatest worry about Nigeria’s comatose education sector is the issue of corruption and lack of accountability by heads of academic institutions and examination bodies. Recall that some months back the nation was regaled with fairy tale by Philomina Chieshe, on account of N36m which was reported to have been swallowed by a snake in the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board’s office in Makurdi, Benue State. It was reported also that the total amount JAMB remitted to the Federal Government coffers between 2010 and 2016 was a paltry N 50,752,544, just about one per cent of the N5bn the agency remitted to the government in 2017 alone under the leadership of Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, the new Board’s registrar. One can thus infer the massive corruption going on in that examination body over the years.

Many of our public and private academic institutions do not fare better.  A lot of malpractices and sharp practices go on in that sector. All sorts of illegal fees and levies are collected from pupils and students. Bribery and corruption have so much permeated our institutions of learning that it has become the order of the day, the new normal.

As government at all levels declares a state of emergency in our education sector, it is imperative for them to thus take on the fight against corrupt practices, lack of accountability by leadership of academic institutions as well as inadequate welfare for  workers in the sector.