Education is a fundamental solution to poverty – Unknown author
The book, why nations fail: The origins of power, prosperity and poverty by Turkish-American economist, Daron Acemoglu and British political scientist, James A. Robinson, the authors agreed that nations fail because of weak institutions and for a nation to break even from poverty, it must first have formidable institutions.
This explains why Nigeria’s educational sector stutters in tatters; as there is no enough political will (political institutions) to change the narrative of the educational sector in the country. As i write this, ASUU is on strike but that is an issue for another day.
On a recent trip to a school in Kano, a nine-year-old Eugenia Jairus, a pupil of Army children’s special primary school, Janguza Barcaks, Kano sits on the bare floor while learning with some of her classmates because of insufficient chairs in the classroom.
Eugenia is the first of six children, she is nursing the ambition of becoming a lawyer and she do walk long distance every school day to get to school and back home. While Eugenia trek, some of her classmates have bicycles which they use to aid their movement.
If the problem of lack of chairs in the classroom and terrible distances are the only problems Eugenia and many of her classmates face, then one can say the problem is “a bit minimal” but that is not the case. According to the Head teacher, Hajiya Ahmed, the teachers in the school are not enough to teach the pupils and although, the school gets supports from Npower volunteers, it has not really helped matters as the number of pupils in the school outweighs that of the teachers.
In a situation like the above, where there is scarcity of teachers, long distance to school and unconducive school environment, it becomes quite difficult for Eugenia and her colleagues to attain their aspiration.
For too long, the political class has shown this conspiracy of silence towards dealing decisively with the issue concerning education in the country and the Emir of Kano, Mallam Sanusi, speaking at the Northern States traditional leaders out of school children conference in Kaduna, the traditional leader stated that if Nigeria wanted to talk about the issue of education, it has to be very frank.
His words: “As a country, we have to face the reality that we have not given attention to education which we are supposed to. For example, take the budget of the federal government of Nigeria in 2018, seven % budgeted to education as compared to target of 26%.
“The budget for education at the federal level is N605, 000 billion out of this, N435 billion is recurrent, N61 billion is capital and N109 billion for Universal Basic Education.”
He lamented: “We all know that this is nowhere near enough to address the educational problems in the country. If we really want to talk about fixing education, we have to address the issue of misplaced priority by those who are responsible for delivering education.”
As if the lamentations of the Emir are not enough, the senate recently cut down N10.238 billion from the N651.226 billion naira appropriated for education to fund the 2019 general elections. How can one explain to Eugenia that she and her friends will have to continue sitting on the bare floor with their school uniforms because money budgeted for education has been allocated to finance elections?
In his back page column in The Nigerian Tribune, writer, literary critic, satirist, columnist and Professor at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada lamented that Nigerians love to think that our institutions are weak, whereas, they are non-existent he emphasized that the path to “institutional restoration” is for the educational institution to be redeemed.
And if the assurance of the President Buhari is anything to go by, it appears that such redemption is on the way as the president promised Nigerians in France yesterday that allocation to the sector will improve as revenue increases describing the sector as “the engine room” for the development of the country regretting the meagre five per cent allocation budgeted to the sector stressing that it is inadequate and pointing that United Nations target of 26 per cent remains ideal.
However, looking beyond promises, there must be a well laid out plan to help children like Eugenia to focus on their studies and help them attain their dreams.
Schools like Army children special primary school, Janguza, Kano, should be well equipped not only by provision of chairs but qualified teachers should be employed and their remuneration should also be attractive.
It is a pity that we do not take teachers welfare serious in our country and that is why we rarely find passionate teachers who really like their jobs. A young graduate completes his education and after “endless search of his desired jobs” he decides to go into teaching not because of interest in teaching but as a means of “part-time survival”.
This trend has to stop, the welfare of teachers should be given adequate attention and there should be constant training and re-training of teachers and the government should come out with a tailor-made development education policy base on the country’s manpower and social-economic development goals.
Also, the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) should be well funded, they should be able to have serious impact in the education sector instead of been fixated in number of contracts awarded for chairs and others and states also, should be able to access funds to be able to meet their educational obligations.
The fact that 10 million children in Nigeria are out of school should give us sleepless night as many children are geniuses but lack the opportunity to learn and Edo state should be commended for having the lowest number of out of school children in the country; and if it is possible, the template the state used in achieving this feat should be given to other states so that they too can imbibe.
Finally, the trend where people win in reality TV programmes like Big Brother Naija and they are given recognition by the government, that feat should also be extended to pupils and students who do very well in common entrance examination, WAEC and other examinations so as to spur other students to understand that education is still the key to success.