Education

Education is perhaps the most important formative factor in the life of a nation. As the education is, so is the nation bound to be.

Yet successive Nigerian governments have allowed our educational system to come very close to destruction. At one level the collapse is the result of poor funding. How this gradual impoverishment began can easily be shown in the case of government subvention to universities. In 1976, the universities with a total enrollment of 46.499 students received N4.036.00 for the education of each student. The allocation fell sharply to just below half that figure (N2, 007.00) six years later in 1982: then to about a quarter (N862.00) in 1985 and to one tenth (N409.00) in 1986. More recently, the Federal Government voted 11% of the national budget to education in 1997, 8.9% in 2000, and 5.9% in 2002. It is evident, therefore, that the progressive impoverishment of education still continues. At the moment, the Federal Government owes federal universities, according to ASUU, N79.82 billion out of allocations agreed for 2001 and 2002. In the whole West Africa sub-region, no other government has treated education so badly.

It is no wonder then that school buildings, laboratories, hostels, libraries, bookshops, electricity, water supply and general sanitation in our educational institutions are in a sorry state. Matters have not been helped, unfortunately, by poor accounting control especially in universities with consequent misapplication and misappropriation of funds.

The Problems of Teachers and Students
At the same time, it has to be admitted that teachers at all levels have been badly treated. As a profession they fell steeply in incomes and social esteem as a result of recent social changes. While at independence they were honoured as an intellectual elite, they are today among the wretched of the earth whose wages do not get paid whenever money is in short supply. A Nigerian university lecturer comparing himself today with a British counterpart whose training is exactly equivalent to his own would find that he earns less than a hundredth of the income of the foreign colleague. The result of this deprivation is the so called brain drain, a massive exodus of our best-trained persons to the United States and United Kingdom. Among those left behind, there is resentment and anger which boils over into anti-government rhetoric, strikes and institutional closure on the slightest provocation.

Students too have been badly treated. It is not just that the infrastructures for their education are in ruin at all levels and that textbooks, and even chalks, are difficult to find. There is the added frustration that there are no jobs even for those who in defiance of impossible conditions manage to obtain good certificates. Graduate destitution in the last twenty years has been indeed scandalous. In the face of such discouragement the weaker undergraduates turn their attention, wrongly but quite understandably, to the thrills of cult warfare and other dissipations. We have to agree that several generations of Nigerian youths have been destroyed by these educational policies.

A Basic Misconception
It is clear what has gone wrong in the last twenty years. The control of educational funding and educational decision-making were centralized in the hands of military men who did not really care. Their decision did not merely impact, as they thought, on the classroom and the teacher. They impacted also on the development of the adaptive skills of the nation, on our competitiveness in a fast-moving global market place, on the propagation and growth of our humanity and the maintenance of the sanity of our world. So important is education that it ought to be as of right the first charge on the income of the nation.

APGA will take the following measures to ensure that the damage done by two decades of neglect are put right.

i. New Sources of Funding
APGA will make sure that enough money is provided for an upgraded national education which should be free at all levels. We will comply with UNESCO guidelines on national budgetary allocation to education and this will make sufficient money available to provide training for our economic, technological and human needs in the 21st century. Apparently N50 billion have been lost from the reserves revenue accumulated since 1993 in the Educational Tax Fund. But contributions from that source 'will continue to flow. There will also be contributions from private entrepreneurs and voluntary agencies who are already building schools at every level, creches, nurseries, primary hoarding schools, international secondary schools and even private universities. At the highest level, industries and professions will pay for research projects, research professorships, and special institutions. Some help will also come from the international community which has already indicated their readiness to contribute to the success of the Universal Basic Education Scheme.

ii. Federal Responsibilities
In accordance with the decision reached at the Education Summit in 1997, the function of Federal Government should in the future be limited to the following:
(a) To define the philosophy of national education, create a programme of action for its realization and establish inspectorates to monitor implementation;
(b) To set up, in consultation with professional teachers associations, university governing councils, boards of trustees and management committee which will run educational institutions.
(c) To provide adequate funding and set up criteria for fund disbursement through organs like the National Universities Commission, the National Council of Technical Education, the National Commissions for Colleges of Education etc;
(d) To oversee international cooperation in education; and;
(e) To coordinate national examination as necessary.

iii. Tertiary Education
At the tertiary level, APGA will ensure that there is a democratic variety of institutions. Fortunately the Federal Government has already enacted a law to promote decentralization and autonomy in polytechnics, colleges of education and universities. These institutions will become more creative and vibrant when they are no longer arms of the public service. Churches, learned professions, special interest groups, state government and private entrepreneurs will compete with each other for a share in educational initiative. In time, city universities will emerge to provide the special needs in research and techniques for the particular business of such large centres as Kaduna, Kano, Onitsha and Aba. This is the way forward in the highly competitive world of the twentieth century.

iv. The Duties of State Government
(a) The Training and Motivation of Teachers
As a pre-condition for the success of all educational reforms, APGA will pay special attention to the education, re-education and the professional re-awakening of teachers. If staff of the right calibre, in sufficient numbers and with the right motivation, are not present in the educational system, nothing else will succeed. The 1977 National Guidelines for Education emphasized the importance of teacher training to deal with the ambitious plan which was made at that time for scientific technological and business education. Now the need for capacity building and the restoration of morale are evident in every field of study. In primary schools and secondary schools, teachers must be made to appreciate once again the importance and the dignity of their calling by the professionalisation of their vocation. Their salaries and conditions of service must be made attractive. In polytechnics, colleges of education and universities, training and re-training programmes will give appropriate weight to the re-stocking and upgrading of libraries, to internet access and staff exchange with overseas instructions. When teachers are well paid and rightly motivated, they will take it upon themselves to ensure that what they teach is at the growing point of knowledge, that their academic programmes are useful in the employment market and that they communicate that joy in learning which should wean their students away from the mumbo Jumbo of cults.

(b) Secondary School Programmes
The programme for secondary education should emphasize the national objective of modern training for science, technology, business and humane values are carefully sustained. State Education Commissions, secondary school boards, voluntary agencies and professional bodies will ensure that there is diversity of choice available for training in trade centres, technical secondary schools, grammar schools, schools for catering, schools of fashion etc; and that there is equitable distribution of opportunities throughout the state. It is important that internationally reputable standards of education are maintained. Decentralisation of duties in secondary education will permit states to deal with their 5pecial problems. In this regard, the

Educational Summit of Northern Nigerian states which met ill April drew attention to the lack of encouragement and lack of facilities at the secondary education level in the zone. APGA will offer that national help to deal with such local problems.


v. Local Movement Councils
APGA will uphold the constitutional responsibility of Local Government Councils for primary school education. School administration will, however, be in the hands of professional school boards which will be answerable to Parent/Teachers Associations.
In this way, local communities will take charge of the quality of education given to their children. They will be in a position to raise funds to improve the quality of infrastructure of the standard of teaching, and of the maintenance of the grounds. They could provide staff quarters, pay for scholarship programmes, monitor the discipline of staff and pupils, and make arrangements for sports and recreation.
These are very grave responsibilities and the entire structure of national education right up to the university level rests upon them. The quality of national life also depends upon these early beginnings. It is, however, appropriate that parents should be called upon to take this responsibility. At the local council level, education should be seen as an inclusive community effort in which families, religious groups, town development unions, women groups and other non-governmental organizations work together in planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluating programmes of action which they themselves initiate for the uplifting of the life of the new generation.

In the thirty years from 1950 to 1980, the newly released energies of the Nigerian peoples surged forward in an unprecedented demand for academic and professional education. The achievements of those vintage years were felt in every field. It was evident that doctors, engineers, teachers, diplomats, historian novelists and public servants trained in Nigeria in those years were equal to the very best in the world. We can repeat these achievements and even go beyond them if only we will again broaden the scope of the educational effort to include all our communities, greatly increase the public funding for education and ensure that both staff and students appreciate the formative importance of the work in which they are engaged.