According priority to education sector

In the build-up to last Saturday’s governorship election, the vice president-elect of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, disclosed that teachers in the country’s public schools would get free tertiary education when the next administration is sworn in on May 29, 2015. He gave the indication during a consultative meeting with members of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) and assured that continuous education for teachers is one of the core programmes which would be implemented by the next administration.
Prof. Osinbajo lamented that one of the basic problems confronting education in the country was lack of training of teachers especially in the public schools. He also noted that they teach future leaders and that free education would be offered teachers who want to go to universities to learn more, stressing that education would receive priority attention in the incoming Buhari administration.
Also speaking at the occasion, the chairman of NUT, Mr. Adesegun Raheem, appealed for more investment in teachers to guarantee development. He noted that one of the ways to invest in teachers is making teaching very attractive.
To say that education remains a vital instrument for sustainable development of any nation is stating the obvious. Unfortunately, successive administrations have been paying lip service to this critical sector. The consequence is the rot that has bedeviled the teaching and learning process at all levels as evidenced by the poor quality products being churned out.
It is public knowledge that education is one of the most neglected aspects of our socio-economic life. The rampant strikes by teachers at all levels paint the picture more vividly. Government at all levels has deliberately refused to admit that for the sector to be successful, it requires huge investments in terms of infrastructure and human capacity development. Nigeria is one of the countries within the African continent that has been branded as educationally disadvantaged destination. It occupies the bottom position with a miserable 8. 4 per cent of its annual budgetary expenditure channeled towards education, far below the 26 per cent benchmark set by the UNESCO, whereas Ghana occupies the top position on the continent with 31.0 per cent, surpassing the UNESCO’s minimum recommendation. The other countries that have risen above the UNESCO bar are Cote d’Ivoire – 30.0 per cent; Uganda – 27.0 per cent and Morocco – 26.4 per cent. South Africa, Swaziland and Kenya fall slightly below the benchmark with 25.8, 24.6 and 23.0, respectively. Botswana’s budget is 19.0 per cent, while Lesotho and Tunisia earmark 17 per cent each. Nigeria’s allocation of 8.4 per cent smacks of total disservice to this critical sector when viewed against the budgets of these smaller nations.

Small wonder, the statistics recently released by the UN Human Development Index (HDI) ranks Nigeria 26th out of the 54 African countries and 13th out of the 16 West African countries on education. It is also lamentable that no Nigerian university ranked among the first 100 in Africa or among the first 5,000 in the world.

All these startling revelations show clearly that the country’s educational sector is in dire need of revolution. There is no denying the fact that education suffered a terrible setback under the outgoing administration under the leadership of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, who is a product of the academic constituency. One would have thought that education would be given the pride of place in his government. Alas, it was under his watch that the nation witnessed the longest stretch of strikes by both the university and polytechnic lecturers.

Yet more public universities have been built and approval given for the establishment of more private ones. In particular, the establishment of more federal universities has come under severe criticisms. The argument in some quarters is that instead of setting up more universities which was seen as a political move, the existing ones should have been expanded and adequately funded. Nigeria currently has 114 approved universities; 36 of these are Federal, 36 are state–owned while 42 are private universities.

While we commend the vision to offer free tertiary education to teachers, we urge the incoming administration to take policy formulation and implementation very seriously. Governments have never been lacking in laudable strategies but highly deficient in implementation.

This seems most obvious in its inability to translate policies to tangible benefit for the citizenry. Education is a social service sector engaged principally in manpower development for the nation and enhancing knowledge for social and economic development. Government at all levels must, therefore, share this responsibility and work in tandem with one another to achieve the desired goals.