The onus is on the authorities of the federal education sector and by extension, the federal government, to prove that the alarm raised last week, by various voices from the South East, over what seemed like another blatant exclusion of the zone from a federally-funded programme, is without basis.
Relevant authorities, including the Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, promptly responded to the expression of shock, throwing light on what they say is the true situation, how N2.95 billion federal loans to students, across the country, have been disbursed so far, by the Nigerian Educational Loan Fund (NELFUND), without a single student in the South East benefitting from the scheme.
The quick explanation may have doused the trepidation of the South East to some extent, still, scepticism persists. Justifiably. It bears noting, that the prompt clarification by relevant officials at the education ministry, was out of character with the insouciant, aristocratic bearing, often associated with prime public servants in such cases.
The light thrown by the education minister and his officers, on how NELFUND has so far disbursed loans totalling N2,95 billion to 27,667 students in 19 universities, spread across the rest of the five geo-political zones, with no student from all of the South East, including the eastern flank of what is now known as South South, still beggar easy comprehension. According to the education minister and officials of NELFUND, the optics in this matter, are different from what they may seem to portray.
The fault, they say, is not from NELFUND, or reflective of any policy of state. The problem can be traced, they say, to the students and institutions in the South East, who, somehow, did not complete and return the requisite verification forms for accessing the loan. That seems so unlike the South East, especially in matters pertaining to education, but so far.no one has contradicted them. Again, Tahir Mamman appears honourable and sounds believable – a characterization so unlike the average profile of prime government officials in this season. He deserves benefit of the doubt.
Now, why should the South East go into frenzy over fears that it has been short-changed [again] in the allocation of federal funds for development purposes? The answer can be found in the unrepentant pernicious shenanigans associated with the All Progressives Congress (APC), in the last almost one decade that the party has presided over governance of the Nigerian federation.
By some coincidence, the trepidation in the South East over the NELFUND loan disbursement, came at about the same time that a non-governmental organization, known as Board of Igbo Deputies, was raising a very cogent point, to the effect that South East states should not be party to repaying loans which they did not collect and which they were cynically excluded from benefiting from, by the past government.
It is important to understand where the NGO is coming from and the relationship between their contention and the uproar about the statistics of the students loan scheme so far. NELFUND may be a relatively new programme, but so far, it has disbursed N2.95billion to 19 universities spread across every other geo-political zone, but one – the South East. For a zone with the experience of the South East with APC-led federal government, what has transpired at NELFUND is nothing but de ja vu!
Barely four years ago, in 2020, in the gale of foreign loans collection, that the federal government under President Muhammadu Buhari was lapping up, as if loans were going out of fashion, the government went out and collected a loan of $22.7 billion (Twenty-two billion, seven hundred million USA dollars) from China Exim Bank. Buhari said the credit was to address infrastructural deficit in Nigeria. The Senate, as was led (unfortunately, as it remains, largely) promptly approved Buhari’s request for the loan, as they did every loan request from the executive.
Now, if any zone in Nigeria deserves comprehensive infrastructural overhaul, it is the South East. The infrastructural deficit in the zone, reprehensibly promoted almost as a state policy by governments, over the years, remains, among others, the loudest statements that Nigeria is still far from becoming a nation. Finding a statesman to administer the country with equity and even-handedness has become almost impossible. So many small minds on high stools.
Anyway, Buhari got his China loan. N22.7 billion, for infrastructural development of Nigeria. The loan will, of course, be repaid, in due course, by Nigeria, but first it has to be put to use. What did Buhari, the president of Nigeria do with the loan? His government proceeded to distribute it among the zones of the country. North Central zone was allocated N651,000,000 (Six Hundred and fifty-one billion Naira). North East zone got N300, 000,000 (Three hundred billion Naira). North West was allocated N6,372,000,000 (Six billion three hundred and seventy-two million Naira). South South zone got N4,270,000,000 (Four billion two hundred and seventy million Naira). South West was allocated N2,000,000,000 (Two billion Naira). The sum of N5,853,900,000 (Five billion eight hundred and fifty-three million Naira) was reserved for general services, in other words for the government at the centre to deploy as it deems fit. Not one kobo was allocated to the South East zone. Not a dime! By a government said to be Federal Republic of Nigeria, led by a man purported to be president of an entire country.
Did heaven fall? Of course, it did not. Did Buhari’s tenure not end? Of course, it ended. While he was in office, Buhari continued to visit the South East periodically, possibly expecting to see the zone grind to a halt. He may have been disappointed, that both overt and covert policies did not yield the desired end, even with the carnage.
How did Nigeria find itself in such a pass, with such a leadership, that was incapable of appreciating the basic fact that the whole is equal to the sum of the whole? The failure of Buhari to see Nigeria as a single entity eventually culminated in dissonance across the federation, with leaking roof all over. The rain is still beating everybody.
The belief by certain tendencies in Nigeria, worse still, by persons on the saddle of leadership, that the country can meaningfully make progress, in spite of any of its constituent parts, remains a most unfortunate expression of expensive delusion. It is even more hopeless, when the attempt is to exclude a most virile and productive section. Such warped tendency that prevailed for almost a decade under the first outing of the APC as a ruling party, is substantially responsible for Nigeria being in its current sorry state.
NELFUND and the Bola Tinubu government cannot be oblivious of what Buhari did and why the South East is agitated at what has happened with the student loan allocation, so far. It is still the same APC. With Tinubu as president, presently entangled in an elaborate web of contradictions, of his past lofty espousals of the high values of democracy and his new realities of an imperial presidency, so much is left to be seen, not only by the South East, but by all the rest of the country.
It is not difficult to see how the point made by the Igbo Board of Deputies will find legal validation, if not now, in the future. If not in Nigerian courts, in international ones. You cannot, as a government, take loans from abroad, whimsically disburse them without any benefit to a people and expect them, in the fullness of time, to pay for your acts of indiscretion and unproductive belligerence. Constituent parts of a state cannot be expected to have obligations to the state, if they are whimsically excluded from deriving benefits therefrom. These may yet form emerging issues of law concerning states and obligations of citizens. Poor leadership may set Nigeria up for future landmark cases at the International Court of Justice.