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The plea made by the registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), Ishaq Oloyede, for the declaration of a state of emergency in the education sector is odd in many ways. The demand came many decades late. The education sector has been haemorrhaging for many years and no one bothered to draw attention to a time bomb in the sector that could detonate any moment.
Oloyede’s call must be seen as deeply cynical. Lamentations over the disintegration of education in Nigeria are not new. This latest plea must be regarded as superficial shedding of tears long after the sheep had bolted from the barn. It is insincere. It is not driven by genuine concerns for the interests of students or for enhancement of quality in Nigeria’s education sector.
The general destruction of education, including the failure to renovate or replace decrepit facilities that support teaching and learning in educational institutions, did not happen overnight. It took decades for these failures and leakages to gain the attention of the public. Surprisingly, federal and state education officials remained unconcerned, impassive and unaffected.
A country that disregards high standards in education must be prepared to harvest a generation of illiterates unprepared and ill-equipped to take on the challenges of managing the country.
For decades, government officials, the private sector, stakeholders in the education sector, students and parents watched helplessly as the quality of education plummeted and students showed little or no interest in their own studies. In no time, the education sector was wrecked. While every government pledged its commitment to provide adequate funds to primary and secondary schools, and public universities and polytechnics, in practice they failed outright to uphold that pledge. Gradually, educational institutions were forced to be reliant on the Federal Government that acted as the ‘Big Brother’.
The deplorable academic environment in universities was not helped by the yearly bouts of strikes by academic and non-academic staff. In 2020, for example, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) stayed away from teaching-related activities for nearly nine months. During that period, the striking teachers were rewarded with regular payment of their monthly salaries but the academic progress of students in affected universities was effectively disrupted.
It was a crazy environment. Studying in Nigerian public universities is now equivalent to serving in jail. Students know the year they commence their studies but they are uncertain about the year they would gain their freedom (that is, the year they would complete their programme of studies).
JAMB registrar Oloyede wants the government to undertake an all-inclusive examination of all the problems that hinder academic studies in Nigeria. That is a tough call. While Oloyede was thoughtful in his call, it remains to be seen the extent to which the government of Muhammadu Buhari would be keen to put an end to all the issues that disrupt academic calendars, not forgetting growing institutional corruption, and immoral practices that take place between teachers and students in educational institutions. So far, the government’s body language shows it is not concerned about improving the quality of education in the coming months and years.
Three months ago, the Minister of State for Education, Chukwuemeka Nwajiuba, shocked the nation when he said that Nigeria had the highest number of out-of-school children in sub-Saharan Africa. The minister said, if the situation was not addressed considerably, Nigeria could be facing palpable inability to generate important human resources that would enable it to measure up to global benchmarks. That reality now stares the nation on the face. The minister said some of the issues hindering quality education include existence of old-fashioned systems required for effective operation of the education sector, as well as insufficient qualified teachers, and shortage of facilities that drive teaching and learning.
The minister reminded everyone about the importance of education, saying: “Education is critical for national development, as it is the only way we can produce adequate manpower to run the country. For any country to develop, it must have a well-equipped education system that prepares its people with adequate knowledge to enable them take competitive advantage in the 21st century world economy.”
When the minister made that point a few months ago, government bureaucrats shrugged and turned their attention to the pursuit of their selfish interests. The point must be made that no nation can achieve sound socioeconomic development in a situation in which quality has been compromised in primary, secondary, polytechnic, and university education.
The number one impediment to the development of well-rounded education in Nigeria is dearth of funding. Adequate and sustained funding of education are key. Education is the tool that drives national development. It is the quintessence of every country’s economy. Remove education and you will find nothing holding or supporting the economy. Without quality education, Nigeria will harvest a cohort of educationally half-baked men and women, untrained, unqualified, and inexperienced to handle the challenges of our globalised world.
Other problems in the education sector include but are not limited to hiring of untrained and ill-equipped teachers, mass failure of students in examinations, unprecedented increase in the number of students inventing underhanded methods to scale through examinations, growing involvement of students and teachers in immoral practices, criminal embezzlement of funds budgeted to support education and lack of commitment, by teachers and education administrators, to quality education. Federal and state governments overlooked all these worrying signs. Suddenly, the JAMB registrar and the minister of state are concerned about the impending implosion of the education sector.
There is a clear lesson embedded in the dire education situation. An underfunded education sector cannot be expected to function properly. When a government shows appalling indifference to the growth of education, when educational institutions engage the services of untrained and unskilled teachers, when schools are denied access to science and technology facilities to enhance teaching and learning, no one should expect graduates of that impoverished education system to excel or to demonstrate exceptional knowledge of critical issues that inform their disciplines.
At 61, Nigeria should not be grappling with basic issues that undermine education. Unfortunately, when the rest of the world were responding actively to the needs of their environment, Nigerian leaders were snoozing. It will take Nigeria more than a generation to fix the damage that clueless political leaders inflicted on the education sector. The situation is hopeless. Primary and secondary school education is abandoned and deficient. University and polytechnic education has regressed. To put things in proper perspective without overstating the facts, our education sector is in serious trouble. It is headed for the abyss.
One quick way to overturn the imminent demise of education is to provide adequate and regular funds to all public schools, polytechnics and universities. But the funds must be closely supervised to ensure they are not embezzled by light-fingered administrators.
Education in Nigeria is lying precariously on the precipice of a deep valley. If action is not taken immediately by federal and state governments to revive that sector, Nigeria would have destroyed the educational objectives of an entire generation, and those of generations yet to be born.
