By Olakunle Olafioye
The commencement of new academic sessions come with a whole lot of challenges for most Nigerian families.
It is a season for a wholesale change of school kits – uniforms, bags, shoes, stationeries and more importantly, a season for the payment of new school fees.
While the experience may not be entirely new, the hardship which has hallmarked the President Bola Tinubu era since May 29, 2023, has definitely compounded this challenge.
Like other basic necessities, the prices of back-to-school items, including textbooks, notebooks, school uniforms among other school paraphernalia have skyrocketed, resulting in lamentations by parents, bookshop operators and authors.
Mr Ayo Alebiosu, author of Best Solution to Topics in English Grammar for Schools and Colleges, lamented the astronomical increase in the cost of publishing textbooks in the country.
According to Alebiosu, the cost of publishing has been more than tripled what it used to be two, three years ago.
“That is the effect of the prices people are being given when they get to bookshops nowadays. When I published my book in 2019, the cost of producing a copy was about N700. That was why it was sold for N1,000. I just revised the book now and the price per copy is almost N2,800, which is four times higher than when it was first published,” he said.
Bookshop operators are equally feeling the pang of the hard times on their business with many bemoaning the low patronage and incessant haggling and complaints over the prices of textbooks and other school items from parents.
A bookshop owner in Lagos, Mrs Toyin Ishola, told Sunday Sun that the prohibitive cost of textbooks and other stationeries is adversely affecting her business. Mrs Ishola who pointed out that the weeks before resumptions were always the peak periods for operators in the past years said patronage has been anything, but impressive this time around.
“Patronage has been extremely poor so far this period. In the past, the rate of turnover used to be very encouraging at a period like this, but due to the high cost of books the traffic has been very low. The majority of those who come around often end up leaving without being able to buy what they come for. Many of them will have to go around, comparing prices before deciding where and who to buy from,” she said.
The lamentations over the exorbitant prices of back-to-school materials come more deafening from parents, the majority of whom have other financial commitments to attend to.
A cursory market survey carried out by Sunday Sun showed an increase of between 50 per cent to over 200 per cent in the prices of stationeries and other back-to-school kits.
For instance, a pack of 60 leaves exercise book which sold for N2,000 around this time last year now sells for N 3,500, while a pack of pens (50 units) which sold for an average of N1,500 now goes for N2,700. Prices of major textbooks for both primary and secondary schools are also on the increase, forcing many parents to resort to either buying in bits or reducing their purchases.
A customer who gave her name as Mrs Maureen Nwaeri at a bookshop in Ikeja told Sunday Sun correspondent that she was visiting the bookshop for the second time in two weeks because she could not buy all she needed to buy for her children the first time she came.
“I was here two weeks ago, but I couldn’t buy everything I wanted due to the high costs of books and other school items. By my calculation now I have spent close to N200,000 on bags and books alone just for three children. Mind you there are still other important items like uniforms, shoes, food flasks which one must buy and then the school fees. To kit a primary school pupil for resumption now, one should be looking at about N200,000 on the average. How many parents do you think can afford that in this Tinubu time?” she queried.
Following the hardship in the country and the prohibitive costs of education, stakeholders in the nation’s education sector have expressed fear about the possibility of the number of out-of-school children in the country spiraling in the coming months.
According to the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, UNICEF, Nigeria contributes 15 per cent to global Out-of-School Children statistics.
As of June 2022, an estimated 10.2 million children of primary school age were said to be out of school while 8.1 million students of Junior Secondary School age were said to have dropped out with only 33 per cent of students of Senior Secondary School age in school.
An educationist, Dr Abiodun Olangbero, said the outlook could be gloomier in the months to come as families contend with the nation’s economic woe.
He pointed out that Nigerians were at a stage where they could no longer accord education of their children the priority attention it deserved, adding that the primary concern of most families now was how to at least feed their families once or twice daily.
“Education is now being priced out of the reach of the common people. Even the so-called government owned schools are no longer free and cannot be said to be at the same standard with what they used to be a few years ago. I can remember that a few years back, the Lagos State government used to provide students with free textbooks which must be returned to the school at the end of the session.
“But this is no longer in place now. How many parents can conveniently buy all the recommended textbooks for their children now because textbooks are now very costly? What about the payment of school fees? With these indices, one can conveniently say that many parents could be compelled to withdraw their children from school any moment from now,” he opined.
He, however, counseled parents to exercise restraints and look inwards to see how they could possibly manage the situation without putting the future of their children in jeopardy by taking rash decisions.
“Education remains the best legacy anybody, both the poor and the rich, can bequeath to their children. To deprive any child the right to education is tantamount to depriving the child the prospect of a better future. I am sure there are some cost-cutting measures that parents may adopt to relieve themselves of the financial burden of their children’s education,” he said.
Olangbenro admonished parents to enroll their children in relatively standard schools with moderate and affordable school fees.
“Most parents make the mistake of judging the standards of schools by the fees they charge. I was once in that category, but I am wiser now. A lot of people are of the opinion that the higher the fee a school charges, the higher its standard. No! This is not always the case. Of course, there are several high-paying schools of reputable and impeccable standards in this country. Likewise, there are school owners who are much more concerned with shaping and improving lives through quality education than making money from people. So, parents should enroll their children in schools with moderate school fees and which will not compromise their standards, ” he admonished.
Also, speaking on the cost-cutting measures parents may adopt to mitigate the burden of their children’s education expenses, another educationist, Mrs Titilayo Idowu, said parents could relieve themselves the financial burden of procuring new textbooks for their children by embracing what she described as a textbook swap deal.
“It is like the old-fashioned barter system. A parent may have a child who has just completed JSS 2 and have another one coming to JSS 1. All he or she needs to do is to get a parent whose child just finished JSS 1 and who needs JSS 2 textbooks and swap them for the ones the child used in JSS 1,” She said.
She also urged parents to shun schools that unduly encumber and exploit parents unreasonably.
Such schools, according to her, are schools that have made it a habit to have multiple uniforms and ensure that textbooks used by a student in a session cannot be used by his or her younger siblings later.
“I know some private schools that have different uniforms for each of the days of the week. What this means is that a child must buy three to four different uniforms in addition to a school cardigan. So, a parent that has three or four children would be bugged down with the burden of buying 15 to 20 pieces of uniforms. I will advise that parents should steer clear of such schools. Again there are schools that compel that classwork and assignments should be done in students textbook. The essence of that is to ensure that such books are no longer useful to their younger ones in future. Parents are, therefore, forced to repeat the purchase of the same set of books every time their children get to a particular class. This is pure exploitation. The only way to dissuade such practice is to avoid such schools,” Idowu advised.