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INTRODUCTION
Last week, we gave a compound definition of the subject matter and later x-rayed the following sub-topics: a short history of education in Nigeria; education and development; before the crisis and challenges in the educational sector; we also identified some of the problems in Nigeria’s educational system beginning with: Outdated curricular and infrastructural decay: lack of quality education; total neglect of schools; dearth of qualified teachers; teachers’ poor working conditions and concluded with insufficient funding by government. Today, we shall begin with Failure to accommodate the rising population demands; the factor of greed; we shall also take look at how far we have come in Nigeria in terms of education and educational institutions in the country and later the exodus, the extent of our failure wherein the best hands in Nigeria keep relocating abroad. We shall then conclude with by categorically stating that the Nigerian educational system is no longer at ease and also examine depth of crisis in our educational system.
Failure to accommodate the rising population demands
The total population of Nigeria as at independence was 45.2 million. As at October 6, 2022, Nigeria’s population was estimated to be 217.66 million. This has become a major problem as the education system cannot fully enroll its rapidly growing population. For instance, Nigeria’s basic education sector is overburdened by strong population growth. In 2015, the country’s population under the age of 15 was about 44 percent. The system has failed to integrate large parts of this growing youth population.
As at today, Nigeria’s under-5 population is 31 million children. At least 7 million babies are born each year. The poverty level of Nigeria is one in three. 22% of Nigeria’s population is made up of children. Over 20 million children are out of school as at 1st September, 2022 (UNESCO). No one bothers about the almajiris, drops-out, nomadic migrants and pastoralists; poor children of farmers, fishermen, etc. they are part of the forgotten vulnerable of the society – the hoi polloi; the Frants Fanon’s “Wretched of the Earth”.
According to the United Nations, 8.73 million elementary school- aged children in 2010 did not participate in education at all, most of which were the almajiri children. They constitute the largest group of out-of- school children in Nigeria. These boys are sent to Qur’anic teachers to receive an Islamic education, which includes vocational or apprenticeship training. Some are involved in street begging. The Ministry of Education estimated that there were over 9.5 million almajiri children in the northern part of the country in 2010, making Nigeria the country with the highest number of out-of-school children in the world. The net enrollment rate at the elementary level was 63.8 percent compared to a global average of 88.8 percent. This low rate of enrollment to basic education in Nigeria has further increased illiteracy level in Nigeria. The country in 2015 had a youth literacy rate of 72.8 percent and an adult literacy rate of 59.6 percent compared to global rates of 90.6 percent and 85.3 percent in 2010 respectively (data reported by the World Bank). The non-literate population is no doubt alarming.
The factor of greed
Greed has crept in as a major issue in Nigerian education because most instructors are paid far less than what they deserve. Thus, the heads of these schools frequently embezzle part of the money for themselves instead of using it for the earmarked purpose. This forces lecturers to milk parents and pupils dry of funds, to survive.
How have we so far fared?
According to a popular online source (“Smartest People, mediocre nation – the irony of Nigeria” ; accessed on 11th September, 2022), British Nobel laureate, Dorothy Hodgkin, once noted that the University of Lagos was one of the world centres of expertise in her specialist field of chemical crystallography. Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, had the first world class computer centre in Africa. The University of Ife (now OAU), had a notable pool of expertise in nuclear physics. Our premier University of Ibadan had an international reputation as a leading centre of excellence in tropical medicine, development economics and historical sciences.
The Saudi Royal family used to frequent UCH for medical treatment in the sixties. The engineering scientist, Ayodele Awojobi, a graduate of ABU Zaria, was a rather troubled genius. He tragically died of frustration because our environment could not contain, let alone utilize, his talents. Ishaya Shuaibu Audu, pioneer Nigeria Vice-Chancellor of ABU Zaria, collected all the prizes at St. Mary’s University Medical School, London. His successor in Zaria, Iya Abubakar, was a highly talented Cambridge mathematician who became a Professor at 28 and was a notable consultant to NASA.
Alexander Animalu was a gifted MIT physicist who did work of original importance in superconductivity. His book, Intermediate Quantum Theory of Crystalline Solids, has been translated into several languages, including Russia.
Renowned mathematician Chike Obi solved Fermat’s 200-year old conjecture with pencil and paper, while the Cambridge mathematician, John Wiles, achieved same with the help of a computer working over a decade. However, after the harsh environment of the 1980s and IMF/WB structural adjustment programmes, the Ibrahim Babangida military dictatorship undertook massive budgetary cutbacks in higher education. Education started nose-diving.
The exodus
Other News
Our brightest and best fled abroad. Today, Nigerian doctors, scientists and engineers are making massive contributions in diverse fields in Europe, Asia, North America and the Arab world. Philip Emeagwali won the 1989 Gordon Bell Award for his work in super-computing. Jelani Aliyu designed the first electric car for American automobile giant, General Motors. Olufunmilayo Olopede, Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, won a McAurthur Genius Award for her work on cancer.
Winston Soboyejo, who earned a Cambridge doctorate at 23, is a Princeton engineering professor, laurelled for his contributions to materials research. He is Chairman of the scientific Advisory Board to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Washington University biomedical engineering professor Samuel Achilefu, received the St. Louis Award for his invention of cancer-seeing glasses that is a major advance in radiology.
Kunle Olukotun of Stanford did work of original importance on multi-processors. National Merit laureate, Omowunmi Sadik of State University of Binghamton, owns patents for biosensors technology. Many young Nigerians are also recording stellar performances at home and abroad. A Nigerian family, the Imafidons, were voted “the smartest family in Britian” in 2015.
Anne Marie Imafidon earned her Oxford Masters’ in Mathematics and Computer Science when she was only 19. Today, she sits on several corporate boards and was awarded an MBE in 2017 for services to science. Recently, Benue State University mathematician Atovigba Michael Vershima is believed to have solved the two centuries old Riemann Conjecture that has defied giants such as Gauss, Minkowski and Polya.
Another young man, Hallowed Olaoluwa, was one of a dozen “future Einstein” awarded postdoctoral fellowship by Harvard University. He completed a remarkable doctorate in mathematical physics at the University of Lagos, at age 21. While at Harvard, he aims to focus on solving problems relating to “quantum ergodicity and quantum chaos”, with applications to medical imaging and robotics. Another Unilag alumnus, Ayodele Dada, graduated with a perfect 5.0 GPA, an unprecedented feat in a Nigerian University. Victor Olalusi recently graduated with such stellar performance at the Russian Medical Research University, Moscow, and was feted the best graduate throughout the Russian Federation. Habiba Daggash, daughter of Senator Sanusi Daggash recently graduated with a starred rust in Engineering at Oxford University.
Emmanuel Ohuabunwa earned a CPA of 3.98 out of a possible 4.0 as the best overall graduate of the Ivy-League Johns Hopkins University. Stewart Hendry, Johns Hopkins Professor of Neuroscience, described the young man as having “an intellect so rare that it touches on the unique…a personality that is once-in-a-life-time”. There is also young Yemi Adesokan, postdoctoral fellow of Harvard Medical School who patented procedures for tracking spread of viral epidemics in developing countries. Ufot Ekong recently solved a 50-year mathematical riddle at Tokai – University in Japan and was voted the most outstanding graduate of the institution. He currently works as an engineer for Nissan, having pocketed two patents in his discipline.
We are no longer at ease
This is only the tip of the iceberg. If our system were not so inclement to talents, we would be celebrating a bountiful harvest of geniuses in all fields of human endeavour. This is why the correlates between our gene-pool and national development are so diametrically opposed, as the night and day. Unfortunately, the success stories mentioned above are the exception rather than the rule. This is because, we are fast becoming a failed state. We are currently miserably below the ladder of progress in the hierarchy of world economics and politics. None of our institutions, except ABUAD, the leading University in Nigeria which also situates within the leading 300 universities come near the top 500 in the World Universities League Table.
The profligacy, graft, bacchanalian and primitive acquisitive instincts of the ruling class (both military and civilian), have undoubtedly arguably contributed to the erosion of our cherished values and the consequent attendant degeneration in the educational sector. The rot that set in has since ballooned and festered. So bad is the situation that it will not be an exaggeration to characterize it – as depicted in the title of this article – as a crisis. We are surely in a crisis situation.
How bad is the educational crisis?
The challenges confronting education in Nigeria are multi-faceted and well-documented. From underfunding to inclement enabling environment, cultism, “blocking”, sales of grades; and everything in between. In parts of the country (particularly in the North-East, North-West and North Central), kidnapping, armed banditry and nascent insurgency have made formal and even informal, Koranic-style (called ‘Islamiyya’) education something of a luxury, the quest for which involves risking one’s life and limb. In the reasonating words of Kenneth Maduagwu (Learning in Crisis”; https://nextierspd.com, July 21, 2022, Accessed on 1st October 2022), “the intensity of violence in Nigeria poses significant risks for school children. Several places of learning have turned to piles of ruin due to attacks by non-state armed groups. Instances are more prevalent in Nigeria’s northeast zone, where the insurgency has been well over twelve years. In the northwest and northcentral zones, banditry also poses significant threats to education due to large-scale kidnappings at places of learning. In the sourtheast zone, school activities are suspended on Mondays and other designated sit-at-home days by the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Ubiquitous terror significantly constrains school enrolment in Nigeria. The country has an out-of-school children problem, estimated at 18.5 million children. The figure is a sharp rise from 10.5 million recorded in 2021. UNICEF links the surge to northeast terrorism and banditry in the northwest and north central regions”.
(To be continued).
Thought for the week
“An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you know and what you don’t”.
(Anatole France)
