The rot in Nigeria’s education system might not be easily noticed, when compared with other sectors. So, it is not surprising that Nigerian leaders have not paid attention to it. It is easier for a leader to use public funds to construct roads, bridges, canals and rail lines, which are quicker to implement and more obvious for the public to see. In fact, there are pictures to document the “before” and “after” to serve as proof. The case of education is different because the return on investment takes time and the impact of policies in education do not kick in immediately. This is difficult for an unsophisticated electorate to appreciate and therefore, unappealing to politicians.

Deconstructing formal education in Nigeria is to critically examine the three tiers of learning primary, secondary and tertiary institutions. Nigeria passed the Universal Basic Education Commission Act in 2004, providing a framework for shared funding responsibility between the federal and state governments. The federal government provides 50% of the funds which states are meant to match to deliver school infrastructure. However, the anaemic condition of states’ finances and the lack of attention to primary education has left billions of unaccessed funds languishing in federal coffers. In a UBEC report, only 24 states accessed UBEC grants as at July 2019. Some states such as Abia, Bayelsa, Enugu, Kwara and Plateau have not used the UBEC fund since 2015. As at February 2020, there is still over N73 billion yet to be claimed by states. The puzzle then is: is funding the problem with Nigeria’s education sector?

In the midst of her population boom, Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children in the world, rising to 13.2 million as at 2015. In a detailed survey by UNICEF and the National Bureau of Statistics, thirteen states with the most out-of-school children are from northern Nigeria. In the UNICEF report, female out-of-school children in the north-east and north-west rank high, especially in the north-west with 42.4% of the children surveyed. The data shows that girls are more disadvantaged. There are cultural, religious and socio-economic reasons why these trends persist in the north and it requires intervention considering the demographic growth within the region. It is important that the government immediately responds to the glaring disparities in educated children across the country.

A significant element of fixing education that we tend to gloss over is teacher training. In fact, most of the attention paid to education is streamlined into the construction of classrooms, which is just a single element in a broad matrix. We have not realised that education should be measured in outcomes such as literacy and numeracy of children in a competitive setting, and how they advance, which culminates in human capital for the country. We can quibble about the state of infrastructure, but teacher training is also a critical issue. For example, in 2017 a teacher training test in Kaduna demonstrated the level of poor hiring and miseducation of teachers. The test conducted by the state government showed that of 33,000 teachers who took the test, 21,780 were lacking in basic understanding of elementary arithmetic and general knowledge. An attempt to sack under-qualified teachers in Ekiti had grave political consequences with teachers’ unions and parents making it a campaign issue and calling for the reinstatement of the sacked teachers.

So far, there has been a recent investment to retrain teachers with the National Teachers Institute, but the institute needs to be revamped for efficiency. In the aptitude test for new teachers in Kaduna, it was revealed that “only 4,000 out of the more than 43,000 applicants who sat for the recently conducted aptitude test for new teachers scored 75 per cent and above.” Our education indicators will continue to deteriorate if we do not prioritise access to literacy, incentivise education and involve state governments, traditional rulers and other leading Islamic scholars in northern Nigeria. It is good that the almajiri schools were handed over to state governments, but how about their funding?

Without fixing the bedrock of education through significant investment in primary and secondary education, Nigeria faces a huge quality gap at the tertiary level. This begins with heavy investments in quality infrastructure, removing barriers to learning and raising the quality of teachers at primary and secondary school levels. Nigerian universities also need to imbibe accountability in terms of quality teaching, curriculum review and research equipment. Education is a space where data can guide intervention and determine: what is the numeracy and literacy capacity of our kids. What is the transition rate of these kids to higher education? What is their ability to compete globally based on acquired knowledge? These questions can
only be answered by putting our best brains to work in crafting an effective education policy. In the name of national quota, Nigeria cannot continue to bend the rules, reducing the benchmarks that facilitate the comprehension and numeracy capacity of her pupils.

Education is one of the sectors where the decay in global standards is not taken into consideration, but the higher the attention every country pays to education, the higher the chances that they will convert people into assets. Education is the cheat code of developed societies, but the Nigerian government is more enthusiastic about commissioning roads and bridges, forgetting that human capital is the bedrock of development.

Excerpt from The Existential Questions by Oluseun Onigbinde