By Afolabi Aribigbola
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T he United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) recently revealed that more than 18.5 million children in Nigeria have no access to education, with girls accounting for more than half of the number. The revelation was that over 60 percent are girls. This is the highest in the world and it implies that one third of the Nigerian’s children are out of school and that one in every five of the world’s out of school children is a Nigerian. This is not only embarrassing but will have serious implication for the health and progress of the country. Of course, since this revelation came out, there seems not to be any actions or concern from policy makers in the country especially those charged with the responsibility of managing the youths and education sector in the country.
Ordinarily this kind of disturbing information should instigate questions and actions to determine how the country declined or arrived at this dismal level of performance in its education against the background of serious policy efforts and resources committed to the sector in the past. Instead, the elites and leadership of the country seemed unconcerned but are busy with justifying the crude murder of an innocent young lady on the altar of religion. while majority are busy struggling and wasting the scarce resources of the country on the forthcoming 2023 general elections.
Unfortunately, and surprisingly too, the Nigerian state and her leaders are less concerned about the retrogressive and backward decent in the education of Nigerian children. The issue agitating the mind of this writer and many discerning progressive Nigerians includes why and how did the country descend to this very poor level and what can we do to reverse this dangerous trend? Dangerous because not educating the children implies not securing the future of the country. They will grow up to add to the pool of poor and unfortunate Nigerians lacking in knowledge and skills to develop the country.
The revelation of UNICEF is an antithesis of development in parts of the country in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the early 1950s introduced free universal education in the western region. In a similar fashion, General Murtala Muhammed in 1975 in a bid to improve access to education in the country nationalized all schools in the country, made primary education free and reduced school fees in all secondary schools that were hitherto controlled by different individuals and groups including religious organisations. These positive actions were improved upon by the Unity Party controlled states in the second Republic in 1979, when the government of the then ‘Lobo States’ introduced free and compulsory education at all levels. They and many other states in the country went further to give bursary and scholarships awards to their students. All were attempts to improve access to and quality of education in the country. This again made more Nigerians to have access to more levels of education.
If these feats and steps were achieved in the past, then what went wrong? If spirited and concerted efforts were made in 1955, 1975 and 1979 to father formal education particularly at the lower level, why do the country still have this embarrassing figure of Nigerian population out of school.
The consequences of the high percentage of out of school children in Nigeria are wide and very grave if not quickly redressed. It portends that Nigeria as a society is not doing well. That the country that has made significant progress and development in educating her people is regressing is becoming a dysfunctional society that cannot care for her citizens. The current strike by all unions in the tertiary education is a testimony to this assertion, a negative one for that matter. Of more fundamental importance is that it presupposes that the nation has no future. In other words the unimpressive records of high out of school children in Nigeria implies a bleak future for the county. It is a well-known fact that the future prosperity of a society depends on its youths. Thus, a society that failed to educate her children is toying with its future. It presupposes lack of future for the country and her people. A society cannot develop above the level of education. In addition, the society will not be able to cope with happening and development in the near future.
The education sector in the country nosedived to a ridiculous level it is in recent times because of lackadaisical attitude and lack of commitment of governments and their functionaries at all levels. UNICEF has noted that the upsurge in out of school children was due to the activities of Boko Haram and bandits that prevented children from attending schools. This could be correct in some states in the north. The fact that Akwa Ibom state in the South South had the second largest population of out of school children in the country indicates that other factors are also responsible for rising wave of out of school children in Nigeria.
One of the causes of dwindling fortunes of education in our society include poor funding. The funding of education in Nigeria has not been encouraging. Teachers for instance are poorly paid and often in some states are owed upward of 24 months’ salary. Most of the public schools lack adequate and sufficient teachers, while at primary and secondary school levels most of the schools ate dotted with dilapidated buildings without basic infrastructure and facilities to enhance sound education. The poor economic situation of the country has not helped matters. Besides the constraint allocation of adequate resources to education, it has continued to deny school leavers employment opportunities thereby discouraging children from going to school. The crave for wealth by the youths is another causal factor of dismal performance in the sector in the sense that the lure of get rich syndrome is taking many youths from schools because there are cheap ways of obtaining the good things of life such as yahoo yahoo among others.
Ironically those who should be concerned and be instigated to take actions to redress the unacceptable malaise and poor situation of education in the country seem unconcerned and therefore there has not been policy initiatives and actions to respond to the humongous challenges of high number of out of school children syndrome in the country. However, do we continue to bemoan and look the other way why the crisis persists and escalate? Of course, to the committed and sincere people of the country, the answer is no.
What are the way(s) outs of the quagmire? This presupposes that efforts must be made to reverse and redress the otherwise unacceptable and downgrading situation of education in the country generally and specifically tertiary education where there are crisis at the moment. Therefore, the need to revitalize and improve the education sector generally becomes indispensable. The government of Nigeria must key into the promise of the United Nations in its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to provide universal primary and secondary education as adopted in 2019. The country must move beyond mere policy that officially indicates that primary education is free and compulsory to ensuring that the schools function efficiently. The reality is that majority of the children are in private primary schools where parents pay heavily to educate their children.
There is the need to discard deceitful policies to embrace pragmatic actions to improve education and get all the Nigerian children into schools. Improvement and upgrade public schools have been neglected to promote private schools that are accessible to only the wealthy. Efforts must be made by all stakeholders in Nigeria to reverse the destructive trend of allowing a high proportion of Nigerian children not to attend schools.
