The forces enamoured of centralisation are in fine fettle with a recent proposal that may remove education from the concurrent to the exclusive legislative list. It is in the works, according to the Minister of State for Education, Anthony Anwukah. If the plan succeeds, it means only the Federal Government will control education at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels. Currently, education is on the concurrent legislative list in the 1999 Constitution. Second Schedule, Part II, Sections 27-30 cedes education administration at all levels to the federal and state governments.
As he put it, “We have a lot of problems facing education sector in this country. Over the last two weeks, I have been pondering on a particular idea, whether, as a country, we can continue putting education on the Concurrent List.” He argued that education, not just the military, is critical to the nation and must not be left at the whims and caprices of state governments. Anwukah is wrong and he has to perish the thought.
True, education is beset by well-catalogued woes. Public primary schools suffer from poor teacher quality, dilapidated infrastructure (some pupils study under trees), and fluctuating enrolment rates, especially in the North. Private primary schools abound but they are often out of the reach of the average Nigerian family. The secondary school level is just as rotten. Although the Federal Government is involved, it is bedevilled by similar challenges being experienced at the primary level.
But the rot can be traced to our skewed federalism. Nigeria is in a state of political paralysis and economic sclerosis today as a result of the serial destruction of our robust and competitive post-independence federal structure. Long before now, different regions of the country had operated their own education structure. Take the South-West, for instance, where Obafemi Awolowo had implemented free education to great acclaim. Local councils established and ran primary schools efficiently during that era we remember now with nostalgia. The missionaries played a critical role in educating Nigerians, with the first set of primary schools founded in 1840s. They also established several secondary institutions, including the CMS Grammar School (1859), Methodist Boys High School (1878), Baptist Academy (1885) [all in Lagos] and Hope Waddell (1895) [Calabar, Cross River State].
Government came into the picture half a century later, with the setting up of King’s College, Lagos in 1909. At the tertiary level, the University College, Ibadan, set up by the colonial government in 1948, as a campus of the University of London, was inadequate to cater for the interest of Nigerians yearning for university education. Regional governments, therefore, took the advantage of concurrent list placement of education to found the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (East), Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, (North) and University of Ife, Ile-Ife (West), to trigger growth at the tertiary level.
Everything went out of kilter when the Federal Military Government implemented the Schools Takeover (Validation) Decree of 1977. All missionary secondary schools were unilaterally expropriated. It was a disastrous policy. Soon after, standards crashed and moral decay seeped through. But a few years ago, states like Anambra and Lagos, which had assessed the negative impact of the policy, returned the seized schools to their owners. This is the way to go.
In Germany, the administration of education is devolved to the 16 states, which determine the exact dates of schooling, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, the multinational professional services firm. Also, primary schools are under the control of Local Authorities in the United Kingdom, says the National Foundation for Educational Research. Churches and charitable organisations equally run schools; though they receive part funding from the public till, yet are not controlled by government.
There is no evidence that the centre is a better manager of education than the constituent states. Abuja is all at sea with its 104 Unity (Secondary) Schools. The results of the May/June 2015 West African Senior School Certificate Examination is depressing: no candidate in four of such schools obtained the five credits required for university admission. Nor are the colleges among the best performers in WASSCE and National Examination Council tests. With this reality, it is pure fantasy for Anwukah to think that centralising education is the solution to the crises in the sector.
Tertiary education is not immune from the disarray. Public universities, including the first generation ones, are in a shambles. Only the private universities have stable academic programmes. In one of the latest global biometric rankings of universities, the University of Ibadan, rated the best in Nigeria, is 1,366 in the world (19 in Africa). The quality of teaching and research is questionable, as the National Universities Commission, in 2015, said less than 50 per cent of lecturers had PhDs. Infrastructure in our tertiary institutions are an eyesore.
We have 40 federal universities that are not well funded. Constant strikes have crippled their academic activities and prolonged the school calendar. To prevent the incessant industrial actions by lecturers, the Federal Government inked a N1.3 trillion Memorandum of Understanding on infrastructure to cover the six years to 2018 with the Academic Staff Union of Universities. As of 2016, it was in arrears by N495 billion, said ASUU. Therefore, it embarked on a strike late in 2016 to sensitise the government to the default.
Unfortunately, this liability is more than the N368 billion proposed for the education ministry in the 2017 budget. It is also more than the N480 billion approved in 2016. It means, therefore, that government cannot even fund university education properly. What is more, the 44 state-owned universities will be added to the 40 owned by the Federal Government. What about the 68 private universities? Can FG, therefore, run 152 universities? In the UK, there are many privately-owned universities and colleges that government provides with funds, evident in the £3.2 billion it granted them in the 2015/16 academic session, and will support them with £3.1 billion in 2016/17, according to the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
Education unlocks talent, grows society and expands the frontiers of humanity. This is not so here. Therefore, the solution to the mess is to grant real autonomy to the states, local councils, private and charitable organisations to play their part by whittling down the powers of the Federal Government. Being a federation, the centrally-administered university admission system within the ambit of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board could be decentralised to enhance tertiary education.
Anwukah’s simplistic solution is wide of the mark. Policies should promote solutions, not chaos, in a system. To elevate the system, the Federal Government should find ways of putting more investment in education without assuming total control. The Universal Basic Education, the Tertiary Education Trust Fund and other similar initiatives should be reviewed and expanded to give Nigeria’s teeming youth population more access to education.
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