THE concerns seem to be coming more from abroad than within: that the country’s human capital development is shockingly low. The latest, from a global study that ranked Nigeria 171 out of 195 countries, in investment in health and education, is an addition to a series of wake-up calls, which the authorities are yet to take pragmatic steps to address.
Undertaken by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, the United States, the study measured human capital between 1990 and 2016. The researchers analysed 2,522 surveys and census reports that yielded data on years of schooling; testing scores in mathematics, science, language and health levels as it affected economic productivity. “Nigeria’s ranking of 171st in 2016, represents a drop from its 1990 ranking of 155th,” the report stressed. Finland topped the ranking in the report published in The Lancet, an international medical journal, in September.
A World Economic Forum’s Global Human Capital Index 2017 similarly ranked Nigeria poorly with its 114th position out of 130 countries, thus confirming a steady deterioration. Lamentably, the World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim, observed that the country spent less than one per cent of its Gross Domestic Product on health. This contrasted sharply with the picture in other African countries: South Africa (6.3 per cent); Angola (6.5 per cent); Egypt (3.5 per cent) and Ghana (3.1 per cent). It also stands in sharp contrast to the 16.4 per cent the US posted to emerge the highest.
This explains the country’s notoriety for grabbing global headlines in the worst health indices in maternal and child mortality rates; and the worst place for a child to be born. With Pakistan and Afghanistan, Nigeria completes the trio whose polio disease incidence has yet to be eradicated globally.
For Nigeria to confront this challenge head-on, it has to appreciate the dictum that: “Every development success story starts with education,” as the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, stated. Investment in education is the fulcrum of knowledge production, which translates to wealth creation and economic development that will foster a better life for the people. The Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates, was therefore right when he advised the National Economic Council at its April meeting, where he was its special guest, to redirect Nigeria’s development focus to health, education and skills acquisition.
Where the foundation is weak, any superstructure on it cannot stand. In synopsis, this is the tragic story of education here. UNESCO underscored this much in 2014 when its director in Nigeria, Hassana Alidou, said Nigeria had the worst education indicators globally, as it led 37 countries with a system that had “education without learning.” Both federal and state governments “spend on” education, rather than “invest in” education. This is typified in the building of modern classroom blocks without qualified and competent teachers; where pupils sit on the bare floor to learn and instructional materials are non-existent.
A survey conducted by the Federal Government in 2010 had revealed that 207,818 unqualified teachers were in the primary schools. This was followed by a revelation from a former Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission, Mohammed Moddibo, in 2012 that more than 50 per cent of teachers in Sokoto State could not read materials supplied to their schools.
A school system where teachers fail competence tests in arithmetic and basic literacy — a cognitive appraisal meant for pupils in class four — holds no promise for the country. Governor Tanko al-Makura of Nasarawa State has confirmed it with his observation that many teachers in the state’s primary and secondary schools had no business being in the classroom.
The country should retrace its steps and find why basic education in the 1950s and ’60s was so functional that its beneficiaries were even employed as teachers, as against the mess of today. Norway, Finland, Switzerland, Germany, Australia and Singapore, among others, perennially ranked highly in HDI, should serve as models for Nigeria in reconstructing this critical foundation. In Singapore, for instance, their highly trained teachers are each subjected to 100 hours of professional development annually, according to Vivian Stewart at the Centre for Global Education. Ignoring this paradigm means that these half-baked pupils will continue to transit to colleges and then to universities to worsen the dilemma.
At the tertiary level, basic facilities are lacking — water, electricity, sufficient lecture halls, hostels and adequate manpower. Ironically, without addressing these problems, more of such decrepit institutions are springing up. This deepens the disorder in the system. This is why the Academic Staff Union of Universities is mobilising to resume its strike over the non-release of the N200 billion promised to universities annually in line with the 2009 renegotiated FG-ASUU agreement.
While the country dithers in holding the bull by the horns, developed countries, and indeed, some developing ones, are widening the knowledge gap. Their strides in nanotechnology, quantum computing, autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence are new knowledge frontiers that define the future. We need policymakers that see education and health as fundamental social policy issues requiring urgent attention. Without investment in STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — the foundation of the jet/computer age, the country will remain severed from the developed world in advancing high living standards and life-expectancy for humanity through education.
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