It is in our opinion at the Federalist Movement of Nigeria that Public Basic Schools (primary and secondary) in Nigeria should be managed and funded by local communities and not the government.
Government can set the standards, provide training and possibly build infrastructure (if possible). As for the day-to-day running; recruitment (hiring and firing of staff), maintenance of infrastructure, discipline, etc., all these should be managed by communities.
The Nigerian governments (from local to federal) have consistently proven themselves to be grossly inefficient and incompetent in managing any public venture, especially schools.
However, this change cannot happen under the present skewed, flawed, corrupt, unitary ‘feeding bottle’ federalism that we practice in Nigeria.
For this to happen, we must first #RestructureNigeria into #TrueFiscalFederalism so as to allow communities have an active role in governance at the local level. Communities must be allowed to have fiscal responsibilities, such as generating revenue and having annual budgets and meeting the basic local needs of their people. And there will be no external funding for these community budgets as every community must learn how to generate and spend its cash based on its internal capacity, and equally pay tax to the government. The state and federal governments should continue to provide their own responsibilities, as may be defined in the new arrangement. This is the basic foundation upon which true fiscal federalism is built around the world – a bottom-up approach to governance.
Under the present style of government in Nigeria, communities do not see the public schools in their areas as their property that should be protected, promoted and developed. This is why some communities go as far as stealing and vandalising newly built and renovated schools in Nigeria. To them, its government property and government property belongs to nobody! Once we decentralise economic and political power and give communities fiscal responsibilities to do certain things for themselves, there will be grassroot development and participation in the business of governance.
True fiscal federalism becomes the most viable option in changing Nigeria. Not PDP or APC
PREMIUM TIMES
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