They keep piling it on. The bad news about our country, that is. We are the most corrupt; our elections are the most expensive with the poorest returns on investments; our country has displaced India as the poverty capital of the world. It never seems to stop. What else is new?
This: The latest bad news is a report on something called the global inequality index released October 9 by OXFAM at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Bali, Indonesia. According to the Daily Trust of October 10, the report, Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index, ranked Nigeria as ranked the highest on global inequality index. Perhaps, that should surprise no one. We can all see the inequalities all around us. The Ajegunle dweller needs not be told that his hovel is not the equal of the gleaming mansions in Banana Island, Lagos. Nor should the man who feeds on roasted plantain by the road side be reminded that he is not the equal of the man who feeds on pounded yam with egusi soup with fresh fish. In this, there is no difference between our country and other countries where the economic system makes and sustains these inequalities.
What are at issue in this latest bad news are more fundamental to us as a country and as a people. OXFAM, according to the newspaper, is a global civil society body that fights against injustice, not as in the powerful oppressing the powerless or the rich dehumanising the poor, but how the poorest of the poor among us are taken care of by our governments. This index, among other indices, assesses a country’s social spending and social protection. It also assesses a country’s spending on education, labour rights, with reference to the minim wage and tax.
This year’s report covered 157 countries. In virtually all the indices, Nigeria came tops among the worst cases. Child mortality is high because, according to the index, one in ten children in our country does not reach their fifth birthday. OXFAM also found that ten million children do not go to school and that 60 per cent of these children are girls.
We may not be happy about how poorly our country is performing but there is nothing particularly new to jolt officialdom from continuing to do the Rip Van Winkle. It says a lot about our country that 58 years after independence we are still grappling with the basic challenges of the nation state. Nothing seems to go right. We do not need reports such as this to know how poorly we fare in our development efforts. No light, no water, no security, no roads, no health care and, shame of all shames, an education system caught up in contradictory and ill-digested policies. Our children die young because we allow them to die young. Our maternity mortality is high because our rural women are still at the mercy of herbalists and traditional mid-wives.
The federal government continues to license new universities while the standard of education is still falling. It has been falling for as long as anyone can remember. We have done nothing particularly radical to arrest it. While universities in other African countries are producing future leaders with sound minds and the ability to think out of the box, our universities are producing mumu graduates who are not quite useful to themselves or the society. Our universities have been turned into degree mills because here paper qualification matters much more than sound education.
Our objective is not the total development of our young people but merely to arm them with worthless degree certificates. We have more universities, public and private, than several African countries put together. Yet, we cannot match their rate of human, social and economic development. It is not a matter of magic. It is a matter of determining what to do with education. Our investment in education is about the lowest on the continent. We are nowhere near the UNESCO minimum that requires countries to commit 28 per cent of their national budgets to education.
On November 13 last year the federal ministry of education organised a retreat on the topic: Education in Nigeria: Challenges and Prospects. President Buhari addressed the retreat. He admitted that past neglect in education had led to everything that is wrong with our educational progress today. Our illiteracy rate is the highest in sub-Saharan Africa; we have more children, 13.2 million of them, out of school than any other African country; add 10 million almajiri and you have a fair idea of where we are in our educational progress, or rather lack of it.
The president told the retreat: “We must get it right in this country. To get it right means getting our educational sector on the right path (because the) security and stability of the country hinges on its ability to provide functional education to its citizens.”
I have seen nothing since then to indicate a likely paradigm shift in our attitude towards our educational progress and the future of our children. Last week, state governors reportedly decided to declare a state of emergency in education in their various states. Yet while that was supposed to give us some indication that our rulers were waking up to the challenges of getting our education right, the executive council of the federation approved a new university of technology in Abuja. Does it make sense?
The minister of education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, told the retreat that since 1999 the annual budgetary allocation to education has been between four and ten per cent of the national budget. Compare that with other African countries that commit at least 20 per cent of their annual budgets to education. Is it not sad, truly sad, that this country should be playing catch up with other African countries less blessed with human and natural resources?
The minister said that “what is needed is a vastly improved funding accompanied by a strong political will. The strong will needed to do all this is present in the government. What the government must now do is to make the funds available.” Adamu called for a declaration of state ofl emergency on education. Still, nothing.
Why, I wondered then and still wonder now, does the Buhari administration or any other administration in this country, need to be persuaded that the bottom has virtually fallen out of our educational progress? If we do not get our education right, nothing will go right with our national development for the very simple reason that education, and nothing else, drives modern development. If we are just waking up to that fact, then the bad news would keep coming. And no matter the number of wealthy men and women who own private jets and live in Banana Island in Lagos, Lekki in Lagos and Asokoro in Abuja, we will get poorer and our misery index will only rise and the insecurity and instability will worsen and make us all sitting ducks for the fun of dehumanised fellow Nigerians.
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