…FG says figure a huge mirage
Nigeria’s budgetary allocation for education has continued to remain below the minimum 15 – 20 per cent recommended for developing countries by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
Currently, the report pegs the barest minimum at 26% of a nation’s annual budget for national educational development.
Some stakeholders believe that the education sector is lagging due to numerous challenges bedevilling it, such as poor policy articulation or implementation, lack of adequate funding, decay in infrastructure, incessant strikes by ASUU among others, in addition to low budgetary allocation.
President Muhammadu Buhari had, in October 2010, presented a paper tagged, ‘Education Stakeholders in Free, Fair and Credible Elections: My Programme for the Rescue of Education’, to the Joint Education Stakeholders Action Coalition (JESAC) in Abuja.
He was then the presidential candidate of Congress for Progressive Change for the 2011 general elections. He listed the problems bedevilling education in Nigeria and proffered possible solutions, at the forum.
He said then that major indicators of quality management of education painted a bleak picture of teacher development in the country, and that restoring honour and dignity to the teaching profession as well as a gradual increase in the education budget to meet the 26% recommended by UNESCO, were part of his plan for the sector.
“I can assure you that I will suggest a minimum of 26% of the national budget in consonance with UNESCO’s well-grounded recommendation, in consultation and co-operation with the National Assembly. This percentage I intend to graduate upwards with time and with results,” he said.
“I do not remember reading about any policy in Nigeria that enunciates strategies to meet up this United Nation’s benchmark. Do you? Nigeria is grouped in the category of under-achievers regarding this index. Mark you, it has nothing to do with wealth, since some much poorer nations rank higher than Nigeria,” Buhari told the Joint Education Stakeholders forum.
He further said that had everything to do with wisdom for an egalitarian society, and noted that when funds were not released on time, planning was distorted and goals and standards compromised.
However, Buhari became president in 2015 and the education sector cannot be said to have experienced any significant progress; rather, incessant strikes have affected the sector, putting the education of many Nigerian undergraduates on hold.
Recently, the president presented a budget estimate of N13.8 trillion for 2021 to the National Assembly, the sixth since 2015, but still failed to implement the recommended 26% for education.
In the 2021 appropriation bill, the sector is to expend about N742.97 billion which is 5.78 per cent of the budget as against the allotted N691 billion (6.69%) in the 2020 budgetary allocation.
The proposal showed that the money, which will cut across the ministry, agencies, schools and institutions, saw the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) with the highest allocation of N77.6 billion, followed by the Federal Ministry of Education with N65.3 billion.
In the budget, the ministry will expend about N58.4 billion for capital projects while research and development will gulp N47.8.
However, Daily Trust tally of previous years showed that in 2019, N620.5 billion (7.02% of the N8.8 trillion proposed budget) was allocated for the sector while in 2018, N605.8 billion (7.04% of the N8.6 trillion) was allocated.
For 2017, N448.01 billion (6% of the N7.30 trillion budget) was allocated; in 2016 N369 billion (6.1% of the N6.08 trillion budget); 2015 had the highest allocation with N492 billion (11.45%) of the N4.3 trillion budget).
The tally showed that despite Buhari’s assurance, education is yet to get the recommended budgetary allocation.
Speaking on the issue, the Dean, Faculty of Environmental Science, Nasarawa State University Keffi, Professor Nasiru Medugu Idris, said allocation to the education sector is still far below expectation due to the state of the sector in Nigeria today.
“Nigeria cannot make any headway with the current education budget when compared with other developing countries in Africa and Asia. No country can prosper without its education sector in good shape,” Prof Idris said.
He also said the future of every country is determined by the crop of graduates at various levels of schooling.
“Therefore, the government can do more in the education sector not only in the area of funding through TETFUND and UBEC but also through channelling the required allocation based on priorities.
“President Buhari and his campaign team before the 2015 election saw things differently, but today, they are now in control. They are now seeing the reality regarding the financial capacity of the country and the state of deterioration in the education sector,” he said.
According to the don, there are a lot of things to be done to achieve the desired results.
“We need strong leadership and strong institutions. Who are the leaders in the sector? Do they have what it takes to lead? Are we following the vision and mission of our institutions? Do we have a national development plan for the education sector? Or each government does what pleases them after every election?”
“What we have today is that the government spends huge amounts of money on infrastructure and curriculum review but the teachers who are going to implement it are not carried along,” he added.
For solution, he said: “We need the political will to change the narrative of the education sector. We can tackle the challenges holistically for human capital development if we still want to be respected among the comity of nations.”
The dean called for proper funding of the sector, saying provision of welfare packages and incentives should be restored; and teacher training and re-training should continue to bring back the dignity of teachers and the profession.
“Government should try and target up to 20% of the annual budget to the sector and commit itself to training at all levels of the education system so that teachers’ competence can be improved upon to meet the challenges of the 21st century.”
He, said the National Commission for Secondary Schools as approved should take off with immediate effect so that it can complement the UBEC in terms of the gap left unfilled.
Reacting, the Director, Press and Public Relations, Ben Bem Goong, said allocating 26% to education is a huge mirage and that the United Nations cannot prescribe flat national resources of the budget to education because different countries are at different levels of educational development.
“It cannot recommend what is working for the US to other countries because 26% may run into trillions.”
“In Nigeria, there is TETFund which is an intervention body for tertiary institutions and over N1.7 trillion has been expended on tertiary education by President Muhammadu Buhari. We have even gone beyond the 26% and TETFund money is not captured in the 26% we are talking about,” he said.
He further said: “UBEC is also an intervention body where hundreds of billions of naira are being sunk into for basic education and the Central Bank is also intervening hugely in education; while the quantum of investment by the private sector in education is even bigger than what government is spending.”
Goong maintained that the government has opened up for the private sector and they have come out much stronger.
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