Post-colonial masters: Many schools, poor standard

Over the past decade, Nigeria has built many schools without commensurate impact on students. Poor infrastructure, inadequate teachers have affected learning. Workers’ strikes have become the order of the day, disrupting lectures, delaying graduation, causing loss of income for staff, and further eroding the already low trust in the education system and promoting education tourism. The scenario leaves stakeholders wondering if education in the country has seen its best days.

It is 60 years since Nigeria gained political independence from the British colonialists.

With Nigerians taking charge of their country’s affairs, expectations became high for a leap in development in all spheres of life, of course including education.

Going by the foundation laid by the British for Nigeria’s educational system, one could say that 60 years later, the country’s educational system should be among the best globally.

However, the country has been plagued by political instability caused by military coups and corruption which, along with other negative tendencies, have left the country struggling to provide citizens adequate and quality access to learning.

Nigeria has been struggling with a learning crisis, with over 60 million people unable to read and write in any language and about 11 million children out of school, even though primary education is officially free and compulsory.

Although, the sector had been in crisis for many years, the situation has recently been made worse by poor infrastructure, inadequate teaching materials, poor teaching by incompetent teachers and more at the basic level while at the tertiary level, it contends with frequent strikes by lecturers, and inadequate funding by government among others.

These have affected the quality of output leading to the notion that many Nigerian graduates are unemployable due to lack of the needed skill set. As a result, there is high unemployment amongst graduates, especially in fields such as engineering.

While many believe that the quality of education of pre-independence and a few decades that followed it was better than others, some say that is not a totally correct view.

Education in Nigeria is on the concurrent list in the constitution which means it is the responsibility of the federal, state and local governments. Lack of political will among the actors, however, has left much to be desired in the sustainable development of the system.

Salihu Ingawa is Professor of Education Leadership Development at the University of Abuja. He attended primary school between 1958 and 1965. He told Daily Trust that the education they received in his days was to make the learners self-reliant and sustaining for the betterment of their communities.

“On the time table, we had craft as a subject; the boys were taught how to make local caps and the girls, bed sheets and pillows and they were very nice.

“We had a school farm and a garden; there was a timetable for each class to go to a school farm for a period to farm. We grew corn and beans. The corn was used to make pap and the beans for bean cake for our breakfast,” he said.

Prof Ingawa said infrastructure in the country then was very good. He said “The education we are imparting now is not relevant to our communities. Many cannot tell you the purpose of education because we don’t know what our education is forging to and what its mission is.”

Basic education, which is the foundation of learning, hasn’t kept pace with the times and it has taken a toll on the quality of education.

The tertiary education level is not left behind as it has also failed to keep pace with the times. With little or no funding for research and a poorly motivated workforce, punctuated by routine strikes, the sector has seen better days, many said.

The Dean of Post Graduate Studies, Bayero University Kano (BUK), Prof Umaru Pate, said many factors should be considered in assessing education of the 70s and today.

“The number (students) was low at all levels before 1975. We had only four universities but today there are over 170 universities and again you need to project that to the population of the country; which is continuously expanding. Naturally, it will affect quality and other factors like funding,” he said.

Prof Pate said in those days, learning in Nigeria provided equality among people of different socio–economic backgrounds or social classes, adding, “whether you were a son of a high government official, emir, or that of a farmer, you all went to the same school but today there is inequality in schools of those who have and the schools of those who don’t have.

For this reason, the rich that can afford well-equipped schools for their children would argue that standards were not bad after all while those who can only afford the ill-equipped schools insist that the system needs overhaul.

“Government schools have become like school for the poor and the wretched while private schools that are better equipped have become schools for the rich and for those who can afford it,” Pate maintained.

There is also concern about lack of recognition of Nigerian degrees by overseas universities.

One of the ugly tests of the quality of the nation’s educational system is that when graduates travel to the UK for example, they are still given exams to write to confirm their competence even though the official language in Nigeria is English.

“The moment a country loses the validity and acceptability of its certificates, or its receipts, cheques as payment instrument, then that country is in trouble,” says Prof Pate.

Presently low acceptability, subsequent upon low quality output, appears to be the status of Nigeria’s educational system 60 years after.