The illusion of progress

Eminent academics, politicians and traditional rulers gathered in Abuja October 10 at the instance of the Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation to jaw-jaw on the educational backwardness of northern Nigeria. It was part of the annual ritual that, as in the past, fed the public with a litany of lamentations. For the inth time, the theme of the conference sought to bring to the fore the lingering problems that have held the old region back from taking 13 million children out of the streets into the classrooms. The theme, in all its academic elegance was: “Education in Northern Nigeria: Status, Challenges and the Way Forward.”

A conference of this nature throws up problems for the purposes of public enlightenment and to challenge our political leaders to take the responsibilities of their exalted offices more seriously than the protocol of transient power. One speaker after another lamented the current of status of education in the north and why. The theme was not strange to anyone of them. They had talked about them at other forums. Some of them had done some research into them and offered their findings to our educational planners who had better things to do with their official time than waste their time reading academic papers possibly dripping with jargons that confuse the brain.

From what I read of the conference in the Daily Trust of October 11, I identified at least four critical problems that together have tied the millstone to the feet of educational progress in the successor states to the defunct region. The Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar III, told the conference that the problem was the non-implementation of past recommendations on how to free the north from the blight of educational backwardness. He said, “If we don’t implement, we come back next year for another conference and still talk about the same thing.”

His eminence was, of course, right. He touched on a national problem that forces the nation to make progress by staying on the same spot. The evidence is found on government shelves where numerous reports and recommendations of panels and commissions set up by federal and state governments for the sole purposes of addressing identified problems lie gathering dust while the problems continue to chuckle at a nation that has made moving in circles a virtue. After all, moving in circles qualifies for movement too.

On November 13, 2017, the federal ministry of education organised a retreat on the problems of education in the country. The theme was: “Education in Nigeria: Challenges and Prospects.” President Buhari told the retreat: “We must get it right in this country. To get it right means setting our education sector on the right path (because the) security and stability of the country hinges on its ability to provide functional education to its citizens.”

In his eight years in office, he did not get education right. He must have forgotten too that his own region is the most educationally backward in the country. You would expect a man who was desirous of getting education right in the country to pay close attention to its backwardness in the north. If the other regions get it right and the north continues to get it wrong, it cannot make real progress in modern economic, social, and technological development.

The problems the retreat identified, such as poor funding, poor quality teaching staff and poor equipment are still with us. The north, according to Professor Ruqayyatu, is still hobbled by the “inability (of its leaders) to mobilise school age children, poor release of funds and inadequate political will.”

The chairman of the Board of Trustees of Sir Ahmadu Bello Memorial Foundation, Dr Babangida Aliyu, said 50 per cent of the teachers in the region are not qualified. But we trust in the miracle of unqualified teachers producing brilliant children. The registrar of JAMB, Professor Ishaq Oloyede, said that because the north is unable to fulfil its admission quota, people from the other regions take advantage of this to insinuate themselves as bona fide northern candidates.

These are serious problems for the northern states. But they actually derived from a more insidious problem, the weak educational foundation on which the leaders of the region insist on building their educational edifices. If we see through the glitter of state universities in the north, we are confronted with the inescapable fact that the foundation of education in the north is in shambles. The primary school is globally the foundation of education. If you do not get primary education right, you cannot in conscience get post-primary and post-secondary institutions right. It is in the nature of human societies to make progress on foundations. This is elementary but while the political will to get education right is lacking, there is a surfeit of will to self- massage bloated egos and commit to grandstanding on cosmetic educational progress in the region.

In its issue of August 13, 2023, The Punch newspaper published a comprehensive story on “How poor leadership, funding frustrate basic education in northern Nigeria.” In it, the newspaper reported its findings on the pathetic condition of primary schools in Taraba, Gombe, Bauchi, Kano, and other states in the region. It found the primary schools in these states to be under-funded and under-staffed. In a primary school in one community in Taraba State, the newspaper reporter saw that “over 40 pupils were camped under a makeshift tent which serve as the classroom. They sat on logs…”

The Kano State commissioner for education, Alhaji Umar Doguwa, told the reporter: “We found that the majority of the 5.2 million in our schools have no chairs and desks. In fact, during one of my inspection visits, I found a school, Dawanu Special Primary School in Dawakin Tofa local government area with 5,618 pupils seated on the floor. This is how bad the situation is.”

It is as bad in Bauchi State where the reporter found that “no less than 79 schools in Misau local government area have only the head teacher teaching all subjects from primary one to six.”

The pathetic situation of the primary schools in these states is replicated in various degrees in all the 19 successor states to the giant northern region. None of the states is anxious to fix the broken-down primary schools that should be the foundations for their educational progress. Given the political foolishness in the country, it makes more sense for the shakers and movers of our nation to concentrate on setting up state universities because the applause is in building hollow state universities that are poorly funded, poorly staffed, and poorly equipped for serious academic work. No state governor earns public applause for fixing broken-down primary schools. Broken-down primary schools be damned. Despite its broken-down primary schools, Gombe has two state universities. Evidence, perhaps, that neglecting primary school education does not hinder university education. Is it a new paradigm shift in educational development? It is the illusion of progress.