Nigeria’s education sector and UNESCO’s report
(Nigeria) By Odimegwu Onwumere
The Director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO, in Nigeria, Professor Hassana Alidou at a
recent launch of the Education For All, EFA, Global Monitoring Report, GMR,
said that Nigeria has some of the worst education indicators in the world.
In ‘Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all’, an
account by the UNESCO launched 29 Jan 2014, Nigeria is among the 37 countries
that are losing money being spent in education, because children are not
learning. UNESCO disclosed that the menace is already costing governments $129
billion a year. The report stressed that despite the money being spent, the
rejuvenation of the primary education is not in the near future because of poor
quality education that is failing to ensure that children learn.
But speaking in Abuja as at June 2013, when he granted
audience to the Director of the Bureau for the Development of Education in
Africa, BREDA, an arm of UNESCO, Dr. Ann-Therese Ndog-Jatta, the supervising
Minister for Education, Barr. Nyesom Wike declared that President Goodluck
Jonathan was fully committed to the elimination of all forms of illiteracy from
the country, stressing that there is no way significant development can take
place in the face of illiteracy. Extolling President Jonathan’s giant stride in
education, Wike blamed past governments for the challenges being faced in the
country’s education sector.
“If previous administrations had worked towards eradicating
illiteracy the way President Goodluck Jonathan has done in the past two years,
we would substantially have tackled this challenge. However, I am happy we are
making serious progress with our direct partnership with UNESCO and we shall
continue to build on the successes already recorded,” said Wike.
Ten per cent of the global spending is on primary education,
yet, hardly a child out of four children can read a single sentence or solve a
simple mathematics. UNESCO feared that it would take poorest young women in
developing countries of Asia until 2072, for all to be literate. On sub-Saharan
Africa, UNESCO bemoaned that it would take about the next century for all girls
to finish lower secondary school.
With the development, pundits on education in the country
decried the supposition by the Federal Government in 2000, boasting of meeting
the 2015 Millennium Development Goal in education, whereas the UNESCO said that
it would take more than 70 years for all children to have access to at least,
primary education. UNESCO tailored the number of children who did not even get
basic schooling to 57 million, of which a huge portion was from Nigeria. The
number of Nigerian children out of primary school was given as 10.5 million.
The number of children in poorer countries who remain illiterate,
notwithstanding having been in school, was given as 130 million.
These worrisome
figures by UNESCO, however, did not go down well with the stakeholders in the
sector. Mr. Lambert Oparah, the Special Assistant to the Supervising Minister
of Education, Wike, disagreed with these figures saying, “I don’t know where
UNESCO got the statistics from, but I am particular about Nigeria, especially
what the Supervising Minister of Education is doing. Apart from the various
restructuring programmes he is undertaking to ensure that our education system
is uplifted, he has also ensured that those managing the education system,
particularly teachers, are properly trained so that they can effectively impart
their knowledge to the students.
“In the next couple of years, Nigeria will begin to see
improved quality of education in Nigeria, given the efforts of the Federal
Government towards this effect presently.”
Oparah concluded that of late, the federal government
demanded that teachers be upgraded and, this is being done in collaboration
with the Nigeria Teachers’ Institute, Kaduna.
Nevertheless, UNESCO was not alone in its position about the
poor state of education in Nigeria. Contrary to Oparah’s position, Mr. Hassan
Soweto who is the National Coordinator, Education Rights Campaign, ERC, was of
the view that the education sector in the country is nothing to write home
about.
He contended that there are 10.5 million out of school
children in 2013 as compared to 2004, when there were 7.3 million. Soweto
revealed that there is less corresponding increase in number of schools
compared to the number of applicants to the universities in the country.
At the 11th Education for All Global Monitoring Report by
UNESCO, the bleak future that Nigeria’s education sector faces means that it
would not be able to meet EFA’s Goals 1, 2 and 4 by the year 2015. According to
UNESCO’s report, Nigeria is one of the only 15 countries that the report
projects will have fewer than 80 per cent of its primary school age children
enrolled by 2015. Nigeria’s out-of-school population not only grew the most in
terms of any country in the world since 2004-2005 by 3.4 million, but also had
the 4th highest growth rate. It was revealed by analysts that while huge sums
of money are yearly budgeted for the education sector in the country, the 2014
budgetary allocation to education in particular, cannot sufficiently address
its numerous woes.
There are challenges and prospects of achieving the six
goals of EFA, adopted in Dakar in 2000, according to Professor Alidou, but
inequality and inequity are very pronounced in certain parts of the country, as
she noted in an EFA global monitoring report.
As UNESCO seemingly promised to give-a-hand to the federal
government in education, developmental agenda and security challenges, hope has
been raised in the Nigeria’s education sector.
Speaking at the lunch of Opo Imo by the Osun state government
last year, Senator Sola Adeyeye, the Deputy Chairman, Senate Committee on
Education, challenged the leaders of Nigeria to integrate technology into
Nigeria’s education system.
“Nigeria could raise nearly half a billion dollars per year
for education if 20 per cent of its oil revenue was invested in the sector. The
amount raised would be almost three times what the country currently receives
in aid to education,” he said.
Also Bar Wike, promised that the government would continue
to work to eradicate illiteracy. “We still appeal to UNESCO to continue to
extend more technical support to us in the area of elimination of illiteracy in
our nation. By next year, we shall increase the level of funding for literacy
programmes and all mass literacy agencies will be galvanized to take the
efforts of the administration to improve our literacy to the next level.”
Findings are that for the education sector in the country to
move forward, corruption must be stemmed and the flagrant mismanagement of the
country’s human and natural resources should be properly utilised.
Professor Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’I, former education minister
is of the view that Nigeria has a need to amplify public awareness among
learners, families and all other stakeholders on the potential for succession,
employment and self-fulfillment that Technical Vocational Education and
Training could offer.
*Odimegwu Onwumere is a Poet/Writer based in Rivers State.
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