“The most important investment any country can make is educating its youth…” These were the words of President Barak Obama at the Young African Leaders Initiative town hall meeting in the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, on June 30, 2013. One year on, his words cannot be any truer. This informs us of the misdirection of present and past leadership in Nigeria leading to the inadvertent strangulation of its education sector. Overused clichés hold that ‘education is light’, ‘education is power’, the facts therein are incontestable. In the 21st century when most nations, even advanced nations, are allocating over a quarter of their annual budgets to education, Nigeria gives less than a tithable amount and it is still dawdling at a snail-slow speed. Since Independence in 1960, there has been no single year that Nigeria spent up to 20% of its resources on education. This, to me, translates into a subtle suffocation of the sector. Poor education has also factored largely in poverty, illiteracy, sycophantic political participation, bad leadership, bad followership and most recently, unfounded insurgency, most notably the Boko Haram menace.

“The most important investment any country can make is educating its youth…” These were the words of President Barak Obama at the Young African Leaders Initiative town hall meeting in the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, on June 30, 2013. One year on, his words cannot be any truer. This informs us of the misdirection of present and past leadership in Nigeria leading to the inadvertent strangulation of its education sector. Overused clichés hold that ‘education is light’, ‘education is power’, the facts therein are incontestable. In the 21st century when most nations, even advanced nations, are allocating over a quarter of their annual budgets to education, Nigeria gives less than a tithable amount and it is still dawdling at a snail-slow speed. Since Independence in 1960, there has been no single year that Nigeria spent up to 20% of its resources on education. This, to me, translates into a subtle suffocation of the sector. Poor education has also factored largely in poverty, illiteracy, sycophantic political participation, bad leadership, bad followership and most recently, unfounded insurgency, most notably the Boko Haram menace.

In a large part, neglect of formal education has contributed to the seemingly unquenchable insurgency of Boko Haram. Somehow, the North is paying the price for relegating formal education to the background. Education of citizens is the responsibility of the three tiers of Government – Federal, State and Local Governments. If citizens of a State are not properly educated, then the State and its Local Governments are to be blamed. Thankfully, today, some States are making conscious efforts to sponsor education of their citizens at Primary and Secondary school levels, some of which include; Imo, Delta, Ekiti, Akwa Ibom and Kano. Majority of the Northern States are very reluctant to take the matter of educating its citizens seriously. Maybe it is for fear that an enlightened populace would question their powers and possibly overthrow the elitist dynasty they have set over the years. Today, threats of Boko Haram are forcing schools to shutdown while Government’s dereliction at another end is compelling schools to become deserted buildings as a result of strike actions embarked upon by educational unions. In my perception, there is a tacit agreement, or at least a common ground between Government of Nigeria (State and Federal) and Boko Haram. At worst, there is an indirect conspiracy between Government and Boko Haram to strangle education. If the youths cannot be educated, then they cannot be liberated from the epidemics of poor leadership, corruption, religious extremism, and wanton violence. Desperate times call for desperate measures; this should be the ripest moment for Nigeria to begin an aggressive campaign for the sustainability of functional formal education in all States and in all Local Governments, particularly in the North. By engaging in a robust, massive and compulsory education for all children and youths of the North, we may be risking the lives of our children, especially in the North East but we can also be sure that we would be securing a bloodless future for them and their own children. The benefits of educating citizens are so enormous and almost unquantifiable. For me, commitment to education forms a strong index for judging the sincerity or manifesto of a Government.

Individuals and corporate bodies have taken advantage of the vacuum of education in Nigeria to exploit citizens who crave good education for their children. It is not uncommon to nowadays to hear parents lament that “school fees” is the number one item on their worry lists. Yes, Government schools (Primary and Secondary) are quite affordable but the quality of education is stupendously low. Little wonder you find Government echelons refusing to send their wards to even the Government schools in which they have benefited.

Prodigious budgetary allocation to education is not enough to improve the state of education in Nigeria. Checks and balances are also required to be put in place in order to avoid emergence of billionaire vice chancellors, rectors, provosts, principals, education secretaries and other key figures in the sector. More ways of assessing educational standards and progress should be invented: It is quite easy to measure the efficiency of NNPC, PHCN, Water Boards and other bodies based on the accessibility, quality and availability of their products, but gauging the quality of educational services is rather more difficult, however, the efficiency of a whole society and its components is a function of the quality of its education sector.

For the avoidance of confusion, the goal of education is not to enable citizens get certificates that would enable them to get jobs or to become rich in the society, as many Nigerian youths are fallaciously led to think. The goal of education must be the refining of individuals to fit in functionally, contributorily, and meaningfully into a society, thereby making it a better place.

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STRANGULATION OF EDUCATION IN NIGERIA: BETWEEN GOVERNMENT AND BOKO HARAM – Bizum Yadok