THE THEORY OF PRIVATISING
EDUCATION
By Yushau A. Shuaib
“We are not selling any colleges but
desire to inject new blood and sanity in our educational sector”
- Dr. Obiageli Ezekwesili
This clarification from the horse’s mouth,
Minister of Education which was timely came when she addressed a
Conference on the “National Brand and Economic Development” organized by
Alder Consulting in Abuja. Already many are getting worried with the
theory that any bad situation in a public institution is best handled by
privatization, while collapsed privately owned firms are not usually
sanctioned or acquired by the government.
Before she made that bold remark which was
greeted with standing ovation, she detailed worrisome statistics on the
fate of education in Nigeria. She pointed out that about 80 percent of
FG’s budgetary allocation to ministry of education goes to the 102 Unity
Schools; out of 6.4 million secondary school students, only 120, 718 are
in the Unity Schools; out of more than 6000 secondary schools (including
states and privately owned) in the country, Unity Schools only
constitute a meager fraction; out of 27,000 staff of the ministry of
education more than 23, 000 are deployed to FGC which is 85.6% of the
total staff enrolment. To add to the gory tales she added that, with the
pampering of those colleges about 70 percent of the students failed the
annual WAEC exams woefully.
Her disclosure came after media reports that
the Federal Government (FG), as part of its ongoing reforms in the
nation’s educational system might soon privatize Unity Schools- the
Federal Government’s model colleges for secondary level. It indicated
that Dr. Ezekwesili on assumption of office had complained of the
unwieldy nature of parastatals and agencies under her ministry. She
wondered why about 85 percent of the allocated resources went to
overheads at the expenses of capital investments. The media further
reported that she proposed the privatization of these schools and that
the ministry of education would work with Bureau for Public Enterprises
(BPE) to allow competent private sector-driven education organizations
to manage these schools.
With the few statistics flashed to the
public, it seems the principal culprits in the bastardization of
education are the civil servants, the technocrats in charge of those
institutions. Probably it was for this reason the allegation that she
unilaterally directed the redeployment of some top civil servants,
directors and permanent secretary in her ministry of education for not
meeting up with the modern trends and assigned consultants to take the
responsibilities of some of the functions in the ministry.
The most disheartening situation we find
ourselves today is that even the civil servants are no more comfortable
sending their wards to public schools as they also cut corner to make
sure they put them in private schools like their senior citizens,
political appointees who not only send their children to foreign schools
but also establish and invest in the proliferation of private schools to
the university level in Nigeria instead of improving the standards of
public schools they had benefited from. In the olden days there was no
demarcation between the school attended by the princes and the children
of the servants which were all free public schools. Today the children
of those poor farmers and servants are the mightily rich and powerful
officers in the society and also major beneficiaries of
non-discriminatory policies on education formulated by our forefathers.
Today while the children of junior workers
and poor citizens contend with decayed public schools that produce
certificated illiterates, the rich children attend the prestigious
private schools that guaranteed their future in the spirit of
cartelization. A child that attends X privatized (privately owned)
schools from elementary to tertiary, would not require any godfather to
get a job in X privatized group of companies or institution
owned/operated by Chief/Alhaji X? The recent commendable policy of
government that only highfliers with Distinction would be offer
employments in the federal civil service may not require the service of
soothsayers to predict how it could be abused by proprietors of private
universities who may churn out more first class graduates (different
from first class materials) to compete in filling up the job quota with
their alumni.
In a situation where average senior civil
servants, not junior cadre or ordinary masses, earn less than N50, 000
as monthly take-home pays, how can their children benefit from intended
privatized schools? If it is necessary to privatize the schools it may
be imperative too that the ordinary citizens are giving the opening to
have the financial muscles to afford the fees to make the rich and the
poor have the equal opportunity to get quality education for their kids
to reduce the rate of touts and illiterate criminals in our midst. We
need to be cautious on the craze for privatization of everything because
if the purpose of Unity Schools is to expose our children to diverse
cultural environments and promote mutual coexistence in a united
country, I wonder what will befall similar schemes like National Youth
Service Corps and other forces in the near future!
What irked me more as a Nigerian is how
civil servants are sacrificed as scapegoats over misdeeds mostly
engineered by political appointees and contractors that promised to
deliver quality service. Even though they take order blindly without
hesitation for fear of losing their job, they (workers/teachers) deserve
no mercy for colluding with corrupt officers, consultants and contractor
in wrecking havoc on the image of public service and destruction of our
collective patrimonies as legacies of our forefathers but being hunted
by the few.
We can not deny the fact that foreign
trained, especially Harvard scholars, who holds sensitive positions in
our present political landscape have great passion for positive change
in how we do things locally. We can attest to Madam Due Process’
exemplary leadership in the formation of Due Process Office and the
transformation of Ministry of Solid Minerals within few months. But they
must note that there are strategies required in solving severe problems,
more than just deploying academic theories to address stark realities.
As I was about to post this
piece, I hooked to popular websites and yahoogroups to read a posting on
education in Nigeria by Prof. Mobolaji Aluko, the respected human
encyclopedia on Nigeria’s political economy. Apart from providing web
links to Nigeria’s 2006 Budget and Appropriation bill approved in
February 2006, he formatted version of NASS document with specific
reference to Education Budget in 2006. He states that Education sector
has N166.6 billion or 8.77% of a total of N1.9 trillion which is far
below the recommended 26% UNESCO international target. Of that N166.6
billion for education, payroll takes a whopping 69.5% with capital
taking only 22.4% and overhead rounding out the rest. Unity Schools take
up only about 11% of the total Education budget with its own payroll
53.6% and overhead 27.9% both taking up Recurrent total 81.5% with the
Capital project being about 18.5%. He therefore ended by saying that “It
is ONLY this recurrent total of the Education budget that comes ANYWHERE
close to the 78% mentioned by the Minister of Education, an observation
that needs to be quickly clarified. One hopes that she has not been
misinformed in her news position as Education Minister.”
As we project the positions of public
officers on what concerned all of us, we must also defend the
conservative public servants who are influenced to toil the line for
fear of victimizations.
Yushau A. Shuaib
Wuye Estate, Abuja
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