I wish to write again on the rot bedeviling the educational system in Nigeria. As I write, public education in Nigeria has gone awry and public secondary schools are in a state of disrepair. The Colleges of Education are daily graduating low quality teachers at will. The Polytechnics have been relegated into dustbin while the public universities lack adequate facilities. Corruption is everywhere. Embezzlement of public fund pervades all sectors.
Now, who’s to be blamed for the generational rot in the education system?
Take for instance, in the ongoing year 2013, over 300billion was appropriated by the government to the Petroleum Development Trust Fund (PDTF) and Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) (formerly Education Trust Fund “ETF”).
N130 billion has been made available via NEEDs for the provision of infrastructures in Public universities and payment of several allowances to lecturers. A whooping sum of N430 billion is the 2013 budget of the Federal Ministry of Education. If you add everything together, you have N870 billion (excluding budget for the Universal Basic Education Board).
Dear Compatriots, please has anything changed? No! Because money cannot perform the magic. Every stakeholders in the educational sector needs proper reorientation on the need to come together and make the system work. Are lecturers not also culpable in the destruction of the system? What of Demands of lecturers for Money or sex for mark? What of absence from classroom by Lecturers? What of the shameful and reckless sale of plagiarized textbook of less than 100 pages for N1000 by lecturers? Are members of ASUU on leave of absence not the major administrators at NUC, TETFUND, INEC, UBEC, etc? What of the ASUU, ASUP and COEASU members on leave of absence in States House of Assemblies and the two chambers of the National Assembly and the Executive Arm? Are most of the Commissioners for Education not members of staff Unions on leave of absence? Are staff union members not serving as Deputy Governors at the moment? Are they not serving as Council Chairmen at the moment? Are their members not the majority amongst the members of Governing Councils in our tertiary institutions nationwide? Despite their contributions, please what has changed? What’s wrong with Nigeria?
Country people, for now, let me submit without being sentimental and hypocritical that one of the major problems militating against the development of Nigeria is policies implementation and policies inconsistency, and not formulation of policies.
•Maxwell Adeleye wrotes in from Magodo, Lagos.