An important factor that is bedeviling our public services is the availability of private or foreign alternatives for the use of our ruling elite and their families. Our public primary schools began to decline when our leaders discovered the option of private primary schools for their own children while our public secondary schools have never been the same since our leaders moved their kids to private secondary schools. The decline of our public universities started when our leaders began to send their kids to private and foreign universities. The flight of elite kids from our public primary and secondary schools is now complete; only the children of the poor attend these schools. A similar flight from our public universities and polytechnics has now reached an advanced stage. Very soon, only the children of the masses would study there.
The neglect of power supply in the country is only possible because the ruling elite have private alternatives in their homes and offices. If there were no generators in Nigeria, NEPA would’ve gotten all the attention that it required and would’ve been giving us constant power. Just one night of darkness in State House is guaranteed to create a firm resolve to deal with the problem. Municipal water supply schemes around the country began to die when the private alternative of bore holes became popular. Our public hospitals began to decline after the emergence of private hospitals and the teaching hospitals have not grown to provide cutting-edge services because our leaders can access these services abroad for themselves and their families.
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In contrast, our airports are flourishing because the elite still use them. If there were private airports in Nigeria, the public ones would’ve become almost unusable. When the Abuja airport runway was closed for repairs and all its users had to be bussed to and from Kaduna airport for a few weeks, “insecurity” disappeared from the Abuja-Kaduna highway. They sanitised the road when it became clear that they had no other option.
For a long time, we have believed that even though a state governor may have his own young kids enrolled in Abuja or Lagos private schools for “security reasons”, he would still be able to fund his state’s primary and secondary schools adequately. We also believed that even though hardly any member of our federal cabinet or National Assembly has their kid in the public universities anymore, they would still fund them adequately. But the evidence has been to the contrary. Many of our governors are able to fund city flyovers, pilgrimage and luxury cars for traditional rulers instead of classroom furniture or teachers’ welfare only because their own kids do not attend these public schools.
You see, our people (and leaders) are not wired to care about things that they do not have a personal stake in, even if they have been officially put in charge of those things.
That is why a Nigerian project, no matter how critical, only takes off when the “interest” of the organisation’s boss is taken care of. If we want our leaders to care about our public schools, we should ensure that they have a personal stake in them i.e. their own kids go there. And before they would fund our public universities well, we need to compel them to send their kids there first. ASUU strikes for any number of years will not solve the problems of our universities.
A major mistake that we have made in Nigeria in past decades, with the benefit of hindsight, is to allow the existence of these private and foreign options. The wiring problem that our leaders have means that once they have separate options for themselves and their families, they will neglect the ones that cater to the general public. Every country should design its systems and services to suit its own circumstances. In Nigeria, all essential services – utilities, transportation, schools and hospitals – should be exclusively publicly-run with no foreign alternatives allowed for public servants and their families. We should have a single pool of services for everyone so that our leaders will have no choice other than to maintain them well.
This is a radical solution that I’m proposing for a uniquely Nigerian problem. But many will say that it is next to impossible to implement it. I agree; but then we have to continue to live with poor public services until we are able to implement it. I don’t see a typical Nigerian beginning to care about what doesn’t affect them personally anytime soon.
*Dr Raji Bello is a renowned anaesthesiologist and socio-political commentator