08042018 - Education in free fall! •Sector gets paltry N3.9 trillion out of N55.19 trillion in 10 years

Page 8—SUNDAY Vanguard, APRIL 8 , 2018
PROLOGUE
Education
in free fall!
•Sector gets paltry N3.9 trillion out of N55.19
trillion in 10 years
•FG to declare emergency
BY CLIFFORD NDUJIHE
AS recent as the mid-1990s, Nigerian
universities, especially the first generation
ones, attracted students from Cameroun,
South-Africa, Kenya and Ghana, among
others, as well as foreign lecturers.
Today, the reverse is the case. Apart from lecturers, in large
numbers, leaving Nigeria for greener pastures in what has
come to be referred as ‘brain drain,’ thousands of students
are also leaving the country to study abroad even in
neighbouring countries like Ghana and Benin Republic.
The Director, Centre for Open, Distance and e-Learning,
Federal University of Technology, Minna, Musa Aibinu,
said, recently, that about 23,000 lecturers leave Africa every
year with Nigeria accounting for the bulk of the number.
Poor funding has been identified as the major reason for
the rot and challenges in the education sector, especially
tertiary education, which has led to frequent strikes by
teaching and non-teaching staff since the early 1990s.
Indeed, the Federal Government’s allocation to the
education in the last 10 years has been miserly. Out of a
budget of N55.19 trillion, only N3.90 trillion or 7.07 per
cent (see table) was allocated to the sector.
In 2009, the Federal Government allocated N221.19
billion (7.25 per cent) of its N3.049 trillion budget to
education. The figure was reduced to 4.83 per cent in 2010
when education got N249.09 billion of the hefty N5.16
trillion appropriation.
There was a marginal improvement in 2011 when
education got N306.3 billion (6.16 per cent) of the N4.972
trillion budget. The marginal improvements continued in
2012 (8.20 per cent), 2013 (8.55 per cent), and 2014 (9.94
per cent) until 2015 (7.74 per cent) when a significant drop
in allocation to education was recorded.
In 2016, President Muhammadu Buhari’s first full year
in office, the sector had its second-worst allocation in 10
years when, of the N6.061 trillion budget, only N369.6
billion (6.10 per cent) was appropriated for education.
However, there was a slight rise in 2017 (7.38 per cent)
and if the 2018 proposed N8.612 trillion is approved,
education will get N605.8 billion or 7.03 per cent.
Poor conditions of service
For many years, teaching and nonteaching
unions in tertiary institutions
have been complaining about poor
funding, poor conditions of service and
welfare, over which they have embarked
on industrial actions on several occasions
almost on a yearly basis.
Recurring strikes
Between 1992 and 2017, university
lecturers went on strike 20 times, with the
attendant adverse effects on education at
the tertiary level in the country. The
industrial actions were embarked on
following the failure of government to
implement agreements reached with the
academic union.
Between 1992 and 1999, there were
seven strikes by the lecturers, including
industrial strikes, trade dispute, internal
strikes, and nationwide strikes, and
between 2010 and last year, there were 13
The situation was so
bad in 2013 such
that, at a stage,
lecturers at the three
main levels of tertiary
education –
universities,
polytechnics and
colleges of education
- were on strike for
over six months
strikes.
There were several agreements signed between the Federal
Government and the lecturers’ umbrella body, Academic
Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), in 1981/82, 1992, 1999,
2001, 2005, 2006, 2009, and 2013 which were not faithfully
implemented by government.
In his article: ‘The Significance of ASUU 2009 Strike’,
Dr. Femi Aborisade, an activist, noted that the 1981/82
Agreement between FG and ASUU contained, among
others, the establishment and acceptance of the principle
of collective bargaining as the main mode by which terms
and conditions of work of academics would be determined.
The 1992 Agreement was on university autonomy and
academic freedom, and the 1999 Agreement dealt with
academic allowances and other terms and conditions of
work. The aim was to address the twin problem of the rot in
the Nigerian education system and brain drain.
The 2001 Agreement focused on three items: Salaries and
conditions of work, funding, university autonomy and
academic freedom. It contained a clause that the Agreement
would be reviewed every three years. This meant that it was
due for review in 2004. Despite many reminders and
pressures by ASUU to get government to review the 2001
Agreement in 2004, government refused to provide an
avenue for re-negotiation, which prompted another round
of strike leading to the 2005 Agreement where the
government gave an undertaking to constitute its
Negotiating Team by May 3, 2005, to review the main
agreement of 2001. This was never done until 2006. More
negotiations and re-negotiations were done in 2007, 2009
and 2013 all “directed towards ensuring that there is a
viable university system with one rather than multiple sets
of academic standards.”
The situation was so bad in 2013 such that, at a stage,
lecturers at the three main levels of tertiary education –
universities, polytechnics and colleges of education - were
on strike for over six months.
ASUU President, Professor Biodun Ogunyemi, said the
union was forced to embark on its last
strike because the Federal Government
failed to implement the 2009 Agreement
and 2013 Memorandum of
Understanding (MoU) and that after
series of meetings with the Minister of
Education and the National Assembly on
the need to respect the Agreement and the
MoU, it got no tangible results on key
issues.
Expectedly, lack of tangible results on
key issues over the years had adverse
effects on the standard of education in the
country.
No Nigerian varsity among top
1000 universities
Currently, Nigeria has 146 universities
(36 federal, 44 states and 66 private); 83
polytechnics (21 federal, 38 states and 24
private); and 82 colleges of education (22
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