Friday, May 29, 2015 was the culmination of the collective will of majority of our people to achieve democratic change through peaceful, non-violent means. It didn’t come easy and Goodluck Jonathan, for the uncommon attribute of keeping your word, your name is etched in gold and you will be remembered for generations. Chapeau to you, sir! The world, especially population minorities, can benefit from your meteoric experience from university teacher to head of state. Founding an International Institute for Minority Rights (IIMRI) could be in order, sir.
President Muhammadu Buhari, it would not be immodest to compare you to Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States. Through your resounding success, it is clear that patience and painstaking steadfastness do pay.
Mr. President, “for the purpose of promoting good government and welfare of all persons in our country on the principles of Freedom, Equality and Justice”, as enshrined in our constitution, it is worth gearing all your actions and policies to the improvement of our low human development index (HDI – 0.471 as at 2012 – ranking us 154 out of 187 countries. Recall we were amongst the 50 wealthiest countries in the world in early 1970s).
The work to be done is long term and our current leaders need to envision a situation where, if history repeats itself and they govern us for the next 16 years, they will take us from a low middle to a high middle income country (similar to Jordan, Gabon, Brazil and China) over the period.
Education is a life asset, the one intervention that can put a seal of permanence to poverty of all shades but it requires large, sustained investment. According to UNESCO, Nigeria’s anchor economic blueprint, the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), with goals of wealth creation, employment generation, poverty reduction and value reorientation, can only be pursued, attained and sustained through an educational system that is efficient and functional. Women and girls need to be supported, taught life skills and nurtured so that at a national level, we can achieve deep, sustainable, transformative socioeconomic change. There is no doubt that with up to 25 percent of our budget dedicated to fuel subsidies, it is difficult to achieve the UNESCO recommended 26 percent of budget for education. We need to set our priorities right.
As part of schooling till JSS3 at the minimum, the curriculum should include subjects on personal finance and entrepreneurship. Germany has a successful formal apprenticeship system that we can learn from, especially for JSS3 graduates. Education facilitates the construction of our democratic society and makes our citizens more globally competitive. We need to, for instance, compare the abilities of our young ones at end of JSS3 to the average Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores internationally.
Statistics from the NBS indicate that across the human development indices under focus, every geographical zone of the country is affected. But if we must assign immediate priority, focus should be on the North Central, North East and North West. The central role of education cannot be overemphasised. Mr. President, sir, we need the likes of Hajia Aisha Buhari and Amina az-Zubair, under-secretary at the United Nations and former special assistant to the president on MDGs, to champion the cause for girl-child education in Nigeria. I doubt much that were he alive, the charming late Ahmadu Bello would have been at all pleased about the sore state of education of our young ones in that part of the country.
I would argue that the Federal Government needs to urgently “seize” full financial and administrative control of Universal Basic Education (and primary healthcare programmes) – these institutions are foundational and must not be toyed with if we must reverse the grim status quo.
Learning achievements as researched by the World Bank at primary school level in Nigeria is a national mean of 30 percent compared to 70 percent and 51 percent for Tunisia and Mali, respectively. Nigeria has the highest number of school-aged children who are not in school – 7 million. Poor learning outcomes are arguably due mainly to unqualified teachers. We need to attract the right quality of motivated teachers who will be adequately remunerated and will benefit from continuous learning and development throughout their career.
Primary 1 to JSS3 education should not only be compulsory but must be enforced, with severe consequences for non-compliance. If there are cultural sensitivities that need to be addressed, they should be but every Nigerian child must have at least nine years of basic education. Chapeau to the Federal Ministry of Education where there exists an up-to-date education databank. We must encourage our northern kindred that Quranic and western education can co-exist whereby the former will be the moral code that will guide students through the real or perceived decadence and uncontrolled liberties inherent in western education/civilisation. Girl-child molestation must be totally eliminated from schools. The Federal Inspectorate Services Department must be alive to its responsibilities to ensure quality education at all levels. We need to ensure that we achieve national Primary 6 completion rate of 100 percent – it is surprising that Lagos has a rate of only 56 percent. South Eastern states are the best performers with an average of 93 percent.
Broadband access will facilitate deployment of e-learning initiatives across schools. The NYSC scheme in the recent past, until subsequent reversal, mandated that corps members serve only as teachers in schools across the country. We should go further and reduce the level of unemployment by incentivising unemployed graduates to permanently take up teaching careers starting from primary level with potential to advance seamlessly through secondary to university professorship.
Mayowa Amoo
