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COMMERCIALIZATION OF EDUCATION AND THE STORM AHEAD
BY: LES LEBA
1192-290805
The youths, they say, are the future of any nation. In the light of this wisdom, the process of youth education and development would normally take pride of place in the priority list of objectives for any discerning nation. The wealth of a nation gathered with the hard toil, sweat and sacrifice of its people will be quickly dissipated in the next generation, if the training and education of the youth of a nation is handled with levity.
The question we need to ask as a result of the above reality is whether or not the educational content and process as currently constituted in Nigeria can produce the expected quality of youth development that would ensure the sustainability of the Nigerian project. The nature of capitalism as a social and economic framework is embodied in the general pursuit of a good profit generally within the shortest possible time interval. In other words, the capitalist entrepreneur is unlikely to be interested in youth education, especially with its huge capital outlay and long gestation as a major feature of such a venture for philanthropic sentiments. The unpredictability of the business environment in general does not also encourage private investment in the provision of free or subsidized education to the youths of any country. Private investment, wherever it occurs in the educational subsector will generally be for a profit motive and consequently the cost will vary with the profit expectations of the investors. So, it is clear that if child and youth education is left solely in the hands of entrepreneurs, education will only be available to the handful of the elite, who can afford to pay the cost! The greater majority of the citizens would remain largely uneducated, untrained and would inculcate anti-social behaviour; qualities that may not support wealth creation and indeed may encourage insecurity in the land in the long run.
The South West of Nigeria is generally recognized as producing the largest body of educated and qualified people in this county. It is for this reason that you find that the indigenes from the South West dominate the commanding heights of industry, commerce and politics in Nigeria. Indeed, wherever Nigerians are extolled in any field of intellectual pursuit in the world today, the chances are that the majority of these Nigerian icons would have their origins in the South West. This is not because the people from the South West are genetically intellectually superior to those from other regions in the federation, but the free quality education programme put in place in the old Western Region by the duo of Late Chief Obafemi Awolowo and Chief Adekunle Ajasin in the 50s and 60s will continue to set apart people from this area from the relatively humble attainment of other Nigerians!
The realization of the virtue and importance of a literate, educated and enlightened population subsequently galvanized the federal government to attempt the ‘Awo Magic’ during the military era. However, the Federal Government project succeeded briefly before its collapse as it lacked the commitment, creativity and planning ability to sustain its funding. In addition, political considerations, such as the quota system, which rejected merit and performance in the selection process for mediocrity and ethnic balancing, soon ensured that the quality of education from federal government institutions declined woefully, as indiscipline soon set in and examination malpractices quickly became a recurring decimal in our youth education process!
The decay in the educational sector was switched to fast forward by the reckless depreciation of our national currency by over 95% between 1985 and today! The remuneration package for teachers in primary and secondary schools, as well as lecturers in our universities became inadequate to meet the survival needs of these cradle watchers; the result was a mass exodus of some of the best brains in the country and the educational advantage that Nigerians had over their counterparts in most other African countries was soon lost!
Nature, they say, abhors a vacuum, and as if on cue, enterprising Nigerians saw the opportunity in education as a profit making business by providing better quality education. The number of private primary schools consequently gradually increased from say a ratio of 1:20 public schools to what may now be a ratio of about three private schools to every one of government sponsored schools. The graduates from these vastly expanded private primary schools soon provided a market for the growth of private secondary schools. Today, there is a private primary or secondary school on almost every street corner. The erstwhile public schools have become deprived of books, desks, teaching aids, roofs, and able and qualified teaching staff, who, where available, are not only underpaid, but also often receive their salaries many months in arrears! Our government funded secondary and primary schools have now become trading places for teachers and breeding grounds for area boys, child prostitutes and street hawkers.
The final death knell of a government-failed educational structure is now being sounded by the steady growth of private and profit oriented universities all over the country. The products of government tertiary institutions have been politely adjudged by employers of labour as uneducated and an embarrassment to the institutions from which they came! Interestingly, the whole structure of youth education in Nigeria has now become commercialized cash and carry education. The disturbing aspect of this phenomenon is the high cost of private education! In a country where the highest paid civil servant earns less than N1.5 million a year and the poorest paid civil servant earns less than N100,000 a year, indications are that primary and secondary school fees exceed N50,000 for the cheapest and over N1 million for the elitist cadres. Pray, how do civil servants who send their children to private educational institutions manage the abracadabra with their meager salaries? As things are, you are unlikely to find the child of any middle level civil servant in a government funded school with the exception, for now, of the so called ‘unity schools’.
The civil service has only been used as a working example, the same may be said for the capacity of other wage earners in the private sectors with the exception of banks and oil companies employees. So, it is clear that there is a lot of magic going on in the Nigerian economy as the private schools and colleges keep opening new campuses as a result of increasing demand! The majority of Nigerian workers who do not yet have the opportunity to practise magic from their official desks have no choice but to retain the patronage of government schools and colleges where their wards can mark time before they are released as unemployables into the job market; this is the crux of the matter! A huge population of quarter-baked youths unleashed into the market with no jobs! The mind boggles at the prospect of the disconcerting disparity of opportunities between a small elite and huge population of have-nots! The gap between the rich and the poor can only grow wider and the potential for increasing insecurity can only move in sympathy.
SAVE THE NAIRA, SAVE NIGERIANS!
