Buhari and the education sector: An agenda

With the inauguration of Muhammadu Buhari as Nigeria's 5th democratically elected President, expectations are high across the land of a new beginning for the country in all facets of national life. It is obvious that Nigeria is currently hemorrhaging in all sectors of the economy. The education sector, in particular, is currently battling with corruption, inadequate funding, inadequate access by qualified students to university education, deficient curriculum content that results in the yearly production of virtually unemployable graduates, low quality of teachers at all levels, as well as steady dwindling performance of students in public examinations, among others.

It is a well-known fact that any nation that truly desires to attain all-round economic development must have a sound education sector that will enhance human capital development. This is why the Buhari administration must make education one of its cardinal priorities and give it the urgent intervention it requires.

It is true that the immediate past President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, made some efforts towards increasing access to tertiary education with the establishment of more universities across all geo-political zones of the country. But this in itself could at best be described as mere palliative. For, shorn of the political end that such indiscriminate proliferation of universities were meant to serve, every right thinking individual knows for a fact that what the country actually needed was the expansion of the facilities in existing public universities and improvement in the quality of the instructions they dole out to their students. Thus, rather than just establishing more universities that could not be adequately staffed with qualified lecturers, the right thing to do would have been to ensure that existing ones are properly equipped and adequately funded for optimum performance.

To be sure, the paucity of admission opportunities into Nigerian universities is one of the toughest challenges facing Nigerian youths today. Despite meeting all admission requirements including excellent performance at university-organised post-UTME examinations in addition to making above cut-off marks in the almighty JAMB entrance examinations, many admission seekers yearly fail in their attempts to get into the universities. The reason for this is simple: All the nation's 147 or so universities could only admit about 520,000 of the 1,735,720 students that sat for last year's Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). The University of Ilorin that is reputed to be the most subscribed university, by admission seekers, for instance, could only admit just 12,000 of the over 105,000 candidates that applied to the University in the 2014/2015 academic session.

The truth is that the current carrying capacity of the accredited tertiary institutions in the country is abysmally low. This scenario has not only driven many promising youth out of the shores of the country in search of university admission, it has also fuelled the proliferation of fake and sub-standard 'private universities' in the country to which desperate admission seekers fall victims every year.

This situation is a serious cause for concern and all hands must be on deck to rescue the nation from the spectre of sub-standard and ill-trained manpower in the future, a situation that could arise if the army of graduates from some of these foreign 'universities' eventually pour back into the country.

In view of this, there is a pressing need to increase the carrying capacity of Nigerian tertiary institutions to be able to accommodate more admission seekers. The Buhari administration should, as a matter of urgency, revisit the mega-varsity plan mooted some time ago by the Jonathan administration. In one of its meetings in April 2013, the National Economic Council (NEC) recommended to the then Federal Executive Council the conversion of one university in each of the six geo-political zones of the country to the status of a Mega University. The recommendation was informed by the need to expand the number of intakes by creating universities that will be able to admit up to 200,000 students each, at a go, as against the present less than 10,000 admitted yearly by some of the biggest universities in the country. The thinking is that when the scheme takes off, the six mega-universities would be able to collectively admit up to a maximum of 1.2million students yearly. If this happens, the number of qualified admission seekers that are yearly denied places in the nation's tertiary institutions would be drastically reduced.

However, as forward-looking as this proposal seemed, that administration failed to get it off the drawing table. Meanwhile, the number of admission seekers in the country keeps rising every year, with the concomitant result that more and more desperate admission seekers are being driven to fake degree mills.

The creation of these mega universities could be one of the best first steps to be taken by the Buhari administration, as it would be a desirable remedial measure to tackle university admission problems in the country. And if this is done, the University of Ilorin should be considered for the slot of the North-central Zone, while the University of Lagos could get the South-west slot, the University of Benin, the South-south slot and the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, could be given the South-east slot. The North-west and North-east slots could go to Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria and the University of Maiduguri, respectively.

My suggestion of the University of Ilorin for the North-central Zone's slot is anchored on very objective parameters. Over the years, the University has proved to be a centre of academic excellence and has, in the past four years, been consistently ranked the best University in Nigeria by different international Ranking Agencies including Web of World Universities (Webometric). For three consecutive years - 2009, 2010 and 2011 – Unilorin was ranked the best in Nigeria and one of the best 20 in Africa. Statistics have also shown that the University has the most stable and consistent academic calendar in the country, which makes it the most sought after institution by admission seekers.

Moreover, in its sustained quest for excellence and to liberalise career choice for admission seekers, the University has recently introduced new academic programmes with the establishment of three new Faculties and the unbundling of some 'unwieldy' Departments.

While a brand new Faculty of Environmental Sciences, with the full complement of Departments, was established, two other Faculties, Life Science and Management Sciences, were excised from the old Faculty of Science and Faculty of Business and Social Sciences respectively.

Also, some Departments in the Faculty of Education have been unbundled to widen their academic programmes. In this regard, the Department of Arts and Social Science Education was split into the Department of Arts Education and the Department of Social Science Education. The Department of Science Education has also been split into the Department of Science Education and the Department of Educational Technology.

The University of Ilorin has the singular reputation of running the most stable academic calendar in the nation's university system, having consistently shunned any strike action since the past 15 years or so. Indeed, the University is an epitome of a harmonious environment where the rule of law reigns supreme. Most anti-social behaviour that are the hallmarks of most universities in Nigeria are an anathema at the University of Ilorin with its strict enforcement of codes of good conducts and especially its zero tolerance for cultism.

Another sore thumb in the nation's education sector that yearns for urgent presidential surgical attention is the sickening non-employability of most of the graduates being churned out yearly by the nation's tertiary educational institutions. No fewer than 1.8 million young Nigerians pour yearly into the almost saturated labour market. Statistics have shown than more than 60 percent of these “freshly minted” graduates are patently unemployable while less than 10 percent get absorbed into the labour market, one way or the other.

It is an open economic secret that Nigeria is currently facing what could be described as “The paradox of economic growth without development”. This is as a result of the country's unemployment crisis in the face of national economic growth, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). On the average, Nigeria's GDP has witnessed a relative growth when compared with the economies of many countries in the world.

This growth has, however, not translated into job creation, as hundreds of thousands of graduates and other school leavers remain unemployed several years after leaving schools. Economists have described this unfortunate situation as “jobless growth”, as, unlike the reported growth in some other economies, Nigeria's has been a case of “growth without development”.

One of the reasons for this situation is the deficiency in the country's education curriculum, especially at the tertiary level, which places undue emphasis on theoretical contents at the expense of the practical components. This has invariably resulted into the production of unemployable graduates, as a big gulf of situational disconnect now exists between the acquired knowledge and the required proficiency of the labour market.

The undue emphasis placed on paper qualification as against aptitude and proficiency. This has led to an unfortunate rat race to acquire certificates at all cost, even if the brain does not match the “stuff” on which the person is “certified”! This paper qualification syndrome has been largely responsible for the steady decline in the country's educational system because most students tend to study just to pass a targeted examination.

This lack of “skills-focused critical education”, identified recently by a UK-based Nigerian intellectual, Prof. Patrick Oseloka Ezepue, is a major bane of the nation's higher education system. Delivering a public lecture recently at the University of Ilorin on the topic, “Higher Education Research-Training Excellence, Engaged Scholarship and High Impact Socio-Economic Development”, the Sheffield Hallam University scholar lamented that “the curriculum currently used in tertiary institutions in the country is grossly inadequate as it cannot produce graduates that are ready for the employer or even make him an employer.”

According to the Guest Lecturer, the current curriculum in the nation's education system is somewhat puerile, as it fails to produce highly skilled, entrepreneurial and employable graduates.

A new education policy aimed at making Nigerian students employable is, therefore, necessary at this point in time. And the earlier the Buhari administration sets in motion a machinery to achieve this desirable change the better.

Another issue that is closely related to the above and which also requires urgent policy intervention is the consistent decline in students' performance in public examinations conducted by such bodies as the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), the National Examination Council (NECO) and the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB).

The case is even worse in core foundational subjects like Mathematics and English in which the failure rates are scandalously high year in year out. One simple reason is responsible for this and that is the inadequacy or total lack of qualified teachers in most subjects, especially Mathematics. There are many public schools in this country today that do not have Mathematics teachers. In some cases, there may just be a single Mathematics teacher in a whole school! Definitely, we do not expect any magic from that single teacher.

There is, therefore, an urgent need for the government to reverse this trend. There should be massive recruitment of teachers especially in the core-subject areas. Those on ground should be encouraged and assisted to go for constant training and retraining to update their knowledge and enhance their productivity.

To be sure, stemming the steep decline in education is not a day's job but at least the Buhari administration can start from somewhere, if only to convince the citizenry of its commitment to its self-imposed change agenda. As a first step, the declaration of a state of emergency in the education sector will not be an entirely bad idea. This must however be matched by visible action. Also, at least 20 per cent of the country's GDP should be devoted to education. And the disbursement and utilization of this must be properly monitored.

Akogun is the Head, Corporate Affairs, University of Ilorin.

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