Education and failure of governance in grassroots

The Nigerian government was a signatory to the Jomtien Conference, 20 years ago, where from March 5 to 9, 1990 participants from all over the world met to come with solutions to provide quality education to over 100 million children, including at least 60 million girls, who have no access to primary schooling. Education for All (EFA) programme by 2015 was born. Governments made commitments to be part of the programme. In Nigeria, policies were put in place to achieve the stated goal which includes the Universal Basic Education (UBE) scheme, in order to check the problem of dwindling enrolment in primary and secondary schooling and educational deterioration generally in the country.

Earlier, the UPE scheme was instituted by the military government in 1976 to develop the educational capacity of illiterate Nigerians. The scheme was not as effective as expected though more people were able go to school, read and write their names and become better informed as a result of the scheme. The Universal Basic Education (UBE) was enunciated in 1999. The latter policy made the first nine years of schooling free and compulsory for all Nigerian children of school age on paper. UBE is backed up by law which also stipulates free, compulsory and universal primary education. In April 2000, over 180 countries including Nigeria, met again at the world education forum in Dakar, Senegal to reaffirm their commitment to the achievement of universal primary education by 2015.

However, in Nigeria since the launch of the scheme, it is faced with myriad of problems including poor funding, lack of political will, poor implementation of policies and corruption, especially at the local level where the local education authority is vested with the responsibility of implementing the programme.

Last week I was in the village to attend a meeting of all stakeholders of the Lawanti Education Development Foundation, among the agendas discussed was problems facing the village’s only primary school in the area for the past 40 years. This is an unusual agenda, but later, as discussions proceed, I was told the primary school doesn’t have even chalk in their stores. I was stunned and speechless as the Chairman of the school PTA narrate to the gathering how the chalk received from the local education authority, in monetary value, in the preceding month could not pay the transportation fee of the person who went to collect it. This is ridiculous considering the fact that, last year alone, from January – November, my local government, Akko LGA, received a total of N1,316,652,451.31 mainly allocated to the council to among other things improve the lives of its people. This was, apart from the special subvention through the EFA, UBE and MDGs.

Was this problem exclusive to that primary school alone or was it general? Who is responsible for overseeing the EFA project and UBE scheme in Gombe state and Akko LGA that cannot provide even chalk for the teaching of the rural poor, who fall in the category of these 100 million children who have no access to school?  It has been stressed again and again that local councils in Nigeria in the last decade have failed woefully to meet the basic needs of their people. This has become clear with the high level of poverty, collapsed primary school system and the lack of basic amenities like water and sanitation in most of our towns and villages today.

It is a sad fact that local councils in Nigeria have ceased to function effectively as stipulated in the constitution due to interference by state governors and the selection of cronies, family members within the local area by powerful elites to run these local councils. Therefore, monies allocated for the transformation of people’s lives at the grass root end up being shared between the state governors and these elites, leaving their people in abject poverty, hunger and illiteracy.

The situation in most local governments; the recklessness of most of our so-called representatives at the grass root level, the open stealing that is going on is all pointer to the fact that Nigerian politicians are yet to learn anything from the failures of the past. Local governments, which are supposedly the closest to the people, appear to be the farthest of all the three tiers of governments, due largely to poor governance, corruption and interference from state governors.

Today, the nation’s public school system collapsed at the primary level because the local education authorities have failed to maintain these schools. Quite a number of people sit under the trees to receive lesson, in some places, no teachers are available to teach the pupils, while in others they combined both. Meeting the EFA goal as the 2015 dateline approaches is a myth and only miracle will make Nigeria achieve that. The Federal Ministry of Education, the UBEC, SUBEB, and local education authority in all states have to show real commitment if we really are serious about educating our children.