By Karo OGBINAKA
After a few years of running schools, the Nigerian government has unsurprisingly failed.
The only lesson we learn from history, the German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel stated, is that we don’t learn from history.
And George Santayana, in his 1905 The Life of Reason, writes, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Through the back door, schools are being returned to religious-based organisations.
The public schools are ill-equipped, poorly funded, teachers are pauperized. In brief, the schools are “weaponized” to impoverished citizens.
These are not the worse of the problems called Nigerian schools.
There is now an obvious disconnect between building morally sound citizens and creating persons that can truly develop the Nigerian state. The essence of education is totally lost. What is education without character?
Why should parents be at the driver’s seat and supervise cheating by their wards and still be “illusioned: into believing that such wards are “educated.”? The construct of private schools is only so-called.
Education is purely the business of government. This statement is made without one being unaware of strong believers in the philosophy of government having no business in anything under the sun except in the highly profitable business of “governance”; which if we go by the Nigerian experience is “mis-governance.”
One point should be underscored. No government is doing any citizen any good if it embarks on a well-funded education project.
It is society more than the individual that ultimately benefits more from a good educational system. The level of progress a people enjoy is simultaneously proportionate with the seriousness they put into their educational sector. Not even the Colonial Government was unaware of this point.
The problem with our educational system clearly started in the 70s when, borne of a myopia-inthinking that oil money is eternal and inelastic, the then Federal Military Government acquired all educational institutions in Nigeria.
A consequence in this action was the withdrawal of grant-in-aids to privately owned schools. Grants in aids was given to the privately owned schools because of the simple belief that these bodies, especially the Missionaries, were doing the business of education on behalf of government.
Since government was responsibly playing its own role in the education equation of the state, she was then morally armed to be the full regulator, supervisor and Leviathan on all matters of education. The first attempt by the colonial government to control schools was between 1882 and 1887.
The colonial government Education Ordinance of 6th May, 1882, and amended in 1888, set the ball rolling for government control of education. Essentially, the law required that a General Board of Education – empowered to appoint and dissolve the Local Board of Education – be set up as it might find necessary.
The British Consul, resident in Accra and later in Lagos, was given the power to appoint this “General Board of Education. Under the colonial system, schools were classified into two categories.
These were public schools that were fully owned and maintained entirely by government as well as run on public funds. And private schools that were financially assisted by government through grantin-aid. Invariable, the colonial government appointed School Inspectors.
They were paid not more than £400 per annum. Their salaries were shared by the British Colonies of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and Lagos in the ratio of 2:1.
The private school were mandated to admit indigent pupils whose parents were adjudged as paupers. Financial grants were made available to Teacher Training Colleges. Conditions for grant-in-aid to private assisted schools were based on managerial control, attendance of pupils at school and examination results.
Government went further to improve on her control of education in 1887. In the intervening period, government started investing directly in schools by building government schools through another Education Ordinance that regulated Certification of Teachers, Scholarship for students in secondary and technical institutions and also, empowered government to open and manage schools in any part of the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, the Colony and the Protectorate of Lagos, The Trumpet gathered.
From the hindsight of the history of education in Nigeria, today, we can clearly see that those who are in charge of governance lack any knowledge of the aim and purpose of education. It is simplistic for government and it agents to clamp down on schools whenever breaches are observed or flagged. But what is the quality of government regulation and control of the schools?
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Are the so-called private school not business ventures? Except clear answers are given to these questions, no gains can be made. Schools should not business ventures. You do not send your wards to school and hope to make “gains” by so doing! It is not only the schools and its owners that should be punished.
Those charged with supervision as Government Inspectors, employed in the Inspectorate Divisions of our Ministries of Education, must be invited to answer questions. In most cases these officers are compromised by the owners of these schools. Not even those who move around to accredit courses in our universities do their job with any high sense of morality.
Whereas the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) usually cry out about the poor states of the universities, Professors who move from one institution to another for accreditation exercises would always score them as fully accredited.
There is the belief that even members whose religious organisations own the private schools are alienated from the schools due to high fees charged by the proprietors.
This is so because government – unlike in the past under colonization – does not give privately owned schools in Nigeria grant-in-aid. For government to have full control of the educational system, and this includes spelling out societal values government expects the owners to promote, she must put her money where she has her mouth.
Education is a common good. At least in principle and constitutionally this is what it is in today’s Nigeria.
“Government shall direct its policy towards ensuring that there are equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels. Government shall promote science and technology.
Government shall strive to eradicate illiteracy; and to this end Government shall as and when practicable provide free, compulsory and universal primary education, free university education, and free adult literacy programme.”
Those who publicly held up in their hands the Holy Bible and Holy Qur’an to swear under oath that God should help them do so, should work towards realising these goals as clearly expressed in Chapter 2, Section 18 of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
