by Mark Amaza

It is about time we came to the realization that the Nigerian government cannot provide free, quality education for all its citizens. The amount of funds needed to do that is not just available, even barring corruption.

In the past one year, the tertiary education sector in Nigeria has witnessed a number of upheavals stemming from school closures and strikes. The causes of these closures have arisen from protests as a result of lack of accreditation (such as at the University of Abuja), or from protests due to a lack of amenities, ranging from the fatal (at the Nassarawa State University, Keffi) and the relatively mild (e.g. the Jigawa State College of Education, Gumel). Thankfully, the labour unions in the sector have been magnanimous enough not to go on an industrial action, especially the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) which is most notorious for this behaviour.

These events are not new to our tertiary education sector and students in the last 20 years are learning that such would almost always elongate their academic years.

One constant culprit fingered for this is the inadequate funding of the schools by governments. For example, the Federal Government allocated only 8.7% to the entire education sector in the 2013 budget as against the recommendation of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) of 25%. This 8.7% will be shared amongst all the levels of education, and the bulk of it goes to recurrent spending (salaries, overheads, etc.). Meanwhile, our West African neighbour, Ghana, allocated 30% of its budget to education.

It has been constantly said that one reason for the abandonment of the education sector to the dregs of poor funding is because those in government do not have their children schooling within the country. Of the estimated $4billion that leaves our shores yearly as school fees, a sizeable portion comes from the pockets of political office holders and even civil servants under whom responsibility for the education sector falls. This belief resonates more considering the deep anti-establishment sentiment in the country.

It is without doubt that we need to make more and better funding available to our education sector. Without an excellent education sector, a nation cannot develop the right manpower and intellectual capacity for its growth.

Beyond this though, we need to ask ourselves if our educational model of giving Nigerians free education across board is working.

Nigerians constantly reject any attempts of paying for education, especially at the tertiary level, under the assumption that Nigerians are too poor to pay for such. Yet, over $4bn is spent abroad on school fees alone, not to mention living expenses of students. These monies could be retained within the country if there were good enough schools who will even charge market rate or close to it for the education they provide.

It is about time we came to the realization that the Nigerian government cannot provide free, quality education for all its citizens. The amount of funds needed to do that is not just available, even barring corruption. Paying for tertiary education at less subsidized rates will, while reducing the number of students in the tertiary institutions admittedly, improve the quality of graduates and at the same time free up funds for governments to invest in free, quality basic education which is the best model for effective delivery.

This decision is one that will need all the political will that can be mustered to be implemented, and it is important that we begin to have a critical assessment of the model of education needed to develop Nigeria’s intellectual capacity for her growth.

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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.