By Nick Agule
Introduction
At the end of July 2021, global leaders gathered in London at the Global Education Summit (GPE) with the theme – Financing GPE 2021-2025. It was a key moment for the global community to come together and support quality education for all children. At the summit, world leaders made 5-year pledges to support GPE’s work and help transform education systems in up to 90 countries and territories. In all, the summit ran four thematic sessions – Education’s reset, Financing for Impact, Gender Equality, Ripple Effect.
Some of the key discussions and outcomes of the summit included the fact that business as usual will not suffice to build the workforce of the future; and that urgent action is needed to ensure adequate funding for the education outcomes that will position countries to exploit their demographic dividend and strengthen competitiveness. The summit tackled what can be done to protect and improve domestic financing for education, especially for girls, in the face strained budgets facing competing demands. Intergenerational dialogue to give young people a platform to elevate their concerns about potential cuts to education budgets and the consequences for their generation of high debt burdens also drew the attention of the attendees. It was indeed heart-warming to see Nigeria’s Maryjacob Okwuosa, a GPE Youth Leader, Transform Education/UNGEI, anchor one of the sessions.
Furthermore, the Financing for Impact thematic discussions focused on how the world can leverage disaggregated data and new analysis tools to build mechanisms that allocate financing to ensure quality learning for the most vulnerable and marginalized and making the best possible use of limited resources which challenges conventional wisdom about what works to improve learning outcomes.
Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari and other African leaders attended the summit.
Education not a Priority to Nigeria
When President Buhari sat with other world leaders at the summit, perhaps it did not occur to him how infinitesimal his budgetary allocation to education is as compared to the other leaders he was rubbing shoulders with. For the 2021 federal budget, education was allocated a total of N771.46 billion which is just above 5% of the total budget. In dollar terms this translates to less than $2 billion. This is the lowest budgetary allocation to the education sector in by the federal government of Nigeria 10 years! The global benchmark for funding education is between 15-20% of total budget.
In comparison with the world leaders whom President Buhari sat next to at the summit, they have committed the following percentages of their total budget to education – UK 14.9%, Mexico 17.58%, South Africa 19.45%, Australia 13.61%, Ethiopia 27.1%, Singapore 28.84%, Norway 16.01% etc. Even countries such as Iran and Afghanistan have committed 21.115% and 15.66% respectively which is well above Nigeria’s!
Nigeria is therefore punching far below the weight given a population of 200 million people. This poor funding of the education sector portrays Nigeria as a nation that does not take education as a priority. To make matters worse, Nigeria’s budget implementation is never at 100% so even the budgetary allocation to education may end up not being released in full!
Outcome of Poor Funding of Education in Nigeria
- Given the abysmally poor funding of education in Nigeria, the tragic consequences include:Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school children in the world. UNICEF data indicates that one in every five of the world’s out-of-school children is in Nigeria. About 10.5 million of the country’s children aged 5-14 years are not in school. Only 61 percent of 6-11 year-olds regularly attend primary school and only 35.6 percent of children aged 36-59 months receive early childhood education according to UNICEF’s data. In the north of the country, the picture is even bleaker, with a net attendance rate of 53 percent. UNICEF concludes that getting out-of-school children back into education poses a massive challenge.
2. Teachers who are the backbone of the education system are often away from the classrooms on industrial action. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) the premier labour union of university teachers has recently served another notice to embark on an industrial action. There is hardly any academic session that runs unhindered without a strike action by teachers in Nigeria.
3. Infrastructure at all levels of education – primary, secondary and tertiary – has totally decayed. A recent video of a students’ hall of residence at the hitherto prestigious University of Nigeria is sickening.
4. Other factors such as COVID and the massive state of insecurity in Nigeria have also contributed to keeping students away from the classrooms thereby jeopardising an already bad situation.
Recommendations
For Nigeria to unleash the Power of a Healthy, Educated and Safe Child, the country must take immediate steps to implement the following recommendations:
- Nigeria must make it a policy priority to comply with UNICEF’s charter that all children, no matter where they live or what their circumstances, have the right to quality education.
2. Nigerian governments at all levels – federal, state and local government – must hard-code budgetary allocation to education to the global benchmark of between 15-20%.
3. Nigeria has an abysmally low budget provision. The total federal budget of $35 billion for 200 million people is a far cry from California’s $200 billion for 40 million people. Even if Nigeria commits the entire $35 billion federal budget to education, it will not be sufficient to lift the sector out of the decay experienced for decades in the past. Nigeria must therefore take urgent steps to boost revenue and this column has served a menu of recommendations in the past to help the government in this direction.
4. The cost of running government is extremely high with redundant, duplicitous and non-performing Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) of government. Government must restructure by scrapping these MDAs to save money to fund education.
5. Government must address the non-payment of salaries and allowances to teachers to forestall industrial actions. A scheme where teachers’ salaries are automatically paid from arranged overdraft facilities with financial institutions should be considered.
6. The state of insecurity in the country has impacted negatively on the educational sector with a spate of school kidnappings and other banditry activities has led to closure of schools. Governments at all levels must intensify efforts at tackling the insecurity situation. Governments must also take steps in securing schools including an installation of an emergency response system to enable schools call for security intervention when they come under attack which will discourage future attacks.
7. The national assembly need to begin legislation to criminalise out-of-school children by putting responsibility on the parents/guardians to enrol children in school failure of which they will be arrested and prosecuted, and the children are handed over to foster parents/carers to be educated. This is what is obtainable in the countries whose leaders President Buhari rubbed shoulders with at the summit!
8. Government at all levels to develop partnerships with countries and other donor organisations to increase volume, efficiency and equity of domestic financing for education. President Buhari’s attendance at the GPE summit was a right step in this direction.
Conclusion
There is no economy without education. Education is serious business and together with healthcare must never be relegated in the pecking order of priorities by any government. Nigerian governments at all levels must step up their game to adequately fund and manage the education of all children. An uneducated child is a time-bomb, and all hands must be on deck to ensure all children receive qualitative and functional education.
References:
1. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS
2. https://ourworldindata.org/financing-education
3. https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/422829-buharis-2021-budget-share-for-education-is-nigerias-lowest-in-10-years.html
4. https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/422829-buharis-2021-budget-share-for-education-is-nigerias-lowest-in-10-years.html
