Similarly, in the education sector, higher educational institutions have been on a three-month strike with no imminent signs of resolution. It is as if the battle lines have been drawn between two large proverbial elephants – the government and the academic staff unions – but the grass – young students with tomorrow’s hopes in today’s systems – continue to suffer as their future is toyed with. A Nigerian student knows when school starts but cannot predict the end of the process. These levels of unpredictability make it increasingly difficult for Nigerian Diasporas seeking to return to the country, to do so. I am particularly troubled when I think about the kind of schools my kids will attend or the airlines they’d fly as they hop from one part of the country to the other. It is unthinkable that a monstrous country with its over 150 million population is unable to solve the basic challenges of travel and education – key and important industries for functioning in the 21st century.
Where simple and basic life endeavors such as traveling or planning for school cannot be ascertained with a degree of finality or predictability; there exists no grounds where more advanced discussions of efficiencies, quality, or sustainability can be discussed within those sectors. This puts Nigeria far behind countries such as the UK, US, Canada and France with which it should compare its advancements. It is clear that these are not questions of the lack of expertise – Nigerian in Disapora who would return under the right environment run large industries, are in politics, and form large bodies of academics in western institutions. Rather broader issues of corrupt practices, executed with impunity, and specific lack of customer service, quality and efficiencies, plague these sectors. The future of Nigeria as we know it is in jeopardy.
According to the National Universities Commission, the country’s regulator for higher education, there are 40 universities in Nigeria, although there are more than a hundred. The number of students in Nigerian universities is not so easily available as real data in African largest country remains an increasingly difficult feat to acquire. Yet, the country is infamous for sending its students abroad necessitating a recent house proposal to pass a bill banning government officials from sending their children to schools outside the country. That bill is expected to arm-twist government into solving the persistently disturbing higher education problems.
Nigerian students who make it into European, North American and neighboring African universities spend over $500 million on tuition annually; excluding associated ancillary and other logistic costs. These figures are increasing. Amounts that could be plugged back into the education system and perhaps decry some of the agitations that the Academic staff union seeks. The inabilities of the Federal government to address these demands puts it in stark violations of global rights of the child and principles of human rights, values to which the country, as with other developed ones adhere. Legislations such as the proposed bill may be compelling but it is the core management of the education sector that requires more attention.
Nigeria boasts sufficient human resources that can offer service to itself, the Africancontinent and the rest of the world, yet quality service is a far cry from standards experienced in North America or Europe some half a century ago, or presently in neighboring African countries. When the national universities commission, the higher education regulator responsible for defining standards benchmarks its popularity and quality against demands from much smaller African countries such as Sierra Leone and Cameroun, it has failed in innovating higher quality criteria and standards for measuring its own success. Similar low quality benchmarks or buck passing exists in the aviation industry when the minister called the recent airline crash an “act of God”. The same crisis is looming in the Nigerian education landscape and total collapse is imminent with the appointment of education managers into ministerial positions that know little to nothing about the sector.
The recent appointment of an interim minister of education with little or no knowledge of educational administration or management is akin to a bus driver armed with a scalpel in an operating theatre. Evidently, the persistent unresolved strike signals an overwhelmed context for a misplaced ministerial appointment. The disputes resulting from defaulting agreements entered by the federal government and the academic staff union are monetary, of which there is no lack in government coffers. The long-term impact of the disputes disrupts the educational quality of graduates who themselves will run the country in the next two decade. The power tussle between the government and higher education is no longer news, neither is it exciting. As far as I can remember, my academic program more than a decade ago lasted one year than planned; and in recent times, the unpredictable years of higher education increases incessantly. Yet students are required to meet industry requirements for which they have been ill prepared. Strikes in the Nigerian education landscape cause more ill than good, and should be completely eradicated.
In a country where curriculum is sacrosanct, much like the constitution of the United States, the content of courses remain the same and not much different from those thought my fathers in the colonial era. The private sector has stepped in to fill the gap of professionally developing new entrants to the work force through apprenticeship modelswithhit and miss results. The cost of developing a professional workforce continues to increase for industry where schools should have played a more active role.
Academic inflation – the situation where a first-degree holder takes the job of a high school student emerges; creating a workforce that is very less critical, less cognitive, less independent, and very much reliant on hands-on management, supervisory approaches, and the “oga-sir” syndrome. As it continues to export students to the international market (owing to no clear government strategy on internationalization of education), the quality of those hired in local and multinational organizations increasingly becomes questionable. The fortunate few employed are recognized through their foreign credentials over those schooled locally. Nigeria becomes a country waiting to implode in a world where education is intrinsic to national development, constantly evolving and being redefined to suit industry, changing government/governance paradigms, and society.
Clearly, the education landscape, as with the aviation industry can change. First,is the need to appoint managers, as minister and their advisers that understand educational administration and management. It is about time that the education ministry is run by those for whom education policies affect. Education is a critical sector much like health and aviation. A bill is required that tethers the management of education and aviation to seasoned and knowledgeable persons in the area much like the ministry of health. A non-seasoned educator should not be allowed to run the education ministry, if a non-seasoned physician or specialist cannot run the health ministry.
Secondly, an overhaul of the education sector is required. Transparency and accountability plays an important role in this call. The need for clear instruments of measure of success must be defined. Equally needed are accountability mechanisms in which states report their educational progress to the federal governments and in which local civil society organizations can monitor federal and state allocations for education. Nigeria can no longer afford to fall in the cadre of African countries where education lacks transparency. Transparency and accountability in this sector should cut across the primary, secondary and tertiary tiers. Over 10 million children out of school put the country in gross violations of the rights of child; news not fit for consumption in the 21st century.
Thirdly, strikes should be made a thing of the past. Industrial action is necessary if both parties fail to agree. But arbitration and negotiation mechanisms should be put in place that obsoletes strike actions especially in the education sector. Clearly, the current arbitration mechanisms have failed and an education minister that wants to leave a legacy, any legacy for Nigeria would address the development of a new mechanism for arbitration that is locally developed and conscientious of the parties involved, and that seeks resolutions before such actions occur.
As I sit at the airport in Frankfurt and Chicago enroute to my base in Canada, thinking about the Nigerian educational and aviation landscape I would like to bring my children, I see similarities in both sectors. I am drawn to the quality, efficiencies, sense of responsibility, and order that takes place at these airports. Yet I wonder why they cannot happen in a country as dynamic and prospective as Nigeria. There is no reason for education and aviation to fail in Africa’s most populous nation.
*Ben Akoh is a Program Director of Continuing Education, Extended Education at the University of Manitoba, Canada.
*me@benakoh.com
THE trip from Lagos to Winnipeg via Frankfurt and Chicago was nothing too extraordinary. As with most travelers, my mind was on fire. If electromagnetic rays that emanate from thinking heads could be captured and analyzed, they’d show the excitement of particles bumping into each other generating large amounts of heat like those experiments conducted by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. I am reminded of those TV ads with speech bubbles showing people’s thoughts as they navigate large public spaces. Thoughts about going on vacation, the joys of retuning home, the anticipation of forging new frontiers, breaking grounds or engaging in new business ventures, or the opposing thoughts of failed business. Airports are rife with high-energy thoughts which when harnessed could at least power a light bulb. At least, but those are the stuff of science.
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