By Ishaya Ibrahim
Acting News Editor
The percentage of funds President Muhammadu Buhari’s government has allocated to education in its three budgets circle (2016, 2017 and 2018) is the lowest in eight years, TheNiche analysis of the appropriation documents within the period has shown.
While the education sector enjoyed quantitative increase in the allocation of funds under Buhari, there is a significant decrease in its value.
Adding the impact of inflation and devalued foreign exchange, Buhari’s education budgets appear even worse.
Inflation was 9 percent in 2015 at the time the administration came on board. Latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows that it is 15.9 percent. This is a 76 percent increase in the prices of goods and services in two years.
A dollar exchanged at N197 in 2015. It is now N364, an 84 percent rise in the price of the greenback. This is why Buhari’s biggest budget, the 2018 appropriation which he recently presented to the National Assembly is about $25 billion. Jonathan’s biggest, the 2013 was $31 billion.
United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) expects countries to allocate not less than 26 percent of their national budget to funding education.
Buhari’s highest was in 2016, the first budget of his administration. He allocated N447 billion to the education sector, representing 7.3 percent of the 6.07 trillion budget.
In 2017, his education budget increased in absolute term – N540 billion. But as a ratio of the national budget, it fell by 100 basis point. The N540 billion therefore represented only 7.2 percent of the national budget which is N7.4 trillion.
In the 2018 budget proposal presented by President Buhari, N606 billion was allocated to education, representing 7.0 percent, a sharp decline by 2 percent. The entire spending proposal of the government for 2018 is N8.6 trillion.
In contrast, former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration started off in 2011 by budgeting a mere 6.2 percent of the nation’s budget to education. Education got N306 billion of the N4.97 trillion the government spent that year.
In 2012, education represented 8.4 percent of the national spending. The government allocated N400 billion to the sector out of the N4.7 trillion appropriation.
In 2013, the allocation to education was 8.7 percent of the budget, which is N426 billion of the N4.98 trillion.
In 2014, the nation hit a 9 percent all time high allocation to the education sector. Of the N4.6 trillion national budget, N424 billion was allocated to the education sector.
In 2015, the Jonathan administration failed to sustain the increase of its funding to the education sector. Rather, it declined by the same margin. The administration allocated N392 billion to education, representing 8.7 percent of the N4.5 trillion national budget.
The consequences
The Council of Legal Education announced on November 8, 2017 that only the University of Lagos (UNILAG) has full accreditation to offer Law among public and private universities in the country.
Three universities; Lagos State University (LASU), University of Abuja and Benue State University had their accreditation suspended. The Twenty seven other universities offering law are operating with provisional accreditation.
For a course to be accredited, it must meet the benchmark academic standards of qualified faculty members, good learning environment and adequate teaching materials – equipment, books and journals. But without adequate budgetary funding, these critical men and materials become the casualties.
In 2016, PREMIUM TIMES reported that at least 150 undergraduate academic programmes in Nigeria’s public and private universities were unaccredited because they failed the Benchmark Minimum Academic Standards (BMAS) that has been drawn up by the National University Commission (NUC).
Unskilled teachers
There is also the challenge of unskilled teachers being churned out from Nigeria’s Colleges of Education. The Kaduna State government conducted competence test for its 33,000 primary school teachers, all of whom are holders of at least National Certificate of Examination (NCE) qualification. A whopping 21,780 of them, representing 66 per cent of the primary school teachers in the state failed to pass the primary four class test set for them.
The mass failure has sparked national outrage. But Kaduna was not the first to unmask low quality teachers in its schools. Edo and Ekiti States government had at different times discovered that many of their teachers were unskilled, even though they possess National Certificate of Examination (NCE) and Bachelor of Education (B.Ed)
An educationist at the Jigawa State College of Education Gumel, Abdulhamid Umar said low quality in the standard of education in Nigeria is traceable to malpractices in appointments of lecturers and heads of tertiary institutions, compromises by examination invigilators during examinations, value for certificates over competence and poor funding of the education sector.
The Kaduna State government has said it would sack the teachers and replace them with more competent ones. But analysts have wondered the quality of teachers the state government could attract when their take home pay is less than N28,000.
Head of department, Politics and International Relations at Lead City University Ibadan, Dr. Tunde Oseni counseled the Kaduna State government against sacking the teachers but retrain those who needed retraining and deploy those who couldn’t be relevant to the education sector to other ministries.
“Every policy of government must have a human face. It cannot be draconian. Yes we need quality teachers. Those other ones have already been employed. And nobody is useless. Some of them may be relevant in other ministries,” he said.
Wrong priorities
Analysts say the 2018 budget estimate of N8.6 trillion is lacking in foresight. While it seeks to address the immediate challenges of infrastructure, it fails to deal with the biggest problem which the economy has – lack of capacity to be competitive in the global economy.
For example, its total allocation to education is about N606 billion ($1.6 billion), just 36 percent of Harvard University budget of $4.5 billion in 2017.
Oseni said while Nigeria does not have enough funds to meet its developmental challenges, the little available is badly managed.
He said Nigeria could have at least allocated 15 to 20 percent of its budget to education because that is the only path to development.
“We need education to develop. That is how Singapore moved up. They built thinking schools where students are encouraged and inspired to think through problems and bring about initiatives and solutions. In Switzerland, they devote one or two hours everyday to technical education. We need such models,” he said.
Former Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) deputy governor, Kingsley Moghalu said in an interview with a television channel (TVC) that: “the education system needs to be reformed. It has to be skewed towards vocational skills, engineering, technology, mechanics – those are the kind of things that create employment. But these courses in our universities are theoretical,” he said.
He explained that his experience in government has revealed to him that technocrats who manage the economy in government, a lot of times have the competence and good intention but the political leaders on top have very different priorities.
He said the solution was for the citizens to place the technocrats inside political power because it is only when their visions align, there won’t be any solutions to the problems the citizens face.
Economist and public affairs analyst, Henry Boyo said the insecurity Nigeria faces was largely linked to neglect of the education sector.
“Education is critical. It is the cornerstone for development, growth, stability, security of any country. It is regrettable that we tend to shun the issue,” he said in a Star FM radio interview.
He argued that the 2018 budget was too insignificant to fix the problems Nigeria grapples with.
“We still placed too much hope on the budget because at the end of the day, it is only a small amount of money in an economy that is supposed to be over $450 billion in GDP. To now expect about $25 billion to turn the economy is a no.”
He said the private sector owes the key to transforming the economy as it has infinitely elastic funds available at any one time.
“$500 billion will come into the country if the government has friendly policies that will attract people to come and invest through concession. Though in the past it has not been so good, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t learn from it,” Boyo said.
.Watch out for the budgetary analysis on health sector.