{"id":11878,"date":"2018-09-14T07:57:11","date_gmt":"2018-09-14T07:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=11878"},"modified":"2018-09-14T07:57:11","modified_gmt":"2018-09-14T07:57:11","slug":"no-books-no-desks-no-pay-nigerias-education-system-is-failing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=11878","title":{"rendered":"No Books, No Desks, No Pay: Nigeria\u2019s Education System Is Failing"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Tope Alake<\/strong>
\nBudgeted funds often siphoned off in web of corruption<\/strong>
\nBill Gates urged Nigeria\u2019s authorities to invest in people<\/strong>
\nWhen Babalola Foluke enters her classroom at Ibadan Municipal Government primary school in southwestern Nigeria each morning she faces a demoralizing scene: shortages of books, chalk and desks for her 41 students. Often, she hasn\u2019t been paid for several months.
\nFoluke, 44, is one of tens of thousands of teachers struggling to train the next generation in Africa\u2019s most populous nation in a ramshackle school system gutted by corruption, a lack of investment and the flight of qualified instructors abroad and to private sector jobs. Nigeria\u2019s education system is failing to arm its children with the skills they need to work in the banking, manufacturing and petroleum industries that drive the economy.
\n\"\"The Ibadan Municipal Government school.<\/em>
\nPhotographer: Tope Alake\/Bloomberg<\/em>
\n\u201cWhen you have a lot of commitment and you don\u2019t have money to do it, you won\u2019t be able to concentrate on the pupil,\u201d said Foluke, who\u2019s been teaching for 18 years and earns about 75,000 naira ($200) a month. \u201cWhen you are hungry, will you be able to do it?\u201d
\nWith elections in February, the ruling party of President Muhammadu Buhari, who\u2019s seeking a second term, and opposition candidates are renewing politicians\u2019 past pledges to boost spending on schooling. This year\u2019s budget in Africa\u2019s top oil producer allocates 7.1 percent of expenditure to education, less than a third of the United Nations-recommended minimum of 25 percent for countries seeking rapid development. The figure for Ethiopia, with the continent\u2019s fastest growing economy, was 24 percent in 2015-16, according to a UN report.
\nSkills Shortage<\/strong>
\nThe results are clear to see. In 2016, the UN Human Development Index ranked Nigeria, a nation with almost 200 million inhabitants, 152nd in educational achievements out of 188 countries.
\nWhen Nigerian recruiting company Phillips Consulting requests applications for job vacancies these days, about 3 percent of the candidates have the required qualifications.
\n\u201cWhile more schools graduate a decent number of individuals annually, there is a gap in the requisite skills they acquire,\u201d said Foluso Phillips, chief executive officer of Lagos-based Phillips Consulting. \u201cIt is extremely frustrating to find qualified candidates.\u201d
\nNigeria once had some of the continent\u2019s top educational institutions that produced the likes of Nobel Prize laureate Wole Soyinka and award-winning scientists and professionals working at the highest levels internationally in a broad range of fields.
\nThe decline started in the 1980s when military rulers cut funding for educational institutions where teachers and students became the voice of opposition. That sparked the first wave of professors leaving to teach in universities in the U.S., South Africa and Europe.
\nAcademic Strikes<\/strong>
\nThe Academic Staff Union of Universities has gone on strike against every government in the past three decades, starting from when Buhari was a military ruler in the 1980s.
\n\"\"Onike Girls Primary School in Yaba, Lagos.<\/em>
\nPhotographer: Tope Alake\/Bloomberg<\/em>
\nSuccessive governments \u201cdidn\u2019t feel education was a priority,\u201d said Deji Omole, a professor and leader of the teachers\u2019 union at the University of Ibadan. \u201cYou have to fund education properly to retain your best brains; if not you\u2019ll continue to lose them.\u201d
\nTraining Programs<\/strong>
\nNow businesses increasingly rely on their own training programs to prepare ill-equipped graduates.
\n\u201cThere is a risk that if we don\u2019t improve it very quickly the employers will actually be spending much more resources in training,\u201d said Abubakar Suleiman, chief executive officer of Sterling Bank Plc, which has a Learning and Development Centre for new hires. \u201cWe can train people on the job they\u2019re coming to do, but I shouldn\u2019t be training them on basic issues like communication, etiquette and how to do team work. It wastes time.\u201d
\nDuring a visit to Nigeria in March, Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates told government officials that while its economic recovery plan is emphasizing physical infrastructure, there\u2019s little on human capital development, particularly education and health.
\n\u201cPeople without roads, ports, and factories can\u2019t flourish,\u201d Gates said. \u201cAnd roads, ports, and factories without skilled workers to build and manage them can\u2019t sustain an economy.\u201d
\nEducation Ministry Director of Press and Public Relations Chinenye Ihuoma didn\u2019t respond to phone calls and a text message seeking comment.
\nParents\u2019 Sacrifice<\/strong>
\nFamilies who can afford the cost are increasingly abandoning the state school system, shifting their children to private schools or sending them abroad. At least 257,000 currently study in six top recipient nations: the U.K., Ghana, the U.S., Malaysia, Canada and neighboring Benin, according to data compiled by the Institute of Statistics at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
\nAs a result, Nigeria made $1.66 billion in official foreign-exchange allocations to pay tuition between 2015 and April this year, according to central bank data.
\nThere were 11,710 Nigerians studying the U.S. university system in 2017, a 9.7 percent rise over the year before, representing almost a third of Africans there, according to the Institute of International Education.
\nPrivate Schools<\/strong>
\nUche Dike, whose son Emmanuel, 22, is due to graduate from the All Nations University College in Ghana in November, said the sacrifice of paying about $4,000 a year was worth it.
\n\u201cSeeing him discussing with his friends while on holiday, I felt very proud that my son had an edge over his classmates in Nigerian schools,\u201d she said.
\nPrivate schools in Nigeria generally do a better job than state institutions in equipping students for the workplace, said Michael Famoroti, an economist at Lagos-based Vetiva Capital Management Ltd.
\n\u201cThey are just more organized,\u201d he said. \u201cSome public institutions can make the learning process very stressful; they haven\u2019t organized themselves to prepare you for the labor market.\u201d
\nThe precious government cash that is available for the state education system is often siphoned off by corruption, according to Olayinka David-West at the Lagos Business School.
\nAs a result, Monilola Oseni, a 54-year-old teacher of catering and crafts at the Islamic Day Secondary School in Ibadan, said she often has to bring meat and vegetables for her cooking classes.
\n\u201cThe students have no conducive environment to study — some are sitting on the floor,\u201d she said. \u201cSome teachers have no interest because they don\u2019t have things to encourage them to teach effectively.\u201d
\n\u2014 With assistance by Dulue Mbachu, and Emele Onu<\/strong><\/em>
\n(Updates with analyst comment in second paragraph under Private Schools subheadline.)<\/strong><\/em>
\n
\nFirst Published by Bloomberg (www.bloomberg.com)<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Tope Alake Budgeted funds often siphoned off in web of corruption Bill Gates urged Nigeria\u2019s authorities to invest in people When Babalola Foluke enters her classroom at Ibadan Municipal Government primary school in southwestern Nigeria each morning she faces a demoralizing scene: shortages of books, chalk and desks for her 41 students. Often, she hasn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":11880,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5777,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-features","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}