Education Commercialization: Continuation Of The Ruinous Past
By Kola Ibrahim
For those who still nurse the illusion
that the present Yar'Adua's government will
be different from the past should be having
a rethink as the current capitalist
government is bent on continuing the
neo-liberal economic policies of the past
especially as it concerns the education
sector. Just few weeks ago, the minister of
education, Igwe Ajah Nwachukwu was quoted in
two forums reiterating the government's
decision to hike fees in all Nigerian
universities. The new policy will see
already impoverished students coughing out
tens of thousands in a country where over
sixty percent are officially recognized as
living in penury; and where government find
it a onerous task to pay N11, 000 minimum
wage for workers.
This new policy is to say the least
anti-poor and incoherent. It is anti-poor
because it will definitely deny thousands of
youth access to university education while
placing the burden of funding education on
parents and students many of whom are from
poor working class, peasant and wounded
middle class background. It is incoherent
because it failed to justify the logic of
government’s so-called increased budgetary
allocation. If the federal government
claimed to have increased budgetary
allocation - which in the real sense is a
ruse - why then is the need to further place
burden of education funding on poor parents
and students since the increased (?)
budgetary allocation is meant to, at least,
lessen the burden on parents and students,
and to improve standard. The new regime of
fees to be introduced could hardly resolve
any of the problems confronting the
education sector. The hypocrisy of the
government is further shown by the fact that
no public probe has been made into billions
being squeezed out of the pockets of parents
and students, and the huge billions being
budgeted for education yearly but looted
through crooked means making most of the
facilities (in our schools at all levels) to
continue to rot despite increased charges.
The real reason why the government cannot
undertake a serious and holistic probe of
the education fund is because the budget
itself, drawn up in the boardrooms of IMF/World
Bank officials are built on the sandy
foundation of neo-liberalism which means
acute cut in social spending vis-à-vis
education, health, etc and concentration on
policies that will enhance the profit of the
business community and the international
moneybags in Nigeria, that is through
budgetary allocation for bailing out big
private businesses – who have been engaging
in rapacious exploitation of the resources
of the country especially the human labour –
after they might have run into competition
crisis. The rest of the budget is used to
invite the foreign experts through
consultancy projects that have little on no
impact on the lives of ordinary Nigerian.
This is why a huge chunk of the education
budget is allocated to seminars and lectures
on issues such as AIDS/HIV when in actual
facts many young ladies are taking to
prostitution as a result of the failed
education sector.
As against the so-called, much lauded
thirteen percent of the budget being
allocated to education, the real education
budget is less than 8.8 percent. The
thirteen percent that has received
unprecedented applause from our "respected"
public analysts and the media is only for
the recurrent/over head cost which does not
cover the developmental projects such as
expansion of facilities. To further show the
hypocrisy of this government, the 13 percent
does not include increased salaries
especially for teachers (majority of whom
are living in abject poverty), reduction in
fees paid by poor students, etc., already
the university lecturers are bemoaning the
stagnation in university special grants. In
the real sense, the increase in recurrent
budget is meant for consultancy services.
Even, the highly anti-poor Obasanjo's
government budgeted about 11 percent for
education at its inception. The capital
budget that could have expanded the
facilities in schools received little or no
increase. Therefore, the budget is a
continuation of the old ruinous policy of
cut in education budget in a bid to maintain
fiscal balance for non-existent investors.
Coupled with this is the continuous
commercialization of education especially in
order to lay the basis for its total
privatization which has been achieved in the
primary education sub-sector. Is it not
instructive that all governments, especially
state and federal government have laid the
basis for private takeover of secondary
schools as this sub-sector has witnessed
unprecedented rot with mushrooms of private
secondary schools – mostly owned by public
officials and their acolytes –growing of the
rot. In the University sub-sector, the same
process is going on with public universities
being under-funded while private ones
charging hundreds of thousands continue to
increase. The new agenda is to commercialize
public education to a point where public
education will be totally unattractive to
the people and thus lay the basis for their
eventual privatization. This is what is
being planned for the Law Schools and the
Unity Schools. While the law school fees was
hiked 100 percent to N230,000 which has
denied hundreds of law students access to
this year's law school programme, new
generations of students are not allowed into
the unity schools so as to justify their
rottenness and thus eventual privatization.
Already less than ten percent of
university-aged youths are currently in
schools or have graduated.
Nigerian resources if judiciously used could
fund free and qualitative education but the
neo-liberal, pro-rich, anti-poor
market-oriented policies which subsequent
Nigerian governments have committed
themselves to, will not allow this. Between
1999 and now, Nigeria has accrued nothing
less than over N10 trillion naira with
practically nothing to show for it than
opulence for the few. This money is enough
to lay the basis for massive development of
the country economically and politically but
the neo-liberal ideology teaches Nigerian
leaders to subject provision of social
service such as functional education,
affordable healthcare, massive
transportation development (road, rail,
water), job creation, food and energy
supply, etc to market forces, that is the
law of the survival of the fittest which
gives the service to the highest bidder.
These policies have meant that it is the
rich that will be buying up the country’s
resources at token while majority will not
be able to afford the huge cost needed to
access social service. This is in addition
to the mindless looting of the nation’s
wealth by the unproductive Nigerian ruling
class and their private collaborators, both
local and foreign which itself is
facilitated by the market idea that deify
the ruthless private sector. All societies
that have developed, did so based on
government's massive intervention in the
provision of basic facilities for the
industrialization of the country, including
social services. Even the much glorified
Asian Tigers were massively supported by the
US as a counterweight against the fast
developing ‘communist’ China. Also in
Nigeria, the little development,
universities, research institutes, health
institutions, road and rail constructions,
etc that we have had were products of the
massive investment in developmental projects
by past governments of the 1970’s and ‘80’s.
in fact, introduction of top-up fees
contributed to the early and inglorious exit
of Tony Blair in Britain..
Unless the Nigerian students and workers are
ready to take on this government and make it
rescind its anti-students education
commercialization, education will be made
the exclusive preserve of the rich. It is
unfortunate that no students' union or NANS
structure in the country has taken any step
to stop this policy, not even on the law
school fee hike, yet students' unions are
being destroyed in preparation by university
administrators for the introduction of this
policy while various state governments have
already begun the process, for instance
Lautech (N6,000 to N40,000), UniOSun
(Between N160,000 to N300,000), Tai Solarin
University (N50,000), etc. Crisis are
already brewing in many campuses where
education are being or are going to be
commercialized – UniAbuja, ABU, OAU. Those
institutions which have destroyed students’
unionism such as UI and UNILAG have turned
the campuses to ghost of themselves with
students being in serious insecurity and
living under unfavourable living and
studying conditions with no student body to
agitate for them. It is funny that a
government that wants to create an
industrialized economy by 2020 is not ready
to dedicate up to 20 percent of its budget
to education when UNESCO prescribed 26
percent for a developing economy. Students
must undertake campaigns that will make
government to massively fund education by at
least 26 percent as prescribed by UNESCO and
democratize decision-making in the education
sector by including education workers’ and
students’ unions. This is the real task
before the Nigerian students’ movement – not
by selling out to politicians and persons in
their local management. There must be
discussions between students’ unions and
staff unions – academic and non-academic –
on this campaign.
The current ruling class is ready to defend
its class interest through neo-liberalism,
unless the workers, students, peasants and
the oppressed through their organizations
such as NLC and TUC, students’ unions, ASUU,
market men and women organizations,
community movements, etc must resist this by
fighting for their own class interests
through the struggle for an egalitarian
society which can only be achieved through
nationalization of the commanding height of
the Nigerian economy under the democratic
control of the working and toiling people
themselves. This raises the need for a
radical, socialist-oriented, working
people’s political party that will fight for
powering order to enthrone the working
people’s government which will develop the
vast resources of the country.
Kola Ibrahim
Activist from Obafemi Awolowo University,
Ile-Ife
Member, Education Rights Campaign (ERC)
Kmarx4live@yahoo.com |
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