Press statement
NIGERIA’S 52ND
ANNIVERSARY
The Education
Rights Campaign (ERC) uses the occasion of Nigeria’s 52nd
independence anniversary to again point attention to the colossal collapse of
public education across the country and demand immediate government investment
to arrest the decay and revive quality and standard in primary, secondary and
tertiary tiers of the educational system.
We also use this
occasion to call for the immediate reversal of hiked fees at the Lagos State
University (LASU), Ekiti State University (EKSU) and the Osun State University
(UNIOSUN). We reject all attempts to introduce tuition fee as recommended by
the Oronsaye committee report. We call for the provision of free and functional
education at all levels.
The only fitting way
to mark this independence anniversary is by mass protests and demonstration of
the working masses, students and poor against the ruinous policies of
successive governments in Nigeria which has turned Nigeria to an
under-developing Nation 52 years after flag independence. While all socio-economic
indices certainly point to reversals in all fields of life including
infrastructures, health, housing, job provision, security etc as the Nation clocks
52, the condition of public education is indeed very appalling.
52 years ago, the
Nation’s education system was at its infancy with very low enrollment and very
few schools and universities. However there were efforts by the government in
the first republic to expand educational access to all nooks and crannies in
order to develop the indigenous productive force. The first universities were
established around this period. Most notable of this era was the free education
policy of the government in the old western region which opened the doors of
education to many, including the children of poor working class and peasant
families who would not have had the means to pay fees. Many political office
holders from the South West today who now often say that free education is
impossible were in fact beneficiaries of this free education policy.
Today the clock of
historical progress has been unwound. The impressive advance in public
education recorded in the first and second republics have all been completely
unraveled by successive military and civilian governments through neo-liberal
capitalist policies of education under funding and commercialization. While 52
years ago many an illiterate parents (including farmers and hunters in the
wild) were having literate children who were able to educate themselves up to
the limit of their abilities, today this whole process has been reversed with
the horrific but occurring prospect of completely literate parents now having
half-literate and stark illiterate children because of inability to afford the
cost of education.
This reality is
borne out by the cold harsh statistics of over 12 million children out of
school with a huge percentage of this being girls. All of Nigeria’s
Universities can all admit a little over 200, 000 new entrants annually yet
over 1.5 million candidates write UTME annually. This is aside hundreds of
thousands who never make it beyond Senior Secondary School class before
privations forces them to go into menial jobs, apprenticeship, crimes and prostitutions.
These are the lost generations – a generation deprived of knowledge and
completely out of tune with the demands of the 21st century and they
are lost thanks to over 30 years of unrelenting neo-liberal attacks on public
education!
Indeed since the
late 1980s and more sharply since the last general elections in April 2011, all
political parties in power at Federal and state levels have taken drastic steps
to further attacks on the right to affordable and quality public education.
This is on top of the poor conditions of teaching and living infrastructures in
primary, secondary and tertiary schools which have in turn seriously reduced
the quality and standard of education.
There is hardly
any state in Nigeria today where fees have not been hiked beyond what poor
working families can afford. The political party in power does not matter. It
is one historical irony of our time that governments formed by the Action
Congress of Nigeria (ACN), which claims to be the descendant of Obafemi
Awolowo’s political dynasty, are leading the neo-liberal assault on public
education today. In fact students are
worse off and are faced with frightening and unprecedented fee hikes in States
where so-called progressive opposition political parties like the Action Congress
of Nigeria (ACN) are in power.
Fees at the Lagos
State University (LASU), Ekiti State University (EKSU) and the Osun State
University (UNIOSUN) are some of the highest fees in any University in Nigeria
today. The fees of some of these Universities mentioned above rivals private
universities’ and these monstrous fees were hiked by supposedly progressive ACN
state governments upholding the legacy of Obafemi Awolowo!
Last year LASU
fees were increased by as much as 750% with medical students being charged up
to N345, 750! Because many could not afford it, admission in 2011/2012 session
fell by about 30%! Indeed in this year’s post-UTME, students seeking admission
to LASU sharply dropped. Most alarming was the over 2000 students who merited
admission having passed Post-UTME aside other requirements but had to forfeit
their admissions because they could not afford the fees!
Now on top of all
these, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) -led Federal Government is planning
to introduce tuition fees! Few months ago, a Federal Government committee
headed by Mr. Stephen Oronsaye identified “the
tuition-free policy of government for undergraduates in federal universities,
the over-dependency on government funding by universities …, as among the
factors responsible for the sharp decline in the quality of standards in
tertiary education”. The committee therefore proposed introduction of
tuition fees of between N450, 000 and N525, 000!
The
ERC condemns this attempt to completely make education the preserve of the few rich,
politicians and treasury looters. Education is the inalienable right of all
people and it is the duty and responsibility of the government to ensure none
of its citizens are denied access to quality education on the basis of
inability to pay. All the Oronsaye
committee has achieved with its report on education is to put the blame of the
collapse of public education on the victim: students and their poor working
class parents. Meanwhile it is government neo-liberal education policies
coupled with over 30 years of underfunding that is responsible for the collapse
of quality and standard in public education.
The
ERC warns that by introducing tuition fee, the already bad condition of public
education will take a sharp turn for the worse. Fees will soar beyond the
imaginable! With the situation of mass poverty amidst plenty, vast numbers of
students will drop out enmasse! Not just the working class but even big
sections of the middle class will find it hard to pay! Enrollment will fall!
The impact on teaching and non-teaching staff will also be phenomenal because
as enrollment drops so also would courses and programs be rationalized with the
grim prospect of retrenchment and job losses.
As
experience as shown, fee hikes more often than not does not translate to better
learning condition for either students or good working conditions for education
workers. We do not believe Nigeria has no money. Indeed Nigeria currently ahs
hundred times more than was had in the first and second republic when the
Nation made impressive advances in the expansion of access to public education.
The
ERC calls on government to mobilize Nigeria’s vast resources which is often
looted by political office holders and big business to begin to invest in
public education through a crash public program to rebuild facilities like
class rooms, lecture theatres, laboratories and libraries, hostel
accommodation, office for staff etc in all primary, secondary and tertiary
schools across the country.
This
if linked with mass employment of more teachers, lecturers and non-academic
staff with provision for in-service training and re-training and payment of a
living wage to all those who work in the educational sector can within a few
years begin to revive quality of standards in the education sector while in
turn laying a firm basis for the Nation’s economic development.
Hassan Taiwo
Soweto
National Coordinator,
Education Rights Campaign
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