Calls
For Nationwide Mass Protests to force an increase in the Budgetary Allocation
to Education
Press statement
The Education Rights
Campaign (ERC) strongly condemns the proposal of President Buhari-led Federal
Executive Council to allocate a paltry 7.04% of the 2018 budget to the
education sector. We hereby demand an upward review of the budgetary allocation
to education up to 26% as recommended by UNESCO, democratic management of
schools as well as the honoring of all agreements reached with unions in the
education sector.
There is no more doubt
that the Buhari-administration has only been paying lip service to the much
needed revitalization of this crucial, but ailing sector. We applaud the National
Association of Polytechnic Students (NAPS) and other groups for condemning the
budget but now is the time to move beyond talks.
Now that the 2018
budget proposal is yet to be passed into law, there is a chance to win an
upward increase in the allocation to education if we fight. Between now and
January 2018, we have a chance to stamp our feet on the ground and demand that
government does what is right. This would require a series of mass actions like
lecture boycotts, strikes and protest marches across the country and up to the
gate of the National Assembly to compel the lawmakers to increase the
allocation to education.
Therefore, we urge the
students unions, National Association of Nigerian Students (NANS), NAPS, NUT,
ASUU and other unions in the education sector not to fold their arms but to immediately
hold meetings of their organs and collectively call for mass actions involving
students, education workers, parents and members of the public. Such mass
actions which should take place on campuses must also move to the streets
nationwide and culminate in a mass occupation of the National Assembly as the
2018 budget proposals are being debated by lawmakers. Without doing this, the
public education sector will face serious challenges over the next one year as
a result of this paltry allocation.
The 2018 budget
proposal, presented to the National Assembly on Tuesday, 7th November, indicates
that a meagre N605.8 billion is earmarked for the funding of the education
sector, in spite of the widely acknowledged crises bedeviling the sector. As
with previous budgets, the proposed allocation to the education sector is a far
cry from the 26% budgetary allocation to education as recommended by UNESCO for
developing countries like Nigeria. On the surface, there appears to be a
fractional increase in the education budget compared to the N550 billion
earmarked for the sector in the present 2017 budget. But as Premium Times of
8th November reported: “Although the N605 billion allocated to the sector this
year is higher in naira terms than the N550 billion allocated in 2017, there is
a decrease in percentage terms.”
Against the backdrop of
collapse of public education in the country, the 2018 budget proposal, if
passed into law by the National Assembly, would further compound the problems
that students and education workers face on daily basis on account of
underfunding of public education. Already, managements of schools are
increasing fees astronomically, and the University of Benin is the latest
example in this regard. As experience has shown in schools where fees have been
astronomically increased, the policy of squeezing the pockets of parents dry in
order to run schools is indeed incapable of resuscitating moribund academic
facilities.
The budget has equally
exposed the insincerity of government in respect of its promises to meet the
demands of education workers’ unions, especially ASUU, for upward funding of
the education sector. This means that the government would continue to grapple
with industrial actions by these unions in the coming year, if the national
assembly fails to rectify this error and sufficiently increase the budget to education.
Days after this budget
was submitted to the National Assembly, the President delivered another
academic talk on the problems with the nation’s education system at the
Education Summit of the Federal Executive Council. We find it completely deceitful
of the President to diagnose same government-induced problems with the nation’s
education system, when the underfunding of this system is at the epicentre of
the Nigeria’s education crisis. Like the politicians before him, President
Buhari continues to draw a parallel line between quality education and national
growth, forgetting that there cannot be sustainable growth without a
value-creating human population.
However, students, education workers, and parents should draw the conclusion that the crops of capitalist ruling elites in this country are incapable of taking independent initiative to mould a desirable future for young people, and in effect, for this country. This is why together with fighting for save public education, we should also fight to replace all these failed anti-poor and anti-education capitalist politicians with a planned democratic socialist system under which the wealth of Nigeria can be publicly owned and democratically managed to finance free and functional education and other vital social services.
Hassan
Taiwo Soweto Ibukun
Omole
National
Coordinator (07033697259) National Secretary
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