MASS FAILURE IN WASSCE MAY/JUNE 2014

                           

A Reflection of the Failure of Government Neo-Liberal and Anti-Poor Education Policies

13/08/2014

                                                                Press Statement

Just like previous examinations, this year's West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) recorded a dismal failure with just 31.28% of the 529, 425 candidates obtaining credits in five subjects including Mathematics and English. 

The failure has been described variously as "massive". In our view at the Education Rights Campaign (ERC), this result is nothing short of an absolute disaster. 

However, far from being the fault of the individual candidates, this disastrous result is a reflection of the failure of the anti-poor and capitalist neo-liberal policies of education underfunding and commercialization by government at all levels in the country.

Government at all levels has pursued a relentless policy of starving public education of funds such that public secondary and primary schools across the country have become devastated with little or no teaching infrastructures such that no useful learning are taking place. Where funds are released through budgetary allocations, the Universal Basic Education (UBE) schemes and others, they are routinely siphoned and mismanaged by politicians, officials of the Education Ministry and the UBE, contractors as well as the appointed heads of schools. The cumulative result of all this is the recurrent mass failure that we are experiencing in external examinations as well as the decline in the quality and standard of education generally.

We place the blame for this failure on the shoulders of the President Jonathan Federal Government as well as the State Governors whose anti-poor education policies are mortgaging the future of the Nation's youth. 

If President Jonathan government is any serious, this recurrent mass failure should serve as a wakeup call to inject more public funds, starting with the UNESCO recommendation of at least 26% of annual budget, into rehabilitating public schools and providing all the required facilities and infrastructures required in a 21st century education sector. All schools must be placed under democratic management such that teachers, parents, the pupils and communities have a say in how funds are utilized and on which projects unlike the present practice where appointed school heads and principals rule with impunity. 

This should be followed immediately by a declaration of free education at all levels and an immediate step to improve the wages and conditions of teachers and a program to begin the retraining of teachers in service and employment of more hands to bridge the yawning teacher: pupil ratio.

The Colleges of Education which are the training grounds for teachers have to be better funded and provisioned as the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU) have been demanding for years. A general improvement in the wages and conditions of teachers will immediately attract the best hands into the sector while the non-discriminatory improvement and upgrade in the facilities of all public primary and secondary schools whether located in rural areas or cities will ensure that teachers are not discouraged from accepting transfer to certain schools for reasons of their location.

None of the steps itemized above are impossible. Nigeria is more than capable, by virtue of the inestimable resources and wealth at her command, to reposition public education within the next few years. If these enormous resources at the command of the Nation are publicly and judiciously managed and ploughed into pro-working people social programs, much of the developmental problems of the Nation including the crises of public education can be surmounted in a few years.

Unfortunately capitalist politicians of the likes of President Jonathan, the 36 State governors and that of the Federal Capital Territory reside in a planet far apart from the people they rule. By virtue of their access to our collective wealth, these elements can afford to send their own children to expensive private schools within and outside the country such that they have little or no motivation to clean up the mess which their failed neo-liberal policies have created in the public education sector.

Further hampering the possibility of repositioning public education in Nigeria is the system of capitalism which all political parties in power at Federal and State levels subscribe to. By virtue of its prioritization of profit over people's needs, capitalism is the greatest obstacle to the possibility of harnessing and utilizing Nigeria's enormous wealth to transform public education and banish mass poverty. This is why the ERC canvasses for a socialist transformation of Nigeria such that the key sectors of the economy are publicly owned and democratically managed to ensure that the collective wealth of Nigeria is utilized for the repositioning of public education and other social amenities.

To achieve this requires the building of a powerful mass movement to fight against anti-poor education policies and a workers political party to take political power. These are the twin focus of the Education Rights Campaign (ERC) in the present period and it is why we are actively in support of the formation of the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN) by the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM).

Hassan Taiwo Soweto

National Coordinator

07033697259

Michael Ogundele

National Secretary

2014 ERC FREE HOLIDAY COACHING COMMENCES

A decade of uninterrupted exercise for poor children from working class background

By Moshood Oshunfurewa and Benjamin Osigwe

The Education Rights Campaign (ERC) Ajegunle branch has kick-started this year's annual free holiday coaching for students of secondary schools in Ajegunle and its environs. This year's free holiday coaching is the tenth edition so far. The coaching is taking place at the Anglican Primary School, 1 Ezie Lane off boundary road Ajegunle, Apapa, Lagos.

This selfless service of ERC and socialist students/youth members of the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) was initiated in Lagos State in 2004 to support children of the downtrodden working class in the slum of Ajegunle, Nigeria. 

Students registering for the coaching

This year free coaching started on the 4th of August, 2014 with turnout of 79 students on the opening day. This includes 21 students in SS1, 19 in SS2 and 39 in SS3 including some students that will be taking West Africa Examination (WAEC)-private. 17 volunteer teachers were also in attendance.

This coaching is part of the campaign of the ERC to demonstrate to Nigeria's capitalist government that free and quality education from primary level to tertiary level is possible. If Nigeria's stupendous natural and human resources are adequately used, democratically managed and controlled by the working people, free education will not only be possible at the primary level but up to the tertiary level as well.

Today, public education in Nigeria is chronically underfunded and mismanaged - a consequence of the brutal neo-liberal capitalist policies. This has made the education sector a ground of incessant industrial action with attendant spiral negative effects.

The ERC campaigns for the provision of free, functional and democratically-managed public education at all levels. We support all struggles of students and education workers for improvement in working conditions, better pay, against fee hike and commercialisation and for an end to infringement on democratic rights on campuses. In communities such as Ajegunle, we work actively among school students and teachers to campaign for the renovation of school buildings, stoppage of illegal charges and improvement in the teaching and learning facilities. The free holiday coaching while it provides opportunity for indigent students to attend coaching classes during the long-term holiday also helps to highlight the abandoning of public education especially in poor communities like Ajegunle and puts a search light on the activities of the authorities in charge of the schools.

A Class Session in Progress

On the first day of the coaching, three classes for each of the three senior classes (SS1, SS2 and SS3), was taken for the day. It commenced exactly 9am to 1:20 pm.

The coaching had been preceded by intensive mobilization with active involvement of comrades at the branch level of DSM. Some students that attended the coaching in previous years also took part in the mobilization exercise which covered both public and private schools in Ajeromi, Ifelodun, Apapa, Mile 2, Orile, Badia and Wilmer.

Subjects taken for this year are English Language, Mathematics, Civic Education, Government, Chemistry, Biology, Commerce, Financial Account, Geography, Further Mathematics, Christian Religion Study (CRS), Islamic Religion Study (IRS), French Language, Physics, Literature in English, Agricultural Science, and Yoruba Language.

Each of these subjects has three to four volunteer teachers. The success story about this year's exercise is that three of our previous students in the past years that are in the university are now currently participating as volunteer teachers.

During the break time, all students at the opening day were addressed on the purpose of organizing the free holiday coaching while the Education Rights Campaign’s anthem was sang by all.

UNILAG: Struggle for the Reinstatement of the Students' Union and a New Constitution

By Femi Adebajo and Joshua Olamide (ERC UNILAG.)

After several years of agitation for the restoration of the students' Union at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), the management of the institution has now decided to inaugurate a constitution drafting committee to draft “a suitable constitution" as a step for reinstating a central students platform for the university.

Meanwhile the composition of the committee is undemocratic as all its members were selected by the management without any opportunity for the mass of students to have a say. Also observers are not allowed into the meetings of the committee.

It could be recalled that the Students’ Union of UNILAG was proscribed about a decade ago. Since then the students have been without a platform to fight for their rights on campus. However, with several outbreaks of protests in the university in the past few years, it soon became clear that a platform of students is urgently needed to defend students' rights on campus. 

The decision by the school authorities to begin the process of returning the union at this period cannot but be related to the series of students' protests in the recent time. Starting with the protest against the arbitrary change of the name of the university to Moshood Abiola University by President Goodluck Jonathan on "democracy day" in May 2012, to the protest against inflated prices of commodities in the university community in 2013, which was also followed by a protest by Theater Art students against harassment, and lastly the recent protest against extortion of students over late course registration. These protests have something in common which is that they were effective but lack leadership, and students had however used each protest as an opportunity to agitate for the return of the students' union.

However while conceding to the growing mood for the return of the Union, the management has other agenda. From all indications, it seems clear that the management is scheming to install a union that will be pliant, pro-management and unable to defend students interests. For instance, the management has been pushing for a model known as the Students' Representative Council (SRC) to be adopted as an alternative to the students union.

To us in the UNILAG chapter of the Education Rights Campaign (ERC), we have openly condemned this model in our statement released on campus. Our argument is that this model is meant to detach the mass of students from having full and direct control of the union and the leadership. The proposed structure of the SRC being pushed forward by the management is nothing different from the current Council of Faculty Presidents, the only difference will be to increase the number of the members. Under this model, only a select few elected into the SRC will run the Union while the mass of students will be no more than spectators. Also this model will allow the management to easily interfere and control the union.

However before the UNILAG students’ union was proscribed, it had an SRC but the SRC as well as the Executive and all other arms of the union were answerable to the Congress. The congress allows all matriculated students of the University to control their union, discipline any erring officers and formulate the activities, programs and direction of the union. This alternative model which the ERC is pushing forward is the best way to ensure that the new UNILAG Students Union will be independent of the management and capable of defending students interests.

The university authorities also informed the general public that they sent some delegations to countries like Ghana, South Africa, Russia among others to study the mode of students’ unionism and according to their reports, the SRC seemed to be the best that UNILAG should adopt.

No doubt, the authorities ventured into a wasteful voyage looking for a model for UNILAG students when the solution to the problem is here at home. Indeed there is no need to go to the moon. The starting point of the work of the constitution review committee should be the old constitution of the proscribed UNILAG Students Union. This constitution still exists. It is our conviction that if the same constitution successfully guided the UNILAG Students Union for decades before its proscription, then there is no reason why the same constitution cannot be adopted for the new union waiting to be restored.

To raise the consciousness of students on the plan of the management to impose the SRC model, the ERC produced thousands of leaflets and circulated them in various hostels and faculties calling on students to agitate for reinstatement of the students union. Our leaflets have drawn students support towards us and we believe it is also part of the reason some members of the committee called congresses days ago ostensibly to take students views on the model they want.

The congresses took place at the Faculty of Art, King Jaja hostel, Eni-Njoku hostel and Shodeinde hostel. Members of the ERC participated fully at all the centres except Shodeinde hostel because our members there were yet to resume. We participated alongside our leaflets and Socialist Democracy (paper of the Democratic Socialist Movement). At all the centres, where we intervened, our position was made clear and we urged students not to have illusions that the union would be restored on a platter of gold but it would involve relentless mass struggle. This point is very important because this is not the first time the Management has embarked on constitution review and nothing came out of the previous exercises. In 2008, a constitution drafting committee was set up which at the end of its work submitted a draft constitution but till this moment the management has failed to inaugurate the union. 

The ERC calls for a mass-based, independent and democratic students union whose leadership is answerable to students and positioned to defend students and workers interest. We also call for a union whose leadership must derive its legitimacy from the mass of the students through a free and fair election devoid of management's interference. Our position for a constitution that defines the role of the central executive alongside the parliament, judiciary and Congress as organs of the union was widely supported by students. At the end of the meeting, students moved to our stall to get copies of our papers. 4 copies of the Socialist Democracy were sold and 3 students put down their names to join the ERC.

REVERSAL OF LASU FEES: WE ARE VINDICATED!

Vigilance is Now Required From LASU Students and Workers To Ensure That This Victory is Permanent

11/08/2014

Press Statement

The Education Rights Campaign (ERC) wholeheartedly welcomes the reversal of the astronomically hiked fees of the Lagos State University (LASU) by Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola, the Governor of Lagos State. The Governor made this known at the 19th convocation ceremony of the University held on Thursday 7 August 2014.

However eternal vigilance is now required from LASU students and workers to ensure that this victory is permanent. This is important because the experience of Okada riders and other oppressed masses in Lagos is instructive to note that the Lagos State APC-led government is a viciously anti-poor government that can grant concessions in the run-up to elections only to withdraw them once they have comfortably returned to the saddle.

Equally instructive is the fact that right at the convocation ceremony where Governor Fashola announced reversal of the fees, protesting members of the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) who were demanding improvement in their working condtions were teargassed. This should be a warning to all LASU students that regardless of the reversal, the anti-poor mentality and mindset of the Lagos State government remains unchanged. The ERC therefore calls on students to actively support the members of SSANU and every other unions agitating for improvement in their conditions because without these unions' solidarity, the struggle for reversal of the fees would not have been won.

In any case the ERC considers the decision of the Lagos State Government to reverse the fees as a vindication of our uncompromising demand for immediate and unconditional reversal of the anti-poor fees. This was not an easy or benevolent decision on the part of the Lagos State government. The State government was forced to concede by an unrelenting and prolonged mass struggle which saw many students brutalised, arrested and detained. Indeed left to Governor Fashola and as he made clear on many occasions, the fee hike was a forgone conclusion.

However as the ERC often told the students of LASU, no mountain is immovable once the people are resolved and resolute to move it. Not for one moment did the ERC lose hope that it was possible to win total reversal of the fees. Our hope and enthusiasm was based on the complete unpopularity of the fee hike among Lagosians and Nigerians as well as our undying faith in the capacity of working people and students to change their conditions if they so will it. Indeed to show the power of the working class, the strikes of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) LASU chapter and the Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) LASU chapter were additional pressures that compelled the government to concede. This is why the ERC often canvasses for the unity of education workers and students to struggle for their rights.

From September 2011 when the anti-poor Lagos State government jerked up the fees of LASU from N25,000 to betweem N193,750 to N348,750, the ERC had been playing frontline roles in campaigning for the reversal of the fees. However in January 2014 in the aftermath of a protest by 1, 292 students who were denied access to write examinations due to inability to pay the criminally high fees, the ERC played a pivotal role in launching a broad platform called #SaveLASU Campaign Movement which comprised the Lagos State University Students Union (LASUSU), National Union of Lagos State Students (NULASS) and radical students of the University.

It was under the #SaveLASU campaign with ERC playing a leading role that the struggle to reverse the fees began. A protest was held to the State House of Assembly on Tuesday 18 February 2014. Also a public symposium was held which had the likes of Barrister Mohammed Fawehinmi as a lead speaker. Also a roaring social media under the hastag #SaveLASU was launched all of which combined to force the issue of the fee hike to the frontburner such that the State government could not ignore the issue much longer especially in the run-up to the 2015 general elections.

No matter how the Lagos State government may want to present its decision to reverse the fees, it is obvious that this is a crushing defeat for the government and the All Progressive Congress (APC) and their cynical policy of playing "progressive" while implementing rightwing and anti-poor policies.

Indeed the public needs to remember that this present victory was heralded by series of small retreats by the State government. After the ERC and #SaveLASU had succeeded in forcing to the frontburner the issue of fee hike as the central cause of the militant students protest of January 22 and 23, 2014, the State government decided to drop its agenda to victimise students and charge reparation fees. Instead the government announced the release of a sum of N51million Naira to repair all University properties allegedly damaged during the protest. That was the first victory. The second victory came much later on Wednesday June 11 2014 when the State government agreed to reduction of the fees ranging from 34% to 60%.

However despite all these concessions, the Education Rights Campaign (ERC) and the #SaveLASU Campaign Movement remained resolute on the demand for total and unconditional reversal of the fees. We believed that the starting point for LASU to become affordable for all was for the criminally hiked fees to be reversed completely without conditons. We also believed that Nigeria and indeed Lagos was rich enough to provide free, functional and democratically-managed public education at all levels. Unfortunately what has made this impossible despite the huge and inestimable resources at the behest of Nigeria is the neo-liberal and anti-poor capitalist philosophy of the APC and PDP ruling elite who see education not as a social responsibility but as a profit venture.

We wish to congratulate all LASU students and workers for this victory. We thank all members of the #SaveLASU Campaign Movement, the Lagos State University Students Union (LASUSU), the National Union of Lagos State Students (NULASS), Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) LASU chapter, Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU) LASU Chapter, all other staff unions in LASU, Joint Action Front (JAF), civil society organisations in Lagos, professional bodies, CLEEN Foundation and Barrister Mohammed Fawehinmi, electronic and print media as well as many others that space may not permit us to mention for their support and roles they played. This victory is for all people who believe in the principle of free, public-funded and democratically-managed education.

The victory against LASU fee hike is a single important event in the student movement over the last decade. Students at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU) and other campuses where fees have been hiked have a lot to learn from the struggle in LASU. One central lesson they must learn is that struggle pays and that when the oppressed masses fight for their right, they can win.

However the struggle to make education affordable and accessible to all does not end with this victory.  So far anti-poor political parties like the All Progressive Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) continue to determine our fate, there will be no end to anti-poor policies like fee hike and education commercialisation. Indeed, this current victory in the struggle for reversal of LASU fees will be immediately threatened if the APC and/or the PDP come to power in Lagos in 2015.

Permanent victory can only be won in the struggle for free, functional and democratically-managed public education when we rid ourselves of these anti-poor political parties and instead put in power at the States and Federal level a genuine political party that represents the interests of the workers, poor masses, youth and students. This is why the ERC is supporting the formation of the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN) launched by the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) and which is currently seeking registration from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). We urge all those who laboured day and night to campaign for the reversal of LASU fees to join us in the Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN) so that together we can work for the total and complete liberation of Nigeria from the stranglehold of capitalism.

                                                                                        

Hassan Taiwo Soweto                                                             Michael Ogundele                               

National Coordinator                                                            National Secretary                             

07033697259