Why North fails to close education gap with South
they teach”.
Nura’s position was corroborated by a school principal in north-western Zamfara State whose students recorded some of the worst results during the period under review.
“The whole education sector has been neglected for a long time. We have not been paying examination fees to the relevant bodies; some children have not even received their results years after taking the exams,” says the principal who did not want to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
He, however, noted that things had started to change since the inception of the current government last May. “Teachers’ welfare is now being improved, exam fees have been paid, and some kids have collected their results, and we have noticed an improvement.
“In my school, for instance, we have seen a very much improved results this year because of the new measures we are taking that include additional supervision and training of teachers,” he said.
‘We are worried about out of school children’
This investigation also showed that across the country, the number of students that sat for the school certificate exam between 2016 and 2018 fell by 3.1% or 52,000 children.
Again, it is the North that recorded the steepest decline in students who sat for the exam, with a drop of 3.7% or 23,916 less students that sat for the test.
The following chart also shows alarming figures for the South. Although it is improving in ratings, in 2018 the southern states tested 32,218 fewer students than in 2016.
The chart shows that only Abuja is growing the base of tested students.
It also shows that the North is actually falling behind rather than progressing. There is a growing concern that this could add to the growing number of outof-school children that is already at an alarming rate.
There are 10,193,918 million Nigerian children that are out of school according to the 2018 National Personnel Audit Report (NPA) on basic schools, released by the Universal Basic Education
Commission (UBEC) in December 2019; even though primary education is free and compulsory, the majority of them in the north of the country where the net attendance rate is 53%.
But the figure could be more than that, said president of the Senate Ahmed Lawan, when he hosted a group of northern leaders who visited him recently in Abuja.
“We are worried and concerned with educational deterioration in many parts of the country and especially the out-ofschool children who number about 11 million, some will tell you 14 million.
“Majority of these out-of-school children are in the northern part of Nigeria. And this is the highest in the world. It is not an enviable position.”
Different states across the region have introduced some measures, including increasing budgetary allocation to the sector, making basic education free with the distribution of uniforms and free meals in the effort to close the performance gap between them and some southern states. Raising school enrollment rate was also part of their objectives.
But educationist Nura Yahya argued that though the idea of free education was meant to encourage parents to send their kids to school, it is counterproductive as many parents in the North are unwilling to make the little investment that would eventually shape the future of their children.
“Most of the parents in this part of the country don’t do enough to complement what the government is doing by providing additional support to the children as they always look for cheap services when it comes to education.
“You still have children going to school without textbooks, coming late or missing classes and yet, you expect them to sit and pass exams? It’s not possible; we have to change our attitude toward education,” he stated.
He added that if the situation remained as it is in Kano, the economic capital of the region, the effects in smaller states like Zamfara, Kebbi or Jigawa would be
more discouraging.
The Boko Haram effect
Another factor that has stalled the educational progress in the region is the Boko Haram insurgency that led to the death of thousands and displaced millions of people, especially in the North-east over the last 10 years.
The abduction of dozens of school children by the insurgents has presented many parents with no option than to keep their kids at home or in displaced persons camps where the condition is not conducive for learning.
The UN estimates that in the three most affected states of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe, at least 802 schools have remained closed and 497 classrooms listed as destroyed, with another 1,392 damaged but repairable. WAEC data also shows that enrolment in the exam has also fallen in the Boko Haram strongholds.
Dilapidated infrastructure
Despite claims by several state governments that they are making additional investment in education, insiders say poor infrastructure has remained a key concern.
Many of the school buildings have not been repaired for years, leaving children to study in dilapidated classrooms and ill-equipped laboratories. Some even study under trees, especially in the rural areas.
A senior employee at UBEC, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the level of government investment in education is not enough.
“Inadequate learning materials, congested and dilapidated classrooms are the hallmark of public schools in northern Nigeria,” he said.
He added that the problem in the North is “worrisome and self-inflicted” because most state governments have failed to fulfill their electoral promises of improving the sector. He warned that the north-south divide “will continue to widen until a comprehensive action plan is adopted and implemented”.
Phantom contracts leave children learning on the floor
The federal government has budgeted billions of naira through UBEC as part of its educational intervention programmes across the country. The projects focus on building and equipping new and rehabilitating existing infrastructures.
But a recent investigation by this paper found that many of the multi-million naira contracts have either been partially executed or don’t exist at all.
Between 2010 and 2015, UBEC allocated N311 million to such projects across 29 schools in four area councils in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, as well as Keffi and Karu local government areas in Nasarawa State.
The area councils in the FCT are
Abuja Municipal Area Council, Abaji, Gwagwalada, and Kuje. Of the N311m allocation, N70m worth of projects could not be traced during this investigation in Abuja and Nasarawa.
Apart from the N311m projects in 29 schools, a “Comprehensive Special School in Keffi” had N500 million projects, said to have been executed, but the school could not be traced.
This is happening as children continue to learn in open, uncemented classrooms, and without toilets. It is a familiar situation in several other parts of the country.
‘Worrisome situation’
Experts are worried about the lasting impacts of these poorly executed or phantom contracts in the education sector and alleged diversion of money on the future of children that are at the receiving end.
Johnson Ibidapo of Human Development Initiative, a nongovernmental organisation, said the state of facilities was worrisome, given the fact that some of the projects were very recently executed.
“There is a misplacement of priority and misuse of meager funds available for administering basic education in Nigeria. This is largely responsible for the bad quality of projects delivered by project contractors,” he said.
Both Yahya and Ibidapo agreed that the UBEC intervention is grossly inadequate and that state governments should do more to complement the federal government’s efforts.
‘Quack teachers to be sacked’
The performance of students in school certificate exam tend to dominate national discourse whenever the annual results are released.
But the anger and frustration that usually come from states which tend to fare low and the families of the affected students have not sparked a change.
According to Yahya, the issue of unqualified and inadequate teachers has been on for decades but it doesn’t seem to go “beyond social media expressions or some expert analysis on conventional media.” However, the government said it plans to sack all unqualified teachers practicing in the country by the end of 2019.
The registrar, Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria, Olusegun Ajiboye, said during the graduation of over 200 education graduates of the University of Ibadan in 2019, that quacks teaching Nigerian children would be replaced by qualified and certified graduates to mould sound future leaders for the country.
“The federal government has directed that by December 31, 2019 all unqualified people practicing the teaching profession would be swept from the classroom and their places would be occupied by young and vibrant professional teachers like you,” he told the new graduates.
He added that education is the key to modernisation, but it is the teacher that holds it. He is the hub of any educational system and the major determinant of its quality.”
The statement may sound encouraging for parents and campaigners but Ajiboye did not give any details on how many quack teachers are under the government payroll and how it plans to replace them. What is clear though is that the WAEC figures have shown that the northern region is actually falling behind rather than progressing.
Some commentators argue that for the region to mount a serious challenge, it has to perform at a far better rate in terms of number of enrollments which will in turn result in a greater number of students sitting for the high schoolleaving exam and the number of students getting the requisite marks. But at the moment, it’s far short of that.