Education, constitutional responsibilities and governance in Nigeria (7)

“Government inertia or failure is not the greatest loss; the greatest loss is when educated minds fail to inspire the next generation.”.

 

LAST week, I started an examination of the last of the pathways to educational security which I describe as the “peculiar Nigerian factors”. These are population growth, the attitude of Nigerians to giving and the role of alumni associations. In relation to population growth, I advocated that government should limit couples to two children per family. When China was faced with similar issues of population growth it adopted a limit of one child per family.  In 2100, the population of Nigeria is projected to reach 545 million. That is quite a lot and is well above the population of approximately 38,000,000 people recorded in 1950. These numbers are worrying. Reporting on the astronomic growth of the population in Nigeria, Elizabeth Rosenthal in an article titled “Nigeria tested by rapid rise in population” published in the April 14th 2012 edition of the New York Times stated as follows:

“In a quarter-century, at the rate Nigeria is growing, 300 million people — a population about as big as that of the present-day United States — will live in a country roughly the size of Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada. In this commercial hub, where the area’s population has by some estimates nearly doubled over 15 years to 21 million, living standards for many are falling…As graduates pour out of high schools and universities, Nigeria’s unemployment rate is nearly 50 percent for people in urban areas ages 15 to 24 — driving crime and discontent…Last October, the United Nations announced the global population had breached seven billion and would expand rapidly for decades, taxing natural resources if countries cannot better manage the growth….Nigeria, already the world’s sixth most populous nation with 167 million people, is a crucial test case, since its success or failure at bringing down birthrates will have outsize influence on the world’s population. If this large nation rich with oil cannot control its growth, what hope is there for the many smaller, poorer countries?”

 

Philanthropy and Attitude of Nigerians to giving.

Over the ages, educational institutions, libraries and healthcare facilities have been funded through gifts from kind-hearted people. It is a historical fact that universities did not start off with the government of yesteryears. In fact, universities were started by people who wanted to learn as a result of which they pooled themselves together. Right from the outset, students paid their teachers what was then referred to as “collectio” meaning “a gift” rather than salary. Later, such collectio i.e. gift got transformed into salary.

Historically, universities, including the University at Constantinople which was founded in 2BC, were all cooperation of students and were founded by philanthropists and kind-hearted people.This ancient practice was followed by universities like Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Stanford and indeed the Ivy League Universities which were founded by kind-hearted individuals like Stanford and Harvard.

 

Philanthropic gestures of the missionaries

Coming back home, we owe the earliest secondary schools to the missionaries; the Church Missionary Society (CMS), the Baptist, Methodist, Roman Catholic Church, Presbyterian, Sudan Interior Mission. Some of the elders here today and the teachers of younger ones are beneficiaries of the philanthropy of these missionaries. One would have expected that the younger generations would learn from the acts of these philanthropists and demonstrate the benefits of philanthropy by giving handsomely to Universities. Regrettably, the average Nigerian does not believe in giving. Consequently, while the government cannot meet the directive of UNESCO in funding universities up to 26 per cent of their budget, the people also have failed to make donations and gifts to universities. The universities are therefore starved of funds as government alone cannot provide the funds needed for quality functional education.

I, therefore, call on the government to honestly tell the public that they must change their attitude to giving and do what other countries do. They must change their attitude to giving and endow universities with professorial chairs, scholarships, buildings etc.

 

Place of alumni in the running of universities

An alumnus of a university is a child of the university that trained the student. One expects an alumnus to recognise and treat the university the same way he treats the biological father. One expects a good child to cater for both the biological father and the university which is the other father. I recall my invitation by the Alumni of the University College Hospital, Ibadan at 50. My research showed that the university had turned out thousands of Medical graduates. I also observed that they were celebrating the 50th Anniversary in a Hall built by government when they were students. I challenged them on their contribution both to the University and the Hospital and added that if they had been donating only 10 per cent of their yearly income to endowment, both the Hospital and the university would have billions of naira in their account including structures where they could proudly hold the Anniversary celebration.

Another example is the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, which from 1963 /1964 to 2014/2015 has produced a total number of  136,270 postgraduate and undergraduate students. Assuming only 75 per cent of these graduates appreciate their obligation to the university and support the university with only N10,000 a year, the total monetary support to the university will be N1,022,020,000.00 In the last 10 years, it would be close to N10,220,200,000.00. My view therefore is that, if those who have passed through   universities appreciate their obligation to their alma mata, education would’ve become more accessible, affordable and available with less dependence on government’s subvention.

 

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I believe that due to gaps in the Nigerian Constitution, lack of sustained government funding of education, failure to incentivise private sector investment in education and the peculiar Nigerian factors, the current path to attaining educational security in Nigeria is narrow and difficult.  But all hope is however not lost.  All stakeholders in the education sector have pivotal, sacred and indispensable roles to play in contributing their voices, ideas and opinions to debates on how qualitative education can be more accessible, available and affordable in Nigeria. Government inertia or failure is not the greatest loss, the greatest loss is when educated minds fail to inspire the next generation.

 

AARE AFE BABALOLA SAN, CON, OFR, LL.D.Litt

 

To be continued……