The State of Education in Nigeria (Part 1)

By

Leonard Karshima Shilgba

shilgba@gmail.com

 

For years now I have written about certain necessary reforms that are required to make Nigeria’s education globally attractive, competitive, and functional (by which I mean the type of education that is designed to equip beneficiaries with the skills that are needed in our economic and social sectors of development). In this essay, which is the first in a series, I would focus on the integrity of national examinations. But let me first clear up some weeds. Some have alleged “falling standard of education” in Nigeria, which they struggle to define coherently. There are critics who allege that standard of education in Nigeria has fallen because “many Nigerian graduates cannot make simple sentences in English language, orally or in writing.” To them, “speaking good English language” is a sign of high standard of education. Interestingly, some of those critics don’t write in or speak the language very well either. I affirm that functional education is not measured by writing or speaking proficiency in a language (including our darling English language, the language of colonialism), but by the quality of thought in solving real-life problems of the society.

 Nigeria has some of the brightest minds on earth, who even under stressful conditions of learning (e.g. unstable electricity, lack of potable water in some schools or on college campuses, absence of high-speed internet, etc.) manage to acquire and demonstrate skills that are in high demand in the world.  Recently (this year), it was announced at a gathering in South Africa that Nigeria is among the top three countries in the world with the most use of the google search engine to look up information on the net. Many Nigerian students are in possession of smart phones, which they have turned to virtual libraries and tools of learning—taking screen shots of literature and lecture notes, downloads of e-books, transmission of notes, etc. They are equipped with current information on the various courses or subjects they study in their schools and on their campuses. Our primary and secondary school students today are exposed to information and skills sets in their schools that many of those critics were not exposed to when they were their age.

There are Nigerian critics who agree that Nigeria is offering “expired education”. The foundation of college or university education is primary/secondary education. Many of our secondary school graduates that have been admitted to study in some of the best universities in the world are not first “quarantined” in programs code-named: “detoxification of Nigeria’s expired education” before they start as freshmen in their choice degree programs. The numbers of foreign universities that hunt in Nigeria for candidates for their universities keep growing by the year; this should put a lie on the claim that we are producing bad products from our schools. Furthermore, graduates of Nigerian universities have proceeded to their graduate programs in universities around the world, and achieved high performance, even winning awards. What is the problem with some of my Nigerian colleagues that they fall over themselves to injure their country with “fake news” (apologies to President Trump)? What we need, which I have written copiously about, is to improve management selection in our schools by making it globally competitive, adopt better practice and theory of quality assurance, and increase funding of public education in order to provide more facilities to conveniently accommodate the ever growing number of Nigerian students. If these are done, our students will achieve more. But I would stand firmly against vicious propaganda against Nigeria’s education, which is highly variegated, with handsome quality investment by the private sector.

In Nigeria, just like in other countries of the world, we have different classes of schools (from primary to tertiary)—upmarket schools and the lowly ones; super-equipped and funded schools and the averagely funded and equipped ones; very expensive schools and the cheap ones; and schools that offer the American style education, Nigerian style, and other styles of education. These all represent the various strengths and weaknesses that could be imputed to our education. And we can only seek and advocate improvements; but it is a disservice to use one dark and dirty brush on Nigeria’s education. By the way, thousands of university and college dons in Nigeria are well-exposed and have studied and taught in some of the best universities of the world. Some of them are deans of schools/faculties, department chairs, and directors of academic planning units of their universities or colleges in Nigeria. It is very unfair to claim that those people do not know how to instigate or do not instigate updated curricula for programs of study.  

In Nigeria, the National Business and Technical Examinations Board (NABTEB), West African Examination Council (WAEC), National Examination Council (NECO), and Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) all conduct examinations that are used to select candidates for admission into universities, polytechnics, and other tertiary colleges. The integrity of their examinations matter, and determine the quality of students that slip from secondary schools/technical colleges into our institutions of tertiary education. I understand that during registration for NABTEB, WAEC, and NECO examinations, some candidates are required (and with the joyful collaboration of their parents at times) to pay extra sums, which are called “understanding fees” or some other weird name. These are meant to facilitate fraud in the examination halls, with the full cooperation of the examination supervisors and proctors, who are well compensated for their complicity. Those students, who may end up with fantastically excellent results in those examinations are usually exposed when they get into our tertiary schools. About two years ago, most of the freshmen of a faculty (school) in a Nigerian university were placed on probation after the first year, having earned a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of less than 1.5 on a scale of 5.0. This “understanding fees” syndrome must stop. I call on the Management of those examinations agencies to take practical steps to stop this. As chairman of the Governing Board of NABTEB, having just officially entered upon this office, I pledge to not knowingly allow this, and to openly name, shame and punish whosoever will sell themselves to work such evil in our education system.  I ask those concerned to pledge the same for WAEC and NECO. We must preserve the integrity of our examinations; and as for me and NABTEB we shall be loyal to this cause. Any university, polytechnic, or college would find NABTEB examinations reliable, and students’ performance in them true reflection of their abilities. I hope WAEC and NECO would openly say so.

Nigerian parents, why would you pay for fraud? Why would you pay for your children to be “helped” to pass WAEC, NECO, or NABTEB examinations? Do you know that you are doing damage to your children? They will be exposed at a point! The Federal Government gave the deadline of 2015 for NABTEB, NECO, and JAMB to migrate from the Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) format to Computer Based Test (CBT) format. Until now, only JAMB has complied, thus making their examinations more credible. NABTEB must be next. Besides reducing operational costs (when MCQ question booklets and Optical Mark Readers are all excluded), students’ performance in essay-type examinations could be benchmarked against their performance in CBT. For instance, the geometric means of the scores in CBT and essay-type examination for mathematics would be the final score. Accordingly, if a student scores, for instance, 30% in mathematics CBT and 80% in essay-type, their final score would be 49%, which is the square root of 2,400 (product of 30 and 80). There must be a pretty correlation between CBT and essay type.