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The Farce Called Presidential Education Forum By Kola Ibrahim
One is filled with unprecedented disgust seeing the deception and sheer display of contempt for the wish of the people by the present set of highly corrupt political ruling class in this country. In semi-civilized societies, a forum in which the president of a nation is present represents is meant to be a serious deliberation. Unfortunately in Nigeria, a gathering involving of this kind is regarded as a waste of time by seriously minded individuals and as a pastime by the government officials. This scenario represents the just concluded Presidential Forum on Education held on 28th October, 2006, which can otherwise be termed as another “Night (sorry Afternoon) of a thousand laughs”.
From the start, it is glaring that the forum was organized by the minister of education to rubberstamp the condemned and already rejected neo-liberal policies especially that of the privatization of the unity schools. Aside the fact that the forum was poorly organized without adequate publicity to involve the general public; the venue of the forum – presidential banquet hall – reflects the fact that the forum is a gathering to gag unsuspecting and some jobless people to their agenda. How many Nigerians, associations, civil societies, unions can have access to the banquet hall? The forum only represent government officials (duplicated to have the whole place filled up), contractors (under the guise of stakeholders and parents), businessmen and women, state security officials, politicians, sycophants like the purportedly announced NANS president – Femi Osabinu, and some uninformed unionists. Government itself which claimed to have evolved from democratic wishes of the people could not announce the yardstick for inviting those in the forum.
Furthermore, the arrangement of the forum in terms of democracy is also questionable. You have a situation in which the president is the invitee, the organizer, the lead speaker, the moderator and the judge while people are only allowed to express their views while the government has its way! Not only this, the forum lacks a sincere historical and factual analysis of the state of education since only the minister has the singular opportunity of fully addressing the gathering, while unions like ASUU, NUT, ASCSN, etc which have registered consistent disagreements on education issues were expected to only speak for three minutes! One would have expected such a forum to be at least a week of deliberation and discussion, and final voting on major and minor issues concerning education by genuine stakeholders. Aside this is the basic fact that there is no authority to back the forum resolution. Or what would the government say is the preponderance of ideas? One of the issues of debate in the education sector is that of democratization of decision making in the sector to include genuine stakeholders – staff, parents and students, how can an undemocratic forum evolve a democratically managed education sector?
And what are the issues of debate – the decay in the education sector. While the minister lamented wildly on the state of educational decay, she could not give a reasonable source of the decay; she only rigmarole on the issues just to raise the emotions of the invited and use the emotions to hammer on their agenda – commercialization and privatization of education. For instance the same minister who said that all institutions of learning, from primary to tertiary are very backward in terms of physical infrastructures, human capital (teachers), facilities (like libraries, computer facilities, etc) also concluded that funding is not the basic problem, while she kept mum on the question of democratic management of funds for schools. But she failed to inform us whether they will use direct labour of prisoners to provide these non-existing facilities and infrastructures in schools. Rather than to admit that there has been chronic under funding of education especially by the present government of Obasanjo which averagely has been less than 8 percent of the budget she only tried to praise her master by giving a false impression that the budget for education has been annually increased. Yet she failed to inform the same sycophantic gathering that UNESCO had recommended 26% of budget as minimum for developing economies like Nigeria; she failed to inform the public that the budget for education has been less than one percent of the nation’s GDP which is one of the least in Africa (even less than that of war-torn countries like Somalia, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, etc). She failed to inform the gathering that despite about $200 billion that has accrued to the coffer of the country just less than 5 percent of this amount has been spent on education while more than 20 percent has been and is being used to service debt. She forgot to inform them that despite the so-called improved budget, Nigeria still had to depend on loans and grants from multilateral organizations for the so-called UBE programme. Today, despite the so-called improved spending on education, hardly can you see any teacher using computer or internet facility. Yet, we want to catch up with advanced economies in the next 15 years!
The president, while responding to the plea of the Senate Chairman on Education to maintain the present levy in the unity schools, said that the unity schools are already privatized since the process of admission is fraught with nepotism, and that those in the schools can afford the fees even if increased. This argument is funny and in fact unfortunate for the fact that it was expressed by the president of a nation. Is the president telling us that the unity schools are meant for the children of the rich? If the president had admitted that the schools had been privatized, should the business continue as usual? Has the president forgotten that he had admitted earlier that over 60% of the population is living in absolute poverty or is he saying that those mass of people do not need education? Fearing the continued anger of the public, the president and his minister changed tune on privatization, but how they want to reform the unity schools, they perambulated and reverted back to privatization. According to the president, government will only regulate the policies guiding the unity schools while private individuals will manage the schools. Will the private individuals run the schools based on welfarist policy (upon which the unity schools are founded) or based on business interests (profit-motive) of the private concerns who will want to extract as much as possible profit from the schools will reducing the cost of running the schools. In fact, no serious business concern will spend the huge long term fund needed to run the private schools to standards without going bankrupt.
The president was also silent on the funding policy. Is it the regulating bodies or the managers? If it is the private manager, then government must be asked what the meaning of privatization is. If it is the government, that is another name of fraud and open day robbery of Nigerians, because it means the private managers will only become government contractors, gaining huge profit from crises in the unity schools. This also runs contrary to the principle of governance because this means that the government can not put its house in order and thus such government does not worth existing. If it is a joint venture, it means that government is subsidizing the private sector from gaining huge profit at the expense of the public since the facilities on ground (the physical infrastructures) which is worth more than the private sector can pay. This also means open robbery of Nigeria. The simple fact is that government just wants to compensate its bootlickers and political family by giving out the huge physical facilities at token fees, while destroying the legacy of organized unionism in these schools. This is another name for robbery, fraud and deception!
The government unfortunate under funding of education has led to lack of morale among academic and non academic workers, frustration and lack of interest in uninteresting education system by students, brain drain tertiary institutions, lopsidedness in education policies (since they are meant to conceal the problems of under funding of education sector) among several other results. This has resulted in low quality of education and consequently affected the examination conduct and standards since it has become the survival of the fittest. Also, the admission processes have led to pure malpractices and means of extortion by the undemocratic school administrators. This process has begun since the late seventies, formalized and structured in to the system by the military regimes of SAP and now crystallized by the present neo-liberal government of Olusegun Obasanjo. Unlike what the minister said, under funding is the central question confronting education sector today, and unless the sector is massively funded by the government and democratically managed by genuine stakeholders like staff unions, parent associations, students’ unions and civil societies and not by bureaucrats, business men and IMF/World Bank/CIA agents, the problems facing education cannot be resolved .
However, the present government which emerged from subjugation of the wish of the people and which is bent on implementing neo-liberal policies cannot genuinely fund education properly. Even the little being spent on education are being diverted to private pockets by politicians and bureaucrats at federal, state and local government levels. For instance, while the fund from federal government for UBE projects are being cornered by politician contractors, businessmen and expatriates, the little reaching states are being looted by politicians at various state boards of the UBEC. This has meant that thousands of pupils will have no access to books and laboratory materials while millions will be excluded from schools. The present highly corrupt government cannot fund education properly if they want to get enough money to steal. The Obasanjo government and its clones in states and local governments only want to shrink the budget in order to maintain financial balance so that multinational financial institutions can come in and exploit the cheap resources and cheap labour of the country, and further plunge the national economy for their profit interests. Furthermore, shrinking budget on education health, agriculture, etc, provide unprecedented wealth for politicians to loot. The examples of PTDF, NPA, etc are too glaring even for the blind and dumb.
Consequently, unless the education workers’ unions like ASUU, SANNU, NASU, COEASU, ASUP, ASUTON, NUT, ASCSN, etc and other workers’ and students’ unions (like NLC, TUC and CFTU) should take the issues beyond the isolated issues. They must form platforms with radical organizations that will fight for proper funding education by at least 26% of the budget coupled with democratic management by unions. If at least 20 percent of the almost $200 billion oil wealth of the country has been used to fund education, there may not be the need for the minister to cry wolf on education today! The unions must form democratic platforms at local, state, regional and national levels to combat all the neo-liberal policies that have impacted huge economic and social injuries on vast majority of the working population.
Also, the unions, pro-democracy organizations, radical movements and parties must know that only a radical, democratic and revolutionary government committed to the welfare of people that can resolve the problems of education, other social services and the economy as a whole. Such government will ensure minimum wage not greater than that of workers for politicians while massively funding social services like education, health, agriculture, etc and provide job for all citizens, living and adequate wage and pension for workers, etc. Such a government must nationalized the commanding height of the economy – which is being privatized for few moneybags and multinational vampires – which will provide the huge wealth needed to fund these social project. Therefore a radical workers’ party must be formed to champion the demand for democratic socialism that will achieve these goals. The movements towards the left in Latin American countries like Venezuela and Bolivia is an example of what a radical government can achieve. This is the only long term way forward!
KOLA IBRAHIM Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM) Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.
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