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2009 BUDGET: No To Further Cuts In Allocation To Education By Hassan Taiwo Soweto National Coordinator Education Rights Campaign (ERC).
We of the Education Rights Campaign (ERC) vow to organize peaceful national protests on all Nigerian campuses should the already inadequate allocation to education be further reduced in the 2009 budget. We believe that further cut in education budget will spell doom for a sector already tottering on the edge of a cliff. Instead, we call for an increase in budgetary allocation to education to at least 26% as a step towards provision of free and quality education at all levels.
In the 2008 budget, budgetary allocation to education was a miserable 8.2% (N210 billion) thus emboldening heads of institutions to increase school fees arbitrarily under the excuse of improving the internally generated revenue to pay salaries and provide basic amenities. This policy of education under funding also led to a further decline in education standard in primary and secondary schools.
However, the proposed 2009 budget promises to be no different. According to the 2009 budget (not yet presented to the National Assembly though), out of a total provision of N2.67trillion (N2 billion short of the 2008 budget), only N552.2 billion is proposed for capital expenditure while N1.523 trillion is proposed for recurrent expenditure. Most shockingly, N436.2 billion is proposed in respect of debt service (Guardian Thursday, Oct. 30 2008).
In our opinion, the 2009 budget is anti-poor and betrays the agenda of the government which is to use the excuse of the global financial crisis to reduce government expenditure on education, health etc while still sustaining the bureaucracy on fat salaries and allowances. This is the reason why a paltry N552.5 is proposed for capital expenditure in an economy where light, water, transportation, roads and housing are virtually non-existent or seriously dilapidated.
Evidently the condition of education is gloomier now than before as a result of chronic under funding. In many schools today, vital learning facilities like classrooms, laboratories, conducive lecture theatres, standard hostel facilities, well-stocked laboratories and libraries are lacking. Due to poor remuneration of academic staffs, several lecturers have gone overseas in search of greener pasture leading to brain drain. Not surprising therefore, many higher institutions lost accreditation of their courses between 2007 and 2008 while the 2008 SSCE recorded one of the worst results where a paltry 13 percent of candidates had 3 credits! This was in spite of the much-vaunted successes of the Universal Basic education (UBE) program-a scheme that has become a conduit pipe for looting the treasury at Federal, State and Local levels.
Faced with this already cheerless situation, we in the ERC shall not allow the Government to force poor students out of school on account of further increases in fees which cut in education allocation in the 2009 budget will usher in. We cannot allow government to unload the burden of the global and Nigerian credit crisis on the poor masses of Nigeria on the excuses that we have to tighten our belts because revenue has plummeted on account of lower crude oil prices.
This is because when for years on end crude oil sold like hot cake on the world market, government and the capitalist ruling class went into an orgy of looting and official corruption. Education, health and infrastructures were abandoned to decay. Basic salaries and allowances of political office holders were increased while workers, teachers and self-employed persons survived daily on stipends. Despite being an oil producing country, the masses had to pay more for domestic fuel as fuel price was hiked for about 7 times in 9 years. Consequently, a deep inequality was created in which just 1% enjoys the oil wealth while the masses live in penury all throughout the period of the oil boom.
Now that the chicken of capitalist senseless gambling on the stock exchange has come home to roost, only the capitalist class must bear the loss. Thus if any belt needs tightening, it is that of the corrupt political office holders whose basic salaries alone are more than 5000% above that of skilled workers e.g. lecturers, bank employees, doctors etc.
This is why we have consistently demanded the reduction of the jumbo pay of political office holders to the wages of average skilled workers. We also demand the nationalization of all the commanding heights of the economy, banks and financial houses under the democratic control and management of committees compromising poor working people, communities, professionals etc. Through this, it could be possible to mobilize the resources of the nation for vast public works in the area of infrastructures, provision of free and quality education, affordable and accessible medicare, employment and improved standard of living for the mass of poor working people. With this measures it can be possible to halt the global recession and the morbidly unique situation which Nigeria - an economy which has always being in recession even before now - has found itself. |