Nigeria and the literacy challenge

Nigeria joined the rest of the world to mark World Literacy Day on 8 September. It is a date set aside by UNESCO to put issues relating to education on the front burner. As expected, activities where held nationwide to mark the day. In Lagos, Wole Soyinka, professor of Literature and Nobel laureate visited a primary school and spent quality time with the school children. That is bound to be an experience those children will cherish forever. But education, just like other areas of our national life, is something we must use the opportunity of the annual ritual to ponder. It is an area with too far-reaching implications for the present and future health of our country to ignore. Sadly, our educational system is in doldrums. A lot need to be done to revamp it, but so far, government, at all levels, seem to lack the will. Current UNESCO figures put the number of illiterates worldwide at 774 million. Going by UNESCO records also, one out of every five adult is not able to read and write in any language, and 75 million children are presently excluded from the school system. In Nigeria, Kutara Elisha, Director, Inspectorate Division, Federal Ministry of Education says 70 million Nigerians are without functional literacy as 22 percent of people in the latter category are made up of school drop-outs. The present literacy level is put at 51 percent overall. This is an improvement over former figures which put more than half of the Nigerian population as illiterate. It must also be the outcome of present concerted effort to greatly improve the school enrolment figures through government’s Universal Primary School, UPE, scheme. About N832.6 billion has been spent on the education sector since the return to civilian rule between 1999 and 2007. The sum is less than 10 percent of the federal budget for the corresponding period—a far cry, we must admit, from the UNESCO recommended 25 percent, especially for developing countries like ours. This is where the challenge is. Experience worldwide, show a direct correlation between literacy levels and the standard of living. Whether in South Korea, India, Indonesia or China who have made giant strides on the world stage, one factor that has helped them greatly in the climb up is the premium they put on education. They are today, world beaters in their own rights. Others who made the transition before them like America, Britain, France, Japan, to name a few, have strong educational foundations to thank. Cuba with the highest literacy level in the world has been able to hold off American economic onslaughts to still be a major exporter of skilled labour to countries around the world. In Africa, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania have high literacy levels and are also climbing up the standard of living ladder. The import of all these is that Nigeria needs to wake up from her slumber. If we are to look at things properly, it would become obvious that things have to be drastically reworked. Despite the fact that we are far from attaining a 100 percent enrolment in schools, how many of those enrolled are guaranteed functional education? A recent World Bank report say 57 out of every 100 primary school teachers in Nigeria are unqualified. The veracity of that report is in the recent acrimony that attended the 27.5 percent increment in salaries of teachers and the huge number that may not benefit as a result of not having teaching certification. This concession was achieved after five weeks of strike by the teachers. The tertiary level is not doing better. The teachers are permanently at arms with government over the decadence in the system. The direct consequence is that the school calendar is badly disrupted and morale very low. The result is that other countries and mostly, the advanced ones continue to profit from in-flock of skilled manpower which Nigeria does not have to spare in the first place. The enrolment figures and invariably, the fees charged in private schools are surging. While private-public partnership has come to stay, the importance of government taking the leading role in formulating education policy cannot be overemphasized. The recent restoration of the inspectorate division in the apex education ministry to its former pride of place is a good development, but government must follow up by freeing the states to take more responsibility for education policy and direction. This will mean a gradual reduction in federal budgetary allocations. The truth is that education is too big and too multi-dimensional for one agency to oversee. When this is done, states and local governments will now have to determine what their priorities are in this vital sector, and how to tackle the challenges. The possible outcome will most probably be a return to the healthy competition that was evident amongst the regions of the first republic.