This word is for the arrogant people of South-West Nigeria, who (justifiably) bemoan the loss of past glories wrought by their fathers, former Premier Obafemi Awolowo and others, in the education sector of Nigeria.
Of a truth, the Awolowo-led government of Western Nigeria introduced the free education scheme that sent many who would have perished in ignorance through the formal school system.
Today, many of the beneficiaries of that educational freebie are intellectuals and professionals, contributing greatly to Nigeria’s march of progress. Many are even senior public servants and politicians, who hold, or have held, top and influential positions in the polity.
While presenting a paper titled, “The 1886 Yoruba Peace Treaty and Imperative of Yoruba National Unity,” Senator Banji Akintoye boasted: “Because the Yoruba lived in heavily populated, secure, well-ordered, and well-governed cities and towns, the Christian message and the Western education spread faster in our country than in any other country in Africa.”
Akintoye, who is also a professor of history, added: “By 1886, we were already producing graduates in various disciplines. By the 1880s, we were already a nation with strong and rapidly growing literate elite.”
But you will note that despite this glorious past, the standard of education has drastically fallen in the South-West, the same way it has fallen in other parts of the country that the arrogant people of the South-West are wont to describe as uneducated.
The truth is that the ship of poverty of education has sailed full circle, berthed, and dropped anchor, in the South-West, whose school pupils are trailing behind other zones in ordinary level certificate examinations.
An unverified, even contested, but certainly pertinent, report indicates that in the 2019 West African School Certificate Examination results, Abia, Anambra and Edo states ranked first, second and third, in that order.
The South-West made a poor overall showing with Lagos State ranking sixth; Ekiti State, 11th; Ondo State, 13th; Ogun State, 19th; Oyo State, 26th; and Osun State coming 29th. Some even contend that Lagos State is sixth only because the populace is mixed.
If this ranking is believed, the House of Oodua has lost the privilege of claiming to be the Athens or even the nobility of education in Nigeria. It looks like the Yoruba are at the nadir of Nigeria’s education totem pole.
Some argue that the lowering of admission marks for Nigerians from the so-called educationally-disadvantaged sections of Nigeria — which are generally in Northern Nigeria — has led to the substitution of mediocrity as the grundnorm of Nigeria.
A friend used to counsel parents against bringing their children to a Federal Government Unity School where he was Vice Principal (Administration). Though he was prepared to admit the children, if the parents insisted, he always gave the caveat that the educational and moral standards of the school had pooped, and his conscience would prick him forever if the children became failures, violent, or drug addicts.
If the South-West lowered its standard because some other zones lowered theirs, then the Southwestern Nigerian political establishment had made a conscious choice to emulate a bad example. Many in the South, especially in the South-West, however, think there would be some remedies.
The first remedy is that the Federal Government should be encouraged, through the agency of the National Economic Council, to put more resources into the educational system of Northern Nigeria.
NEC could provide an emergency fund to upgrade the educational facilities of Northern Nigeria, the same way it provided $1 billion for the war efforts against Boko Haram insurgency. Anyone who opposes this does not know what is good for Nigeria.
A TV talk show footage, “Reflections With (Catholic) Father George Ehusani,” currently swirling on the social media, has a female guest expressing concern and reservations about the policy of lowering cut-off marks in order to admit Northern Nigerian candidates into federal primary, secondary, and tertiary educational institutions.
She argues: “If you find that the people are educationally backward, you address the backwardness. You don’t pull down the whole country. You (rather) look at the challenges, and (put) whatever resources, (or) funds (needed) into the educational system.”
She contends that nothing is fundamentally wrong with the ability or intellect of the Northern Nigerian school age children. They just do not have access to the necessary support and resources that can make them excel like their counterparts in Southern Nigeria.
She recalls the happy experience with Northern Nigerian children who attended her secondary school, Federal Government College Ilorin: “(When) most of the people who came from the North came into our school, they couldn’t read or write.”
“But by the time they were done,” she adds, “one of the girls had one of the best (presumably ordinary level) results in my school.” Presumably also, the school did not lower its standards, but invested in the upgrade of the hitherto educationally deficient pupils.
With such positive results, she finds it difficult to understand how or why anyone would rather lower standards than increase investment in the education of the educationally disadvantaged pupils.
She is concerned that many graduates, who were admitted into universities with lowered cut-off marks, are only able to secure government employments, because they are not good enough for the private sector, which emphasises merit and competence.
The second remedy is that the political leaders of the South-West should enrol their own children in public schools, to better monitor the quality of education in the public schools firsthand, and to improve the standards.
Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai, who once tweeted, “Reforming the education sector in Kaduna (State) is a continuing struggle against decades of neglect,” is leading the way for his southern counterparts.
He explains, “My government has a commitment to the public education, and raise the standard of public schools so that private education will become only a luxury,” and then walked his talk by enrolling his six-year-old son, Abubakar Al-Siddique, into Kaduna Capital School, a publicly-run school in Kaduna State.
Southern Nigerians, especially of the Southwestern stock, should be looking to see how their leaders can take a cue from el-Rufai, and indeed Awolowo, whose children attended public schools, whilst he was Premier of Western Nigeria.
This remedy dovetails to a third, which suggests that if the South-West, and the rest of Southern Nigeria, think that admission standards into Federal Government institutions have been lowered far too much, they should, as a matter of deliberate policy, insist on high standards for admission into their own state educational institutions.
A report indicates that a Federal University Vice-Chancellor (in the South-West) refused to bend admission rules for candidates who had high scores that were still below the cut-off point for medicine. That is the way it should be for state-owned institutions.
If South-West-owned educational institutions insist on high admissions standards, federal-owned institutions will either conform or continue to admit unqualified candidates who will not be able to compete.
But the South-West governments should resist attempts by the Federal Government to compel their tertiary institutions to lower admission standards, impose unqualified candidates on them, or even be taken over, as the military did in the mid-1970s.
This is the time for remedial action, and not of wringing of hands.
