A pledge by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), along with other heads of state at the recent Global Education Summit in London, United Kingdom, to increase the education budget by 50 per cent over the next two years, is noteworthy if it is faithfully implemented. The promise was contained in a document entitled, ‘Heads of state call to action on education financing ahead of the Global Education Summit,’ signed as a form of commitment at the summit. It is a right step.

Nigeria has a fundamentally weak and underfunded education system, having a record of the highest out-of-school children in the world. Properly implemented, the agreement can alter the dynamics. A statement by the President’s spokesperson quoted Buhari as saying at the summit: “We fully endorse the call for more efficient use of resources and to significantly increase investment in education by strengthening institutions, promoting greater adoption of technology, building the capacities of our teachers and mobilising additional financial resources through legal frameworks and deliberate intervention on a sustainable basis.”

Though this development is encouraging, it nonetheless exposes the lip service of a government that has brazenly ignored the UNESCO benchmark for education funding. Under the Education For All programme, the agency proposed that governments should spend between 4.0 and 6.0 per cent of Gross National Product on education and that within government budget, between 15 per cent and 20 per cent should be earmarked for education.

After the Buhari regime took over from former President Goodluck Jonathan in May 2015, it allocated N369.6billion to education in 2016, which amounted to 6.7 per cent of the national budget of N6.06trillion. In 2017, N550.5billion or 7.38 per cent of the N7.29trillion budget was allocated to the sector.

In 2018, N605.8billion, out of N9.12trillion budget, indicating 7.04 per cent, was allocated to education; in 2019, it was N620.5billion, signifying 7.05 per cent of the N8.92trillion budget. In 2020, N671.07billion of N10.33trillion, which amounted to 6.7 per cent, was allocated to the sector; while in 2021, the sector got N742.5billion of the N13.6trillion budget, representing 5.6 per cent.

These budgetary allocations depicting a drop in the ocean to the vital sector are not an exclusive preserve of this government. Past governments similarly underfunded education and this has stunted the growth of education in the country.

The country’s education sector is riddled with intractable problems, hence the current regime is expected to enhance quality, foster growth, promote competitiveness, encourage research, and motivate teachers. It should create an atmosphere conducive to learning to encourage massive private sector investment in the sector. A one-off promise whose fulfilment is apparently in doubt is not what is needed now to breathe life into the comatose sector. It needs a total reform. A bottom-up, focused, and pragmatic solution to make Nigeria’s primary, secondary and university education compete globally is urgently required to heal the system.

Arguably, the government is no stranger to empty promises. Last October, during the 2020 World Teachers Day, Buhari approved a special salary scale for teachers in the country. Disturbingly, it was only after a recent media inquiry that the Federal Government, through one of its allied agencies, claimed that different committees had been inaugurated to come up with the modality for the implementation of a new salary scale. This is its model of promises. It is untidy to promote an assurance capable of fuelling more crises in the sector without a buy-in from states and other stakeholders given the fact that education is on the concurrent list in the 1999 Constitution.

The Federal Government must immediately collaborate with states to make schools safe to end bandits’ reckless impunity of kidnap-for-ransom, especially in the North, which is fast turning schools to no-go areas. Its disclosure that the number of out-of-school children in Nigeria had now dropped to 10.3 million from 12 million is still heartrending. It must find a solution to the festering insecurity in the land to defend the UNICEF position that every child has a right to quality education. Many states in the North were forced to shut schools in the face of leadership helplessness over the rising abduction of students. As one of its failed electoral promises, the Buhari-led Federal Government has yet to breathe life into the education sector.

Governors also have a role to play in this situation. They got into office on promises to deliver sterling performances in promoting development and not to exhibit profound helplessness when confronted with crisis.

States should utilise the Universal Basic Education Commission funds to boost quality education delivery. The disclosure by the Executive Secretary of UBEC, Hamid Bobboyi, in April that out of N184.8billion set aside by the commission, only N143billion matching grant was accessed by states between 2017 and 2020 depicts lack of seriousness by the states. It indicates that about N41.08billion matching grant was not accessed by the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. It is sheer laziness and lack of resourcefulness for states to fail to meet the performance yardstick for accessing these funds.

It is paramount for the Federal Government to be reminded that adequate funding of education is enormously crucial for national development. But beyond such financial support is the need to set precise goals to drive educational change and promote sustainable development to fix the worsening decay in the sector.

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