Silence over the education front

On hindsight, this zone of silence has longevity about it. The late Professor Ishaya Audu once praised the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) of Ahmadu Bello University as a vanguard of debate over public policies and affairs whose voices were heard in Dodan Barracks – the seat of federal military power in the […]

On hindsight, this zone of silence has longevity about it. The late Professor Ishaya Audu once praised the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) of Ahmadu Bello University as a vanguard of debate over public policies and affairs whose voices were heard in Dodan Barracks – the seat of federal military power in the 1970s.
Graduates of the institution will most probably recall ‘’FASS” as a zone of ‘intellectual terrorism’ for victims of its criticisms; and of ‘’intellectual liberation struggle’’ for those freed from chains of assaulted theories, theorems, prejudices and what – one of its leading warriors, Dr Yusuf Bala Usman – labelled as ‘’manipulations of religion and tribalism’’. Caustic wits by Patrick Wilmot in the Sociology Department; Wang Metuge in the Political Science Department, George Abalu in IAR, and Mike Kwanashie in Economics denounced imperialism and apartheid in South Africa long before the United Nations declared the latter as a ‘’crime against humanity’’. In 1984 a group around Yusuf Bala Usman produced a book titled Nigeria’s Economic Crisis: Causes and Solutions. It was typically aggressive, original in approach and arrogant. It was meant to pre-empt a military budget likely to be anchored on what was thought to be General Idiagbon’s claims to mastery of economic sciences.
FASS, and that book of redemption, had tended to neglect work by its neighbour – the Faculty of Education. Students from the Faculty of Education who were preparing to teach specific subjects did enrol in relevant courses taught in FASS. As an example, those preparing to teach a subject known as “Government’’ did attend classes in Political Science. There was, however, little, if any research and seminar papers written and held by FASS in the vital matter of education.
Subsequently, the social sciences came under severe attack from government’s 1986 policies. The collapse of funds for research and of living conditions following increases in costs of education, health, food, books, journals and imported tools, crippled academic working conditions. Academics with records of high quality publications found employment outside Nigeria and abandoned local research challenges. To add pepper and salt to injury, the World Bank proclaimed the dictum that African countries do not need university education. What was needed was focus on primary school education. Considering the fact that both patriotic conservative and radical socialist academics had denounced linkages to Euro-American economies which deepened the exploitation of African countries, the World Bank’s posture appeared vindictive.
By the time a democratically elected government launched its Universal Basis Education  programme, the rich areas thrown up for social scientists to undertake research on, was a mere mockery of the intense poverty afflicting academics. Three fields stand out. The federal government’s proclamation of basic education to be ‘’free and compulsory for all children’’ by 2015, had began to yield some crawling-speed success. Enrolment in public primary schools increased from 19.1 million in 2001 to 21.7 million in 2009. The character of this crawling gain was screaming for academic researchers to dig their jaws into. With diverse ecologies ranging from riverrine areas in Bayelsa State to sand dune – threatened Yobe State, needed dedicated research work to raise alarms and praises where necessary.
The figure of 21.7 million children attending primary schools competed against huge numbers attending Madrassas. There were 2, 657, 767 almajirai in North-east; 4, 903, 000 in the North-west; 1, 113, 288 in North-central, with only 3, 827 in the South-east zones of Nigeria.  A total of 9 million children were not inside classrooms. Issues of social justice and of long term political stability were at stake if these 9 million grew up to be alienated from growing urban economies because they were not receiving official investment as the country’s human resources.
The federal government set aside 2% of Consolidated Revenue Fund to assist state governments in implementing free education for all through an agency known as the  Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) as from 2005. In the face of the vast numbers of children outside UBEC’s concern at the time, the issues of equity should have incited enthusiastic university researchers.  With drums of alarm about corruption pounding around governance, matters of tracking fates of UBEC funds as they crawled through official fingers at federal, state and local government levels should have aroused vigorous interdisciplinary academic research.
Academic members of Women in Nigeria (WIN) had much to track. At pre-primary school levels, government was reporting that in 2001 out of a total of 938, 717 toddlers, only 43% ( 446, 099) were female, while 52 % (492, 618) were male nationwide.  The dropout rate among females who entered primary and secondary schools would increase the higher up they climbed. A local NGO reported that in Kebbi State, political rulers preferred to allocate funds for religious pilgrims than to building primary schools near enough to villages to protect school girls from dangers of rape; while in Rivers State, teachers were responsible for a high rate of pregnancies among school pupils. These ‘’roadblocks’’ were screaming for adequate funds to enable academic members of WIN to open up sunlight as cures over them.
So long a silence over education must end.