A report on the funding of education in Nigeria, which was presented last week in Abuja, tells lies with statistics.
Prepared from a survey conducted by the World Bank, the British DFID and others, the report claims, among others: the Nigerian government spent N832.6 billion on the different levels of education between 1999 and 2007; the government spends N323, 000 on each public university student each year; the Universal Basic Education Commission gulped N90 billion from 2005 to 2007.
Education Minister Igwe Aja-Nwachukwu Spoke of the "necessary reforms" in the education sector which, he said, would assist in the achievement of the MDGs. On the same occasion, however, UK minister Lord Mark Malloch-Brown recognised the major challenges in the delivery of basic education in the country which limit progress towards the MDG for universal primary education. "As many as seven million children, the majority of them girls, do not attend primary school," he said.
Funds lost to corruption were not included in the report. Yet, probably 80% of the money purportedly spent on education went into private pockets. The outcome: education has virtually collapsed at all levels.
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It takes a white man to convince you that our educational system is broken and what is this inerpt administration doing to correct the situation? Throw more bureaucracy at it like he did on the Niger Deltan crisis by compounding the wastage by increasing ministries from a lean/mean 19 to a bloated 28 with 42 ministers and their cronies collecting sallaries with nothing to show for their services, instead of the govt actually rehabilitating the schools, providing books and computers and motivating teachers with good pay. In the country of the blinds, the one eyed is King. All hail to King YarAdua.