In this
concluding part of a 2-part article, Daniel explains the problem faced by young
Nigerians in search of a foreign education and he offers some options for
Nigerian policy makers
In spite of high
rate of illiteracy in the country and in our part of the world, it is no longer
news that there are more Nigerians seeking education than the country’s
educational institutions stretched beyond capacity, could accommodate. In many
Nigerian universities it is typical to find 6 students sharing a hostel or a
privately rented room, lecture rooms designed for 300 students (with half its
chairs missing) now accommodate close to 500 students; the teachers available
would find it very difficult to thoroughly teach, examine and supervise these
students. And we say nothing about the millions who could not get into the
universities.
If you look into
the education system at secondary schools which serve as feeders to the
universities, the picture is worse. A total of 6 years secondary school
education has now been reduced to the possession of 5 credit passes in the SSCE
exams, which not many can boast of on the first attempt. Thus on arrival at
university, the question is not what one has already knows from secondary
school, but what is written on the certificates. At the stage of JAMB’s UTME,
the university entrance examination, I think the story gets worse: of every 15
applicants only 1 will be accepted in the university (regardless of how many
actually pass the examination).
It is no longer
news that Nigerian students are everywhere in the world. In Nigeria, one hears
of graduates arriving from far flung places like Kyrgyzstan and Australia. Many
Nigerians have been studying in Ghana for decades, but now some are branching
out to Benin and Niger Republics and new universities and polytechnics are
popping up daily in Nigeria. Yet only recently, students of the University of
Abuja protested and insisted that they rather study in programmes that are not
accredited than allow these programmes to be suspended by the Ministry of
Education.
So Nigerians have
over the years become experts of world educational systems; we know which
countries force us to write IELTS and which ones respect our NECO; we know
where we can study in English and where we have to learn a foreign language
before beginning our studies. Of course we know where we can find jobs while we
study and where cost of living is best. Perhaps it is this expertise that has
drawn thousands of Nigerian youths to study in Scandinavia over the years. In
the past, education was tuition-free for scholars from developing countries and
all one worried about was food, clothing, shelter and school books.
The ‘free-movers’
of Scandinavia soon discovered a brute fact, cost of living is exceedingly high
and jobs are scarce even to those who speak the national languages.
Consequently, many of them dropped out of the free education and sought places
in the workforce. Now the free education policies have been replaced with
expensive tuition fees for everybody; but Nigerians have not stopped coming.
They pay their way through school and attempt to work or take periodic breaks
from studying to work and save for the next lap. From students there are
reports of Nigerian (and other African students) sharing accommodations meant
for one person; taking and sharing odd jobs to pay their way and increasingly
being supported from home.
What these point
to is that the option of seeking foreign education is not as easy as it sound.
We need to urgently look at the capacity of the Nigerian nation to educate
itself and arm citizens with skills needed to compete in the modern world. In
this regard, there is need to revisit the trends of opening up new universities
by the Government (at all levels) and the private sector to focus more on
expanding the capacities and competences of existing institutions. If at all
there must be specialized universities for agriculture, they should teach
agriculture and not nuclear physics.
On the other hand,
foreign education should not be pursued as an alternative to home training.
Instead, government could assist Nigerian institutions to forge partnerships
with foreign institutions such that foreign education could be pursued as an
addition to, or indeed component of degrees awarded in Nigeria. But there is
need to educate the youths – there is no way a decade spent mopping floors in
Europe to finance a Masters degree could be thought to be better than studying
in a Nigerian university. Yet regardless of the state of institutions in
Nigeria, some people would opt to study abroad. This is a fair ambition, but it
is not fair when people head to Kyrgyzstan because they are one of the 14 –
those for whom the Nigerian educational system cannot give a place to study
regardless of their grades.
_______________
Daniel Nengak
Until he took a
break to study International Migration and Ethnic Relations at Malmö Högskola
in Sweden, Nengak Daniel Gondyi was a Senior Programme Officer at the Centre
for Democracy and Development, CDD in Abuja. He holds a Bachelors in
International Studies from the Ahmadu Bello University. At CDD, he worked on a
number of projects including the West Africa Insight
(http://westafricainsight.org ) which seeks to collect and analyse futures
information in West Africa. He reads and writes about human rights and
democracy in West Africa. He loves cycling, asking questions and reading. He is
presently reading Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet for a second time. Nengak can be
reached via email on nengak.daniel@gmail.com
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