Address at the Conference on Falling Standards in Education,
December 30, 1996

I welcome you all to this most important and timely conference on the falling standards of education in the northern states of Nigeria. For me, it is an honour and a privilege to be associated with this noble effort. The importance of education is so self-evident; it needs no demonstration. Everything – development, progress, enlightenment and every good thing in modern life – depends on it.

It follows therefore that a decline in the standards of education is a very serious matter. And when the decline is of the magnitude that we witness today it is clear then that we have a major crisis in our hands. In the past the North prided itself in the quality of its educational system. That quality has long vanished. Over the years it has sought to catch up in the quantities game. Now, as far as the quantity is concerned, the North has been left further behind. While the standards of education have generally fallen in all parts of the country, it is the North that is worse hit.

When one examines statistics from examination bodies such as the West African Examinations Council, WAEC, National Board for Technical Education, NBTE, Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, and others the pathetic situation of the North becomes clearer. In the recent WAEC results some northern states recorded the abysmally low results of less than 1 per cent pass. That is bad enough. But what JAMB results show is even worse, with regard to the disparity between the North and the South. From 1992 to date the results show that the worst state in the South has more successful students than all the northern states put together, less Benue and Kwara. This situation, no doubt, makes every right thinking Nigerian see not only the widening gap between the northern and southern states, but also shows that the future, if indeed there is a future, is very bleak.

There are many reasons why we are in the state that we are today. In the past, of course, all educational development was planned. No school was established that was not needed; and none established was left unequipped or understaffed. And there was always some purpose – employment, general literacy or the demands for higher education n mind – whenever a school was established. Today, nothing more than the desire to award contracts dictates the pace. Not surprisingly the moment the building is finished or abandoned, that is the last you hear of the school. In other words, the expansion of schools was unplanned, uncoordinated, and in the end it became unwieldy and beyond our capacity to manage or adequately fund. But that is not to say education is not being well funded. It is. Indeed, it has always been on every government’s priority list. At present up to 10 per cent of the national budget is spent on education. According to the minister of education, 17 billion naira will be needed by the sector annually.

The problem here, however, is the penchant for the Nigerian for corruption, abuse of office and general lack of accountability; and because nothing was done about this in the recent past, public funds end up in private pockets. In the end only a small percentage of the education vote ever gets spent on education. The rest is siphoned away. In addition to all this, education in the North lost one of its mainstays – the commitment of teachers and the support of parents. In the past, teachers in the North were among the most respected classes in the society which, as you can see, is a far cry from the attitude towards them today. Nowadays, they have no salary in this world because their reward is said to be in heaven. On their part, parents lost interest when the moral content of education began to decline – and especially now when, after suffering to see their child through school, there is no employment for him at the end.

On top of this it must always be remembered that resistance to western education has not been eradicated completely; and so graduate waywardness and unemployment will only further harden this attitude. However, identifying problems is one thing, while identifying workable solutions to them is another. Perhaps, this conference could not have been organised at a more appropriate time than now when everyone is sick and tired of the situation. Everyone seems to be waiting for someone to start the ball rolling. I am happy that you have taken up the challenge. But we must face the fact that the solution to our set of problems will not be easy. We must look back and copy the time-honoured practices of our predecessor – practices that we threw away without thinking. Our authorities must begin to tolerate the idea of planning and give it a chance to guide the development and management of our educational system. And while we are happy that something is being done about accountability we must admit that even when corruption is reduced to its minimum, funding of education has become too great a burden for the public sector alone to bear.

Rationalisation of universities, other higher institutions, secondary schools and perhaps even primary schools has become inevitable. We must plan, we must rationalise and we must deal with corruption in the educational system if we are to salvage education. Meanwhile, everything must be done to eradicate all remaining resistance to western education especially; though not exclusively, with regard to female education still in our people. Authorities can help by raising the moral tone of graduates and by increasing the ethical and moral content of instruction in the classroom in order to make it more attractive to the more religious-minded people who are in the majority.

This reminds me of the special problem faced by the madrasah system that is fast facing extinction. I hope your deliberations will address the future that lies ahead of this oldest system that still survives in spite of all our neglect of it. While there is wisdom in integrating the western and madrasah systems, it is very well to recognise that there are functions which only the madrasah can fulfil. Its existence as an independent entity is therefore absolutely essential.

Ladies and gentlemen, education as we all know, holds the key to the future. The spiritual and material development of any nation depends, to a very large extent, on the quality of its educational system. We cannot afford to fold our arms in the face of this dangerous problem which is capable of causing the total disintegration of our society. Because you are today addressing the problems as they affect education in the northern parts of the country, we note with dismay the lukewarm attitude of northern peoples and northern governments in the face of this tragedy. We must come together to salvage education in the public interest as quickly as possible. As public schools began to collapse, private effort put up new ones. But as we are painfully learning now, this private effort is too little, too late and ultimately beyond the majority of the people whose children need salvation.

I wish you every luck and look forward to reading the proceedings of the conference and its committees. From the calibre of the presenters, discussants and the educationists here present, we expect nothing but the best. Thank you very much.