Nigerian Education: the Ichabod, the Culprits & the Way Forward

By Charles Offiong

A few days ago, I was discussing with a childhood friend of mine, who also doubled as my classmate. Our subject of discussion was the state and quality of our education vis-a-vis what was obtained in our days. We were lucky to attend one of the foremost secondary schools in Nigeria, the Hope Waddell Training Institution, Calabar, founded in 1895, which prided itself as the oldest in South-Eastern Nigeria and one of the best in West Africa. Apart from her, our first generation universities were ranked among the best in Africa. However, considering the current circumstances, it will be foolhardy of me to presume that my alma mater and those other institutions still maintain these bragging rights...

The importance of education to our national development and its need to occupy the pole position of any government cannot be overemphasized. The talk about the declining standards of the Nigerian education is what the blind had seen the dumb told the deaf, so it is no longer a news. The issue is how we got here.

The focus of this discourse will be on the rot in the foundational level of our educational system, especially the secondary education, as its importance in educational development has been underestimated. For those of us, who are not bible students, Ichabod is an expression of regret at a loss of former glory or higher standards. Its etymology is from 1 Samuel 4:21, where Eli’s daughter-in-law, Phinehas' wife, named her child Ichabod, saying ‘The glory is departed from Israel', when she heard that the ark of the Lord had been taken away by the Philistines...

Every year, the two major bodies saddled with the responsibility of conducting terminal examinations for pre-tertiary institutions in the country, the West African Examination Council (WAEC) and the National Examination Council (NECO) announce the results of their respective examinations. After reading out the somewhat disappointing statistics for the exams, the airwaves start buzzing for the next one week or thereabout with the analysis of the results and the possible culprits. While some blame the students, others put the blame on the teachers. A few point fingers at the parents and others on the government. A very little group tends to make any negative comment about the school owners and the society.

The puzzle is: Who truly deserves the blame? I mean who is responsible for this rot in our educational system. Thank God, of all the groups listed above, none of them are known to be spirits. So, unlike Ola Rotimi's, 'THE GODS ARE NOT TO BLAME', someone or group(s) of people have to be culpable in this case. In an attempt to answer this question, and as a stakeholder in this sector, I had to engage other stakeholders in meaningful discussions; from which I was able to put the pieces together to help you solve the puzzle, by looking at the roles each group plays in the departure of the glory of our educational system.

Students
Most of our students today suffer from what I call the 'Misplaced Priority Syndrome' (MPS). They exhibit a nonchalant attitude towards their studies, and usually want to be spoon-fed. They hardly perform their tasks by themselves, and are always seeking shortcuts. I call them the Xerox machines, because they are always waiting to 'photocopy' anything that seems like the solution to a task without necessarily thinking through its reasonability. Some of them are so daft that they can even copy their benefactors' details alongside the solution.

This group of students prefer to waste their time watching films, soaps and musical videos on TV. No thanks to Telemundo, Soundcity, MTV etc. They can memorise the names of 20 actors and 3 films or series each of these actors has featured in, the year of release of those movies, and also narrate everything that happened. Also, they can mime the contemporary hip-hop and R&B songs from A to Z with the names of the artistes. However, tell them to recite the 7-times table or ask them to read and summarise the 'Village Boy' in just 300 words...verily, I say unto you, it will be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for an average Nigerian student to do any of these.

Besides music and films, they are also into gaming. They spend their days playing different types of games that add no value to their lives. To worsen the issue, they are now easily distracted by the social media. They can spend hours on the internet gossiping, posting pictures and getting themselves indoctrinated on the social media by one radical group or another, at the expense of their studies. So, tell me how they will pass their exams! 

Make no mistake about this, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but all play and no work makes Jack a foolish toy!

Teachers
Teachers are the custodians of knowledge and they have the burden of imparting same to the students. A good teacher is expected to possess the following qualities, though not necessarily limited to these:

a) Sound knowledge and understanding of the subject
b) Smart and hardworking
c) Ability to express himself/herself fluently in spoken and written English
d) Good class management, teaching and interpersonal skills
e) Disciplined

Teaching is a vocation, however, many rush into it out of frustration. No thanks to the current economic situation! It goes beyond dishing out notes, giving assignments, and marking them. It requires a follow-up or a follow-through to ensure the students do and know what is expected of them. It involves being interested in the well-being of your students and inspiring them to be the best they can be. Good teachers are like demigods before their students. Their words are like laws to those students. These teachers know their onions, which makes it easy for them to positively influence their students.

Unfortunately, majority of our teachers today suffer from the 'NEMO DAT QUOD NON HABET' syndrome. How can they give what they don't have?...and this has a direct implication on the standard of education. From the feelers I get, these teachers have low self-esteem and a poor understanding of the subject. During classes, if not for the uniforms, you would hardly differentiate them from the students because of their poor class management skills. The teaching atmosphere is like a market, which makes me wonder how the students assimilate under such condition.

Surprisingly, this group of teachers are always the first to complete their schemes of work without considering the students' understanding of the contents of the schemes. They show little or no interest in the students' welfare forgetting that the latter tend to show more interest in a subject, if they know that the teacher cares about them.

If you carry out a random check when classes are going on in most schools, the number of errors you will discover will baffle you. Such errors range from grammatical to lack of understanding of the subject matter. I have overheard students ask themselves, "If the ones, who are entrusted with the responsibility of correcting our mistakes, are the ones making these mistakes, what then will become of us?"

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying a teacher must be perfect. No!, far from it; but what will you say, if four out of ten sentences made by a teacher are wrong! Cases are abound where engineering graduates could not explain or solve simple quadratic equations at interviews for teaching jobs. Or, what do you have to say about an English Master degree holder, who claimed that adverb and verb have the same meaning. According to her, one can be used in place of the other...Huh! From the information I gathered, most of these people go to these interviews as experienced teachers, which leaves one pondering, who their former or current employers are!

Private School Entrepreneurs
The essence of private schools system was to make up for the inadequacies of the public schools system, which include lack of highly qualified and competent teachers, high students-to-teacher ratio, lack of functional facilities etc. Apart from a handful of them that are living the standards expected of them, others are nothing more than glorified public schools.

Their owners are more of businessmen than educationists. Most of them do not understand what it means to run an educational organisation. They know little or nothing about educational quality control and assurance. They pay little or no attention to the quality of materials or documents sent out by the school. These materials are always true reflections of the standard of the schools. My heart bleeds whenever I go through schools' newsletters or report cards bastardized with grammatical errors. I often ask rhetorically, whether such schools have competent English tutors, and what they teach their students. In some cases, those letters are written by the English teachers...which brings us to the same question: Who recruited them?

These businessmen are more interested in the population of students in their schools than the quality of education acquired by the students. That is why they encourage and indulge in every form of examination malpractice just to achieve that goal. Most of them mandate the teachers to deliver a certain class of result in the external examinations, by hook or crook. This promotes laziness among the students and teachers alike, because as a student, if I know that my teachers will be there to provide the answers during the examinations, why will I waste my time studying for it? And as a teacher, if I know that despite my efforts in class, I will still have to teach the students in the examination hall, why should I stress myself in class? I would rather save that energy for the examination hall jooor!

In fact, the level of malpractice in these so-called private schools supersedes that obtained in public schools. The results are used as marketing tools to attract gullible parents. Meanwhile, the students who claim to own these results can hardly defend them.

In most private schools, window dressing is their specialty. They are poorly equipped for any standard and effective teaching to take place. Yet, they are always given a pass mark during supervision by officials of the Ministry of Education. In fact, it is a crime for any student to repeat a class in some private schools. Is it possible for all the students in a school to be above average or of average performance? Obviously not! The fear of losing the students will make them pad their scores and make their report cards look appealing to the eyes of the foolish parents, who are always against their wards repeating a class. Also, they will never write the true comments about the children's characters in school, just to earn continued patronage from the unsuspecting parents. If these students do not repeat and get to understand what is expected of them in the lower classes, how do you expect them to cope in the upper classes?

Through these acts, they indirectly encourage indiscipline in these schools by promoting a student's world. They tend to attach more importance to the students than the teachers forgetting that without good teachers, you cannot have excellent students.

To crown it all, they offer poor staff welfare packages and working conditions. Firstly, they overload the teachers with multiple subjects. Imagine one teacher teaching three to four subjects, how do you expect such a person to be effective? Secondly, the teachers are paid peanuts, despite one person doing three people's jobs. To worsen it, those peanuts are not paid regularly, because staff salary is not of high priority to them. How do you expect to get the best out of an individual, when you are not willing to give your best? At the end of the day, the students suffer! Those of them that try to pay anything meaningful, are slave-drivers, who expect you to live and die in the school. You do not have time for any extracurricular activities apart from school activities. Some even demand that you be in school on Sundays....FOR WHAT NOW?!

Parents/Guardians
Parents are the first teachers of a child. They are the ones, who are expected to teach the students about values, discipline and dignity of labour. It is the duty of the parents to ensure their wards do their assignments. In achieving this, they are expected to guide them and not do it for them. They are meant to closely monitor the activities and progress of their children in school by regularly checking their notes (to ensure they are updated) and results (to know when the children are backsliding or losing focus), and query any discrepancies, if the need arises.

However, most parents today, like their wards, do not know how to set their priorities right. Some of them relegate their children's education to the background. They do not pay their school fees on time, but prefer to spend their money on wears for parties and expensive gadgets. Others chase money at the detriment of their wards' well-being. They continually hide under the deception that money is the answer to all things. To them, their responsibilities in their children's education start and end in the payment of school fees. They do not even have the time to go through their ward's notebooks or engage them at home to test their understanding of the subjects. They rarely make themselves available for the parent-teacher fora. There are cases of parents, who do not bother to go through their children's report cards throughout their stay in a particular institution? How do you expect such students to give their best, when there is nothing or no one to push them? Some of them can hardly control these children at home; yet, they would expect the schools to wield a magic wand because they pay their wards' fees. From what I gathered, these parents, who expect this magic, are the same people who cry wolf, if their children are disciplined.

Studies have shown that the academic performance of students is directly proportional to their mental maturity, of which age is a factor (though, there are a few exceptions). The rate at which children are being rushed through school these days is quite alarming. In our days, the average age of admission into secondary school was 12, but today, it is 9. Many students gain admission into secondary schools at age 8, which means that they will be 11 years old, in SS1. The question now is: how many of them at that age can easily comprehend the concepts of chemistry, physics, biology, government etc? Yet, their parents seek double promotions for them in their primary education, even when they do not deserve a single promotion! What is the sense in making a child graduate at 14, only to make him/her wait at home for one or more years before gaining admission into the university because he/she is underage?...i.e, if and only if, the student got the prerequisite O' level result at his/her first sitting!

Society
The society does not help matters. It offers the largest forms of distraction, which requires a highly disciplined child to stay focused. The airwaves reverberate more with entertainment and fashion, and less with education. Much emphasis is laid on success without stress, when little value is placed on industriousness and dignity of labour. The corporate world dole out millions of naira as prizes in talents hunts and fashion shows, compared to those in educational competitions. I have never heard of any quiz or essay-writing competition in Nigeria, where the winner was awarded one million naira or given a car; or have you? So, how can you convince and encourage the younger generation to focus on their education, when they see dropouts celebrated more than their educated counterparts on a daily basis?

Government
This is the supposed 'big daddy', who has failed in his role to provide standard infrastructures and make policies that will enhance the development of the sector.

Hope Waddell, like other public schools, is bigger than two communities put together in terms of land mass. It had a standard and two semi-standard football fields, a basketball court, a chapel, an assembly hall, blocks of storey buildings used as classrooms, dormitories and refectory, and a large expanse of land as staff quarters. We never had any reason to take our inter-house sports competitions and other extracurriculars outside the school compound. Our labs were as big as three 12x12 bedrooms, combined together and also well-equipped.

Our teachers were topnotch. In fact, the man, who taught us mathematics in JS2, was an Indian - Mr. Rajah Panchalingam; while his father, Mr. V. C. Panchalingam, who was the head of the science department, taught us physics in SS3. This is without prejudice to the fantastic indigenous teachers like Mrs Idy Akubuiro, our chemistry teacher and Mrs Mfon, our SS1-2 physics teacher, to mention but a few. No teacher was told to handle more than two subjects, if at all. The teachers were enthusiastic about their jobs, because the conditions of service were quite friendly. We had quite a number of foreign students from the neighbouring West African countries like Cameroon, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone etc as schoolmates. The governors', commissioners', directors' and other public officials' children were also our school and classmates. In fact, then, it seemed like a 'taboo' to attend a private school.

As students, we were exposed to all disciplines in our lower senior secondary. As science students, we offered Literature-in-English, Igbo language and Economics; while our arts and commercial students offered chemistry and biology in SS1. The curriculum was very comprehensive and the policies were consistent.

All these things are now history because the government has failed in its responsibilities. The educational sector is completely bastardized. The system is now suffering from infrastructural decay and inconsistent policies. Most public schools are now eyesores with dilapidated roofs and buildings, and abandoned projects. Instead of completing or rehabilitating these structures, the government officials will rather wish they collapse completely, as this will favour them and their cohorts, who are busy setting up private schools with looted funds.

Ministers of Education now want to satisfy their egoistic tendencies by introducing policies, without considering their pros and cons. Students are now confused about their subject combinations. Biology and agricultural science are no longer general subjects. Even the science students cannot offer them with further mathematics or geography at the same time, because they are no longer considered as regular science subjects. New subjects are being introduced and tested without the availability of trained professionals in those disciplines. How then can the students excel?

Way Forward
From the above analysis, you will agree with me that the task of restoring the lost glory of our educational system is a collective responsibility. We are all culpable for its deplorable state, because all of us are stakeholders in the business of education. If you are not a student, then, you are a teacher; otherwise, you are a parent or guardian. If you do not belong to any of these categories, then, you must be a government official or a school owner. If you are none of these, then you must be working in the corporate world.

It is time to make a pragmatic shift from merely paying lip service to a conscious attempt of taking the Nigerian education to its once enviable position in the league of nations. The government should increase the annual budgetary allocation for education to between 16-21%, as recommended by UNESCO, the arm of United Nations that oversees education, science and culture. They should make the public schools to compete favourably with the top private schools, in terms of facilities and staff welfare. This can be achieved by passing a law mandating all children of public office holders to attend public schools.

In addition to the government increasing their supervision on private schools, I would recommend that the sector be sanitized through the introduction of mergers & acquisitions (M&A) to allow real professionals run the business of education the way it should be. Alternatively, all schools should be categorized as Grade A, B or C (renewable biennially) based on the available facilities and quality of teachers; with the high-end institutions regarded as Grade A, the middle-class as Grade B and the low-end schools classified as Grade C. These grades will be boldly printed on every signage and document bearing the name of the school. By so doing, unsuspecting parents will be able to make informed decisions before patronizing any school.

Our teachers should be made to undergo regular and effective developmental trainings. They should also carry out more personal developments on their own to ensure they have adequate knowledge needed to excel in their respective disciplines. Less emphasis should be laid on paper qualifications, and more on competencies. The idea of the rewards of teachers being in heaven should be abolished. They should be made to enjoy the fruits of their labour right here on earth as obtained in other climes. We should learn to appreciate those good ones for their selflessness in laying the right foundations for us to build on.

Parents should make their children's education of utmost priority by paying their school fees regularly. They should endeavour to follow up on their progress in school, by ensuring that the children do their homework and partake in other school projects regularly. They should create time to attend any forum organised by the schools, which will enhance  the children's academic performance. These fora give them the opportunity to receive firsthand information about the growth of their wards academically.

Parents should constantly ask for their wards' report cards and query any observed drop in performance. They should closely monitor the kinds of friends they keep, to ensure that such companies are value-adding. Through this, the children will be kept on their toes, when they know the expectations of their parents. Lastly, they should ensure that the homes are peaceful and conducive for studying, as a troubled or divided home causes the child to be psychologically imbalanced.

The corporate world should support and make education enticing by building and equipping more facilities across public schools and increasing the monetary rewards in educational competitions to match those in entertainment. They should try and encourage creativity in science and arts (not singing and dancing only) by funding innovative ideas. I know a few of them, which are trying, but they can do more!

Our media houses should produce more creative and educative programmes, and give them more airtime than what they currently do. More celebrities should be made out of individuals in the educational field, because the youth want to hear more inspiring stories or news about educated minds. They should play down the get rich quick syndrome and let the young minds understand that hard work generally pays.

Finally, the students should start doing what is right by showing more interest in their studies. They should spend their times on matters that will increase their intellectual capabilities, than on trivial issues. They should learn to be independent when carrying out any tasks and stop waiting to be spoon-fed. By so doing, they will be taking responsibilities for their actions...and if all these are achieved; verily, verily, I say unto you, we shall once again witness the glory of the latter days.

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