Cheta Nwanze: This is alarming – Education is shutting down in Nigeria? (Y! FrontPage)

by Cheta Nwanze
Chxta back
As is usual with these little dramas, the devil is in the detail. According to the CEO of the National Examination Council, Prof. Promise Okpala, 16,050 of the 62,682 registrants were in Lagos State, Kebbi had 83 registrants, and Yobe had 74!
In May last year, the News Agency of Nigeria ran a story about the numbers of students registered for that year’s National Common Entrance Examination. The NCEE, for those who may not know, is the examination into Federal Government Colleges (Unity Schools) across Nigeria.
According to the news agency, a total of 62,682 pupils had registered to sit for the examination. Considering the fact that the Common Entrance is meant for pupils in the 9-11 age bracket, the first question that comes to mind is whether we have just 62,682 children of that age in Nigeria.
When you think of the fact that based on our census data, 70% of our 170 million-population is under the age of 30, then that figure of 62,682 becomes utterly ridiculous. Assume that there is an equal distribution of citizens in each year of life, then we should be expecting to see upwards of 10 million souls registering for the Common Entrance, not a paltry 0.6% of that figure.
As is usual with these little dramas, the devil is in the detail. According to the CEO of the National Examination Council, Prof. Promise Okpala, 16,050 of the 62,682 registrants were in Lagos State, Kebbi had 83 registrants, and Yobe had 74!
So where were all the 9-11 year olds in both Kebbi and Yobe states? And how come Lagos alone had 26% of all the registrants? The last time I checked, our own official figures give Lagos 6% of our total population.
What this tells me is that education all over the rest of Nigeria, not just in the North, is shutting down. The potential impact of this is incredibly horrifying.
Consider that the post-election violence in Northern Nigeria was orchestrated by a small, but influential, and educated elite who use the large numbers of uneducated boys milling aimlessly around as a weapon, then you realise just how bad things will become if we continue at this rate.
The signs are already there: Northern Nigeria has to all intents and purposes, shut down. A lot of its citizens are voting with their feet and moving down South for fear of Boko Haram, and in search of greener pastures. This movement will lead to more communal conflicts, of the kind we have seen with increasing frequency in the Middle Belt.
The scariest part of the whole drama being played out is what will happen if, as these indicators point to, Southern Nigeria decides to go the way of the North and stops educating its young, or worse, gives them poor education. The potential (and catastrophic) effects are better imagined than experienced.
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Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.

Comments (4)

  1. I see the point Cheta is making. The truth is that there are not enough private schools to cover for the shortfall.

    Back in my time, it was like almost a million people sitting the Common Entrance. What happened that the number fell so hugely. Truth is that not nearly enough people in Nigeria can afford private schools, so if only 62000 out of 10 million registered for common entrance then we have a crisis.

    1. We have always had a crisis in the educational sector.. Especially primary and secondary education. But I feel this decline in common entrance just shows the deep distrust and lack of confidence people have in common entrance exams.. Remember the states also run their own parallel entrance exams for state run schools which is where a huge majority of many poor people turn to as top unity schools became out of the reach of the common men. Those who can turn to mushroom dingy seedy private secondary which u find scattered all over Nigeria especially in rural areas. Our education system has been in need of massive reforms for over 20 years sadly it rarely makes the news.. Public universities were on strike for close to 6 month during OBJ reelection campaign but this never became an electoral issue. Not once was it raised. We as a nation do not value education or rate it high in priority list.. What we value is certification not the process towards attaining it. As write this the University of Abuja is in comatose with close to 60% of program losing their accreditation and the school has been closed down since for ever. But u won’t ever find this in the news. The top public school of our federal capital is moribund and it not even headline news. A reflection of our attitude towards education.

      1. Wicked point. Maybe the numbers that Cheya has highlighted will be the kick on the but that we need. But I don’t believe that.

  2. Err I think we should not reach a conclusion based on number of participants in common entrance if anything it just shows how much faith people have in government educational institutions (which its self is a bad thing) I remembered sitting for common entrance sometimes in the 90s but never checked my results because in the end it doesn’t matter I went to a private school. The private school option is what many Nigerians rich and poor are increasingly turning to. The irony is that even the Unity schools run by the feds offer a relatively much better standard of education at a government subsidized price compared to most of the seedy private school out there.. But getting into them is out of the reach of many common folks.. Most of the places are reserved for children of top politicians or connected Nigerians (at least allocations for the good unity schools)..

    Yes the state of our education is appalling plaqued by corruption mismanagement especially public education that doesn’t change.. But what this figure shows is that general public’s confidence on public education has gotten to a new low especially secondary school level.

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