Rebranding Education in Nigeria
Friday 23 July
2010
Oseloka Obaze
This
weekend, a handful of my high schoolmates and I, will do what we have done every
summer for the past 13 years. We will gather in Los Angeles from 23-25 July, for
a college reunion, popularly called the annual convention of Christ the King
College Onitsha Alumni Association in America (CKC-AAA). Yes, every year we have
a convention. And we do bring our families along. This year will mark our 14th
Annual convention.
Recently, an old schoolmate sent me an article by Ms. Azuoma Anugom, Esq.
(see
Conventions:
Do they really
serve
any
purpose
or
are
they just
jamborees?
),
in which she asked if conventions by Nigerian Diaspora organizations were indeed
worth the efforts. The question, to me, seemed rhetorical for obvious reasons,
granted that she did make very spirited, eloquent and noteworthy points.
But she may have, as I had an opportunity to point to her, overlooked the bare
but critical essential: the weighty intent of those unsung Igbo and other
Diaspora organizations that are giving back in many small ways. I suppose Ms.
Anugom did not intend to discourage those organizations.
CKC-Onitsha-AAA, our alumni association to which I am an unrepentant, steadfast
member and officer, is basically an Igbo community-based organization by the
mere geographical location of the school. Not many of my fellow ex-students –
numbering some 2000 in the Americas are engaged. That is hardly surprising.
But what is more surprising, is what a few of us have managed to achieve
by sheer dint of hard work, self sacrifice and commitment.
Without bragging, we have turned our old school around through our humble
efforts and in spite of the school being under the control of the Anambra State
Government until recently. But the daunting challenges remain. From
experience, I suppose this year will be no different.
Each
year when we gather for our annual convention, we are confronted with the stark
realities of the dwindling and dismal standard of education in Nigeria, as
evidenced by the result of the common examinations taken by students at our alma
mater, C.K.C. Onitsha. Though
much improved over the years since we the old boys reengaged with the school
authorities, and as discouraging and unimpressive as these results have been,
they represent for the most part, better results than what applies across the
country. Put simply, educational values and academic performance in Nigeria, is
on a slippery slope. Like everything else, Nigeria’s educational system is in a
surreal state having encountered arrested development.
This reality and our collective belief that no nation can hope to advance into
the new age, if it does not accord academics and its educational sector the
attention it deserves, informed the choice of our 2010 convention theme:
Rebranding Education in Nigeria. This theme is far more than a cliché.
Whereas we cannot reinvent the wheel, we
can orchestrate the realignment of educational policies, the prevailing mindset
and malign neglect. We can push for a return to time-honored educational values,
goals and commitment of the past. We can push for the rebranding of education in
order to accord education the high priority it deserves. We can do so through
our concerted advocacy. These
efforts are imperative because we are living witnesses to the rut in our
educational system and the society at large.
Indeed, recent statistics tell a
sorry but deeply troubling story. National candidates who flunked the most
recent National Examination Council (NECO) were in the ninetieth percentile.
Indeed, statistics from NECO confirmed that only a dismal 1.8% or 4,223
out of the 234,682 candidates who sat for the examinations passed with the five
credits, including English and Mathematics required for admission into tertiary
institutions. Why do we bother, one may ask?
We do, because things are
getting progressively worse. Between 2000 and 2004 some 76.63 per cent of the
students who sat for common WASC examinations flunked. By 2009, that dismal
number had fallen further to a
98 per cent failure rate.
However, there is a corollary to this reality. Funding for education as a public
policy component in Nigeria has been treated with near malign neglect.
Comparatively, Nigeria trails many developing countries in the budgetary
amount it allocates to education – a paltry 6% -- as compared to Singapore’s
37%, South Africa’s 35%, and 29% allocated respectively by Botswana and Ghana.
Nigeria’s allocation falls 20% short of the 26% per cent recommended by
UNESCO. Certainly, for anyone truly committed to nation building that is nothing
to celebrate or ignore.
As
a nation, Nigeria covets greatness and we aspire to play in the big league.
Frequently, we are miffed when not given the opportunity or recognition we feel
we deserve. The truth, however, is
that as a nation, we have neglected our educational needs and allowed the
infrastructure to rot, which is partly responsible for growing brain drain and a
preponderance of Nigeria’s intellectual wealth residing outside the country.
Our
national lack of commitment to education is broad and varied; from the paltry
pay of teachers and professors, to poor maintenance of academic infrastructure
and the disappearance of vocational schools, with the attendant disappearance of
a skilled middleclass work force. Across board, enrollment from primary school
to universities has fallen. And
without functional secondary and tertiary schools, Nigeria is producing a slew
of functionally uneducated university graduates. If this trend continues, in the
years ahead, we will have very limited homegrown graduates, who can indeed lead,
govern and run the nation.
In
CKC-AAA, we are certainly not in the business of policymaking, nor are we
interested in meddling. But we are
cause-focused and proactive in our belief that we can bring about change, even
if only incrementally. And there is an added rationale.
As beneficiaries of qualitative education made even better by fierce
competition between parochial and government schools on one hand, and between
denominational schools on the other, we sense the deep erosion of educational
impetus in Nigeria. The driving
imperatives are glaringly absent. We
therefore seek to orchestrate collegial competition as well as collaboration.
We
are nonetheless conscious of the parlous state of affairs in the education
sector. Indicative figures from the
Nigerian University Commission (NUC) suggest that only 20 percent of Nigerian
university graduates are employable, which indicates the deplorable level of
labor market absorption in Nigeria. We must, however, retrace our steps to the
roots of their being unemployable; poor secondary education.
And that is why we focus on giving back to our high school.
Indeed, we remember that the parents of some our Nigerian peers, were
either uneducated formally or had only high school education, yet they thrived!
Therefore, the nexus between qualitative education at the secondary and tertiary
levels cannot be glossed over; for now, there exist an utter disconnect. It is
in this context that our theme choice of
Rebranding Education should be
appreciated.
The
educational sector is also bedeviled by fraudulent examination practices and
fraught by corrupt public officials. In advocating the
Rebranding of Education in Nigeria,
CKC-AAA merely wish to challenge Nigeria and especially those in the education
sectors at the local, state and federal levels to retrace the steps back to the
way things were in the pre-civil war era.
For
our part, as members of the Nigerian Diaspora, as alumni of a great college and
as a collective troubled by our national failings and our seeming inability to
cope with the challenges, we have led by example, with our proactive engagement,
which has yielded discernible results, notably, funding C.K.C.’s revitalization
in the tune of over N20 million and spearheading its return of to the Catholic
mission on 1 January 2009.
Secondly, we have a say in the selection of those who run our alma mater
and including the principal and his staff.
Third, we motivate the students and the staff to be the best they can be,
through the CKC-AAA Motivational Annual Award. Finally, because we have made a
different and because we have stayed engaged, we have unfettered access to other
stakeholders in the school, and as a corollary wield sufficient influence in
shaping the school and its products in ways that would create a pocket of
excellence and quality, even if limited in numbers.
Furthermore, we see it as our duty to create an enabling environment, for those
privileged like us, to attend C.K.C. Onitsha and to make the school attractive
for those who would seek the very best for their children and wards. That is not
a mission impossible! Indeed, change is possible!!
So as we go off to our yearly convention, we will naturally have fun and
reminisce about the past, but surely, we will continue to stride forward, even
if only by inches in our commitment to help rebrand the education in Nigeria in
all its facets. A burden shared, after all is a burden halved.
Finally, when we started CKC-AAA in November 1997, there was no other Nigerian
high school alumni association in the United States. Being the first US-based
Nigerian organization to undertake such an endeavor, we not only set the
template and standard, but motivated alumni of other Nigerian schools to do the
same for their alma mater. More importantly, we drew attention to the areas of
unmet need in our school systems back home.
Inevitably, we and others are doing something to bring about the much
needed change. At every CKC-AAA
convention, we reignite the flame of giving back and challenge others to get
involved and do the same. That many Nigerians and Americans support our humble
efforts is a testimony that we are onto something right. That ought to count for
something.
---
Mr. Oseloka Obaze
is the National Secretary of CKC-AAA, USA. This piece is adapted from the
Editorial in the recent edition of The Amaka Gazette, the Journal of
CKC-AAA.