Nigeria has witnessed a steady decline in the fortune of the education sector, going from the era of military rule to the present democratic dispensation which took off in 1999. LEADERSHIP SUNDAY investigation can reveal that the budget pattern steadily fell in value from 1999 to date, raising concerns that the country may not meet the 2015 target of “Education For All” (EFA).
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It was also gathered that, when compared to the annual budget, the amount budgeted for the education sector is much at variance with the UNESCO benchmark of 26 per cent, just as? the available fund allocated? to the sector does not reach the targeted beneficiaries.
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An analysis of the budgeting pattern for the education sector between 1999 and 2005 showed a steady decline in allocation. Data obtained from the Civil Society Action Coalition on Education For All (SCACEFA) office show that the education sector had the following shortfall: 1995 (18.72 per cent), 1996 (15.72 per cent), 1997 (17.41 per cent), 1998 (17.18 per cent), 1999 (9 per cent), 2000 (16.17per cent), 2001 (21.92 per cent), 2002 (18.16 per cent), 2003 (18.04 per cent), 2004, (15.79per cent), and 2005 (17.60per cent).
The percentage of the allocation to the sector in relation to the annual budget size under the same period is as follows: 1995 (7.20 per cent), 1996 (10.24 per cent), 1997 (8.59per cent), 1998 (8.20 per cent), 1999(16.77 per cent), 2000 (9.83per cent), 2001 (4.08 per cent), 2002 (7.89 per cent), 2003 (7.96 per cent), 2004 (10.21 per cent), and 2005 (8.40 per cent).
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It is also on record that the budgetary allocation to education became worse between 2005 and 2010. The education sector received the following percentage of the total budget: 2005 (9.9per cent), 2006 (10.2 per cent), 2007 (10.5 per cent), 2008 (10.6 per cent) 2009 (10.6 per cent) and 2010 (6.2 per cent).
This development has been linked to the continued poor outing of secondary school students, especially in their performance in the Senior Secondary School Examination (SSCE) over the past decade, as well as the fallen standards at all levels of the sector.
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Policy advisor to CSACEFA Mr Wale Samuel, who spoke to LEADERSHIP SUNDAY, said that Nigeria had not got it right in her budgeting procedure.
He added that available indicators had shown that, even when there was a marginal increase in the budget, the implementation pattern made it impossible to get the actual value of the money spent as a result of endemic corruption which had permeated the system.
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?Samuel said, “Nigeria is one of those countries in the world whereby the time you spend N100 on a particular item, by the time you are through, you will be lucky if N2 meets the target because of issues of corruption, embezzlement and all sorts of issues that are endemic to us.
“So you realise that budget in itself does not necessarily get to the target. So it is the more you see, the less you understand. Is the money necessarily addressing the problem? If you cast your mind back to those years when we had budgeting for education, you realise that the more we budgeted, the more, in most circumstances, the worse result we get.
“If you want to take the indicator, using the WAEC result as an example, it is getting worse by the year. It shows you there is a problem. The exam bodies all have their budgets, so it shows you there is a distortion in the way we are spending our money.
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“The money is not connecting with the problem and if the money is not connecting with the problem, then, there is a need for us to restructure. We need to restructure our spending pattern because, the way it is now, we cannot get to our much-anticipated target of 2015 to have met all the indicators of development as far as education is concerned. The quality is not faring any better as we see year in, year out performance of our students.
According to him, a radical approach to it is to, first of all, meet the UNESCO benchmark, which is 26 per cent and then proceed to a more effective implementation strategy of tracking the money to ensure it got to the end users with the desired impact met.
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He also said that the country’s education sector had continued to wobble despite calls by the UNESCO for leaders to invest more in the education of their citizens.
Though the Nigerian government has signed several treaties with development partners such as the Millennium Development Goals, (MGDs) 2015 target of Education For All (EFA) with the objective of setting educational goals, LEADERSHIP SUNDAY’s investigation has revealed that? Nigeria is still at the bottom of the table, trailing behind Bangladesh and other war-torn and poverty-stricken countries.
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There is also the challenge of ensuring that no country was left behind in meeting the education needs of the citizenry. But, to get this done, investing heavily in this critical sector becomes a major issue. That was why the UNECSO set a benchmark of 26 per cent because the body strongly believes that, “Education is a fundamental human right enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration. It should never be an accident of circumstance. Nor is it a privilege to be distributed on the basis of wealth, gender, race, ethnicity or language. Unfortunately, like other fundamental human rights, it has not been fully implemented over the past sixty years”.
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The director-general of United Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), Irina Bakova, at the launch of the 2010 Global Monitoring Report on Education for All,? noted: “Some countries may have made pledges that they are now finding it difficult to keep, because their budgets are under pressure as a result of the financial crisis. But this crisis was generated entirely in the financial markets of the developed world. It cannot be right that money earmarked for aid to the world’s poorest people should be reduced as a result of it. I call on all countries to meet their longstanding international aid commitments and this includes Nigeria.”
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