Registered Charity No. 1120876 Europoint House 5 Lavington Street London SE1 0NZ Telephone : +44 (0)20 7261 9650 E-mail : [email protected] Website: www.britain-nigeria.org CONFIDENTIAL NIGERIA DIGEST – December 2014 Education West African Secondary School Certificate Examinations and National Examinations Council Ibrahim Shekarau, Minister of Education has disclosed that High Schools’ students in Nigeria usually record mass failure in external examinations particularly in West African Secondary School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) and National Examinations Council (NECO) due to the acute shortage of qualified English and Mathematics teachers in Nigerian schools. This, according to the Minister, has further troubled the quality of education and contributed a marginal decline in the performance of candidates of such examinations since details of the May/June 2014 WASSCE result indicated that only 529,425 candidates, representing 31.28% of the 1.7 million candidates who wrote the examinations, obtained credits in five subjects and above including English Language and Mathematics. The Minister, who in conjunction with Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State, declared open the Ministerial Session at the 60th National Council on Education (NCE) Meeting held in Abeokuta recently. He lamented the dearth of qualified teachers in core subjects offering in Nigerian secondary schools, adding: “there is no doubt that we have a challenge in among others, the availability of teachers of Mathematics and English Language.” He however, revealed that the Federal Government, through the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), had introduced in September this year, an e-curriculum which “would ensure that teachers, learners and other relevant stakeholders have easy online access to the prescribed national curriculum in all subjects.” Similarly, the Minister decried the high level of damage the Boko Haram insurgency had done to the Northern education, especially the North Eastern part of the country as it constitutes a grave danger to education in the affected areas, saying all efforts must be directed at overcoming the security challenges for normalcy to return to the affected areas. “The prevailing insecurity situation in the north eastern part of Nigeria has disrupted academic life in a number of our public schools. Nigerian educational institutions and students have become endangered due to the attacks. “We can no longer afford to underestimate the need to map out co-ordinated action plan for our institutions to always be on security alert. There is the need for us to continually review security issues in our institutions so as to protect our children from harm.” West African Examination Council In the first week of November, the House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts accused the West African Examination Council of misappropriation of billions of Naira. According to the Committee, the Council, which receives an annual budget worth several billions of Naira, has failed to remit its revenue generated to the Federal Government since its inception. The Committee has also alleged that the Council has failed to provide audited accounts to the Auditor General of the Federation and relevant Committees of the National Assembly since 2010. As a result, Solomon Adeola, the Chairman of the House Committee, announced that his Committee would be investigating the accounts of WAEC for the years 2011, 2012 and 2013. He added “The attitudinal behaviour you, WAEC, have exhibited over the years does not portray the kind of institution Nigerians expect from their WAEC. Is it the monumental fraud, or lack of records, or financial improprieties that have taken place in the institution? I was not taken aback when I found your name on that list; I was not surprised, it is expected.” According to the Head of Office of WAEC Nigeria, Mr Charles Eturidu, there are a number of State Governments that owe the Council some N3 billion in respect of examination fees, which the Council has had to fund by borrowing from banks. According to him, there are 10 States that owe N3 billion, of which Cross River State Government alone owes N300 million for 2013 and 2014 WAEC examination fees. Within the last few weeks Borno, Akwa Ibom, Kebbi, and Sokoto States have all paid their outstanding fees, leaving 6 States still owing a substantial amount of money for which they do not have the funds due to the low allocations that they have been receiving this year from the FAAC. The 6 remaining States are likely to have difficulty in the next few months in making their outstanding payments, due to the deterioration in the Nigerian economy as a result of the fall in the world oil price. This has resulted in the allocations from the Federal Account Administration Committee falling on a monthly basis, making it almost impossible for the 36 States to meet all of their obligations in terms of salaries and debts. National Teachers Institute On 18 th November, Dr Ladan Sharehu, the Director General of the National Teachers Institute, announced that his organisation is to retrain 4,070 primary school teachers in order to enable them to acquire new skills that will improve their knowledge and ability to teach primary school children. In addition, according to the Special Assistant to the President on the Millennium Development Goals, Dr Precious Gbenoil, her office in conjunction with the NTI has so far successfully trained 610,032 public primary and junior secondary school teachers nation-wide. The Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) At a conference that ended on 1 st November, the ASUU, and other unions in Nigeria's universities, decided to ask the Federal Government to declare a State of Emergency in the education sector. The unions also called for the re- conceptualisation of the Nigerian education sector in a manner capable of performing its transformative functions for the individuals, groups and the nation at large. The unions led by ASUU also resolved to develop and present to the Federal Government a new education policy (Chatter) which will reflect the aspirations, culture, values and realities of the Nigeria people within the context of a dynamic world. According to the unions, there is need for the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency in the education sector owing to the fact that “The current educational system is characterised by chronic under-funding, bad leadership, and infrastructural decay, poor conditions of learning and service, promotion of mediocrity, shortage of personnel (academic, technical and administrative) and entrenchment of orthodoxy, parochialism and chauvinism.” These were contained in a communiqué jointly signed by the president of the four unions (ASUU, National Association of Academic Technologists (NAAT), Non-academic Staff Union of Universities and Associated Institutions (NASU) and Senior Staff Association of Nigerian Universities (SSANU)) at the end of a week long National Education Summit held in Abuja. A copy of which was made available to reporters in Ibadan by the Ibadan Zonal Co-ordinator of ASUU, Prof. Olusegun Ajiboye. The four unions who jointly held the summit themed “Towards a System of Education for Liberation in Nigeria” warned the Federal Government not to use public funds such as Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Petroleum Trust Development Fund (PTDF) among others to fund private educational institutions and associated enterprises. While condemning corruption, lack of professionalism, poor and opportunistic leadership, and unethical conducts that impinge on learning environment and the integrity of teaching and research, the unions called on their members nation-wide to rid the sector of these ills. While rejecting the systematic privatisation of education and selling off of public educational institutions, the unions described education as public good, which must not be left in the hands of private individuals who are driven solely by profit. The communiqué read in part, “the fundamental problem bedevilling the educational system in Nigeria is that it is located within a philosophical and political economic system which emphasises personal self-enrichment and individual aggrandisement instead of emphasising knowledge acquisition geared towards public good and national development.” Academic Staff Union of Polytechnics and the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union The ASUP, which had been on strike from October 4, 2013 and COEASU, which had been on strike from December 18, 2013 suspended their action on 12 th July 2014 to enable the new Minister of Education, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau, to investigate their complaints. As a result, he established a Technical Committee to resolve the problems. However, some 3 months later, according to the ASUP President, Mr Chibuzor Asomugha in an interview on 3 rd November both the teachers and their students were not happy in the delay in resolving all of the outstanding issues. One of the major issues is the subject of the payment of arrears accruing to the unions, who would appear to be on the verge of resuming their strike unless the Technical Committee finishes its investigations and reports to the Minister in order for him to meet with the two unions to resolve this crisis. Tertiary Education Trust Fund The Executive Secretary of the TET Fund, Professor Bogoro, has announced that N100 million has been released for the establishment of entrepreneurship centres in every Federal and State University in Nigeria.