Goddys:
I sat in deep thought with many things running through my mind trying to grapple the reason why things and state of affairs are 'specially' harder in Nigeria.

One of the things my mind was ruminating on was the absence of Student loan in Nigeria financial institutions to help students who are financially handicapped. I have read on the internet, magazines and other publications where it was highlighted on the availability of such loans to students in other climes.

It is glaring that Nigeria government is not doing enough when it comes to its responsibility towards education sector and this can be seen in the light of the above position. A society that does not value education is no better than a barbaric society of neanderthal era.Thus the need for revolution in Nigeria education sector.

Goddys, great question. As you may well know, any loan paid out will be returned with interest. No financial institution will give out loans if they don’t believe those loans can be fully paid back, interest and all. Now let us apply the Nigerian factor, if you add in student strikes, high unemployment for the youth, and an economy in recession, etc. You can start to see why it would be difficult to justify giving out student loans because there’s almost no avenue for the students to pay it back.
I will go one step further and make suggestions on how we could possibly fix this. First things first

1. Policy and framework

We need to total educational reform from kindergarten to university. We need to research, find and study model frameworks from developed countries and tweak it to work in our society. If we don’t train the younger members of society properly, there is no future for this country.

2. Student loan financing

You will always have the poor in any society, in order to give them a fighting chance, they need an education and this needs to be paid for by someone. This is where the state and federal government step in. They have to guarantee the loans to some extent. What do I mean by this? We have to provide an incentive for financial institutions to loan to students and one convincing way would be, if the student can’t pay back, the government is on the hook for it, which inevitably mean we have to grow our tax base

3. Forgiveness plans

We want everyone educated and being a useful member of society, now some people will never be able to pay their loans back, this is where the federal and state government can comes in and say go work in some underpopulated place for x number of years and each year x amount comes of your loans or when you start working a certain amount of your salary goes towards your loans.

4. Legislation

House of state and senate must actively speak about and advocate through words and legislation the need for a well-educated citizenry

I could go on and on, but here is an indisputable fact, the individuals that spoilt our education sector did an excellent job. If you are to busy trying to survive, what time will you have to fight for your rights or fight against corruption. We must investigate where we got it wrong starting from the days of British rule till date

CriticalThought:



Goddys, great question. As you may well know, any loan paid out will be returned with interest. No financial institution will give out loans if they don’t believe those loans can be fully paid back, interest and all. Now let us apply the Nigerian factor, if you add in student strikes, high unemployment for the youth, and an economy in recession, etc. You can start to see why it would be difficult to justify giving out student loans because there’s almost no avenue for the students to pay it back.
I will go one step further and make suggestions on how we could possibly fix this. First things first

1. Policy and framework

We need to total educational reform from kindergarten to university. We need to research, find and study model frameworks from developed countries and tweak it to work in our society. If we don’t train the younger members of society properly, there is no future for this country.

2. Student loan financing

You will always have the poor in any society, in order to give them a fighting chance, they need an education and this needs to be paid for by someone. This is where the state and federal government step in. They have to guarantee the loans to some extent. What do I mean by this? We have to provide an incentive for financial institutions to loan to students and one convincing way would be, if the student can’t pay back, the government is on the hook for it, which inevitably mean we have to grow our tax base

3. Forgiveness plans

We want everyone educated and being a useful member of society, now some people will never be able to pay their loans back, this is where the federal and state government can comes in and say go work in some underpopulated place for x number of years and each year x amount comes of your loans or when you start working a certain amount of your salary goes towards your loans.

4. Legislation

House of state and senate must actively speak about and advocate through words and legislation the need for a well-educated citizenry

I could go on and on, but here is an indisputable fact, the individuals that spoilt our education sector did an excellent job. If you are to busy trying to survive, what time will you have to fight for your rights or fight against corruption. We must investigate where we got it wrong starting from the days of British rule till date

your post is quite illuminating. At your last paragraph, do you imply there is a sinister motive or well-orchestrated move by some bad eggs to keep our education sector where it is today? Education they say is the key to success. Could there be a western influence in what is happening in our education sector so that we don't have the standard of life they have?

1stCitizen:


Thanks for the link. I have taken my time to read through. "8.1 millions students currently in default" considering the number of students (443,783 students in 2014 and 361,379 in 2013-Lets assume 2015 and 2016 has 1M each)is quite high and does not carry any sign of success. The blog post actually reveals that default is a huge problem which is being tackled.

A reduction in default does not translate as success as default rate reduction can be attributed to less people being accessible to such loans due to more bureaucracy.

"Any school with a default rate of 30% or more for three consecutive years, or a 40% rate for one year, faces the loss of access to those federal programs" This shows that the reduction in default rate was based on data from schools with access to the program.

Finally, be wary of statistics that civil servants give you in any part of the world. I am still not convinced it is successful in Kenya. Maybe if they run it for another 20 years without scrapping it, I would buy in. One would naturally base success figures on the rate of default rather than the number of loans given which I am sure is not what you are looking at, or is it?

Ok, you are clearly picking out the part of this article that suits you. If you understand statistics, you should know that absolute numbers don't make sense without putting them in context. the highest average default rate is 15% for students at for-profit colleges and that 8.1 million is about 12% of those who took the loans, if 12% default out of 100%, that is pretty good(look at the table).
Also of course the data will be based on schools, what are the loans for Did you also notice that most of the schools that defaulted are not in Kenya and they are just 10 schools out of the 100s of higher institutions attended by Kenyans. I don't know what else you want to hear to be convinced or do you think an African country cannot implement something like this successfully I don't get you.
I still say that it is over 60% successful and that's impressive.

Goddys:
your post is quite illuminating. At your last paragraph, do you imply there is a sinister motive or well-orchestrated move by some bad eggs to keep our education sector where it is today? Education they say is the key to success. Could there be a western influence in what is happening in our education sector so that we don't have the standard of life they have?

At some point in time, I believe those 2 conditions which you have mentioned played a role in the Nigerian education sector we have today. By 2 conditions, I am referring specifically to British colonial influence in addition to the Nigerian elite influence.

If you take a step back and look at what education was during the colonial days, you will notice that education was highly based on culture and tradition, mostly in the southern parts. In the north, Islam as a religion played a huge orientation in education. If I still remember correctly, Christian missionaries arrived in Southern Nigeria in the 1800s and with them, came western education. Now since the North is landlocked, missionaries didn’t exactly have a choice in getting there. I have always wondered, what if Northern Nigeria was accessible to the missionaries early on, could the influence of western education have changed minds and hearts and prevented a lot of things that have occurred today.

I honestly think not, we would still find ourselves in the same place today because of one key factor, the British. Southern Nigeria was more focused on how you could benefit yourself and your community but Northern Nigeria always had a focal point, you had to look up to a figure and their interpretation of religion e.g Emir, Sardauna. The British liked the Northern style of leadership and indirect rule because it was easier to control and to make sure this hold lasted, they stopped the spread of Christianity into the North. An uneducated society is a gullible society and if you just listen to what the pastor or Imam tells you, all will be well. In addition to this, if the colonial government gave aid to missionary schools and the likes, the North didn’t get any

What even further complicated the matter was the British trying to setup 3 forms of education, traditional, qur’anic and western education. The idea was that eventually even though both North and South were moving at a different pace, they could coexist. While this could work in theory, It wasn’t exactly practical, the French learned the same thing, the English learned the same thing, but Nigeria, well, education was different depending on which part of the country you were in. Fast forward a few years and you begin to notice the educational gap and success between the North and the South.

You see, western education focused on human ability as opposed to spiritual hope but Islamic education was different and as such did not place heavy focus on human ability plus they did not get as much support for it from the colonial masters.
So to answer your question about western influence in the education sector, If they had allowed the missionaries access to the North without having to teach Christianity, we would be in a better place. Also, without the inclusion of traditional education, the loss of identity becomes prevalent (e.g breaking kolanut, market days, when to pray, how to greet etc). The west did enough to get what they wanted; I don’t think they anticipated the consequences of their actions to turn out like this

As for the Nigerian elite, I do think there is a sinister move by bad actors to keep Nigeria where it is educationally. We have had more than 40 different ministers of state for education including education ministers of Nigeria. If you look into the profiles of some of these individuals, you will see they had no business in the ministry of education
Take for example, Richard Akinjide, his background was law and politics, yet he was minister of education for 2 years. How does his background help in setting education policy for future generations?
Another example Jubril Aminu, professor of cardiology, background in medicine was minister of education for 4 years, I find it difficult to see the correlation
Take Sunday Afolabi who was minister of interior in June 1999 under the Obasanjo government and before that the minister of education but what did he do in private sector, Accounting. How does that concern education policy?

For donkey years, they have tried to put a square peg in a round hole and even when they found a round peg, those folks where chased ways under the guise of fighting corruption etc. If you don’t have the right people and a strong institution, then we are all wasting our time

sobmos:
It's simple.. Nigeria has no database and central information on each of its citizens. No death and birth records. The government do not have the central database of every student in the country. If they make the mistake of giving out student loans, trust Nigerians, they will disappear with the money and there's no record to trace the defaulters and no means of recouping the loan back. So until the government work on a central database to store records of all Nigerians, student loan will not happen in Nigeria.

you only need them to deposit their degree

uzolexis:


Ok, you are clearly picking out the part of this article that suits you. If you understand statistics, you should know that absolute numbers don't make sense without putting them in context. the highest average default rate is 15% for students at for-profit colleges and that 8.1 million is about 12% of those who took the loans, if 12% default out of 100%, that is pretty good(look at the table).
Also of course the data will be based on schools, what are the loans for Did you also notice that most of the schools that defaulted are not in Kenya and they are just 10 schools out of the 100s of higher institutions attended by Kenyans. I don't know what else you want to hear to be convinced or do you think an African country cannot implement something like this successfully I don't get you.
I still say that it is over 60% successful and that's impressive.

You misunderstand me. I said the study are for schools not under ban due to default. Now let's put that aside. Please where did you get the info that some of the schools are not in Kenya. Please pardon me. I hope you are not talking of foreign schools located in Kenya.

You provided data and seem to be skewing it to favour your argument.

While the lower default rate among
borrowers entering repayment is good news, the total number of borrowers in default has continued to
grow and is now at a record 8.1 million—more than the entire population of 38 states

.

The above was culled from your report. 38 states/counties! . As at 2016, Kenya has a population of about 47 Million and this represents about 17% of the entire population. Imagine 17% of people in a whole country defaulting on loans. How many are aged,minors or not in school. All I see is a huge disaster based on the data provided.

If 17% of Nigerians default on student loans alone what do you think will happen.

Our job should be to scrutinize data provided by civil servants and their affiliates. Here we still pick holes in the data provided by the national office of statistics.The fact that a study was carried out does not necessarily make it correct. Especially when done by government agents to justify their policies.

I would like to see the limitations of that study which the authors have failed to provide on your link.

Even the header of your link says it all. That a record number are in default and that the default rate just did not increase for new borrowers which is what I have been saying. I wish to place emphasis on the word 'record'

Again, 17% . You cannot convince anyone with such contradictory report. Maybe in Kenya though.

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There is no student loan because the FG subsidizes tertiary education. There is no FG school that collects tuition fees as part of the school fees, you only pay for health, IT, exam and others. In other country the tuition fee alone is more than most private uni total fees.

We can't say the same for state schools.

uzolexis:

8.1 million is about 12% of those who took the loans, if 12% default out of 100%, that is pretty good(look at the table).

*Addendum to my last response*

You say you understand statistics.Apologies but I strongly doubt this. Okay 12% of students that took loans defaulted and this amounted to 8.1 Million of a population of 47 Million. Meaning that 67Million people took the loans in a country that has only 47Million . the whole thing reeks of complete failure and only the gullible or illiterates will see such statistics without questioning them.

I rest my case.

Nne easy now haba...noh finish the guy

uzolexis:


Ok, you are clearly picking out the part of this article that suits you. [b]If you understand statistics, [/b]you should know that absolute numbers don't make sense without putting them in context. the highest average default rate is 15% for students at for-profit colleges and that 8.1 million is about 12% of those who took the loans, if 12% default out of 100%, that is pretty good(look at the table).
Also of course the data will be based on schools, what are the loans for Did you also notice that most of the schools that defaulted are not in Kenya and they are just 10 schools out of the 100s of higher institutions attended by Kenyans. I don't know what else you want to hear to be convinced or do you think an African country cannot implement something like this successfully I don't get you.
I still say that it is over 60% successful and that's impressive.

1stCitizen:


*Addendum to my last response*

You say you understand statistics.Apologies but I strongly doubt this. Okay 12% of students that took loans defaulted and this amounted to 8.1 Million of a population of 47 Million. Meaning that 67Million people took the loans in a country that has only 47Million . the whole thing reeks of complete failure and only the gullible or illiterates will see such statistics without questioning them.

I rest my case.

My mistake, I checked again, that info was from US student loans board, sorry about that.

CaesarII:
It is very very obtainable.

Please,where exactly can one get it?

They know chances of getting a job after graduating is low,so where and how do you expect students to pay back after collecting the loan