by Ijeoma Nwogwugwu


"As long as Nigeria continues to produce half-baked students from our primary and secondary schools, the quality of its workforce will be substandard, irrespective of the number of degrees it has acquired".

Nigeria and Pakistan have a lot of similarities. Both
countries have large populations – Nigeria, an estimated
167 million people, while Pakistan is estimated to have 180
million people; both have economies of roughly the same
size – Nigeria has a nominal GDP of $289.9 billion (2013
estimate), while Pakistan has a nominal GDP of $230.5
billion; both are classified as middle income economies and
have been identified as the Next Eleven (N-11). The N-11
comprising Bangladesh, Mexico, Nigeria, Egypt, Indonesia,
Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Philippines, South Korea and
Vietnam have been tipped by Goldman Sachs investment
bank and its former Chief Economist Jim O’Neill as having
the potential of becoming, along with the BRICs (or BRICS if
South Africa is added), the world’s largest economies in the
21st century.

In other areas, both countries have diverse ethnic
nationalities and regional languages, but use English as
their official language. Nigeria and Pakistan are also
largely hierarchical societies, with an emphasis on local
cultural etiquettes. Both countries also have large Muslim
populations but with a slight divergence. While 97 per cent
of Pakistanis are Muslim and is the second largest Muslim-
majority country in world, about 47 per cent of Nigerians
are Muslim and has the sixth largest adherents of the
Islamic faith in the world.

My interest in both countries has been spurred by a citizen
of Pakistan Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old schoolgirl
who has been advocating for the rights to education for
girls since the age of 11. I first became conscious of this
brave young girl early in 2012 when I watched
documentaries on her activism on the BBC and CNN. As I
watched her – she was 14 at the time – I marvelled at her
eloquence and keen sense of understanding as she made a
case for girls’ rights to education in the Swat Valley, a
border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the
Taliban had banned girls them from going to school.
Horrifically, her activism and the global attention that it
drew made her the target of the dreaded Taliban militia. A
few months after watching the documentaries, Malala was
shot in the head and neck by Taliban gunmen. The attempt
on Malala’s life and her miraculous recovery has
catapulted her to the kind of global prominence that we
mere mortals could only dream of. She has spoken at the
United Nations, has garnered several accolades and
awards, two weeks ago, was the favourite to win the Nobel
Peace Prize, until the awards committee decided otherwise,
and last week was the special guest of Queen Elizabeth II of
Britain. In all this time, she has comported herself
magnificently and spoken with a precociousness that is
rare for a girl her age from any part of the world.
But what I found most fascinating about that this young
girl from the town of Mingora in the Swat District of
Pakistan was that she able to survive because of first, the
delicate surgery to remove the bullet lodged in her head
and stop the swelling in her brain was carried out by
surgeons in a military hospital in Peshawar, Pakistan,
before she was airlifted to the UK for further treatment. The
second being, this girl, Malala, had already attained an
education long before the attempt on her life. It is at these
two particular junctures that the divergence between
Pakistan and Nigeria, both Third World developing
countries, becomes very stark.

Since Malala’s recovery and reemergence on the global
stage, I have wondered whether a young girl under similar
circumstances would have been afforded the same medical
attention in Nigeria as Malala before she was flown to the
UK. Does Nigeria have the same kind of health care facilities
and medical personnel as Pakistan, with the capacity to
undertake a life-saving surgery on the brain?

More importantly, that a girl who grew up, was once made
a refugee, and was educated in a remote, war-torn region
that the Taliban had made a stronghold, was still able to
get an education that was qualitative and has given her
the confidence to interact with a global audience, is
inspiring. How many young girls and boys who have
attended schools in remote Nigerian villages can boast of
the same quality of education? How many of them can
represent us on the global stage and make us swell with
pride with the same kind of diction and intelligence that
Malala has projected? Sadly, very, very few.

It is telling that Pakistan, which has so many similarities
with Nigeria and also has a militant insurgency that puts it
on the back foot, is still able to provide decent health care
services and qualitative education to its citizens. Mind you,
this young girl Malala is still of secondary school age. She
has not even attained a university education. Yet she has
displayed the capacity to put millions of Nigerian
graduates with their two, three and four degrees in the
shade.

It is for this reason I have often argued, whenever the topic
of education comes up, that a proper, broad-based
education is attained at the foundation level; that is, at the
elementary and secondary school level. It is also for the
same reason most countries, Nigeria and Pakistan
inclusive, offer free basic education, because that is when
actual literacy is attained. In contrast, a university
education only offers specialisation, skills and
qualifications in isolated disciplines.

Indeed, in other parts of the world, where a premium is
placed on basic education, it is assumed that by the time
an individual is applying for a university degree
programme, that person is able to read and write
coherently, can assimilate and think critically about the
written word, and is numerically literate. Unfortunately,
all three attributes are glaringly missing in Nigeria simply
because the quality of education at the foundation level is
abysmally flawed.

A review of the information found on the website of the
Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), shows that
the commission was set up by the federal government as a
reform programme aimed at providing greater access to,
and ensuring the quality of basic education throughout
Nigeria. The UBE programme objectives include: ensuring
uninterrupted access to nine-year formal education by
providing free and compulsory basic education for every
child of school age. The emphasis is on six years of primary
education and three years of junior secondary school (JSS)
education; reducing the school drop out rate; and the
acquisition of literacy, numeracy, life skills and values for
lifelong education and useful living.

The website further provides data on primary and JSS
school enrolment by state up to 2012 and national
summary basic education data up to 2009, but is bereft of
information on teacher profession development for the
training of teachers in all states of the federation, is silent
on the number of children that are of school age but are
out of school, and has no information on the teacher to
student ratio in the states. It is also silent on tools and
implements available in schools, and the enforcement of
quality assurance in the 36 states of the federation and
Abuja.

While UBEC might have played a role in universal access to
education at the foundation level, it is uncertain that the
commission has laid much emphasis on the quality of
education offered Nigerian pupils. In recognition of the
importance of basic education, UBEC is one of the few
government agencies enshrined in the constitution and is
accorded a first line charge on the Consolidated Revenue
Fund. Still Nigeria continues to churn out semi-literates and
illiterates who go on to universities and eventually call
themselves graduates.

It is apparent that a total overhaul of the education
system, especially at the foundation level, is long overdue.
Contrary to the argument put forward by the Academic
Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) that 26 per cent of the
federal budget should be assigned to tertiary institutions, I
am of the view that the 26 per cent should go to primary
and secondary schools. (The UN prescribes that countries
should assign 26 per cent of their budgets to the education
sector.) If only they can muster the political will to
introduce school fees, universities can actually fend for
themselves and improve on the delivery of qualitative
graduate and post-graduate education. Primary and
secondary education, on the other hand, which must be
free, must be given greater attention in any country
desirous of a literate population.

As long as Nigeria continues to produce half-baked students
from our primary and secondary schools, the quality of its
workforce will be substandard, irrespective of the number
of degrees it has acquired. A substandard workforce has its
attendant costs, as employers would have to spend more
resources training entry-level employees assumed to have
been educated in the first instance. In addition, a
substandard workforce means that the output by its
personnel would also be substandard, requiring employers
to pay more for expatriate personnel for jobs that could
have been handled by Nigerians.

The lesson to be gleaned from Malala and Pakistan is
Nigeria still has a long way to go. All countries marching
towards development lay considerable emphasis on
developing their human capital resources. Where it is
deemphasised, it becomes evident in the quality of the
leadership, the quality of the workforce, the quality of
public discourse, the technological strides a country makes,
and its ability to pull its citizens out of the poverty trap. It
is a vicious cycle from which Nigeria must extricate itself. A
way out is through a well-rounded, qualitative education.