NextierBest Practices for Funding Education in Nigeria
To provide primary education to all her people, the Nigerian government at all tiers should foster a relationship with private and civil society that can offer the necessary funding to ensure access to quality education.
By Emeka Chinonso Okafor
The right to education should be a fundamental human right. It is recognized by about 85 percent of the countries. As signatories to various international conventions such as the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, they recognize everyone’s right to free, compulsory primary education, availability, and access to secondary and higher education. The covenant recognizes the development of fundamental education for all persons who have not received or completed primary education, the development of a system of schools at all levels, and the improvement of teachers’ material conditions. It is expected that these countries’ governments provide the above-stated rights; however, this hasn’t always been the case as the advancement of such philosophies began only in the mid-nineteenth century as today’s industrialised countries started making efforts to expand primary education. This effort was often implemented through public finances and government involvement. Reports from those times showed that taxes at the local level was the primary source of government funding for education
The twentieth century saw an expansion of education across the world. As of the 1990s, developing countries’ spending on education as a share of national income neared those of developed countries (Szirmai 2015). This increase in funding resulted in a significant decline in education inequality across the globe and all age groups (Cuaresma, K.C and Sauer 2013). Recent data from UNESCO shows substantial cross-country and cross-regional heterogeneity in these broad global trends.
Following the Millennium Development Goals’ agreement, the first decade of the twenty-first century saw a meaningful increase in international financial flows under the umbrella of development assistance. Recent estimates show that development assistance for education has stopped growing since 2010, with notable aggregate reductions in inflows going to primary education. These changes in the prioritisation of development assistance for education across levels and regions can have potentially large distributional effects. In particular, this effect is experienced within low-income countries that depend substantially on this funding source for basic education ( Steer and Smith 2015).
Education in Nigeria is viewed as the primary responsibility of the government. It has always been the public’s belief that education funding is the sole responsibility of the three tiers of government (Ibezimako 2020). Nigeria’s federal government adopted education as an instrument for effecting national development (Ajeyalemi 2009). This philosophy led to the hosting of the first national curriculum conference in education in 1969. The conference’s resolutions resulted in the national policy on education, which was first published in 1977 and subsequently reviewed and reformed. These policies have not sufficiently lifted Nigeria from the morass of technological underdevelopment, political instability, and social decadence (Nwagu 2010). Inadequate funding of education is blamed for this situation. There appears to be a perennial crisis of funding in Nigeria and a lack of definite structures and strategies for financing education (Nwachukwu 2014). There is a need for a pragmatic solution to fund education development in Nigeria for effective national development.
Current State of Education Funding in Nigeria
The Universal and Compulsory Primary Education (UPE) introduced in 1976 wasn’t adequately prepared in terms of the number of classrooms required, the number of qualified teachers available, and the extent to which available resources could last. More than thirty years after that initiative, Nigeria’s educational sector is still characterised by poor performance. One of the significant explanations for this situation is the crisis of funding, definite structures, and strategies for addressing the problem (Nwachukwu 2014).
A 2006 review by Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Education ranked funding as very poor and advocated an increase in public spending. Between 2008 and 2018, the federal government allocation to education was about N3.9 trillion out of a budget of N55.19 trillion. While this represents 7 percent of the national budget, it falls below the UNESCO recommended 15 to 20 percent of the total public expenditure budget. Notwithstanding, Nigeria’s education budget has consistently increased within this period except for 2015 and 2016, which saw a marked drop conditioned by the economic recession.
Nigeria budget allocation to education (Source: Central Bank of Nigeria; Nextier)
The budget allocations to Nigeria’s education sector have not delivered commensurate results. For instance, between 2000 and 2004, over 85 percent of students at the Unity School failed their West Africa Secondary School Certificate Examinations. About 38 percent made Credits in five subjects at the National Examination Council Examination (NECO). The Federal Government-funded Unity Schools did not rank better than the 54 positions on the NECO Top 100 Schools ranking. This poor performance shows that, contrary to conventional thought, funding is not the most critical challenge of the education sector; instead, governance and accountability processes are the sector’s banes. Improved accountability will attract private financing to Nigeria’s education system.
Going Forward: Best Practises
From the preceding, what are the most critical questions for improving education in Nigeria? A 2008 World Bank report estimated that at least US$70 billion is required for infrastructure investment to build 800,000 new classrooms (300,000 to close the gap and 500,000 for growth to 2043),110 new universities, and 130 new Polytechnics.
The government alone can’t fund this need. Private-sector funding is required. What are the prerequisites for unlocking private sector funding for education? What are the processes to ensure the funds are effectively and efficiently utilised? The critical issues revolve around governance and efficiency.
Governance
There is a need for improved coordination of education spend at the three tiers of government, especially on expenditure tracking and reporting. Nigeria’s government needs to implement and uphold an outcomes-based funding mechanism (a sort of results framework) to guide policy development, programme planning, and budgets. A third option is to develop a fully costed long-term strategic plan with short-term operating goals. Such a strategy will outline the role the government intends to play and the areas where it seeks non-government players’ participation. In doing so, the government must ensure the service providers’ independence to manage their resources with clear separation of funding, clearly define performance targets and performance-related rewards for both the organisation and the individuals.
Efficiency
Strong leadership is required in the planning and management of Nigeria’s public education system. The government needs to right-size or optimise the assortment of agencies with overlapping responsibilities. For instance, tertiary education in Nigeria is under the administration of three organisations with varying but overlapping roles: the National Universities Commission, National Board for Technical Education, National Commission for Colleges of Education. Optimisation of personnel and capital costs is an essential step to increasing the available financial resources. Competition among service providers and availability of choice to service users should improve efficiency as the providers scramble to gain more share of the sector. Similarly, reforms need to be independently monitored and evaluated with a constant issuing of transparent reports.
Private Sector Education Investment
Improved governance, accountability, and efficiency should enable the government to attract private sector funds to the education sector. For the private sector involvement to become effective, there is a need for effective sector regulation, public accountability, and long-term engagement. The private organisations will bring efficiency, productivity, innovation, flexibility, and cost-effective results. Lastly, civil society is needed for impact assessment and advocacy, especially at the grassroot levels.
The private sector can work with the government to promote improvements in financing and provision of services. The focus should be on system efficiency, effectiveness, quality, equity, and accountability. Areas of private sector involvement should include enabling innovation, input on curriculum development, improvements to infrastructure delivery, and access to educationally disenfranchised groups. These private-public partnerships (PPP) can be in school adoption, philanthropy, capacity building programmes, outsourcing school management, voucher programmes, and school infrastructure partnerships.
Private sector involvement cannot be void of challenges as the education sector is a significant pillar of society. The expected difficulties may include construing the collaboration as a “profiteering,” political risks of policy reversals, lack of expertise in the successful implementation of these PPP models, and the difficulty in aligning the goals of different constituencies given their different motivations.
Conclusion
Governments worldwide have realised that they cannot fund education on their own. There is a need for collaboration between the public sector, private sector, and civil society organisations. This partnership must uphold the principles of transparency and accountability are prerequisites for successful collaboration. Besides, competence and commitment are required from all the parties: the government, private sector, and civil society organisations.
