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Education Reforms::Reflections On Reconstructing, Not Reforming, The Nigerian Education System

Reflections On Reconstructing, Not Reforming,
The Nigerian Education System.

Chukuka Okonjo
Adigwe Okonjo Centre
Ogbe-Ofu, Ogwashi-Ukwu.




Reflections On Reconstructing, Not Reforming, The Nigerian Education System.

Chukuka Okonjo
Adigwe Okonjo Centre
Ogbe-ofu, Ogwashi-Ukwu

¢â¬¦ Present, Past and Future
Form one mighty Whole
Kings College School Song.

1. BACKGROUND:

After more than three (3) decades of uncritical and very poor leadership, the education authorities in Nigeria, have woken up from their slumber and romance with the inherited education system They had been linearly expanding this system, only to discover that the dysfunctional state of the education sector over the last two (2) decades is a major cause of our socio-economic problems (Presidential Forum on the Education Sector; 2006).

Prior to the colonial domination of the African peoples in the 20th century, African civilizations, thought systems, value systems and an African mode of development, based on the two organizing principles EQUALITY and UNIFORMITY or COLLECTIVISM existed and were evolving. The United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) General History of Africa, started in 1965 and completed in eight (8) volumes in 1999, is evidence of these facts. With no summaries of these volumes in simplified English, French or any of the major African languages, like Hausa or Swahili existing, as had originally been planned, it is difficult to see how our children, those now in and out of school, can be made aware of the sufferings, tribulations, successes and contributions to the history of mankind made by our ancestors.
We now also know that although the current knowledge revolution is the third time in the history of mankind that knowledge has become extremely critical to the development of mankind, the first time this happened was in Maat some three thousand (3000) years ago in Ancient Egypt. There the concepts of the creation of mankind, that of one Supreme God, written language, the principles of mathematics, geometry, medicine, chemistry and other allied studies were enunciated, giving us in Khemet, the first knowledge based civilisation, (Ochefu, 2006).

In the case of Nigeria, where the British had seized Lagos in 1861, colonial domination and the Pax Britannica were not imposed until 1900. By October 1, 1960 this external colonialism ceased to exist, with the coming into being of the sovereign nation-state of Nigeria, enclosing within her territorial unit, some 97000 communities (Akinpelu 1994). With, these population agglomerations having communal systems of existence, the major task for Nigerians has been the conversion of a nation -state with 97000 communities into a nation state with one community.

Just as in the African case, evidence exists that Nigeria, with a population of around fifteen (15) million in 1900, had her civilizations, her thought systems, value systems and a Nigerian mode of development. The EREDO earthworks, located near Oke-eri in Ogun State is the most extensive in the world, involving the shifting of 3.5 million cubic metres of earth, which were used to build the encompassing ramparts that is one (1) million cubic metres more than the amount of rock, which went into building the Great Pyramid of CHEOPS in Egypt. The building of these earthworks is estimated to have taken one hundred and fifty (150) million man hours. The earthwork system, which encloses a vast complex covering four thousand (4000) sq. Kilometres, divided into five hundred (500) communal enclosures, goes around the area for one hundred and sixty (160) Kilometres.



The vertical side ditches, of this WORLD HERITAGE site, are fourteen (14) metres in depth and are more than one thousand (1000) years old, making this the earliest proof of a kingdom founded in the rain-forest area. The earthwork was carried out over a four hundred and fifty (450) to six hundred and fifty (650) year period, covering between 800 to 1000 AD, up till the 15th century, when troops of the Benin Kingdom overran much of the surrounding area. (Ahanihu,1999; 22-23).

This and the other findings at Ife, Benin City, Igbo-Ukwu, the Nok culture and the nine thousand (9000) years old canoe from north eastern Nigeria all point to the yawning gap in our knowledge of our past, as well as the paucity of our research efforts. They also remind us of the major deficiencies in our social science education. The population agglomerations that existed in the pre-colonial period, the cultures and communities that have continued to exist since then are an indication that there was a high level of independent thought, value systems and mode of development in Nigeria, which any education authority, wishing to reform the inherited education system, imposed on Nigeria as an immediate result of external colonialism, must of necessity think about and include, in arriving at their so-called reforming process.

For, for us Nigerians, the present, the past and the future form one mighty whole. But with no ENCYCLOPAEDIA NIGERIANA project in hand, it should be clear that the general public and our children, in and out of school, are hardly conscious of the contributions to human history and development, made by our ancestors.

What this means is that in our attempts to devise an education system more suitable for the rapid and accelerated development of Nigeria, we must adopt first a holistic attitude, looking not just at our current position




but also at our past and visualizing our desired future as a nation state and community. And in attempting to solve this our problem, not only must, we try to modernize the education system to serve our purposes but we must also not be seen as attempting to westernize it. Otherwise we might be regarded as unconsciously trying to perpetuate an unsuccessful internal colonialism or forcibly trying to convert our communities and nation state into shadow and subordinate variants of a Western liberal nation state.

A detailed review of the education system at all levels does show that the objective of modernizing the system without westernizing it, is best achieved, not by tinkering with the walls or parts of the structure of the inherited education system, as the Presidential Forum on the Education Sector has done, but rather by using readily available tools for a total and systemic reconstruction of the foundations of the inherited education system, in order to produce an entirely new system more suitable for our achieving our purpose building a modernized Nigerian nation state in a knowledge based society, which accepts the primacy of intellectual capital. We can thus redesign the education system to enable us catch up with the countries of the FIRST WORLD, leaving open the possibility of outstripping them. The route to achieving this objective lies in being able to raise simultaneously the number of pupils and students in the school system, the quality of the knowledge imparted in the schools and the literacy quotient in society and to achieve all this comfortably and within the resources of the country. (OKIGBO, 1997: xvii). We shall attempt to follow the advice given by this outstanding son of Nigeria.

The inherited education system, as we now know it, consists essentially of some early childhood education for around one (1) million children aged 2





to 5, out of some sixteen (16) million such children. But this education does not come under the formal authority and supervision of the various Ministries of Education of the Federal and State Governments; primary education for children aged 6 to 11, which still does not cover some eight (8) million children, who are now outside school; secondary education for children aged 12 to 17 with some 6.5m. children in school and 17.5m. not benefiting from school; a tertiary sub-sector of education for persons aged 18-24, who number at least some 17.7m. but of whom only some 1.5 million students enjoy the benefits of tertiary education.

No fourth or quarternary sub-sector of education exists, as the knowledge revolution of the 21st century began almost a century later than when the inherited education system had to be organized, in order that the imposed external colonialism could have administrative support. At that point in time, Nigerians were not supposed to invent or innovate, as this was an area of endeavour reserved for nationals of the mother country, Britain. Even the first university - type institution the University College, Ibadan was not founded until 1948. The education system, as such, was not geared towards producing creative and innovative persons. Nor indeed was the civil service, whose business it was to help transfer value from the ordinary Nigerian to the British and their mother land, in whose interest, the whole colonial structure had been conceptualized and constructed. The benefits of colonialism thus accrued, first to the external colonialists- the British, and with political independence, to the internal colonialists, to whom the British handed over power. The British, continued to benefit, but now operated a modified imperialism, in the form of supporting the existence of a neo-colonial state, run by those who inherited power from them, but whom they supervised in an indirect manner. Considerable effort was exerted not to introduce social changes.





In this way, passivity to change was induced among the leading elites, including the traditional rulers, the civil and public services, as well as members of the indigenous communities, whose lives remained virtually untouched, by the new administrative changes, which indirect rule connoted.

If we recognize that the influences impinging on education in Nigeria have not been solely from the FIRST WORLD, whose cultural imperialism now dominates Nigeria, with the only official language being English, then it becomes easy to understand that with the influence of Islam from the East, a number of persons in the country are literate in Arabic. Most of the population, however, is unable to read or write in their mother tongues. There is, as such, an adult population of around 40 to 55 million persons, who are not literate or fully numerate in the official language, English.
Universal primary education (UPE) was successfully introduced in Western Nigeria in 1951, in Eastern Nigeria in 1957 but unsuccessfully by the Gowon regime in 1976 for the whole of Nigeria. As a result of this, a further attempt has been made, since 2000, to reintroduce the concept of universal primary education now, however, in the form of universal basic education (UBE) that is formal school training for all for the first nine (9) years of school. Basic education thus, on the one hand, enabled the governmental authorities to meet the International Labour Organisation, (ILO) requirement that persons entering the labour force must be at least fifteen (15) years old. Education theory, on the other hand, assured the Governments of the Federation that persons with nine (9) years of school training would not, in the future, relapse into illiteracy. The notion of education as a fundamental human right, although acceptable to the Federal Government of Nigeria, as a member of the United Nations Organisation (UN), has thus yet to be implemented in the neo-colonial circumstances of Nigerian education.





Before continuing our search for an education system appropriate for a country in the circumstances of Nigeria, four basic characteristics of the population of the country ought to be noted. With respect to these characteristics, there is a marked difference between Nigeria position and that of the FIRST WORLD countries, which she is trying to compete with and possibly outstrip. First, while most FIRST WORLD countries, consisting of the leading nations of the world, have an AGING POPULATION, with around two (2) adults having to fend for one child, NIGERIA, in contrast, has a YOUNGING POPULATION, in which the median age of the population is 17.41 years. This means that there is only one adult, who is expected to, fend for one person under the age of 17.41 years. The tactics and strategy of the development of Nigeria, given her human manpower resources profile, must therefore be essentially different from those of FIRST WORLD countries, with a different type of population structure.

Secondly, Nigeria population has a lower level of material existence as well as a poorer quality of life than obtains in the FIRST WORLD countries. This does imply greater carefulness, on the part of Nigerians, in the utilization of any surplus natural resources, that they have available for investment. Such investments would, of course be made, with the hope that higher rates of return, on such investments, could result, than would have been the case with comparable investments in the FIRST WORLD countries.

Thirdly, Nigeria past experience with both external and internal colonialism has left her with an economy, which unlike those of the FIRST WORLD countries, has been fractured into two sub-sectors the formal and informal sub-sectors of the economy. Fourthly, and in addition,





colonialism has induced in the lowest nine (9) income deciles of Nigeria population, particularly those to be classed as living and ekeing out an existence in the, so-called, informal sub-sector of the economy, a passive attitude to change and the acceptance of a low level equilibrium with poverty, exemplified by the unsatisfactory and unacceptable poor living conditions Nigerians enjoy and characterized by a low material existence and a poor quality of life.

2. REAPING THE DIVIDENDS OF ACCELERATED DEVELOPMENT IMMEDIATELY.

The success of the East Asian Tigers, within the last three (3) decades, in achieving economic growth rates of ten (10) per cent per annum or more of their gross domestic products (GDP), continuously, for more than a decade has led to new hopes about development being raised, in the Third World countries. In these countries, it is believed, that with a proper mix of economic policies, good governance and the preparedness of the leading elites to equitably share the increases in production and productivity with their toiling masses, a Third World country can accelerate its growth rate and the growth of its economy and so catch up with the countries of the FIRST WORLD.

First, as the Malaysians have found for heterogeneous nation states and ANYA (1997; 33) has reported, for the endeavour to accelerate economic growth and enhance per capita productivity to succeed, there must be a consistent and discernible commitment to a set of over-arching values, anchored in COMMUNITY and CONSENSUS. Secondly, the INFORMATION AGE into which we have entered has for its infrastructure an educated population, with some seventeen (17) years of schooling, backed up by a healthy work-force.



This latter statement of the need, for an educated workforce has been partially reformulated for Nigerian circumstances by the statement that the key to success in the 21st century is a quality education. (Shonekan; 1998).

In Nigeria, where an attempt is being made to replicate the success of the East Asian Tigers, through the introduction of economic reform and a NEEDS (national economic empowerment and development strategy) strategy it has been possible, between 2003 and 2006, to reverse the negative and retrogressive trends of the Nigerian economy. Thus, a per capita gross domestic product, which stood at one thousand two hundred dollars ($US 1200) per capita in 1983 had fallen to two hundred and ninety ($US290) dollars in 2003 and the economy was approaching an economic melt down. The NEEDS strategy is predicated on a return by the country to its original values of hard work, honesty, integrity and humility. These values are central to a communal form of society. The NEEDS strategy, which is in essence, pushing a structural adjustment programme (SAP), in which financial and other investments are made in the “formal sub-sector of the fractured economy is thus hoping, if successful, to re-create the Nigerian mode of development that would engender growth in the formal sub-sector of the economy. It is then hoped that the modernization of the formal sub-sector would spread and its effects trickle down, and with time, engulf the informal sub-sector of the economy.

In Ghana, for example, in the decade of the eighties, such an expansion of the economy was not adjudged to be likely to succeed in engulfing, with time, the whole economy. For the costs of adjustment, which were onerous, had to be borne by the greater mass of the population living and





working in the informal sub-sector of the economy. Consequently, the route to success seemed to be for such SAP programmes to be accompanied by other programmes, specifically aimed at benefiting the poor, through, mitigating the social costs of adjustment (PAMSCAD), These programmes offered some relief from the burdens of the SAP programme, the costs of which invariably fell on the poor of the population, who were already in a low level equilibrium with poverty. This mass of the population also lived in a state of passivity with regard to social change in their societies, with this state of affairs being promoted by the negative credit and health conditions that existed in such societies. These in turn, militated against any attempts by these poor classes to adventure into entrepreneurship, on their own.

In the Nigerian case, not only has DEBT RELIEF been granted, while the price of oil, the major export product of the country has remained high. The new NEEDS strategy of development, which presupposes a return to the pre-colonial evolving basic values of Nigerian society has also been promulgated and is being implemented. Such a strategy, curiously, has been found acceptable to the leading and governing elites. But a PAMSCAD like programme, aimed at building an educated and healthy work force has yet to be organised. Pari passu, there is also, existing, the all pervasive PREBENDALISM, BRIBERY and CORRUPTION of the LEADERSHIP, with these negative traits of the leadership not being as vigorously and uncompromisingly tackled, if immediate success in accelerating the growth rate of the economy, production and per capita productivity are to be achieved and this within a year or two.

The nomenclature the “formal and “informal sub-sectors of the economy is given by classical and neo-classical economists to the “enclave and “domestic market economies of under-developed countries, like Nigeria.


These terms are easily recognized by proponents of a structural theory of development under the conditions of imperialism, otherwise known as Centre-Periphery theory. They are a means of mentally inducing “amnesia about economic development in the domestic market economy of an underdeveloped country, the periphery (p) of each PERIPHERY (P) another name for Third World countries.

It is advocated in orthodox development theory that investments in the enclave economy, which initially benefit the topmost or at the best the two topmost income deciles of a country, would in around fifteen (15) to twenty (20) years trickle down and engender growth in the domestic market economy. Then, the nine (9) or eight (8) lower income deciles of the population of an underdeveloped country, who earn their living in the periphery of the Periphery nation, and live on less than two (2) United States dollars ($US2) a day, can expect to enjoy the benefits of development. This desirable situation is hastened by investments by the underdeveloped country in infrastructure like roads, energy, water, primary and secondary education, etc. while curbing mortality and morbidity and restricting fertility. The reality for underdeveloped country politicians, economists, development policy planners and administrators, conditioned, as they are, by colonialism into a state of PASSIVITY to and the acceptance of, immobility in social change, is different. Their experience is that their implementation of the enclave economy paradigm has not resulted in accelerated development but rather, quite often, in regression. Consequently, the majority of their fellow citizens, with a life expectancy at birth of less than forty-five years, cannot wait for fifteen (15) to twenty (20) years to reap the dividends of development. They want to enjoy those benefits now.



Even though large sums of foreign exchange are earned by and invested in the enclave economy, returns on foreign capital invested, other capital outflows, debt repayment, leakages induced by prebendalism, bribery corruption, as well as economic mismanagement lead to outflows exceeding inflows. A situation thus arises, in which there is a net outflow of capital, resulting for the country in regression, not development.

The imperatives for development, therefore, as seen by Third World country governments, seem to be DEBT CANCELLATION, the stemming of the leakages of capital through unwarranted capital outflows and corruption as well as better economic management, with more capital investments being made in the enclave economy. For the donor governments, the way forward is good governance by Third World country politicians, the ending of corruption and economic mismanagement, privatization, liberalization and trade under the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO). There would then be the injection of fresh capital into the Third World country enclave economy through new partnerships, like the New Economic Partnership for African Development (NEPAD). Such partnerships, Third World country economists and politicians fear, are just a new form of neo-colonialism.

As against this thinking, it is posited that by redirecting and channeling investment resources, not necessarily monetary or financial capital, into the domestic market economy, we can call into being a “structural transformation of the economy from below (STEB). This desirable situation is made possible by “simultaneous and sustainable development achieved through the empowerment of the people (SISUDEP) in ten areas critical to development, namely, education, science and technology, information and communications, food, health care, employment, culture, particularly the languages, income and wealth, community living and the environment and participatory democracy.


Concentrating our attention on the first two variables in which people ought to be empowered education, science and technology reorganization of the inherited education system at all levels, but beginning at the tertiary level with the university-type institutions, could lead to latent resources being identified. These currently latent resources exist partly as students, partly as that portion of the population of the country, who make up the nine (9) or eight (8) lower income deciles, and live on less than two (2) United States dollars ($US2) a day. They make up and constitute the domestic market economy. As members of this sub-sector of the economy, they are “passive recipients of dispensed benefits, who could be converted into “agents of change and utilized. Their transformation into active investment resources in the domestic market economy would lead to development there being revolutionized. Development in this view, can be accelerated and the nine (9) or eight (8) lower income deciles of a country made to reap the dividends of development, immediately, not in fifteen (15) to twenty (20) years time.

This would be the case, in Nigeria, if in development policy, a two pronged approach to development theory and policy is accepted and undertaken. First, as is being tried out with the NEEDS strategy, with respect to the enclave economy, a structural adjustment programme (SAP) supported by PAMSCAD like programmes would be put in place. Secondly, with respect to the domestic market economy, enhanced human resources would replace natural resources, like solid minerals, oil and gas, as the engine of development. The population living and working in the domestic market economy would then be mobilized and induced to shake off their passivity to change. This would be achieved through attention being directed to solving their undoubted development problems. This, in conjunction with the action already being taken in the enclave economy, would lead to more rapid and accelerated development of the country. This new viewpoint needs some elaboration and expatiation.




3. GENERATING HUMAN RESOURCES FOR DEVELOPMENT

But before proceeding to make suggestions for generating human resources for development and reconstructing the inherited education system, it is necessary to put forward the introduction of a few measures, which would increase the capacity of the inherited education system to self-generate a higher level of DISCIPLINE, among pupils and staff, involved in the system.

Replacement of the current value system, which emphasizes the get rich quick, my share of the national cake and the settlement syndromes has been required by the NEEDS strategy as a first step in economic reform. These negative values would be replaced by the old values of HONESTY, HARD WORK, INTEGRITY, and HUMILITY, values which underlie the evolving Nigerian, COMMUNAL model of society. Success in achieving a rapid expansion of national production and productivity could then be guaranteed. We can begin to take action in this direction by requiring that there be a diminution in the incidence of examination malpractice and cultism in the education system, where their influence is now pervasive. It is suggested, that instructions be given for examinations and tests usually held in the eleventh (11th) week of a twelve (12) week term be shifted and should now be held on the first week of the succeeding term and immediately after the holidays.

The current practice of schools taking examinations and tests in the eleventh week of term has meant that after the holiday preceding a new term, many public schools find resumption on the scheduled date, difficult. This is because children in school, stay away from school for a further week or one and a half (1½) weeks, with the consent of their parents.





Pupils thus extend their holidays. Again after examinations and tests in the eleventh (11th) week of the term, no lessons are taught in school, during the twelfth week. With the teachers ostensibly marking the examinations or test papers during the twelfth week and children in the public schools being required to do agricultural work, discipline in the schools seems to be in order. In the view of the pupils, however, they are being asked to provide unpaid and unrequited LABOUR, to till the school farm, whose harvest usually benefits the teacher. This they oppose and resent. If they can, they abscond from school in this twelfth week. If they cannot, they spend the twelfth week in school, playing or otherwise making themselves unmanageable.

Children at school thus lose, at least, two (2) teaching weeks every term, six (6) teaching weeks a year and thirty six (36) teaching weeks or one year of teaching in six years of school. In twelve (12) years of school, they thus lose two (2) teaching years, ending up after twelve (12) years of school, unlike elsewhere, by only being prepared properly to successfully take a School, rather than, a Higher School Certificate examination. Such lax discipline, with its negative and unforeseen consequences for school achievement, is easily corrected by shifting the time, when examinations and tests are taken, to the first week of the succeeding term. Such a shift would change the situation, with parents no longer being morally forced to support the indiscipline of their children in not returning to school as scheduled. For they also resent the so-called LABOUR WEEK. Pupils would be compelled to return to school at the scheduled resumption date for their examinations and tests,

The teachers, as a group, would feel much happier at the marked improvement in school discipline. Marking all scripts as before, within ten (10) days and publishing the results of the examination and tests,




immediately, would also mean an improvement in the work discipline of the teachers. There would no longer be an idle twelfth teaching week for teachers, particularly in public schools, in which teachers do nothing else but mark papers. Teachers would then have to mark papers during the first week of term and in a timely manner. They would then follow this up by teaching from the first week of term, onwards, until the end of term. Parents would require their children to revise what they have been taught at school during the past term, while they are on holidays This would be in preparation for the examinations and tests to be held in the first week of the succeeding term, after the holidays. Because the children have to devote some attention to revising and mastering the material that had been taught them, in the term previous to the holiday, serious work leading to a higher and better standard of performance would result.

The sum effect of this proposal that examinations be no longer taken in the eleventh (11th) week of term but in the first week of the succeeding term, immediately after the holidays, would be that learning during the holiday would be more intense than now. Pupils would, because they are forced to revise for their examinations and tests, have a better understanding and comprehension of what they have been taught during the preceding term. Another salutary effect would be that with the improvement of general discipline and the raising of standards, pupils would no longer lose two weeks a term, six (6) teaching weeks a year, thirty six (36) teaching weeks or one whole teaching year in six (6) years of school and two (2) whole teaching years in twelve (12) years of school. Pupils should thus be able to complete twelve (12) years of school with the final exit examination being the Higher School Certificate, as in other countries. For cognitive science has taught us that with more intensive learning more learning takes place than would otherwise have been the case.






If this change is made immediately, the standards of entry into the universities could then be raised to that of admission by direct entry, that is, by the candidate applying for admission being in possession of a Higher School Certificate, as in other countries of the FIRST WORLD. Candidates applying for admission into university would thus be admitted by direct entry and the ranking device, which the Joint Admissions and Matriculations Board (JAMB) now constitutes can be done away with, immediately. Notice would then have to be given to the JAMB office and their officials to wind up their affairs within the next two (2) years, that is by or before the end of the year 2008.

It is also scarcely noticed, in Nigeria, that after twelve (12) years of work at school, ending with a School Certificate, it takes another five (5) years of training, including a year of national service, to prepare a pupil for the world of work. For pupils with a good School Certificate and JAMB results are admitted to university, with their first year at university being spent doing remedial work, which should have been done much more cheaply in the secondary school. HINCHLIFFE gives the unit cost now of training at the various levels of education as being in the ratio of 1: 2: 13.5:15 for training at the primary, secondary, tertiary non-university and tertiary university levels. Universities in Nigeria have learnt the hard way and have now begun, despite the financial losses involved, to out-source sub-degree courses, like Diploma, Certificate and JAMB remedial first year courses to secondary schools, or tertiary non-university institutions that operate much like the American Community Colleges.

Such universities, like the University at Ibadan, have enjoyed a marked diminution in examination malpractice and cult activities and gained in the much better discipline of their students. The much more intensively loaded and worked students do not have that much spare time to devote to extraneous activities.




Older, as they usually are, they know that the results of their examinations in their first and succeeding years count towards the final grade they would make in their first degree. A good degree is not made by loafing around. Students who do so, must be content with a gentleman degree. They also have themselves to blame for their not too outstanding performance .

In this regard, Nigeria is lucky in that the Babangida administration did construct 1178 buildings two (2) each in 589 Local Government Areas (L.G.As.),-which were to have been used as party political headquarters, but have since 1983 not been in use, as such. These buildings could be reconditioned and expanded in a first phase and used to train persons not fully qualified to enter universities. In a second phase of development, similar facilities can be constructed in the LGAs, that did not have party political headquarters, built in them, in the first place. Persons applying for, but not admitted to universities, could then have a place, where they could study and improve on their performance, while at the same time participating in the world of work, as in the case of the American Community Colleges. Academic standards would not be more than two (2) years of degree work and this would be coupled with training in skills. This particular type of privileged training has been granted to teachers, policemen, prison officials, sanitary workers, categories of nursing and mid-wifery personnel and should, as of now, be extended to all pupils, finishing twelve (12) years of school, as a right.

University tertiary institutions, in former British colonies in Africa, admit students for instruction and training in a SINGLE INTAKE, once a year. In a seven (7) hours working day, five (5) days a week, students are taught on-campus for two (2) semesters, which, taken together, cover twenty sixty (26) weeks, revise for four (4) weeks and sit to examinations for two (2) weeks.




Thus the lectures, which do not take, all in all, more than five hundred (500) hours, are spaced out over a period of seven (7) hours a day, five (5) days of the working week, over a period of twenty six (26) weeks or nine hundred and ten (910) working hours. In Nigeria, sandwich courses are arranged to take place during the two (2) holidays of six (6) and fourteen (14) weeks, although sandwich students are admitted to a degree after five (5) years or one hundred (100) weeks of successful work, as against four (4) years or one hundred and twenty eight (128) weeks for the regular student.

Let us now, instead, divide all students both regular and sandwich into two structurally similar groups, equal in number. If the first group receives twenty six (26) weeks of lectures on campus, followed by a twenty six (26) weeks off-campus holiday cum revision and work-study period, the second group could be engaged in twenty-six (26) weeks of holiday, work-study cum revision, during the on-campus lecture period of the first group, followed by twenty six (26) weeks of lectures on campus. Such work would earn these students two (2) to three (3) weeks of paid leave, which, in the initial year would be free but, as we shall see in later years, could be used for examinations, followed by twenty six (26) weeks of on-campus lectures. We thus have a situation, in which two batches of students have been taught on campus for twenty six (26) weeks each, followed by a holiday, work study and revision period of twenty six (26) weeks, albeit, with a gap of twenty six (26) weeks or six (6) months, between the commencement of lectures for the first and second batch of students. It is also to be noted, that no examinations have been administered to each of the two batches of students, after their twenty six (26) weeks of lectures, followed by a twenty six (26) weeks holiday, revision cum work study period.







If during the twenty six (26) weeks lecture period, an eight (8) hour day, instead of the current seven (7) hour one, is worked, in other words, lectures would begin at 7am instead of at 8am, as of now, the (7x5x26) hours = 910 hours available for fixing lectures in twenty six (26) weeks can be replaced by twenty three (23) weeks, of possible lectures, given over (8 x 5x 23) hours = 920 hours. Students in the first group could then undertake lectures for twenty three (23) weeks, revise off-campus for twenty six (26) weeks and sit to examinations for three (3) weeks, before proceeding to a new year. Students in the second group, who initially have to work for six (6) months, would then have three (3) weeks free, commencing lectures exactly six (6) months after the first group of students start theirs. They would then embark on twenty three (23) weeks of lectures, given within nine hundred and twenty (920) working hours. Since they would have to spend another twenty six (26) weeks on holidays, revision and work-study, before sitting to examinations, lasting three (3) weeks, they would have spent an extra year on work-study than students graduating normally. In Nigeria, this can be compensated for, by exempting this initial second group from the obligatory one year national service. Thus, instead of a single, a double intake would result. Moreover, where before the facilities were used to train only one batch of students, a second batch of students, similar in structure and equal in number to the first batch, can be taught in the same facilities within the year. No recurrent (teaching) or capital costs would be involved.

By continuing the current tests, during the twenty three (23) weeks teaching period, to ensure students keep pace with the teaching and introducing the double intake system of admission in place of the single intake one, with the taking, after holidays, of promotion or exit examinations, including viva-voce ones, educational standards can be raised, examination malpractices significantly reduced, and enrolment doubled, within one year.



It would also enable the sandwich system, which equates one hundred (100) weeks of work of the sandwich student, for a degree, to that of one hundred and twenty eight (128) weeks of work of the regular student, to be phased out, without a loss in enrolment.

The introduction of the quadruple intake system of admission and operation, in the third year, that is a double intake in the morning and another in the evening, analogous to a shift system of work, would enable Nigeria to catch up, both in absolute and per capita enrolments in universities, with countries of the FIRST WORLD, within five to seven years or two to three development cycles, without sacrificing quality or standards. This would mean, in the Nigerian case, that with the double intake system of running a tertiary institution, three hundred thousand (300,000) new students would undertake university studies each year. In the case of the quadruple intake, six hundred thousand (600000) new places would be available yearly for students going up for studies in the universities. And all this can be done without new major capital or recurrent expenditures being incurred by the Governments of the Federation, excepting in the case of the quadruple intake, where the recurrent cost entailed in recruiting and employing eighteen thousand (18000) to twenty thousand (20000) new university teachers has to be met.

In view of the revolutionizing effects, which the ideas embodied in the concepts of the double intake, quadruple intake, work-study, target timing, direct entry into the university system through the possession of a Higher School Certificate, a quarternary sub-sector of education, which specializes in research and development, do have for the education sector in Nigeria, it is important that we go over the grounds covered by these new concepts, at the risk of being repetitive.




We would also need to explain other ideas like, the creation of new knowledge and improvements in teaching technology and methodology, the provision of an adequate number of teachers, with a satisfactory and acceptable knowledge base now interpreted as the university teacher holding a doctorate degree. As we would also have to consider the treatment of education as a fundamental human right, it is important that we explain these ideas further and apply them, with those already mentioned above, to the current Nigerian situation, in the hope that in using them in various contexts, their meaning would become clearer. Appropriate use, we think, would also show how many of the difficulties, which the education authorities believe they are now facing can be solved, elegantly, and without their having to throw too much money at the problems before them.

We begin by considering the question of the access, which students have to the universities and other tertiary institutions. We assume that like the education authorities, in this year (2006) university admission exercises, eight hundred and sixty eight thousand (868000) candidates applied for university admission, two hundred thousand (200,000) scored on or above a (so-called) cut off point, but only one hundred and forty eight thousand One hundred and forty eight thousand given cut off point of 200, 000, three hundred and twenty three (148323) candidates stood the chance of gaining admission, because of the perceived low carrying capacity of the nation seventy six (76) universities. Attention is also directed to the fact that the application of a cut off point is in effect the use of a ranking mechanism. This ranking mechanism does not test how much material the candidate has studied and mastered, and so this mechanism, the Joint Admission and Matriculations Board (JAMB) examination is simply a neo-colonial adaptation of old colonial ranking devices, used to frustrate students, as in the old Higher College at Yaba.

The perception of the education authorities of the “low carrying capacity, of our universities cannot withstand any critical examination. For the operation of a double intake system in the running of our universities would lead to some three



hundred thousand (300.000) places being immediately available, with no increase in recurrent or capital costs. If, instead a quadruple intake system of running the universities is undertaken, six hundred thousand (600 000) university places would be immediately available for new entrants, with zero or minimal capital cost but with the extra recurrent cost of paying eighteen thousand (18000) to twenty thousand (20 000) new teachers, that would have to be recruited to teach the expanded number of students.

The question as to whether Colleges of Education and Polytechnics should be upgraded immediately, by association with a nearby university can therefore now be more rationally discussed. For there would no longer be the pressure, for us to create five hundred thousand (500,000) new and essential university places by associating Colleges of Education and Polytechnics with nearby universities. Using the double and then the quadruple intakes in the admission process makes first, three hundred thousand (300,000) places and then six hundred thousand (600,000) places available in the universities. As we shall see, in due course, the perceived low carrying capacity of our universities is due to the non-application, by the education authorities of the double and quadruple intake systems of admission and their operation in the university system.

Figure 3.1 illustrates diagrammatically the arguments already presented in respect of the double-intake and also shows how the transition from a single intake mode of operation to a double intake one can be under taken. In the on-following diagrams, the OX axis represents hours of the day in which the facilities of the institution could possibly be in use, that is from 06.00 hours in the morning until 24.00 hours, each night. Each unit on the OX axis represents an hour of possible use. The OY axis represents weeks in the year, with each unit on the OY axis representing a week. The origin in the diagrams instead of being at the bottom left hand corner of the graph, as is usual in graphs, is at the top left hand corner of each diagram. While the OX axis runs towards the right from the origin, as is the case in normal graphs, the OY axis runs downwards from the origin, perpendicular to the OX axis, instead of upwards. As compared with normal graphs, the OY axis is inverted.



Diagram 1 of Figure 3.1 therefore, represents how a university tertiary institution in Nigeria uses the time at its disposal during the day and the year in implementing its teaching and research programmes, particularly its teaching programmes. This consists of thirteen (13) weeks of teaching in the first semester, followed by two (2) weeks of revision, one (1) week of examinations and then, six (6) weeks of holiday. There is then another thirteen (13) weeks of teaching in a second semester, followed by two (2) weeks of revision, one (1) week of examinations and then fourteen (14) weeks of holiday, to make up a whole year.

In diagram 2 of Figure 3.1, the teaching weeks, revision periods and holidays are each consolidated into one block each and set down, one after the other, to cover the year, with teaching weeks being coloured yellow, revision weeks grey, examination weeks red, and holiday weeks, green. This brings out, clearly, how the facilities, of the tertiary institution are used for teaching, revision, examinations and holidays. The total amount of time, when the facilities are not in use that is some twenty (20) weeks, when the students are on holiday is also clear.

In Diagram 3 of Figure 3.1, the time in which the students do their revision is deleted. This is because the student, during a holiday, can not only recuperate from the stresses and strains of the teaching and tests in a term, but can also engage in work-study, that is working, while at the same time studying during those times they are not at work. This means that the student can during this period take up employment, as well as, revise the lesson materials he has been taught during his twenty three (23) weeks of lectures on campus. Revision can therefore take place in the twenty-six weeks following their lectures and in alternative accommodation, which is not the tertiary institution.

If we assume that students revise two (2) hours a day, during the five (5) working days of the week and some five (5) hours daily, during the week ends, making a total of twenty (20) hours of studies a week, students would have






studied some three hundred and sixty eight hours more or a month and sixteen (16) days more than is the case in the current single intake model of the university tertiary institution now functioning in Nigeria There, he is forced to revise for four (4) weeks and presumably reads for eight (8) hours a day. It is assumed, in this regard, that working for six (6) months would entitle the student to two (2) weeks of annual leave. It is also assumed, in making the comparison that in view of his yearly promotion examination being close, he would spend these two (2) weeks reading eight (8) hours a day, in preparation for his end of year examination. In translating the extra hours spent reading in the double intake model of operation, it is assumed that only eight (8) hours of reading a day has been undertaken over three hundred and sixty eight (368) extra hours. The diagram shows that the turn-around time for teaching a batch of students is twenty-six (26) weeks.

In Diagram 3 of Figure 3.1, this twenty-six (26) weeks turn-around time is used to teach a second set of students - the double intake. With teaching starting at 7a.m., lectures can now be delivered at convenient times during an eight (8) hours working day, five (5) days of a working week, with, work closing at 3 pm. Each set of students spends some twenty-three (23) weeks having lectures and is then sent down for a twenty-six (26) weeks vacation and work-study. During the three (3) weeks which follow, examinations are administered to those students, who have been away for their six (6) months holiday and work-study period. Their registration for a new year of work is also done, if they are successful in their examinations.

This registration takes place with that of a batch of new students admitted to studies that year, in the university. The first such batch of new students is thus registered and takes up studies, with the very first set of students admitted to study in the university, under the new admissions system. This is then followed by both the old and the newly admitted set of students, receiving twenty-three (23) weeks of lectures. Thereafter they are sent down and the second batch, of students, that had been on holidays and work-study returns to do its examinations.




Those students, who are successful, then proceed with a newly admitted group of students, equivalent in number to those admitted newly to studies with the first batch to do work for a new session in twenty-three (23) weeks. This is the double intake.

It is important, in this regard, to explain the transition from diagram 3 to diagram 4, as represented by the intermediate inset diagram, in which there is a transition from a seven (7) hour to an eight (8) hour working day. Diagram 3 represents training for two batches of students, in which in twenty-six (26) weeks of lectures, spread over seven (7) hours a day, of a five (5) day working week or nine hundred and ten (910) hours in all are delivered. Diagram 3 makes no provision for examining the student. Since examinations have to be provided for, we could do this by extending the diagram linearly, to cater for the time required for the two sets of students, to sit to their examinations. But this would be improper, for we cannot extend the year to accommodate the needed examinations.

The question therefore arises, as to whether by extending the number of hours worked a day, we can in less than twenty-six (26) weeks, so organize the teaching, that a TARGET TIME of nine hundred and ten (910) hours would be made available for the lectures and tests to be given. One way of achieving this is by extending the daily period of work from seven (7) to eight (8) hours a day or starting lectures by 7a.m. Lecturers would thus have forty (40) hours, in a five (5) day working week, within which to deliver their lectures and administer their tests. If the variable “X represents the number of weeks required to achieve the TARGET TIME of nine hundred and ten (910) hours required for lectures, then (40 x X) would be approximately equal to 910. From this it follows that X = 910 and “X would be approximately equal to 23.
40
This means, however, that in twenty three (23) weeks, with a working period of eight (8) hours a day in a five (5) day working week, nine hundred and twenty (920) working hours would be available, in which lectures can be given and tests administered.




Diagram 4 therefore gives a representation of an eight (8) hour working day, with lectures and tests being organized for twenty-three (23) weeks, leaving three (3) weeks each half year for examinations. The time available for examinations each half year is coloured in red. Examinations for a batch of students are taken after a holiday, in which the student does work-study.

The first batch of students can therefore receive lectures for twenty three (23) weeks, proceed on holiday and work-study for twenty-six (26) weeks and end up the year by taking their examinations and having their results collated and announced, over a period of three (3) weeks. They can then proceed to do work for a new session with newly admitted students. With a six (6) months lag in commencing lectures, as compared with the first batch of students, the second batch of students goes up for twenty-three (23) weeks, in which lectures are given, goes on holidays and work - study for twenty six (26) weeks and is then examined in another three (3) weeks, before going on to do work for a new session. They are joined by a second group of newly admitted students, equal in number to those joining the first batch of students, to undertake a new session.

Diagram 5 shows in detail, with arrows indicating how each batch, of students proceeds from one stage of learning to the other, while diagram 6 takes cognizance of the fact that twenty-three (23) weeks, without a break, might be a bit too long for students to sit continuously, as it were, at lectures. Each twenty three (23) weeks period is therefore broken into two (2), eleven (11) weeks long semesters, with a one week holiday inserted in green - between the two semesters. Diagram 6 therefore shows how two (2) equal batches of students can be taught sequentially in the same facilities, without having to build extra classrooms, studios or laboratories. No extra capital costs are involved in training twice the number of students, that are permitted to study under the single intake method of operation.

The quadruple intake does indicate how a tertiary institution could, without strain, take up and have instructed approximately some four times the current number of students taught in a single intake university. In the quadruple intake a second double intake is run in the afternoons and evenings.



It thus represents the fuller utilization of the facilities of a tertiary institution, both during the day and in the afternoons and evenings. In this case, apart from teaching being done in the mornings, a second batch of students is taught in the evenings between 16.30 hours and 21.30 hours every day of the working week and work is also carried out for ten (10) hours on the sixth day of the week. After teaching ends, the cleaners move in and work till around 23.30 hours. By 24.00 hours the tertiary institution closes for the night. Handled this way, the same facilities could, without strain, take up approximately some four times the current number of students, as in the single intake university. Over the year then, two sets of double-intakes are taught in parallel, one in the mornings, the other during the evenings and nights.

Nigerians might wish to note, that the operation of a quadruple intake system in Nigerian universities, is equivalent to building two hundred and twenty eight (228) new single intake universities in addition to the seventy six (76) single intake universities that we now have, without spending one kobo. Equivalent teaching facilities, studios, workshops and first class laboratories, as in the First World countries, do have to be provided and maintained, for this larger number of students. But this is the case even for a single intake university, if quality education does have to be given.

A quadruple intake system, like the one sketched out above, has many manifest advantages over the usual single intake system. It could, however, be argued that going to lectures in the evenings could lead to less rigorous work being done and so to a fall in standards. Taking lectures and practicals, during the day is, however, for the student not different from taking the same lectures and practicals, in the evenings, provided water and electricity are guaranteed for operations both during the day and in the evenings. It could even be argued that lectures in the evenings and nights would be preferable, as it would be cooler than during the day. One priority would however be, under the conditions obtaining in Nigeria, the strengthening of the delivery of services like water, electricity and gas to the tertiary institutions. It might also be observed that many tertiary institutions in the United States run two divisions a division of day studies and one of evening studies. The courses offered in the evening are identical with those offered during the day.



The evening courses are staffed by the academic departments from the same pool of full and part-time scholars, from which teachers in the day and evening divisions are selected. Degrees conferred by such tertiary institutions are in respect of the same examinations and these institutions do not distinguish between programmes, completed during daytime or in the evening hours.
Another argument that might be put forward is directed to the fact that a student in Nigeria trained under a double or quadruple intake scheme has lectures for twenty two (22) weeks, as in diagram 6. this is less than the twenty-four (24) weeks year obtaining in some universities in the FIRST WORLD and so such training is not normal. this observation is contradicted by the fact that many tertiary institutions in the United States, Great Britain, Eastern and Southern Africa have a twenty-four (24) weeks teaching year and the currency of their degrees and the high quality of their teaching and research is not doubted. In fact, the famed Business Schools of the Ivy-League universities in the United States are going over to operating a twenty-four (24) weeks teaching year.

In Nigeria, we have a twenty six (26) weeks teaching year, in which students receive as many quality lectures as in the twenty four (24) weeks year obtaining in the First World countries, if not more. It is to be noted that using the new process of TARGET TIMING evolved in the last decade of the 20th century, it has become possible to find an alternate equivalent period to the nine hundred and ten (910) working hours now available under the single intake system, in which lectures are now given. It should be clear that, if a certain pensum of lectures and tests can be given in the nine hundred and ten (910) hours available for work in the single intake system, they are more easily given, within the nine hundred and twenty (920) hours available in the double intake system of operation. This argument does not, therefore, provide an excuse against operating the new system being advocated. For even though students are lectured and tested for twenty two (22) weeks, the number of contact hours involved is not less than those being given in the twenty six (26) weeks of lectures, that now obtains under the single intake system.

Since the facilities already available are being used more efficiently, no major capital costs have to be incurred in respect of classroom construction. If the quadruple intake system is put into operation, maintenance costs would of course rise.


But these costs are marginal and would not in any one year exceed ten (10) per cent of the annual recurrent cost of operation. Apart from the need to increase staffing, and consequently office space for the teachers, it would also be necessary, under Nigerian living, work and study conditions for universities to construct a few buildings, where students, not at lectures can rest or study as they wish. Auxiliary staff, like laboratory technicians, would have to have their numbers multiplied by two, with one set working, during the day and the other during the evenings. Office staff, however, do not need to be duplicated and the increased work-load could be taken up by computers. This needed increase would however be only a fraction of the recurrent cost of a single intake institution.

With the teaching staff, the position is different. Teaching two sets of students, sequentially, would mean that staffing would have to be increased to one hundred and fifty (150) per cent of its single intake level. As we shall see later, this increase also takes care of the necessity for tertiary education teachers to go on research sabbatical for one year, after three years of teaching and research, which is a method, which allows tertiary education teachers to extend and improve on their knowledge base as well as create new knowledge. Such a fourth year rotatory sabbatical does form a good foundation for the quarternary sub-sector of education in Nigeria, which now exists by its studied absence in the education system. Having an evening and day stream, each stream consisting of two sets of students, again, does not mean that teaching staff must be increased to three (3) or four (4) times the number of staff required to teach a single intake but rather to about two and a half times.

For given the opportunity to earn extra income, regular full-time day staff would be prepared to teach part-time for extra payment in the evening courses or vice versa. Where one then is employed, as a full or part-time teacher, is a matter for the sub-division of a school to decide. Academic departments of a faculty would thus be expected to make a judicious mix of full-time and part-time teachers, both for the day and evening courses undertaken by them.

The capital cost to be incurred, in providing buildings for the rest and recuperation of students in between lectures and offices for additional staff,



would be much less than a tenth of the capital expenditures, which would otherwise have had to be incurred, in providing living, working and study facilities for the over three (3) million anticipated increase in the number of students. In addition, capital expenditures would have to be incurred in respect of the office accommodation for the extra staff that would be needed in operating a single intake system with an enrolment six (6) times the current number of students. These latter considerations must have been at the back of the minds of the Longe Commission in making its recommendations, for a limited increase in the number of students admitted to study, in the tertiary institutions, by the year 2000.

There are also other advantages to be gained by moving over to a quadruple intake system. Water, electricity and gas supply services, all over Nigeria, are not noted as being efficient, particularly in the suburban and rural areas of the country. The creation of evening classes in the tertiary institutions immediately establishes a most powerful lobby for efficient all day service, which the authorities, responsible for these services, would ignore at their own peril. Moreover, the fact that the same laboratories, workshops, studios and other facilities would be used four times over in a year by students, instead of once, as in the case of single intake enrolments, also exerts its own pressure, for these facilities to be always put right and properly maintained for use.

For the authorities, who have to find the money to pay for the tertiary institutions to function, a six-fold expansion of intake, would remove one big problem they have to contend with the inter-ethnic rivalry involved in competing for access to tertiary institutions with a limited single intake and all the animosity this generates. With admissions increasing six-fold or more, the government authorities can concentrate their efforts, not on preventing persons, who merit it, from going up to a tertiary institution but rather to ensuring that people in the so-called “disadvantaged states have facilities, which prepare prospective students for the performance tests, which tertiary institutions would have to set, for selecting their students.

One other problem also becomes easier to solve - that of restructuring the student body so that it is biased towards specialization in areas of study, like science and technology.


A sizeable increase in the number of persons being admitted for study would make it also easier to remove the gender biases, which the current structures of the education system inject into the enrolments at the secondary and primary school levels. Both failings cannot be fully corrected for at the tertiary level. Better training in the sciences and mathematics, much better teaching and laboratory work at the primary and secondary school levels, as well as changes in social attitudes towards women are all required, if these desirable changes are to become part of our daily lives. Moreover, changing attitudes towards women requires that continued and lengthy education should be given to men. In addition to this, affirmative action can also be consciously taken not to place women at a disadvantage in filling places. Given the dual-sex division of roles in our societies, efforts should rather be directed towards diversifying the roles available to women and encouraging them to take up what have become known as men areas of work and professions.

There is one further consideration, which usually does not come into the reckoning of officials, who have to decide whether to expand intakes in tertiary institutions or not the opportunity costs of doing business as usual. It is not well known, and the Longe Commission seems not to have taken this into consideration in its report, that some twenty four thousand four hundred and eighty (24,480) students or some 6.8 percent of the then current numbers of students being taught in Nigeria, in the decade of the nineties of the 20th century, were doing tertiary level work in institutions outside the country. (UNDP; 1993:165). It is even being put out that over seventeen (17) million Nigerians are in the Diaspora and over six thousand (6000) of them are studying in the tertiary institutions of the United States alone. If each such student cost some twenty thousand United States dollars ($ 20000) to maintain in the United States in 1993, current estimates put this cost at forty five thousand United States dollars ($US 45000) in 2005. Thus the cost of maintaining around some six thousand (6000) students in the tertiary institutions of the United States alone can be put at two hundred and seventy million United States dollars ($US 270m.) Accepting this information for whatever it is worth, as an indication of the actual position, this, at 2006 exchange rates, of N128.00 to the dollar, is equivalent to N34.56bn or 18.27per cent of the anticipated federal total expenditure on education, for the year 2007.




We must direct attention once again to the fact that this N34.56 billion, is 18.27 per cent, that is, nearly one fifth of the total budgetary provision of N189.20bn. for education, for the year 2007 by the Federal Government . The N34.56 billion being spent on six thousand (6000) students in the United States only, is when compared with the 500,000 students in universities and one (1) million in the other tertiary institutions in Nigeria, a quite a large sum to spend. With properly equipped libraries, classrooms, laboratories, workshops and studios, which must still be provided for in a single intake university, and the Governments of Nigeria are already committed to provide, there would be more than enough places, with a quadruple intake, for all these students abroad to study at home. This opportunity cost of students migrating abroad to undertake their tertiary education need never be incurred. Neither do they and their families need to be put under the emotional and financial stress, which such study abroad entails. Lastly, apart from the emotional and financial costs involved, the country loses the most important contribution, which these students can make to their country, at this young stage of their lives their ability to innovate and create new knowledge. Instead, they eke out their existence in educational surroundings, which are not very supportive of their work and function virtually as unpaid research assistants, working on foreign problems.

4. Using Human Resources to Generate an Accelerated and more Rapid Pace of Development.

It is very often forgotten in Nigeria that ninety (90) per cent of the population of one hundred and forty million (140m.) persons live on less than two (2) United States (US) dollars a day and mostly in the domestic market (informal) sub-sector of the economy. This in effect means, with Nigeria YOUNGING POPULATION STRUCTURE, that a population of one hundred and twenty six (126) million belong to this sub-sector of the economy. Consequently, an estimated sixty three (63) million adults above the age of 17.41 years, the median age of the population, are left out of the development discussion.

JOE STIGLITZ, in a personal communication, has pointed out to me, the massive waste of human resources for development, which such thinking involves and has directed attention to the fact that Third World economists must




find a way of converting their massive human resources into resources for investment. Thinking also in the same vein, Amartya Sen also considers societal arrangements, involving many institutions in terms of their contribution to enhancing and guaranteeing the substantive freedoms of individuals, seen as active agents of change, rather than as passive recipients of dispensed benefits. (Sen, 2000; xii xiii). Thus the problem of development becomes that of converting these passive recipients of dispensed benefits into agents of change

Nigerian population statistics and school enrolment figures are still matters of controversy and the Federal Ministry of Education only began in the last quarter of 1999, once again to collate the number of pupils enrolled in the primary, junior secondary and senior secondary schools. Although there has been a population census in 2006, the results of this Census, are, as at the time of writing in the last week of December 2006 before Christmas, not available, with a detailed breakdown of the state populations.

Assuming then, with the World Bank, an eleven (11) per cent undercount in the official 1991 census figures and a population growth rate of 2.91 per cent per annum, there would be by the year 2000, when the universal basic education (UBE) scheme was introduced, some 16.137m. children in the age group 2 to 5, 20.445m. in the age group 6 to 11, 18.401m. in the age group 12 to 17, 5.520m. in the 18 to 19 age group and 12.113m in the 20 to 24 age group, apart from the between 46 to 55m persons, who by the reckoning of the National Population Commission, had no access to (western type) education. (Okonjo, 2000; 8).

We begin by considering how a change can be made to occur in the work-style at the tertiary level of education, so that the change would lead to immediate changes taking place in our attempts at solving, what we consider to be is a first order educational problem the question of the access of eight (8) million children to primary education in Nigeria.

In the year 2006 the education authorities have put out that there were 50871 public pre-basic/basic education schools and 9,317 private pre-basic/basic education schools. 22.3m. children attended the primary section of these schools and 3.6m. children were to be found in the junior secondary schools.



Eight (8)m children were not in school at all. 254 319 classrooms were currently available for the children, while only 50.95 per cent out of these classrooms were considered to be in good condition, and some 251030 more classrooms were needed immediately. Only 29.65 per cent of the primary schools have access to water and light (Ezekwesili, 2006;52). If the eight (8) million children, not in school now, are to be put in school tomorrow, at Ministry of Education standards of one teacher to forty (1:40) children, those out of school would need some two hundred thousand (200,000) teachers to teach them and some two hundred thousand (200000) classrooms, in which they can be taught. These needed teachers with the best of will, cannot, according to the Federal and State Ministries of Education be found.

According also to the single intake method of operation, neither 200000 teachers nor 200000 classrooms are available to accommodate and have taught, the eight (8) million children out of school. Let us assume that there are as of now 1.5m. students in the tertiary institutions with five hundred thousand (500,000) of them being in our universities. According to the 2006 statistics of the Federal Ministry of Education, of the eight hundred and sixty eight thousand (868000) candidates, who applied for admission to the universities, two hundred thousand (200,000) scored above the cut off point and should have gone up to the universities. In fact, however, owing to the low carrying capacity of the universities, in the single intake system, only one hundred and forty eight thousand three hundred and eighty three (148,383) candidates have places in the universities.

In the double intake system this is evidently not so. Twice the assumed number of successful candidates, that of would have been admitted that is around 300000 candidates could have taken up studies at the universities at no extra capital or recurrent cost. This is provided they had been adjudged successful in their examinations and these results were acceptable to universities for their admission to further studies in the universities. The inability of the universities to offer around fifty two thousand (52,000) successful candidates places leads to competition for entry into the universities by means, other than by merit. It in effect leads to competing through bribery and corruption for places. However,




the low carrying capacity of the universities in Nigeria exists in the imagination of the Federal Ministry of Education and like thinking persons. 300000 new students could have been admitted, if a double intake system were operated in our universities.

The self inflicted waste in our educational training is highlighted by this example. If we added the number of persons to be admitted under the double intake system to the five hundred thousand (500000) students already in the universities, we would have some eight hundred thousand (800,000) students in training. If we split the eight hundred thousand (800000) students into two (2) groups, as in, a double intake system structure, four hundred thousand (400,000) students or one half, of the whole group of students would be on work-study for six (6) months in the year. Out of these, four hundred thousand (400,000), only two hundred thousand (200,000) are needed to teach the eight (8)m. children, not in school. Two (2) such students working in the two sequential student groups would cover a whole year of teaching for these children out of school.

In other words two hundred thousand (200,000) students on work-study from the first group of students would cover teaching for six (6) months and then would be followed for another six (6) months by two hundred thousand (200000) students from the second group, also on work-study. It follows that two hundred thousand (200000) students out of the four hundred thousand (400000) on work study, who already have the knowledge base to teach, to at least, junior secondary school level, can, with a little training in how to mark registers, prepare lesson notes etc., be put in a position to teach the eight (8)m. children, now out of school. This particular type of exercise of training Higher School Certificate (HSC) level students, who could not obtain admission into the universities has been successfully carried out in Ghana. It follows then, that if tried out here, those children out of school, do have persons, at hand, who could deal with their teaching.

The question of accommodation for the eight (8) million children is also easily solved. If we add these eight (8) million children, out of school, to the twenty-two (22.3) million already in school, we would have 30.3m children.



Let us divide this number of children into two groups of approximately fifteen (15) million each and ask one group to attend school in the mornings and the second group in the evenings. Since some 22.3m. children now occupy 254319 classrooms, of which 50.95 per cent are in good condition, we would effectively be decongesting the classrooms. For only fifteen (15)m. children need be taught in any one of the two sessions at a time. We can therefore proceed to call on the authorities to hasten the rehabilitation of the classrooms not in good condition and desist, at this level, from building the 251,030 as yet unbuilt classrooms. The authorities would need an estimated eighty one (81) to eighty nine (89) billion naira (N81bn to N89bn.) to rehabilitate the classrooms, which are not in good condition, as also to properly equip the schools.

What is left now is to ensure that each of the two groups has adequate light for study. When the sun is overhead at the Tropic of Capricorn , the imaginary line which crosses Southern Africa, and so is overhead at the southern - most point at which it can be overhead, there is good daylight in Nigeria for reading from around 6.45a.m onwards until around 6.15 to 6.20p.m. in the evenings. Since children in the primary school do not receive more than five (5) contact hours of teaching a day, when the school, is in session, a regime in which children go to school at 7.30a.m and complete work for the day by 12.30p.m. can be prescribed for the morning group and would be suitable as the morning session. The afternoon group of pupils would then take up work from 12.45pm or 1pm - in the vacant classrooms up till 5.45p.m, or 6p.m, as the case might be, when there would still be good daylight all over Nigeria, in which any child can read. There is therefore no acceptable reason, why, in the knowledge based world of the 21st century, eight (8) million children should, as of now, be out of school.

At the secondary school level the education authorities, from their planning, seem to lead us to believe that much the same conditions obtain, as at the primary school level. The situation, however, seems slightly more complicated at this level, because of the number of children out of secondary school. Moreover, the greater number of pupils at the secondary level would not be proceeding to university to do undergraduate or post-graduate work. Provision thus has to be made at this level, for their introduction to the world of work and for their being trained to achieve competence in exercising the work skills, which would be necessary, for them to earn their living in the future.


The areas in which they would mostly be trying to achieve competence would be namely, in the fields of business and enterprises, leadership and entrepreneurship, information and communications, technology (ICT), management, sports, economics and finance, exports, agriculture and natural resources, entertainment and services. Thus the majority of the children aged 12 to 17 and whom, by World Bank projections numbered 20.4 million in 2006, would be seeking not only to broaden and deepen their academic knowledge base, but also to achieve competence in the areas indicated above. Most of the areas listed are known in Nigeria not to provide a training in the skills necessary for successful practice in these fields. Pupils would therefore require, in addition to their academic training, some skill training to build up their competence.

Unfortunately, the inherited education system has been very short on skill training and even though there is an indigenous apprenticeship scheme, the Ministries of Education have not sought to pay attention to this type of training, not handed down by our former colonial masters. They have also not attempted to modernize this indigenous scheme and bring the system, within which most children receive their skill training, under the supervision and control of the Ministries of Education. Consequently, suggestions which need not be repeated here have been made in a chapter of the book, The Quiet Revolution. On Creating an Information Age Education System in Nigeria as to how this indigenous system can be modernized, integrated into the formal system of education and supervised by the education authorities, (Okonjo, 2000; 276 302).

Concentrating our attention, then. on the provision of further academic training for the 20.4m. children in the age group 12 to 17, of whom only 6.5m are in school, we note that it is most unlikely that the nearly fourteen (14) million children, who are not in school, would suddenly descend on the education system, all at once, but rather that some four (4) to five (5) million of them graduating from the primary school sub-sector of education would be requiring training in any one year. Given this number of pupils, there should be no difficultly in finding the requisite teachers, once the double intake system of



operation has been introduced into the tertiary education sub-sector of education.

A different situation would however arise in seven (7) years time, when the eight (8) million children, of primary school age, who are not now in school but were inducted into school in 2007, graduate from primary to junior secondary school. We would then anticipate that some thirty three million (33m.) children would be needing academic training at the secondary school level, after account has been taken of those who might possibly be in school, having been convinced to return to school as part of the attempt to have drop-outs return to school. For all these pupils, some eight hundred and twenty five thousand (825,000) teachers and classrooms would be needed.

What would have proven an insurmountable difficulty under the single intake system is easily dealt with under the double intake system of operation. With a quadruple system of intake in operation and with training for the world of work lasting, just as now, five (5) years for tertiary students, there would be some (600,000 x 5) students, that is, three (3) million students in the universities. Divided into two groups of 1.5million each, there would still be some six hundred and fifty thousand (650,000) work-study students left over after eight hundred and fifty thousand (850,000) have been assigned to teach in the secondary schools. Thus, as far as teachers to teach is concerned, no insuperable problems would arise.

With the classrooms there might be a problem. It had been suggested that the Federal Ministry of Education classroom construction programme, which foresees 251030 more classrooms being constructed for children in primary school, should not be proceeded with at this time and at that level. Instead, construction of these needed classrooms would be for the secondary sub-sector of education, still leaving a shortfall of some six hundred thousand (600,000) classrooms for pupils of the age group 12-17, who would be attending school. The needed construction would be immediately manageable, if instead of constructing six hundred thousand, (600,000) classrooms, a double session of school attendance were introduced. This would mean that only three hundred thousand (300,000) new classrooms would need to be constructed.





There are good reasons for believing that the introduction of a double session of work, every work day, should be introduced now, not just for the primary sub-sector of education alone, but also in the secondary sub-sector. Nigerians tend to build in CEMENT and the country now consumes some fourteen (14) million metric tons of cement yearly, of which some eleven (11) million metric tons have to be imported. Thus all the cement factories in Nigeria, excepting perhaps EWEKORO and ASHAKA are virtually lying idle. Those producing the nearly three (3) million metric tons of cement not imported into Nigeria are using around only some twenty (20) per cent of their installed capacity. The Ministries of Education responsible for building the classrooms required in the secondary sub-sector of education, would therefore experience considerable difficulty in obtaining the cement needed for their construction of class rooms. This needed expansion of their construction capabilities would also occur at a time, when the quarternary sub-sector of education, not foreseen or provided for in the discussions that took place at the Presidential Forum on the Education Sector, would be implementing a sizeable construction programme, which would require that various building materials be provided for their construction programme and the purchase of the needed materials financed.

Cement is a heavy material to transport and such costs do form a not insignificant proportion of the final cost of cement. The production of say fifteen (15) million metric tons of cement, at home in Nigeria, would require a capital investment of some 3.5 billion United States dollars ($US 3.5bn), which would place any such investment programme, squarely in the ambit of the enclave (formal) economy sub-sector of the economy. Although most persons do not know this, there has been a change in the technology of cement production in the world. Cement production in the FIRST WORLD COUNTRIES is now by the DRY CEMENT TECHNOLOGY, no longer the WET CEMENT TECHNOLOGY, which was in use, when our cement factories were built. This new technology has made cement production in these other countries far cheaper than in Nigeria and has led to most of our cement factories being shut down in the face of the fierce competition from abroad. Yet there are good grounds to believe that the situation can be turned around, within two to three years, if we change our poor economic management methods.



To make all our cement factories function satisfactorily or indeed again, a capital investment of some three and a half billion United States dollars ($US 3.5bn) would have to be made. This would be in the enclave economy sub-sector of the economy. It is to be noted that the Petroleum Products Pricing Regulating Agency (PPRA) has announced in Lagos that the subsidy to importers of petroleum products for imports between January and October 2006 was N218.5bn or ($US 1.7070bn). (PUNCH, 2006; 64).

Thus if this subsidy, like the others before it, is abolished and the money becoming available is applied strictly to reviving the cement industry in Nigeria, the required capital sum for replacing the outdated machinery formerly used for producing cement by the WET CEMENT METHOD could be replaced within two (2) years. The industry could then be requested to pay back the loan, given it, within a stipulated time within which the loan to the cement industry would be recovered. In any case, given the centrality of the building industry in any economic recovery programme or a programme designed to accelerate the pace of economic growth, such a withdrawal of the subsidy on petroleum, would at this stage be a sign of Nigeria demonstrating that it could provide good management for her economy. Handled this way, there should not be too many problems for the Ministries of Education achieving their goal of building some three hundred thousand (300,000) classrooms for the secondary sub-sector of education.

It should however be remembered that if two sessions a day are to be implemented for the secondary schools, the time spent at school in each session would not be the eight (8) contact periods, each lasting forty five (45) minutes, now being run by secondary schools. We are of course, regarding assembly that lasts fifteen (15) minutes and break thirty (30) minutes), which put together jointly last forty five (45) minutes as a contact period. For this would mean that if eight (8) contact periods were run by each session, the sessions would last from 7am till 1pm and from 1.15pm till 7.15pm at night. In view of the lack of electricity in the schools, such an arrangement would not make it feasible to hold the afternoon cum evening sessions. Instead, each session would have to run a day, which is just seven (7), instead of eight (8)



contact periods with each session not lasting more than five and one quarter (51/4) hours. School for the morning session would thus start at 7.15am and end at 12.30pm, while the afternoon and evening session would start at 12.45pm. and end at 6pm, when all of Nigeria can still read by daylight, at any time of the year. It is to be noted that in Jamaica, school starts at 7.am.

To recover the forty five (45) minutes lost every work day or some one hundred and thirty five (135) hours in a school year of thirty six (36) teaching weeks, elsewhere, the time spent at school by each group morning or evening -session would have to be lengthened to forty two (42) from the thirty six (36) teaching weeks now obtaining elsewhere. Thus time at school would be divided into four (4) quarters, lasting eleven (11), ten (10), eleven (11) and ten (10) weeks, with examinations being taken on the first week of that quarter, which lasts eleven (11) weeks. There would be two holidays, each lasting two (2) weeks, between the quarters, which are eleven (11) and ten (10) weeks long and another two (2) holidays each lasting four (4) weeks between the quarters, which are ten (10) and eleven (11) weeks long. In this way, pupils in the secondary schools would not be disadvantaged in respect of the amount of material taught to them, as compared with their colleagues in FIRST WORLD countries.

What now emerges is schools being run on a quarterly basis two sessions a day, when pupils are in school and for forty two (42) weeks a year at the primary and secondary school levels. The time spent at school would be eleven (11), ten (10), eleven (11) and ten (10) weeks or forty two (42) weeks a year and daily, during the working week, some five and a quarter hours covering seven (7) contact periods a day, particularly in the secondary schools. At the tertiary level and with the introduction of the double and quadruple intakes, time on campus would be eleven (11) and eleven (11) weeks, with a break of one (1) week, a twenty six (26) weeks holiday cum work-study period and finally a three (3) weeks examination and results collation period, to make up the fifty two (52) weeks in a year, for two sets of an equal number of students, taught sequentially in any one year.

It is important to note that in the Presidential Forum on the Education Sector no time was devoted to a discussion of the establishment of a fourth or quarternary sub-sector of the education sector or of its anticipated problems. Nor have


those of the tertiary sector, like the BRAIN DRAIN. Yet UNESCO as far back as the eighties of the 20th century, had pointed to the necessity of Nigeria having at least one thousand (1000) scientists and engineers per million of her population, if Nigeria intended to be able to withstand the global competition in the markets of the world, now governed by the rules and regulations of the World Trade Organization (WTO) which was clearly emerging. Nigeria, facing the much talked about globalization, has up till now failed to even formulate a strategy to counter the anticipated problem that would arise. There seems also to be no idea in the Federal Ministry of Education as to the importance of their evolving their own version of a fourth or quarternary .sub-sector of education.

The Academic Staff Union of the Universities (ASUU) and the Abacha regime in its Vision 2010 Programme had come to much the same conclusion as UNESCO. Nigeria must have a quarternary sub-sector of education, if she is to survive and must train the needed personnel. Now the situation is such that Nigeria spends, only 0.1 per cent of her gross domestic product on research and development and has fifteen (15) scientists and engineers per million of her population. Japan, the foremost country in the world in this sphere of development, has four thousand nine hundred and sixty (4960) scientists and engineers per million of her population and spends 2.8 per cent, out of a much larger gross domestic product than Nigeria, on research and development. We will now endeavour to show how the new educational structures being advocated would enable us to catch up with the Japanese, within a decade, remembering, of course, that their economy would not be or remain at a standstill.

It would be remembered that we have already shown, how in twelve (12) years at school, Nigerian pupils can finish at school, with their exit examination being the Higher School Certificate. As such, they would now be admitted into, university, by direct entry. We also did show that, as of now, it takes a pupil, who has spent twelve (12) years learning in the Nigeria school system, and ending up with a School Certificate, some five (5) more years, to be prepared for the world of work. Four of these years would be spent studying in a university, while another year would be spent on national service, In the same five (5) years, having a Higher School




Certificate and gaining admission by direct entry into a university, all successful applicants would have gone up to university, like their counterparts in Germany, to end up with a Masters degree. They would thus not just be finishing with a Bachelor degree, before doing one year of National Service, as is the case now but would have, in addition, in five (5) holidays, each six (6) months long, carried out revision and work study. They would also have been able to spend two of these holiday periods doing industrial or agricultural training, one six months holiday period, doing military training, to qualify as a reserve officer of Nigeria armed forces or would have participated in training for community service, while in the remaining two holidays covering a period of twelve (12) months, they would, as in the inherited education system, render national service.

While then in the current system of training, students end up with a Bachelor degree and then do national service, in the new system they would be able to earn a Master degree, but would as well have had an undoubtedly superior type of training, during these holiday and work-study than they can have now. All this would, however be in the same period of five (5) years, needed in the inherited system for preparation for the world of work. There is also an essential, difference in the content of the grounds covered as well as in the nature of the training process undergone, with time, when the official learning process ends with a Bachelor degree, as compared with when it ends with a Masters degree. Most of the work for the first degree is, in terms of what can be called, the LEARNING OF RECEIVED KNOWLEDGE. Here the teacher mainly garners knowledge from his own research, his books, papers and the work of others and teaches this to the student. Work for the Master degree is different, in that the student is taught, in addition, how to create new knowledge and the principles, rules and regulations to be observed in the creation of new knowledge, how old knowledge can be borrowed, used and acknowledged in the attempt to invent, innovate and create new knowledge. This is essentially a totally different type of learning. Received knowledge, on the one hand, implies the acceptance of authority. Knowledge creation, on the other, implies, criticism of existing knowledge and of work already done and the creation of something new. This process of learning how to create knowledge, invent and innovate, if we are allowed a little measure of exaggeration, was entirely missing in the education provided Nigerians by the inherited education system, foisted on them by British cultural imperialism, in the heydays of COLONIALISM.

What this means, is that, if the quadruple intake system of operation is adopted by our universities, at current rates of admission of sixty thousand (60,000) new students every year, there would be in five (5) years time, that is the time required for finishing work for a Masters degree, some sixty thousand (60,000) students at each level of work for the Masters degree, that is some three (3) million students in all. Sixty thousand (60,000) of these students would be taking the Masters degree as their final exit qualification. If only ten (10) per cent of them qualify to go on to do a doctorate degree that is some six thousand (6000) graduates per year a partial counter to the negative and debilitating effects of the BRAIN DRAIN, in which a sizeable number of Nigeria best brains go to seek greener pastures elsewhere, would at least, have been found. For if even one thousand (1000) of this best qualified persons left the country, there would still be some five thousand (5000) just as well qualified persons, left to work in the Nigerian economy. The situation now is that the economy, particularly the tertiary education sub-sector of education, has no persons left over to carry out the essential work of teaching, research and development, once the bright graduates are attracted away.

What is even were important, every year some sixty thousand (60,000) persons would leave the universities having participated in learning how to solve the problems arising in actual life, to invent, innovate, create and react positively to change. With the change in the training offered in the new system of education, they would have also had the opportunity of interacting with and mobilizing the sixty three (63) million adults, living and working in the domestic market economy and belonging to the nine (9) or eight (8) lower income deciles of the economy. It bears reminding ourselves that the qualities to be found in a person and which are required for listening attentively to and absorbing knowledge being expounded and disseminated are not precisely the same as those required for effectively participating in the processes of invention, innovation, creation and the finding of solutions to the problems that arise in actual life.

One other neglected major issue in our development efforts is that of having an educated and healthy work force. The task of ensuring that all those who work in Nigeria are healthy is not only a necessary but also a very urgent one, which ought to be taken up, if possible, in the very early days of the reconstruction of the education system.


Luckily, during the very initial period of the introduction of the double and quadruple intake methods of operation, one hundred thousand (100,000) students on work-study would be available to deal with this sort of problem. They could assist in making the one hundred and twenty six (126) million persons to be found in the domestic market economy, into a much healthier group of persons, than they are now.

The territorial area now covered by Nigeria is as part of Tropical Africa, one of the most disease-ridden areas of the world. It is an area in which the indigenes are subject, as we enter the 21st century, to the most awesome and endemic diseases of mankind - malaria, syphilis or yaws, dysentery, leprosy, onchochersiasis, shistosomiasis, filiariasis, gonorrhea, pneumonia, measles, cholera, whooping cough, cerebro spinal meningitis, hepatitis B. polio and later imports like tuberculosis and now the much dreaded HIV/AIDS. This latter illness is bidding to decimate the whole African population. To these can be added vesico vaginal fistula (vvf), and the other sexually transmitted diseases (STD), which depend to a great extent on the culture of the society concerned. Some of these diseases can be combatted simply by making girls have a much needed education and enabling them to stay in school, much longer than they do now, so that they do not become married before they are eighteen (18) or nineteen (19). Almost everyone in Nigeria has been infected by the helminths, which include the hookworm, the tapeworm, Ascaris infections and the Guinea worm. Children have been particularly subject to the six (6) children killer diseases, especially gastro enteritis and malaria.

With the improvement in the gathering, collation and dissemination of statistics, about the country population, its wealth, state of health etc, more credible and reliable statistics are becoming available. With more accurate statistics in hand, the rosy picture of Nigeria position with respect to her human development ranking, painted by civil servants for the general public is gradually being rejected, for the acceptance of more disheartening values of the various indices that determine Nigeria position in comparison with other countries. We are hopefully entering a situation, where the statistics and data put out by civil servants and other public officials would no longer be guess estimates or manipulated figures designed to suit the whims and caprices of politicians, as to what data, statistics and information should be provided to the general public on the state of the population.

Thus with her great mineral wealth, Nigeria per capita GDP in 2004 stood at only $ US 560, while the infant mortality rate has been put at almost 160 deaths per 1000 live births. This is at par with that of England in the 1890s. Again, and with, respect to Nigeria human development index ranking, the picture previously painted by civil servants, of the situation, must now be rejected for more disheartening values of the various indices used to ascertain where Nigeria lies in comparison with other countries that have now earned the nomenclature of being “emergent countries.

While the infant mortality rate is now given as 160 deaths per 1000 live births, the under - five mortality rate has increased in 2003 to 217 per 1000 live births. The maternal mortality rate has however jumped from 704 per 100,000 live births in 1999 to 800 per 1000,000 live births in 2002. With the number of people having access to clean water dropping from 48 per cent, to 46 per cent, over the last fourteen (14) years, and with there being also, only 28 doctors per 100,000 of the population, average life expectancy at birth is only 43.4 years, a more reliable estimate, which, perhaps, does not bear comparison with that of the other low income developing countries, which is now given as 58.7 years. There is thus increasing realization that unless an aggressive mortality and morbidity reduction campaign, is embarked upon and rigorously pursued, the hopes, that the country would succeed in meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, are just another pipe dream. This campaign, to be useful and effective, must also be coupled with a monumental effort to produce the educated and healthy work force needed to make possible a rapid and accelerated development, with increasing production and productivity. The possibility of beginning to pursue an aggressive mortality and morbidity reduction programme is not very high, unless this can be tied on to the introduction of a new education system. For, by putting every one in school, it becomes easier to push through clean drinking water and sanitation reforms, which we know, more than a century ago, resulted in an increase in the expectation of life at birth in Great Britain, in the latter part of the 19th century.

Secondly, with respect to an aggressive mortality and morbidity reduction programme, we do know that the diseases YELLOW FEVER, CHOLERA, POLIO, HEPATITIS B, CEREBRO SPINAL MENINGITIS, PNEUMONIA,



TETANUS, WHOOPING COUGH, MEASLES and TUBERCULOSIS have vaccines, which can be used to vaccinate all persons in an area and so ensure the eradication of a specific disease in the area. Diseases like GASTRO. ENTERITIS, ONCHOCHERSIASIS and SCHISTOSOMIASIS, we also know, now have medicines, whose application can result in the rapid cure of the affected individual. MALARIA, one of the current major causes of death in infants, will hopefully, by 2008 or 2009 have a vaccine, which could lead to its elimination as a major source of mortality and morbidity.

With the revised estimates of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) being put at seventy two billion one hundred million United States dollars ($US 72.1bn) in 2004 and Nigeria oil and gas wealth, it should not be too difficult a task, if the requisite manpower to vaccinate the whole population of Nigeria against these diseases can be assembled, to purchase and install pharmaceutical plants that would manufacture the needed vaccines or in the alternative, buy the necessary vaccines and embark on eradicating all the diseases, for which vaccines are already available. Indeed as has happened to the disease, small pox, this is a very quick way of eradicating these diseases, turning them into diseases of the past or diseases known to children, only in the pages of their textbooks.

That this can be done in Nigeria is made possible by the introduction of a double - or quadruple intake system of operation in all our universities. With the existence of two sets of university students, each group four hundred thousand (400,000) strong, and undergoing six (6) months of work-study, in the very first year of the inception and implementation of the double intake programme in the universities, two hundred thousand (200,000) students, it has been explained, could be assigned to teach the eight (8) million children not now in school. Another hundred thousand (100,000) it is anticipated would be assigned to teach the four (4) to five (5) million pupils, who would be moving from primary to secondary school. This leaves one hundred thousand (100,000) students, who could be assigned to work in the aggressive morbidity and mortality reduction programme.

If one student is able to vaccinate twenty (20) persons daily or four hundred and eighty (480) persons in a working month of twenty four (24) days, some



fourteen hundred and forty (1440) persons would be vaccinated in three (3) months. If at each vaccination session, vaccination is carried out against two (2) diseases, then in three (3) months, fourteen hundred and forty persons could be protected against two (2) of the most dreaded diseases for which vaccines already exist. If there are one hundred thousand (100,000) such students enlisted to do the vaccinations, then in three (3) months one hundred and forty four (144) million persons would have been vaccinated against these endemic diseases. Since we have been informed that some one hundred and forty (140) million people were counted in the last 2006 Nigerian population census, we can in a six (6) months holiday cum work-study period, have the whole Nigerian population, vaccinated against four (4) of these dreaded diseases. In this way these four (4) diseases would have been eliminated, as sources of mortality and morbidity.

It follows that within eighteen (18) months, twelve (12) of the most dreaded diseases in the country today, could, be eliminated as sources of mortality and morbidity. All that would be left is waiting for the development of a vaccine against MALARIA, for which a vaccine is expected to be ready in 2008 or 2009. Within three (3) months, of such a vaccine being put in our hands, malaria also would no longer feature in the list of diseases, responsible for mortality and morbidity in the country, and in particular for the deaths of so many children.

With the increase from the second year upwards of the number of students being trained in the universities, as under the double intake programme, at least there would be available some one hundred and fifty thousand (150,000) students a year, out of these extra number of students a SURVEILLANCE UNIT of thirty thousand (30,000) students can be set up. It would be their business to monitor and watch out for any new occurrence of the, diseases, that would have been eliminated all over Nigeria. This group would also report any new occurrences and their other findings to the health authorities, who, it is hoped, would take rapid preventive action against the spread of any disease. They would also, at the same time be responsible for the treatment of all pregnant women, or refer them to doctors, if they are discovered to be suffering, from syphilis and or gonorrhea such persons would be easily cured through injections with shots of Penicillin such. Action would clearly eliminate these diseases as maternal killers.

That all this is not a huge joke is attested to by the fact that in the decade of the eighties of the 20th century, two (2) million Nigerians died of yellow fever, even though the Federal Government had been warned, in advance, by a University of Ibadan virologist of the possibility of a yellow fever pandemic occurring [Ransome-Kuti], 1998; 24-25). And as we write, people are dying of Cholera in BORNO STATE even though there is a vaccine against CHOLERA, which could be mass-produced and administered to all Nigerians, starting from BORNO State. It can thus be seen that by implementing the two measures of running the DOUBLE and QUADRUPLE intakes as well as pursuing an aggressive MORTALITY and MORBIDITY reduction programme through MASS VACCINATION, Nigeria would have been put in a position to meet some of the Millennium Development Goals by the year 2009, about six (6) years ahead of the time predicted for Nigeria.

We could also use the manpower made available through the implementation of a double and then quadruple intake programmes in providing personnel who would work on programmes of needed social surveys, a, mass literacy programme, a day by day savings and credit provision programme for the domestic market economy, as well as, in the provision of enlarged agricultural advisory services and other similar programmes. The double intake and quadruple intake programmes applied to our education sector would thus eliminate a considerable proportion of our first order development problems.

5. FUNDING THE ENLARGED EDUCATION SECTOR OF THE ECONOMY.

You cannot eat the seed corn
And expect at harvest time
To have a full barn
Old Ogwashi saying.

Considerable attention has been paid to elaborating how the double-and quadruple intake concepts would work, when applied to our universities and also how they could help to solve, what otherwise would have remained intractable problems in the education sector.

There are, of course, many other problems in this sector, which have not been referred in the presidential forum on the Education sector. We must remark that these, like the proper management of the Unity Schools, are important problems that must be immediately tackled. We have not addressed these problems here for we run the risk of making an already long paper much longer than it should be. Moreover, while these problems must be dealt with, we do not consider them to be first order, problems but rather second or third order problems.

First order problems are basic and fundamental affecting a fabric of our development as a nation and appear to be insoluble through an application of the theories and methods ordinarily available to us. They, like the, domestic market economy are only touched upon in passing and do not seem to be areas for proper academic study and investigation, with action to deal with such problems being reserved for a later and higher stage of our development.

One such area would be the wiping out of the illiteracy, both in their mother tongues and in English, of some forty (40) to fifty (50) million Nigerians. The general Federal Government policy, if we leave aside its wrongly named Mass Literacy Programme, is simply applying a policy of ATTRITION, as a means of solving the problem. Put otherwise, the current operative policy has been KEEP PRETENDING WE ARE TRYING TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM and with time all the illiterates would die out. This is not proving very effective in eliminating our mass illiteracy problem, particularly the mass illiteracy in English. It may well in fact be that this is a more sensible policy to adopt than consciously trying to eradicate this mass illiteracy. But this implies that we could somehow ensure that every child born does go to school, as the laws already
promulgated in respect of the education of the child do talk in terms of supplying FREE and COMPUSLORY EDUCATION FOR ALL. But there are, as of now some eight (8) million children still not in school and these if not put in school now might be with us illiterates in 45-50 years time if by then they are not dead, due to their ignorance. Here, again, the problem seems to be finding the personnel to take up the required teaching and telling people the elementary things they can do to save their own lives. With the double and quadruple intakes, this type of problem is easy of solution.



Okonjo, writing in the year 2000, has proposed the carrying out by the Governments of the Federation of a Nigerian Learning Environment Transformation Project (NILETRAP). (Okonjo, 2000; 374 422) The much larger problem of building a system of LIFE LONG EDUCATION is treated in Part 4 of the same book.

It might however have been noticed, that the analysis has not dealt with the question of early childhood education to which category around sixteen (16) million children belong. It might be remembered that at the tertiary level of education, there are some 1.5 million students and that out of these, five hundred thousand (500,000) were presumed to be studying in the universities. We would thus have left some one (1) million students up for studies at the university type tertiary institutions not as costly to run as the universities. Since they function essentially in the same way as universities, founded to pursue different goals and solve different societal problems, a double intake system can also be applied to their work. To cover the grounds they are now expected to cover, they might wish to run a year broken up into twenty-four (24) weeks for studies on campus, twenty-five (25) weeks for their holidays cum revision and work study and three (3) weeks for their examinations, collation and publication of their results, for any one of the two groups that would be taught during the year. Or they might choose to run a slight variant of the number of weeks they spend on campus, time allocated to holidays cum work-study and examinations.

In any case, if they introduce the double intake system of operation, some two (2) million students at least, would be in these universities type institutions. Divided into two (2) groups, with one group being on holiday cum work-study, while the other is receiving lectures and training in skills on - campus, some one (1) million students, would be available, at any one time, to support the work of an estimated one (1) million grand-mothers, provided by the various 97000 population agglomerations, which are to be found in Nigeria. While the charges for the one (1) million staff from the university type institutions would be one, the Federal and State Governments would meet type institutions, the emoluments payable to the “local grandmothers for their taking care of their grandchildren would be a charge on the various local governments.


In this way, early childhood education would be catered for. And we would be sure that such children would be taught LEARNING HOW TO LEARN. The Federal Government would be expected to produce the initial experts, who using a CASCADE METHOD would instruct our grandmothers how to teach people LEARNING HOW TO LEARN. We can also have recourse to the non university tertiary personnel for help in the eradication of mass illiteracy.

We can estimate what all this would cost, to see whether the Federal, State and Local Governments are in a position to pay for all the education we are requesting and to what extent there should be cost sharing or that free education should be provided at some or all levels of education. The free education of all students, we must note, is the primary duty and responsibility of the Governments of the Federation, after those of maintaining the territorial integrity of the country and providing security for the population. It is in fact the law, which these self-same governments have promulgated, requiring them to provide the necessary facilities for the implementation of this scheme and are bound by their oath of office to implement. But this law has been honoured more in its breach rather than in its application.

The well known answer from the governments for this their breach of the law is that having regard to the state of their finances, this is impossible. There is no money, having regard also to the other sectors of the economy and their demands. For example, we can see that the demands of energy sector alone these demands cannot be met within the next three (3) years. But is this really true and the country cannot afford to offer FREE and COMPULSORY education to all its young people immediately?

Callaway, writing in the decades of the fifties and sixties of the 20th century, found that while Nigeria was spending only 3.5 per cent of her gross domestic product on education, the other sub-Saharan African countries were spending five (5) per cent of their GDP. The Moslem country of SAUDI ARABIA, in contrast, spends ten (10) per cent of a much larger GDP, for the same purpose.




Since GDP estimation is ultimately dependent on the figures presented for the total population of the country, it may well be that the budgets approved for spending by government do give a better insight into what is to be actually spent by the country on the education of her children over time. For this there is no lack of statistics, for every year, every Government has an approved budget and tries to implement the approved national budget.

In the case of Nigeria, like in other under - developed countries, UNESCO has supported for various reasons, which we do not want to go into here, that the various Governments of the Federation should spend some twenty six (26) per cent of their annual budgets on education. The Academic Staff Union of the Universities of Nigeria, working out what they believed should be the priorities of the country, has also come independently to the conclusion that the Federal and the state Governments ought to be spending twenty six (26) per cent of their budgets on education. Also working independently, the Vision 2010 of the Abacha regime came to the same conclusion.

Even the Presidential Forum on the Education Sector has estimated that to deliver on the Millennium Development and EFA goals, an annual funding window of $ US 4 billion per annum for the period 2006 to 2015, would be required. They come to this conclusion after having discovered that fixing the education sector is not about more funding. However after a fundamental restructuring, there is need for significant investments in the sector at both the Federal, State and Local Government levels.

It is to be noted that the funding window required by the Presidential Forum of $ US 4billion per annum between 2006 and 2015, converts to N512bn. per annum. In a 2007 budget of N2310 bn., for this self same year, only some N189.20bn or 8.19 per cent of the budget has been allocated to education.

Herein lies a fundamental and antagonistic contradiction between what the Presidential Forum says is required and what is actually allocated to education. Government hopes to be able to allocate twenty six (26) per cent of its annual




budget to education around the year 2020. Even the $ US 4bn. per annum sum perceived as being needed funding for the MDG and EFA goals to be attained, works out, as only 22.16 per cent of the 2007 Federal budget. For the past year (2005) only 68.8 per cent of the Federal budget was implemented. If we assume that the 2007 Federal budget, will be 70 per cent implemented, owing to the budget being signed into law this January, not as in the past as late as April or May the wish of the Presidential Forum that education be allocated an extra (US 4