Consider that the post-election violence in Northern Nigeria was orchestrated by a small, but influential, and educated elite who use the large numbers of uneducated boys milling aimlessly around as a weapon, then you realise just how bad things will become if we continue at this rate.

T9ksy:

But this is stale news, sha.

Its common knowledge that northerners trail miserably behind their southern counterpart in education.
When Awo tried to provide free education to the northerners, the sardunna and his merry-go men opposed it vehemently. Meanwhile, Tafawa balewa on becoming our first P.M decided his 10 yr old son should go and finish his schooling in london!

My premise here is that the northern elite do not want to educate their young generations- they need them as foot soldiers to unleash on us infidels whenever we seem to be getting too big for our boots. Whenever they see the need to whip us into line, they have their almajiris at their beck and call ready to obey like zombies without asking any questions. They even massacred us because of the eclipse of the moon!

They have been in the corridors of power all these years yet they have not done anything to catch up with their sounthern counterparts in the education of their youths.

It wasn't an oversight, it was/is a deliberate action by their ruling elite who sent their own kids to school in foreign lands like the muthallabs.

Blackteeth:

Since the almajiris intend to be uneducated foot soldiers of destruction, the solution is simple. Let the south use their knowledge acquired via education to manufacture a Nuclear warhead targeted at and kept for the almajiris should they become a threat to southern existence.

texazzpete:

This is not stale news and cynics like yourself are only helping to drag Nigeria further backward.
Please do tell me, how am i responsoble for nigeria's retrogression? Am i a part of the decision making body in govt?


The Common Entrance figures were released just recently and it paints a gloomy picture on the 9-11 demographic. It's almost as if the entire editorial was lost on you.
The editorial wasn't lost on me, I just don't give a damn! There are people elected and whose jobs it is to take note of this anomaly but heck they don't and you are here giving me a hard time about it. These people are paid a hell lot of money so i believe you should direct your tirade at them and not innocent me.


This is about a whole new generation of kids being allowed to slide slowly into the abyss of street life and easy manipulation.
And so? wtf am i suppose to do about it? Where was you when Boko Haram was going about butchering people, mainly southerners all because they don't care nor want for western education?

We have a president in the centre and a National assembly to enact laws. Will we continue to cross our arms and mumble about 'Northern Elite'?
Oh so what should we talk about ? Southern elite? are they the ones responsible for the poor state of education in the north?


We need a 'state of emergency' in Northern education. We need to break this vicious circle at this stage while the kids are still relatively free from all the negative influences. This is when we need proactive investigation and decisive steps to supervise and encourage the education of these kids.
Go and declare your "state of emergency" in northern education then. wtf are you waiting for? Afterall, the north has a majority in NA, go and appeal to them then as if they are not aware of the situation.

In any normal country, these figures will trigger off serious soul-searching and a concerted effort to fix this issue. In Nigeria all we have are cynical people and reactive governments. Rubbish.
And who the hell is been lying to you saying nigeria is a normal country?
I dey hia dey look and laugh as these awful statistics elicit profound introspection from you waiting to see what concerted effort you are willing to employ in arresting the situation.
Yeye dey boom!!!

T9ksy:

But this is stale news, sha.

Its common knowledge that northerners trail miserably behind their southern counterpart in education.
When Awo tried to provide free education to the northerners, the sardunna and his merry-go men opposed it vehemently. Meanwhile, Tafawa balewa on becoming our first P.M decided his 10 yr old son should go and finish his schooling in london!

My premise here is that the northern elite do not want to educate their young generations- they need them as foot soldiers to unleash on us [size=14pt]infidels [/size]whenever we seem to be getting too big for our boots. Whenever they see the need to whip us into line, they have their almajiris at their beck and call ready to obey like zombies without asking any questions. They even massacred us because of the eclipse of the moon!

They have been in the corridors of power all these years yet they have not done anything to catch up with their sounthern counterparts in the education of their youths.

It wasn't an oversight, it was/is a deliberate action by their ruling elite who sent their own kids to school in foreign lands like the muthallabs.

texazzpete:


When you think of the fact that 70% of our 150 million-population is under the age of 30, then that figure of 62, 682 becomes utterly ridiculous. Assume that there is an equal distribution of citizens in each year of life, then we should be expecting to see upwards of 10 million souls registering for the NCEE; not a paltry 0.6% of that figure.
.
.
.
So where are all the 9-11 year olds in both Kebbi and Yobe states? And how come Lagos alone has 26% of all the registrants?. The last time I checked, our own official figures give Lagos 6% of our total population

What this tells me is that education all over the rest of Nigeria, not just in the North, is shutting down. The potential impact of this is incredibly horrifying.

FACE:

The NCEE is for entrance into unity schools (FGCs+ Kings College and FGGCs + Queens College) which are less than 80 in number out of more than 12000 Sec schools nationwide. Various states have their own entrance exams/admission criteria into their own school in addition to the private schools. There are also Command Sec Schools, Navy Schools + AFMS and NMS and they conduct their own entrance exams, so why would the writer expect 10 millions applications to < 0.7% of available schools ?

The writer's analysis is flawed on many counts.

1. Not everyone is interested in going to unity schools.

2. Majority of those in unity schools need to travel a considerable distance from home in order to attend a unity school (I attended a unity school so I know)and not everyone is interested in travelling a considerable distance to attend school when the local secondary school is near the corner and when there is a state school that rocks for them.

3. Gone are the days when unity schools flew the highest flags as there are now many private and church schools giving the a good run for their money.

4. There are more than 12000 secondary schools in Nigeria and if people show the same level of interest in all the schools as they do to unity schools, it means that more than nine million people are showing interest in secondary schools.

Put another way, unity schools represent less than 0.7% of total sec schools in Nigeria but attract more than 1.3% (at 5 million/year which is more reasonable than the the 10M postulated by the writer which implies that he expects at least 60M Nigerians in Sec Sch and at least another 60M in Primary school) of potential secondary school students, which is already more than their fair share of attraction.

People should take time and cross check their analysis before they go to town with them.

ndu_chucks:

FACE, mai gida, I was going to comment on this topic until I read your post. I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis.

Having said that, we cannot forget that literally millions of kids are wasting away without primary education, much more secondary, particularly from Northern Nigeria. We hope the Feds and the states' ministries of education with a combined budget of over $5.7billion per year, will do something tangible about the problem in the next 4 years.

FACE:

Hey, yaya dei ? We really need to invest more agressively in education (at least basic). What would work for northern Nigeria in my opinion is more small sized schools and more qualified teachers to run them.

Let me explain; a state like Imo might require 30 large schools to satisfy their needs, while a state like Niger would require not less than 200 small schools to meet their needs because Niger state is at least 15 times larger than Imo state. That is the disadvantage of your large land mass in the north unfortunately. This means that it would cost considerably more in the north to deliver the same spread and quality of schools as you have in the south.

However, if not for the kleptomania across the nation, there would have been a different outlook by now. E.g, less than $1.5B of the $5.7 B you mentioned will make it to their intended target.

ndu_chucks:

I agree with you once again. I also believe that we need a law in Nigeria which will mandate Primary school education and provide jail terms for parents who do not send their children to school. Those who want their children to become Almajiris should provide after school training for them. The archaic culture of enslaving millions of youths and rendering them a menace to the society, in the name of senseless implementation of an aspect of religion, must be eradicated from our mist.

I wonder why we don't have Almajiris roaming the streets of Saudi Arabia, Quatar, or even Indonesia, in great numbers (millions). Note that, the children of the Sultan of Sokoto, IBB, Atiku, Ciroma, Yerima, and other so-called leaders of the North will never be found in the streets of Nigeria roaming around as Almajiris.

I would definitely propose more funding from the government, but I also realise that the task has gone beyond normal allocation from the budget as the funds aren't just there. Therefore, I would propose two sources of funds for the sector bearing in mind who the beneficiaries of education are; companies/employers, Nigerians and employees.

1. Education development tax (employee): For a start, this would be 0.5% tax on income 15K - 30K (N75 - N150). 1% on income N30001 - N70K and 2% on N70001 and above. (that's a revenue of at least N30 billion p/a assuming that 20 million people were at work and earned btw 15 and 30K)

2. Corporate Education development tax: 2% tax on profit of all corporate bodies.

The money from both sources would be lodged in a special account and would be used for funding infrastructural development in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions. Govt should also continue to increase allocation to the sector as if the the funds did not exist. The harsh reality is that we need an enormous amount in the education sector and there is no way we can rely on budget allocation alone to remedy the situation.

In addition to the above, universities should be given a level of independence to source funds and I am sure they would be able to secure corporate funding for some chairs and research activities in schools.

texazzpete: http://dailytimes.com.ng/blog/coming-storm


The coming storm

BLOG | MAY 17, 2011 - 1:32AM | BY CHXTA

On Wednesday, May 11, the News Agency of Nigeria ran a story about the numbers of students registered for this year's National Common Entrance Examination. The NCEE, for those who may not know, is the examination into Federal Government Colleges (Unity Schools) across Nigeria.

According to the news agency, a total of 62,682 pupils had registered to sit for the examination. Considering the fact that this examination is meant for pupils in the 9-11 age bracket, the first question that came to my mind was whether we have just 62, 682 children of that age in Nigeria.

When you think of the fact that 70% of our 150 million-population is under the age of 30, then that figure of 62, 682 becomes utterly ridiculous. Assume that there is an equal distribution of citizens in each year of life, then we should be expecting to see upwards of 10 million souls registering for the NCEE; not a paltry 0.6% of that figure.

As is usual with these little dramas, the devil is in the detail. According to the CEO of the National Examination Council, Prof. Promise Okpala, 16050 of the 62682 registrants are in Lagos State, Kebbi has 83 registrants, and Yobe has 74!

So where are all the 9-11 year olds in both Kebbi and Yobe states? And how come Lagos alone has 26% of all the registrants? The last time I checked, our own official figures give Lagos 6% of our total population.

What this tells me is that education all over the rest of Nigeria, not just in the North, is shutting down. The potential impact of this is incredibly horrifying.

Consider that the post-election violence in Northern Nigeria was orchestrated by a small, but influential, and educated elite who use the large numbers of uneducated boys milling aimlessly around as a weapon, then you realise just how bad things will become if we continue at this rate.

The signs are already there: Northern Nigeria is shutting down, and a lot of its citizens are voting with their feet and moving down South in search of greener pastures. This movement will lead to more communal conflicts, of the kind we have seen with increasing frequency in the Middle Belt.

The scariest part of the whole drama being played out is what will happen if, as these indicators point to, Southern Nigeria decides to go the way of the North and stops educating its young, or worse, gives them poor education. The potential (and catastrophic) effects are better imagined.