Money and Education in Nigeria

MONEY AND EDUCATION IN NIGERIA

By: Akande Iyiola Adeniyi

The Nigeria educational system has witnessed dramatic turn around between the 14^th and 18^th century when forma education was introduced in the North and South respectively, and what we now have this 20^th century.  There has been a great diversification in the interest for establishing schools and colleges. While the motive for establishing schools then was to build excellence power, making returns in terms of profit is now the essence of establishing schools; thus good schools are found in the cities where expectation of higher profit is feasible.

Nowadays, it has become a great difficulty to separate the connection between money and education. Education is now an expensive function where who have the resources invest and control its functionality. School is now chosen to be one of the basic economic activity who is now been guided by the 5 basic economic questions. Government, Religious group, Elite, and foreign body now have preferential schools where the children of less privilege can not afford the exorbitant tuition fees.

Government because of her economic motive establishes Government Colleges which are well funded for their children and the children of politically connected people. Religious group (Christian and Muslim) also establish their own to cater for the rich among them, Universities such as Covenant University, Fountain University, Ben Idahosa University, etc charged high tuition fees in which the poor can not afford. Also, we have foreign body specialized institutions such as, British School, Indian School, etc which is available for their children and individual who is highly placed in the society.  

All these is of course having negative effect on public schools which are now assumed to be for the common Nigerian, They are poorly funded, bad policy is been formulated to the detriment of providing qualitative education. Political sentiment has left a perennial failure in the administrative system of public schools which was not so backed 14^th and 18^th century.

It is only in the private or specialized schools that you enjoy smaller class size, well maintained campus, standardized sporting facilities, and well equipped laboratories, and so on. All these aids quality performances of Teachers, make students feel relaxed and concentrated, and make the students to perform excellently on external examination, e.g WAEC and Cambridge Examination. It also makes the products of these schools look smarter than their peers in public schools.

Little wonder then, that the rich in our society never mind the large of tuition fees charged by these schools; they want quality education for their children and this can only be obtained in private schools. The children of the less privilege are thus left to brace up to the challenges created by these differences.

Also, the Elitist never sited the schools in towns or villages but in the cities such as Lagos, Abuja, Benin city, etc. In place of this, Nomadic schools, One-block primary schools are established in town and villages. The implication of this is that, the children of the elites will continue to enjoy quality education to the disadvantages of their counterpart in towns and villages.

The bottom line therefore is that, if you have the resources you can establish a good school and charge high tuition fees. Also, if you have enough money, you can send your children to good school and to enjoy quality education. Quality education is now moving hastily away beyond the reach of less privilege in Nigeria and the effects is already been felt among us.