Nigeria Content Online

When he died last
Monday, aged 87, a former minister of education and one of Nigeria’s
key players in that sector in the last 50 years, Babatunde Aliyu
Fafunwa left behind his life-long companion, his wife, Doris and
children and grandchildren who have done him proud as a father.

However, the man
who devoted his entire career to educating generations of Nigerians
also left behind a nation still grappling with defining its destiny and
an even more troubled education sector. It is perhaps not surprising
that one of the last public actions of this driven and doughty man was
to rise in defence of one of his signal contributions to Nigerian
education: the 6-3-3-4 system introduced by the federal government in
1983 when he was the minister of education.

Fafunwa and other
scholars had for long argued that the former British 6-5-4 system was
inadequate for the nation’s needs. They contended that the British
based system was parochial, elitist, regurgitate and unresponsive to
the need and aspirations of the Nigerian society and fought for what
they said was a more suitable one, which was later adopted by the
federal military government.

Yet, participants
at a recent education workshop, including President Goodluck Jonathan,
blamed the rot in the nation’s education system on the change from the
British system to the more American one, which was supposed to provide
room for individual development. As it happens, the federal government
has itself changed the 6-3-3-4 system to the 9-3-4 system.

It is a trite
argument that education, along with most other sectors of the Nigerian
society, is in very parlous state. Employers of labour routinely bemoan
what they tag the ‘unemployability’ of Nigerian graduates while fresh
graduates themselves deal with diminished and vanishing employment
opportunities – and don’t even get them started on the conditions under
which they receive their training!

Surely the blame
goes beyond an operating system taking into consideration the now age
old Nigerian propensity to rush things through and hope for the best?

Take the 6-3-3-4
system: one of the recommendations of its promoters was that an
adequate number of teachers and the requisite infrastructure be
provided before the system was launched.

This never happened and it ensured that the expected outcomes were not achieved.

The new system,
anchored on a well-promoted university basic education programme, has
itself not fared any better. It has been struggling with under funding
and lack of teachers to bring the project to reality. It would not be a
surprise if this is also jettisoned by another administration a couple
of years down the road. This business of chopping and changing while
ignoring the basics is as unsustainable as it is pathetic.

No nation can
truly achieve its potential with an uneducated – or poorly educated
citizenry and Nigeria cannot be an exception. If any government
official – or parent – needs any reminder of the low quality education
that children are receiving across the nation’s schools, they only need
to check the result of graduating secondary school students over the
past couple of years.

The failure rate
has been consistent in its abysmal level. Our education system is
failing our children – and you cannot hang this on one man.

The death of Mr.
Fafunwa also poses another dilemma for national planners. He was a
member of a generation that was well trained in local and international
institutions and was still devoted to working in their country to build
a better future. It is a moot point whether they truly were able to
achieve this.

Many of the
fresher graduates expected to lead in future are badly prepared – and
probably see little to recommend them to a life of public service, and
that is they have not already fastened their hopes on making a living
abroad.

Our present leaders need to realise, to use a much-abused phrase,
the urgency of now. There is a need to ensure that the labour of our
heroes past – thinkers, doers and leaders – is not in vain. Hard work
and dedication to duty must therefore replace fickle chicanery.