Bantu education in Nigeria

Bantu education in Nigeria?

Bantu is Zulu word originally meaning "people". In South African vocabulary, it means "Black people". Bantu education means a separate system of education designed for the black, coloured and Indians under the apartheid regime of South Africa. Under the apartheid regime, there was no mixing of races in schools, but the apartheid government was concerned with more than physical separation. The Bantu Education Acts (of 1953 and 1954) were designed to bring all schools for Africans under the control and administration of a South African central government department where they could be starved of funding until they could eventually be abolished. Schools in private hands or churches had to register and the minister could, at any time, cancel the registration. Penalties were prescribed for running unregistered schools or permitting children to attend it.

The fundamental purpose of the Acts was to adapt Bantu education to the role which Bantu could be expected to play in a white country or world. Another purpose was to prevent Africans from becoming "black Englishmen". There would be less English and more Afrikaans in the syllabus, Social Studies would be adapted accordingly, and there would be more emphasis on practical subjects. The teachers would be under effective discipline, would be forbidden to comment adversely on government policy, and if dismissed, would find no other employment, as there would be only one employer in their profession, government! All these features and more have been observed in Nigeria under various education ministers.

In 1976, the Federal Government of Nigeria took over the then University of Ife, ostensibly to allow the Western Region benefit from federal funds as their counterparts in the other regions, namely Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, in the North and the University of Nigeria, Nzukka, in the East. A decree was subsequently promulgated to back up the take-over. The gigantic edifice built from the toil of the Western Nigerian farmers was now firmly in the kitty of the Federal Government with its assets and liabilities. My understanding was that all the investments and fixed assets of the University of Ife (OAU) in Britain were subsequently taken over by the National Universities Commission (NUC), a new organ of the Federal Government charged with the administration of universities. All money budgeted for capital and recurrent expenditure in the universities pass through the NUC, which paid subventions to the universities according to its own guidelines, one of which is student population. Facilities in the universities were consequently stretched beyond their elastic limits to accommodate more students and attract larger federal funds from the NUC. The National Universities Commission (NUC) also issued guidelines on the universities syllabi, which was called minimum standards. This is currently in use in all the federal and state universities. Thus, the autonomy of the university was on the wane.

Universities were no longer to conduct admission examinations individually, admission examinations are now to be centralised and conducted by a new institution, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), which prescribed the admission conditions and quotas and also ratified the admissions. No university can vary the admission policy; Ife's College of Health Sciences that hitherto conducted interviews for prospective students was forced to stop the practice by the JAMB.

New universities began to spring up from all corners of Nigeria. Within a space of less than two decades, universities grew phenomenologically in number from five to about thirty-five (a factor of 7). In 1977, shortly after the take-over, the same Federal Government began to complain that there was too much waste in the universities, started to cut subventions to them and stopped all physical developments. Construction of new hostel accommodations must stop. Students must henceforth be encouraged to live in off-campus accommodations "so that the students may live among those with whom they will eventually work", thereby denying them the civilisation and culture that go with university education.

These measures went down to the states where the state governments manned by the military administrators took over all secondary and primary schools from their proprietors, the churches, without any compensation. The governments at the state and federal levels proclaimed that all schools were free at all levels of education. Some lecturers at Ibadan and Lagos were actually dismissed by a minister of education. One of those dismissed was Comrade Ola Oni, who died in Ibadan recently and another, Mr. Simeon Adu of the University of Lagos, father of the singer, Shade Adu, he died shortly after his dismissal because of shock.

As if Nigerians have not had enough, the ill-conceived 6-3-3-4-education policy, a creation of Aliyu Babs Fafunwa, a professor of education, was foisted on the Nigerian child. Every Nigerian child was thus made to believe that it is part of the education plan for him or her to attend a university and obtain a university degree. There is no civilised country in the world where more than 10 per cent of the population possess university degrees. This is because education is about developing and maximising the human potentials.

The introduction of a four-year university programme increased student population astronomically and more than doubled the recurrent expenditure in the university as the cost of running practical in the first-year alone far outstrips what is needed for the remaining three years. Because of the size of the classes and lack of corresponding physical expansion, the number of experiments conducted in these classes dropped from about 28-30 to 8-10 per session. Student accommodation problem was further compounded; rooms meant for two students now house between 10 and 12 students. The social costs of these things are enormous.

Apart from non-performance at jobs; the enormous amounts of money invested is certainly a waste, except that we have created a class of illiterate black Englishmen that may interpret the white Englishmen only. Three important points emerge from our description of Bantu education: over-centralisation, starvation with funds and discipline of teachers. All these have happened in Nigeria; do we really intend a Bantu education for our country? If not, we must look at the history of education in our nation and see how we can make amendments, stop experimenting with the lives of our children and make positive advancement.

In the early history of education in this country, students fit for university education were identified by their school certificate performance. Applicants with at least Division 2 in the West African School Certificate Examination were selected for university admission examinations. Usually, everywhere in the world (except the communist states of the East, which is now of historical interest), there is a level of performance below which a person does not need to seek admission in a university. In the USA, the lowest Intelligence Quotient of Grade 12 pupils taken for university admission examination is 115. Educationists say this score is well above average. In Britain, for concessional entry into universities, Division One or Two at the School Certificate Examination or its equivalents at the Ordinary Level General Certificate of Education Examination and a good performance at the concessional examination is the admission requirement; and for direct entry, the admission condition is two good passes at the Higher School Certificate or G.C.E. Advanced Level. In Ghana, our West African neighbour, the same conditions subsist.

In all these countries, there is no problem in their education system. It would appear therefore that we should think seriously of reverting to this old system that worked well in the sixties and the early seventies before the rule were changed to accommodate the children of the powerful in the Nigerian society. There is no Nigerian university. University is expected to have universal appeal. If we mutilate our system, we must not expect mutual respect in the field of education. We must know that we can never expect the benefits of the university education such as technological advancement, if we fail to uphold the rules that govern universities in technologically-advanced communities around the world.

My suggestions are that privately-owned primary and secondary schools should be returned to their original owners. Government should give grants in aid where appropriate. Federal Government colleges nationwide should now be made to have Higher School Certificate sections. One of the arguments used to jettison the A-Level is that there were high failure rates because of non-availability of qualified teachers in those schools that run A-Level's at the time. This argument is no longer valid. This will both be remedial and re-organisational. Those in the universities now find it hard to understand what we teach them and so become aggressive, ready to intimidate lecturers to extract pass marks from them. We must re-introduce classification into the school certificate results, that is, Division 1, 2, 3 and so on with the same old conditions of having to pass Mathematics and English. We should revert to the university admission requirements of the sixties, that is, Division 1 and 2 and a good pass at the concessional entrance examination, for admission to a four-year university degree programme for special students only. This may be considered as a parallel option to the normal three-year programme. The requirement for this is two or three A-Level's at a single sitting. This system is still practised in Ghana. I know of many Nigerians that send their children to Ghana for education.

The government must change the thinking that the output of the secondary schools must go to the university, the so-called 6-3-3-4-education system. This does not exist anywhere in the world. The Federal Government should realise that they must create jobs for school leavers or provide other low level avenues for technical, trade or other forms of training for its citizens at an intermediate level. The education policy of the old Western Region under the leadership of Chief Obafemi Awolowo may be instructive in this regard.

A very important area to look into is the salary structure in the public service that discriminates against teachers. In 1981 when I was in Oregon State, USA, I discovered that the salary of a graduate teacher was $15,000 while the salary of those in other jobs was $12,000. That certainly makes teaching jobs attractive to the best calibre of graduates. The converse is the case in Nigeria. The salary structure immediately after independence may have to be adopted nationally to meet the needs of today. Job evaluation and remuneration has become skewed in favour of those at the corridors of power since independence.

The Federal Government has to make definite pronouncement on the level of education that must be free and compulsory for all Nigerians. The current position of free education at all levels may be described, with due respect, as aimless and hypocritical, more so when the parents of the beneficiaries have been dismissed from their jobs. It has helped to destabilise the educational system in large measure. Of course, scholarship must be made available to needy students and possibly loans to not too bright students as is done in Jamaica and some other Third World countries.

There are three basic necessities of life; they are food, shelter and clothing. These basic needs distinguish us from lower forms of animal. Of these three things, none is guaranteed our university undergraduates. Many students come to class in the morning without breakfast and sometimes they are not sure of what they will eat after the class. This is totally unacceptable. To further compound the problems, they do not know where they will sleep at night. Many of the students carry their backpacks and sleep wherever they find themselves! I have seen many students that sleep in lecture threatres! Clothing, though important, is minor and it is the least of the average student's problems.

If we in Nigeria want responsible citizenry, we must train our children in a way that will let them have the feeling that they owe something to the nation. If we train them like thugs, we should expect thugs, anyway. We must provide undergraduates with decent accommodation and subsidised feeding. It may be necessary to revert to early independence days. We must dissolve those new structures such as NUC and JAMB and instead of NUC, create a department of higher education in the presidency. The minister of education should be made to take charge of Universal Basic Education and federal secondary schools. This is what we have in many advanced countries of the world.

Some people have given the opinion that the violence experienced in various facets of our national life today, including universities, is due to our past political experience, that is militarisation of the society. This may contribute in the sense that the university is an integral part of the society, but my own submission is that it is structural changes imposed on the school system that caused our woes. Again, Ghana, which shared similar political experience but sustained her educational structure, does not share our experience in turmoil. Thus, if we revert to those structures that produced first-rate scholars of today, we will realise the university of our dream, and very soon, we will be in pace with modern civilisation like the Asian tigers and others that were regarded as underdeveloped at the time of our independence.