WE strongly support Organised Labour in its campaign against the sale of the nation’s 104 Federal Government Colleges to private interests. Recent reports on the plan to sell the schools that are also known as Unity Schools have been generating controversy among the nation’s education stakeholders. Although the plan has not been confirmed by the relevant authorities, many individuals and corporate bodies have advised the government against it. The Association of Senior Civil Servants of Nigeria (ASCSN) recently told President Muhammadu Buhari that such a move would be detrimental to the nation’s unity.
The ASCSN secretary, Comrade Bashir Lawal, expressed surprise at the reopening of the debate on the proposal to sell the schools, which had been roundly discredited when it was first mooted under the administration of ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo in the early 2000s.
We share the view of the ASCSN that the sale of these schools would be retrogressive. These schools that were built to foster national unity by bringing students from all parts of the country together have been serving that purpose over the years. They are also known for giving qualitative education to children of different social and economic strata at a highly subsidised cost. The sale of these schools will shut their gates against children from less privileged homes, who will not be able to afford the fees that would be charged by the new owners.
Although certain vested interests in the country are always keen on the sale of public institutions as they see the option as the panacea to all the problems plaguing them, they should not be allowed to have their way on this issue. Schools that were built with the noble objective of uniting Nigerian children should not be sold like other commercial enterprises. The lives of children are involved in this matter and this must be the most important consideration.
There cannot at all be any comparison between the sale of public organisations such as Power Holding Company of Nigeria (PHCN) and Federal Government Colleges. The extent to which the campaign for the sale of public assets has gone is also reflected in calls for the sale of the nation’s General Hospitals, which offer indigent Nigerians the only hope of access to proper medical care at a reasonable cost.
Since the privatisation bug bit the country, those behind the campaign have spearheaded the auctioning off of hundreds of publicly-owned enterprises, often for pittance, and without any visible benefits to the public. The Unity Schools are more than educational institutions. They are national unity social laboratories designed to increase interaction among the various ethnic groups that make up the country. These schools were a great idea 50 years ago. They are still a great idea today as they help to deepen the knowledge of young Nigerians about people from all parts of the country, thereby breaking down stereotypes, reducing misunderstandings and instilling the spirit of oneness in them. The gains of the promotion of interaction among young Nigerians from all parts of the country cannot be underestimated.
Besides, Unity Schools have been very successful as educational institutions. This is not only in terms of their performance in public examinations and the acceptance of their candidates into choice universities in Nigeria and abroad. They are also a good example of what functional secondary schools should be with regard to infrastructure, tutoring and academics.
We understand that as the number of the schools increased, their funding, quality of instruction, laboratory facilities and those important factors that make the difference between a good and a poor school, decreased. But, the answer to this is not to dispose of the schools. What should be done is to raise the level of not just the funding, but also the commitment to upgrading and sustaining the high standards that have always been associated with the institutions. There is no alternative to getting a good secondary school education if the country is to compete for a place in the modern world. Selling off these schools is not the best way to improve them. It will be an abdication of responsibility on the part of the Federal Government.
If the standards in these schools are flagging, they need to be strengthened. This means the provision of better trained and better paid teachers, better equipped laboratories and a better learning environment. Private schools are priced beyond the reach of ordinary Nigerians. It will be a great disservice to our education system to abandon public schools and push the agenda of privatisation of Unity Schools.
It is not true that private schools are always better than their public counterparts. Public schools that are well managed and adequately funded can be as good, if not better, than private schools. Indeed, the fear of many Nigerians is that those who are striving to purchase the schools are mostly those who want to join the new craze of university ownership that has been sweeping the country in the last ten years. The thinking is that they want to buy the Unity Schools and then convert them into private universities. Nigerians should not let this happen.
