The developing African country of Nigeria has seen significant development in its GDP in the past decade. But despite this, its educational infrastructure, as well as implementation, is fairly poor compared to other African countries. What is more alarming is that the level of quality education in Nigeria has fallen below its previous records as well. Nevertheless, the Nigerian government has taken several steps to provide quality education through combined efforts from regional educational institutions and welfare organisations. Despite such efforts, due to several social and political constraints, the dream of offering higher quality education still seems a distant one.
Let us understand in detail what these intrinsic factors are and to what extent they can be overcome to better the educational standards in Nigeria.
Government’s Lack of Focus
Consistently for quite a few years, the national budget of Nigeria has not laid enough emphasis on developing a system of quality education in the country that can help improve the general social and intellectual levels of the people to contribute towards a reformed human resource base. A major portion of the national budget is spent on public works, healthcare, and defence, leaving very little remaining to invest in developing the standard of quality education in Nigeria. However, the lack of quality education should not be attributed to just shortcomings of the government, but the underlying social and cultural issues should also be factored in.
Social Norms Against Girl Education
The redundant cultural traditions of certain Nigerian communities still pose a barrier to girl education within the country. Even though a larger portion of Nigerian boys have begun to enroll themselves in schools and colleges, for girls, acquiring quality education in Nigeria has been significantly more challenging. Especially after passing out from schools, girls are restricted to household duties and thus refrain from enrolling for higher education. Although this is mostly true for several yet to develop rural communities of the country, the same cannot be generalized for the urban youth of Nigeria. Cities in Nigeria lack quality education and thus, urban youth look to educational opportunities abroad.
Improvement in Primary and Secondary Education
According to reports of UNICEF, of the entire population of the world’s out-of-school children, 1 out of 5 of them are Nigerians. To provide quality education in Nigeria, several prominent educationists have taken initiatives to improve enrolment as well as retention in primary and secondary school levels and achieved quite a bit of success in this regard. However, for higher quality education in the country at the university level, much work remains to be done.
Nigerian students and foreign education
As a result of the lack of necessary infrastructure and implementation of quality education in Nigeria at the university level, a large chunk of ambitious students has migrated to developing countries like India to pursue an affordable and quality higher education. Universities like Sharda University have facilitated such students with experienced faculty and excellent industry exposure to enable them to acquire meaningful employment both in their home countries as well as abroad.
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