An Islamic group, Muslim Rights Concern, has condemned the seven per cent budgetary allocation to the education sector by the Federal Government.
This came following the presentation of the 2018 budget presentation to the tune of N8.6trillion by President Muhammadu Buhari to the National Assembly, last week.
The Director of the group, Prof. Ishaq Akintola, described the amount as being naïve and retrogressive to the development of the nation, adding that the Federal Government, like its predecessors, had simply demonstrated that it had yet to come to terms “with the monstrous challenges facing the education sector.”
He noted that since more than 70 per cent of candidates who applied for admission into tertiary institutions were unable to gain admission in the 2017/18 admission exercise, the security implications were serious as the country needed more tertiary institutions “which the tight-fisted allocation” could not take care of.
He said, “The government recently admitted that 75 million Nigerians were illiterate. The woeful performance of secondary school leavers in the West African Examination Council is didactic enough concerning the tragedy, which we are likely to face in the next 10 years, unless something is done urgently.
“Nigeria is most likely to produce half-baked graduates in the next 10 years at the best; or, worse still, educated illiterates.”
He recalled that the mass failure in the WAEC exams was a reflection of the failure of successive governments, at both federal and state levels, to invest properly in education.
“Whereas the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation recommends the allocation of 26 per cent of total budget to education, Nigerian governments have been consistently underfunding the sector and strangulating it almost to The Point of death,” he further condemned.
He, as a result, called on the Federal Government to do a quick, sincere and radical inward search, adding that an emergency must be declared in the education sector.
Government officials must also be banned from sending their children abroad for education, he advised.
