2023-07-06 15:28:27
Nduka Orjinmo BBC News, Abuja
11 minutes ago
Credit photo, Nduka Orjinmo/BBC
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Students Aminu Sadiya (L) and Mercy Sunday are worried they won’t find a job when they graduate following taking out a loan
Two major reforms aim to improve quality in Nigeria’s crumbling universities, but will they be effective?
There is excitement in the house of Esther Abu, where mother and daughters have just heard of a new law that will allow poor Nigerian families to obtain loans to send their children to university.
Ms Abu’s youngest daughter, a teenager who talks like she’s rapping, will leave secondary school next month.
She likes computer engineering, but she knows that her mother, a single woman whose salary as a street sweeper is barely enough to support the family – and supplemented by alms given mainly by her church – cannot afford it. to send to university.
Her eldest graduated from high school two years ago and immediately started working as a hairdresser to support the family who live in Mararaba, a congested suburb on the outskirts of Abuja.
“When I was little, I dreamed of becoming a doctor,” says Eunice, 21.
Both now have a chance, albeit a slim one, of realizing their dream, as the government has announced that it will provide loans to pay school fees for people from such poor backgrounds.
However, many questions have been raised regarding this program.
Since coming to power at the end of May, President Bola Tinubu has carried out a lightning-fast series of reforms – scrapping fuel subsidies, devaluing the naira, sacking the central bank director and security chiefs – and its latest initiative aims to revamp Nigeria’s struggling higher education sector.
For decades, the government has kept tuition fees low to encourage enrollment in a country where many are poor and have a high illiteracy rate.
While medical students at the University of Lagos in Nigeria’s wealthiest state pay just 25,000 naira (£32; $26) a year, their counterparts at the University of Ghana in Accra pay 3,500 cedis (£242; $308).
But these low tuition fees have not been matched by government funding over time, which has led to schools with outdated equipment, overcrowded classrooms, and poor pay for teachers and teachers. other staff members.
A Nigerian university professor earns on average less than 500,000 naira (£570; $725) a month, while a graduate assistant receives 160,000 naira.
These conditions have led to relentless strikes, which shut universities for eight months last year – the ninth work stoppage in 13 years.
Strikes and lack of adequate funding have eroded confidence in Nigeria’s public universities, pushing students to enroll in expensive private institutions or study abroad, particularly in Eastern Europe.
By introducing these loans, President Tinubu has given universities free rein to raise tuition fees, which the government considers very high for students from poor families.
They can now afford university education.
According to the president, this program “will expand access to education for all Nigerians, regardless of their background.”
The interest-free loan will be repaid in the form of monthly deductions of 10% of the beneficiaries’ salaries, two years following they have completed compulsory postgraduate paramilitary service.
“But what if they finish their studies and don’t find a job?”,
It’s a question students and their parents across Nigeria have been asking since the scheme was announced two weeks ago.
Every year, the Nigerian labor market welcomes a considerable number of graduates, but only a small number of them find employment.
When last surveyed, in 2020, a third of those who wanted to work were unemployed, and millions of graduates were working in jobs below their skills, for example as hairdressers.
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Ayuba Mayah thinks the loan will be a burden when he completes his course
“I know at least 200 graduates in my village who went back to farming following studying because there was no job,” says Ayuba Mayah, a student at Zuba College of Education, Abuja. .
He has no intention of taking out a loan, he says, to avoid the burden of finding a job following graduation. Instead, he works to pay for his studies.
Aminu Sadiya and Mercy Sunday, who are both studying economics at the same university, agree that getting a job is their main concern when it comes to the loan.
“My parents didn’t think of a loan before sending me to school, they will find a way to pay the school fees,” says Ms Sunday, whose parents are farmers.
Although Mr Tinubu has promised to halve the unemployment rate in three years by creating millions of jobs for young people, the new law is silent on graduates who cannot repay the loan because they are at the unemployment.
On the other hand, those who become self-employed risk a two-year prison sentence or a fine if they refuse to repay the loan up to 10% of their monthly profits.
But the loan is not available to everyone – it is specifically aimed at students from households with incomes below 500,000 naira per year.
In theory, millions of people might benefit from it, but the conditions for obtaining a loan are strict.
Poor families will have to prove they earn just as little, which means they will have to provide bank statements that many of them probably don’t have.
Applicants must also provide at least two guarantors:
It was pointed out that poor Nigerians are unlikely to know such people and if they know them, they are unlikely to vouch for a loan.
Even if they qualify, applicants are not guaranteed to get a loan, as the loan is contingent on the availability of funds.
“They should just say they don’t want anyone accessing the loan,” says Vanessa Macaulay, a third-year mass communication student at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos.
The president of the university teachers’ union also calls the loan conditions “unachievable”, adding that more than 90% of students will not meet the “requirements”.
But other academics, such as Professor Mudashiru Mohammed, who heads the department of educational management at Lagos State University, say that despite tuition fees of just 30,000 naira (£34, $43 ) per semester, many of its students cannot pay.
image copyrightGetty Images
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Funding for education has improved recently, but it still falls short of the 15-20% of the annual national budget recommended by the United Nations
He explains that these conditions were necessary to ensure that people pay, in a country where most regard government loans as free money.
Although it is difficult to gauge the financial standing of students at public tertiary institutions, many at the University of Abuja told the BBC that they come from low-income homes.
Their studies are funded by parents and guardians who are junior civil servants, private security guards or company drivers.
The combined incomes of these families are often just above the threshold, which puts the loan out of reach.
These families have already been affected by the doubling of transport fares and the recent increase in the cost of food.
Now they will have to deal with tuition fees which have increased in some universities – which are considering increases since last year – of up to 200%.
The loan is strictly for tuition fees and excludes other costs such as housing and food, which usually make up a larger portion of the total cost of college.
“If they don’t pay for everything, what’s the point? Who will buy the books, pay for the accommodation, the food?” Ms. Abu asks.
“They should have made the loans available to all students,” says Caleb Issac, a part-time student at National Open University Abuja.
In his spare time, he works as a salesman for a transport company and fears that the increase in tuition fees will hurt him.
This is not the first time Nigeria has tried to provide a student loan – a first scheme, set up in 1972 by the military government, collapsed because recipients refused to repay, says Professor Mohammed .
“Perhaps the president should have focused on job creation,” Abu said.
The lack of jobs, the other costs involved and the lack of clarity regarding what will happen to employees who don’t repay make the loan unsuitable for her family, she says.
“It is better for my daughters to learn a trade and find odd jobs than to go to school and risk prison,” she says.
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