Buhari’s Promise to Increase Education Budget, Another Unrealisable Move?

Uchechukwu Nnaike and Funmi Ogundare

The promise by President Muhammadu Buhari to increase the country’s budgetary allocation to education by 50 per cent in the 2022 and 2023 appropriation bills is cheering news given the level of rot plaguing the sector after years of neglect.

The president’s promise was contained in a document titled ‘Heads of State Call to Action on Education Financing Ahead of the Global Education Summit’, signed as a form of commitment at the just concluded education summit in London.

Presidential spokesman Femi Adesina quoted Buhari as saying: “We commit to progressively increase our annual domestic education expenditure by 50 per cent over the next two years and up to 100 per cent by 2025 beyond the 20 per cent global benchmark.”

If the N2 trillion per annum estimated cost of funding university education alone, presented by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), is anything to go by, then a sustained increase in budgetary allocation is necessary.

However, stakeholders in the sector think the declaration is a tall order, given the country’s debt profile and other priorities. Barely two months ago, the president hinted that the federal government could not afford the funds needed to revive the country’s education system.
He explained that the competition for funds had become keener because of the recent increase in Nigeria’s number of tertiary institutions. The global economic downturn has worsened the country’s finances.

It is noteworthy that the Nigerian government has not allocated up to 10 per cent of the budget to education over the years, despite UNESCO’s recommendation of 26 per cent. The 50 per cent mouthed by Buhari seems unrealisable. Details of the budgetary allocation to education from 2011 to 2021 shows that the figure ranged from six to nine per cent. The highest being 9.94 per cent allocated in 2014, while the lowest is 5.6 per cent in 2021.

Considering the nation’s rising debt profile, which stands at N33.10 trillion, according to the Debt Management Office (DMO) and its sole dependence on crude oil for revenue, it is not clear how the president will fund the 50 per cent education budget.

Therefore, critics believe that the president made the promise to score cheap political points, accusing him of having made empty promises in the past. Others expressed hope that the 50 per cent budgetary allocation will be actualised to transform the education system. They also called for the appointment of an ombudsman to oversee and initiate measures that will ensure appropriate application and utilisation of the improvement in funding to avoid perceived excessive bleeding in the education sector.

The Vice-Chancellor of Samuel Adegboyega University, Prof. Idowu Babatunde, said Buhari’s intention to increase the education budget by 50 per cent in two years is quite admirable. However, a closer analysis of the patterns of his administration’s budget on education reveals otherwise.

“For instance, in 2012, the Nigerian government allocated 8.2 per cent of its national budget to education. It, however, increased the budget to 8.55 per cent in 2013 and 2014, 9.94 per cent was allocated, while in that same year, defence got 20 per cent of the budget.”

“A decline emerged in 2016 as the education sector received 6.10 per cent. The decline continued in the following years as at 2017, 2018, and 2019, as 7.38 per cent, 7.03 per cent and 7.05 per cent were allocated to the education sector, respectively. The same thing happened in the 2020 and 2021 budgets. So what change will happen in 2022?” noted Babatunde.

He recalled that the federal government last year increased only a fraction of the budget while other areas suffered tremendously and described the president’s pronouncement at the summit as mere grandiloquence.

“Don’t forget,” added the vice-chancellor, “he spoke after his Kenyan counterpart issued a statement. Kenya’s education sector has traditionally received the lion’s share of the country’s national budget. In 2016, Kenya assigned 23.1 per cent to education. So what were you expecting?”

“Nigerian budget on education and other sectors will continue to decline in real value. Have you even checked the number of schools that are closing in Kaduna and other parts of the north? On the other hand, as a patriot and a believer, I hope and pray it becomes a reality,” Babatunde said.

A former Rector of Lagos State Polytechnic, Olawumi Gasper, pointed out that the proposed increase in the education budget by 50 per cent from the 2022 budget takes it from the current 2.5 per cent to 3.75 per cent. Though an improvement, it is below the universal benchmark.

According to him, there are other competing demands for the nation’s scarce resources. Still, there should be an emphasis on human capital development, which will be a precursor to developing the knowledge economy and innovation to drive the country’s industrial transformation agenda and growth of technology-based industries.

“For the actualisation of the industrial transformation agenda, there is no resource that is better focused upon than the human capital development accompanied with quality intervention and quality improvement benchmarked against international standards and best practices.

“Human capital development that will ensure that Nigerian youths possess skills, knowledge, attitude and are innovative to embrace technology for a knowledge-driven economy: that is, one in which the generation and exploitation of knowledge would play a predominant part in the creation of wealth,” he explained.

Speaking further, the former rector stated, “Accordingly, we need to promote a system that will endeavor to catch the recipients young at a time when they are receptive to creativity and critical thinking and equip them with the education and skills required to be competitive in the new global order driven by innovation and technology,” Gasper stressed.