The Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has demanded that government allocates 20% of annual budget to the education sector, to recover the learning losses and to ensure quality education.
The Union made the call in Abuja on Wednesday, at a global response workshop on privatisation and commercialisation of education in Nigeria.
It also urged the government to give more attention to public schools through improved funding and sustenance of the public sector education.
The workshop was organised by NUT in partnership with Education International (EI) and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES).
NUT national president, Comrade Audu Titus Amba, reiterated the Union’s stand against the brazen attempt to legitimise profit-making in the provision of education, which is antithetical to their quest, desire and commitment as a nation, to provide free, inclusive and equitable quality education to all in line with SDG 4.
He, therefore, demanded that government should not abdicate its responsibility to regulate and monitor the operations of private providers based on set standards and human rights principles and be alive to its obligation to guarantee the right to education by providing free, inclusive, equitable quality education for the benefit of the nation’s children and citizenry,
“Government should invest more in education by allocating the internationally recommended benchmarks of 6% of GDP and 20% of the national budget to education. This can be achieved if government adopts progressive and efficient tax collection processes to generate resources.
“International Financing Institutions and Development partners should review their education financing policies in favour of public education, rather than funding profit making private ventures,” he said.
Amba further said the Union is not unaware of the fact that the participation of private providers in education is not forbidden in the country, but what has become highly disturbing and unacceptable was the ugly trend where education is turned into a commodity for sale for the purpose of profit-making.
The Registrar/Chief Executive of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), Professor Segun Ajiboye, who represented the Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu, said the programme demonstrated the union’s concern about the quality of education in the country.
He emphasised the need to increase the budget to the education sector while urging the National Assembly to ensure that it comes to fruition.
Ajiboye, who lamented that people running private schools were doing so for business, said the challenges in the education sector today were coming from the private schools.
“Commercialisation and privatisation of education is what all Nigerians should stand up against because education is the right of every child,” Ajiboye stated.
