RISING DEBT, DECLINING REVENUE AND THE NEW TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS IN GOMBE STATE – A NEED FOR CAUTION BY COMRADE ABUBAKAR INUWA TATA.

I wish to respectfully draw the attention of fellow compatriots and contemporaries of Gombe State origin irrespective of economic, political and socio-cultural affiliations to drop all sentiments and read these few lines of mine. There is no doubt that Gombe State as a project has progress and like every project, we have to assess the downside risks and sustainability of what we do today in order to put risk mitigants in place for sustainable progress.
Let me begin by saying that education is the live-wire of every society and without access to quality education, our dreams and aspirations as a people bounded by environmental and cultural lineage will not be achieved. It is my desire as a bonafide indigene of Gombe State to support the fulfillment of these dreams irrespective of who is driving the process.
Distinguished men and women of substances, I equally want to re-emphasize here that there is nothing wrong in borrowing to provide critical social services such as education, portable drinking water and medicare. But there is a problem with borrowings if you cannot fix the problem you intend to solve with the borrowed funds while paying huge interest on things that are sitting ideal in the bush as uncompleted projects.
My respected brothers and sisters, the central thesis of this write up is to provoke debate on the need and/or otherwise of these new projects when we are unable to complete existing ones. Before I proceed, I wish to state that the constitutional role of the state government as enshrined in 1999 constitution is similar to the role specified in “Child Right Act 2003” and “Universal Basic Education Act 2004”.
The 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria explicitly stated in Chapter II and sub-section 18 that “Government shall direct its policy towards ensuring that there are equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels”. It went further to state that “The Government shall promote science and technology; shall strive to eradicate illiteracy when practicable by providing (a) free, compulsory and universal primary education; (b) free secondary education; (c) free university education; and (d) free adult literacy programme.
Section 15 of Child Right Act, also made explicit provision for child education. Its stated that “Every child has the right to free, compulsory and universal basic education and shall be the duty of the government in Nigeria to provide such education”. To this end, the Act stipulated that “Every parent or guardian shall ensure that his/her child/ward attends and complete his/her (1) Primary School Education and (2) Junior Secondary School”. It went further to state that “Every parent should ensure that his/her child has completed his/her basic education and shall endeavor to send the child to a senior secondary school”.
The Universal Basic Education Act 2004 (UBE Act) also made a provision for free compulsory primary and junior school education in Nigeria. The Act, without prejudice to the provisions of item 30 of Part II of the Second Schedule and item 2 (a) of the Fourth Schedule to the 1999 Constitution dealing with primary school education, the Federal Government's Intervention under this Act shall only be an assistance to the States and Local Governments in Nigeria for the purposes of: uniform and qualitative basic education throughout Nigeria. Services in public primary and junior secondary schools are free of charge.
Based on the aforementioned legislations, can we really say that the state government has addressed issues surrounding child education in the state which fall under concurrent list? Have we met the yearnings and aspirations of our children at lower level of education? Can we authoritatively and with the fear of God claim that the education sector we declared emergency four years ago is different from the one we inherited not in terms of class rooms but in terms of improved learning outcome? What can we say about the rising numbers of out-of-school children in the state who constituted majority of children taking all sort of substances on the street? Have we done enough at lower education level? Do we really think that providing classes and reducing the teacher/pupil ratio is the most important ingredient for quality and accessibility? Can we say we are comfortable with the products of government schools at both primary and secondary levels? Can we say with high degree of certainty that “Kwalliya ta biya kudin sabulu” at lower level of education before we embark on a more elaborate and ambitious projects? If yes, how?
My dear compatriots, the current administration which declared “State of Emergency in Education Sector” in 2011 had spent a whooping sum of about N52.33 billion in the last four years comprising N18.85 billion and N33.48 billion in recurrent and capital expenditure with lower education accounting for N33.94 billion and higher education accounting for the balance of N18.39 billion (Audited Accounts of Gombe State Government).
Despite this enormous investment in education in the last four years, learning outcome in standardised exams like WAEC and NECO shows frustrating outcome, indicating that the root causes of poor performance were not addressed. A breakdown of the statistics revealed that in 2011, 18,847 students sat for WAEC and only 11 students had the requirements to go to tertiary institution (5 credits including Maths and English). In 2012, 17,985 students wrote WAEC and only 38 students had the requirements to go to university. In 2013, we don't have the numbers but we made estimates. In 2014, out of 19,502 students that sat for WAEC only 1,107 students had requirements to go to university. Do you know how much was spent for education during these periods? In 2011, N9.2 billion, 2012, N17.36 billion, in 2013, N10.98 billion and in 2014, N14.78 billion, respectively. Do you know the cumulative number of drop outs during these periods? Those that cannot proceed on account of poor result? The total is about 73,086 students in the last four years. Can we now see what is feeding the Kalare Market with restive youth? How comes we are still living with the menace of youth restiveness despite the much celebrated corp Marshall?
I guess my readers want to know why learning outcome hasn't change so much? As you all know, greater intervention was on building classes and that alone cannot change the learning outcome when we have teachers that cannot pass WAEC themselves, when we have teachers that are not coming to classes, when teachers are not properly monitored, supervised, trained and challenged, when we have teachers that are not motivated, when we have teachers with outstanding entitlements and when we have teachers that are not qualified and when classrooms lack resources such as textbooks. The efficiency of investment in education and returns on investment in public sector is higher at primary and secondary school more especially, when schools can attract good teachers, when students and schools are periodically assessed, when the system is made accountable, when schools have autonomy and when the government pays attention to early childhood development and reading culture.
My fellow compatriots, we shouldn’t feel comfortable just because we have means to educate our children in high-fees private schools. We should put it at the back of our mind that “No condition is permanent” and if we can afford to take our kids to private schools, what assurances do we have tomorrow, that we will not be on the other side of the divide? Life is like a business circle with peak and trough, recession and recovery as we navigate the mother earth.
Fellow compatriots, as you can see from the above, there are daunting challenges to keep children in school, to provide them with requisite skills and knowledge necessary for better tomorrow. You can also decipher from the available statistics that; we have not done well in the past couple of years. Therefore, can we concentrate in enhancing and improving lower level education by impacting critical skills, improving students’ performance and hence reducing poverty and illiteracy levels or can we continue to pay leaf services while embarking in ambitious projects outside our primary constitutional mandate?
Without sounding rather pessimistic which am not, I wish to draw our attention to the mounting domestic debt profile of the state government which stood at N53.45 billion and external debt of US$39.82 million as at end-December 2015 from a relatively low debt profile of N7.17 billion and $28.37 million in 2011. These figures exclude non-debt component of government liabilities which include outstanding contractor’s and pension liabilities and greater proportion of the borrowings was made when average statutory allocations was well above N40.0 billion annually. With plethora of uncompleted projects littering all over including School of Nursing and Midwifery, Dukku and State Polytechnic Bajoga, Metro Park, ICC, etc, there is need for one step at a time.
While some segment of the society find the news of establishing five (5) new institutions as laudable, others find it rather preposterous when we look at the possible fiscal burden associated with some of these projects on recurrent basis. At the moment, the state bleeds about N480 million monthly for debt services payments when there is no significant improvement in IGR, when staff outstanding entitlements in GSU were not met, when payment of salaries is sometime a nightmare, when LGA Elections cannot be conducted on account of paucity of funds, when primary and secondary school teachers had outstanding entitlements unpaid.
I think it is high time for those interested in leadership positions in the state and more especially those vying for Governorship position to personally initiate a private memo and advice the current leadership on the need to consolidate its gains by making frantic effort to complete existing projects rather than engaging in wild goose chase. I hope some of the candidates that indicated interest in governing the state post – 2019 can do something. We shouldn’t wait until we are there before we provide guide to those in charge.
I wish to state that anything worth doing, worth doing well.
God bless you all.