His Excellency,
The President,
Commander In Chief of the Armed Forces, Federal Republic of Nigeria, Aso Villa, Abuja
Dear Sir,
Congratulations on the realization of your dream of decades to be Nigeria’s President/Chief Executive Officer. I believe less than one percent of human beings realise their star dreams all through their lives. I have reason to believe the micro minority blessed by Almighty God to realise their dreams owe a sacred duty to meet the expectations of the Great Benefactor I think should be the execution of acts for the betterment of the locality and the world with the people who live therein.
If anyone says you experience ‘hard starting’, the person must have been asleep since May 30. You have hit the ground running to confirm you had a blueprint long before you dreamt of being the flag bearer of your political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC).
In some states nothing has happened after their Governors were sworn in, or some are busy in the condemnable act of obliteration of policies and projects of their predecessors in an attempt to settle political scores. Do well, Sir, to call such Governors to order despite the apparent independence of states.
My major thrust in this ordinary citizen of Nigeria’s open letter to your good self relates to the Student Loan Bill you recently signed into law two weeks after you took up residence in Aso Rock Villa. In the first place, I appeal for restraint on the issue of the final authorization of the Act of Parliament.
Nigeria runs the American type of government. There, the President uses Executive Orders in the early days in office to carry through critical policies and plans in his election manifesto. The primary reason for this has to do with the requirements for review of Bills after assent. A new government needs forensic study of every piece of legislation before the President assents, because of the dynamic nature of society.
More than halfway into his tenure, President Joseph Biden continues to pore and agonise over the Iran nuclear deal, which came to life during his tenure as Vice President, but his predecessor, Mr. Donald Trump dumped.
Mr. President, for you to assent to a Bill rejected by the Academic Staff of Universities (ASUU) in 2016 and kept in the cooler means someone close to you and with less than altruistic reasons pushed you into it.
In government, as you know well, ultimate responsibility lies with the Chief Executive Officer, rather than with the operatives who sometimes act based on their personal orientations and selfish motives.
Nigeria adopts the American Presidential template, and to a large extent many of our policies are in the American format. If this assertion stands true, the Student Loan Bill should be regarded as a photocopy of the American style student loans, at least in spirit, if the words differ.
First conceived in 1958 as National Education Defense Act, it targeted science education as a response to Russia’s first manned space mission. Mr. Yuri Gagarin orbited the earth in a space ship known as Sputnik 1. America found itself behind in space exploration and sought to overtake Russia, but the country needed educated people, in particular in the science and technical fields. Government had to encourage education and sought to finance it in part through loans.
In 1965, the National Education Act went into force, and with the philosophy of pragmatism as the base, scientific research and practice saw the United States (US) on the moon in 1969, the first country in the world to achieve such a feat. Although Russia has cooperated with US on the Space Lab project, the country has no manned presence on the moon till date. How would the country when Vladimir Putin shows more excitement about territorial expansion on earth than in space? India tried, but the craft failed to land as programmed. But you can be certain the country will continue the quest. Development economists list India as a developing country given her wealth vis-a-vis population.
The American model of Student Loans has two aspects – the Direct Subsidized Loans and the Direct Unsubsidized Loans. Amounts range from $5,000 to $12,500 per year based on prospective beneficiary’s dependency status. Repayment last for ten years after graduation, interest pegged at 5%, and 10-15% of salaries of the borrowers are expected to be used for repayment per month.
To prospective borrowers, Kristina Ellis, in an analysis in “Ramsey Solutions” published on April 21, 2023, described American student loans as “poisonous for your future.”
To start life with encumbered earnings can be a source of distress and a life time setback to growth.
Student loans are subject to forgiveness. But Ellis says no more than 1% of the borrowers are lucky to be favoured. By 2023, Ellis indicates outstanding loans of $1.66 trillion! (No one should attempt conversion to Naira for it will run into quintillion!!).
Mr. President, you want us to run away from huge financial commitments, the classic example being fuel subsidy payments. How will the country raise trillions to meet loans which will be repaid in breach? Who will manage the money – a Federal Student Loans Board, or private banks and financial institutions? Ask the Acting Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria the reason the bankers bank should be involved in loans to small and micro enterprises. Commercial banks prefer penalty to disbursement of customer deposits to small and micro enterprises despite the need for them in the economy (those businesses create two thirds of all jobs in the most advanced economies).
Mr. President, there are several issues to consider in the plan. First, based on your Manifesto, you want to grant loans to enable you withdraw government from funding institutions of higher learning. If private universities can run well, public universities can do same thing as some die-hard anti-people argue. You expect the institutions to charge “cost effective” fees for the education service. Mr. President the thought of it sends chills down the spines of anyone who has been associated with tertiary education administration.
When Professor Peter Okebukola anchored administration of the National Universities Commission between 1999 to 2006, the Commission carried out a study on the cost of university education. I cannot access the document right now, but I have a vague recollection of an amount above ₦200,000 for medicine being the highest, excluding the cost of accommodation, food, health, and the sundry expenses. Mr President, how many Nigerian students would have afforded such an amount?
If we use the Naira to dollar exchange rate of ₦130:$1 obtained in 2006 and the 497% increase at this point (₦776:$1), a medical student should pay at least N14.9 million per year today. No private university charges as much. But the amount falls into the ‘realistic’ level expected by Your Excellency in your election Manifesto.
The realism becomes more pointed when compared with average school fees for medicine in state universities versus private universities in the US.
As indicated by MedEdits.com and Forbes Advisor, public universities in US charged an annual fee of $39,150 or ₦30.4 million in 2022, while private universities charged an average of $64,053 or ₦49.7 million in 2022. I heard years ago, former President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo said higher education should be regarded as being out of the reach of everyone.
A student admitted into the University of Uyo Medical School for September 2023 wonders where she will raise the ₦117, 000 expected to be paid for preliminary processes. If a realistic fee comes on board, the child will likely register as an apprentice to a pharmacist to become a ‘chemist’ in the years ahead.
By 2016 when Femi Gbajabiamila who crafted the Student Loan Bill and presented it to the House of Representatives where he presided as the Speaker, ASUU objected to it – as it should – because it would have thrown millions of students out of higher educational institutions.
Lecturers wear the shoe. They know where it itches or pinches them. An average student today sweats to pay N50,000 per year for a degree programme. And, Your Excellency, will the planned fees stop the dozens of charges public universities burden students with, such as fees for conference and seminar, plagiarism, project, studio, Departmental/Faculty dues, and dozens of others? These levies arise from funding inadequacies, while those to lecturers arise from low salaries.
Please Sir, if the real consideration for tertiary education comes into play, the N5 million private universities charge may look realistic. But as I wrote in my column in the Southern Examiner of September 25,2022 all of us who claim to pay fees in private and public institutions are supported by the government. If your government decides to shy away from funding education, payment of fuel subsidy, God alone knows what other social programme your government’s long knife will cut, what will the Federal Government do for Nigerians anyway? Will the government remove subsidy benefiting the poor and transfer the ‘saved’ monies to the rich as the American Republican Party does?
Imagine, Mr President, the proposed policy from the Salaries & Wages Commission to increase remunerations of political office holders by 114%! Will the monies saved from the subsidies be used to pay Federal legislators their incredible salaries as well as those of other political office holders? It will, as my primary school teacher taught me, amount to robbing Peter to pay Paul.
Permit me Sir, to appeal to you to listen less to the Femi Gbajabiamilas of this world. How would a man whose family funded his A levels abroad understand the pain of the child of a Level 01 officer with a mother who fries plantains to sell? Barrister Olufemi Gbajabiamila should have entered the House of Representatives for his 6th term this year, but you pulled him out, we believe, for a juicer job as your Chief of Staff, or gate keeper who must clear any and everyone who wants to see you and review every letter you are to see. Such a person cannot understand the concept of poverty, because unlike Bashorun M. K. O. Abiola who sold firewood he could eat and pay his school fees, your closest aide today has been a silver spoon in his or her entire life.
In 2020, Gbajabiamila used his personal resources to take his 90-year old mother to Dubai for her birthday celebration accompanied by 300 guests, as Sahara Reporters told astonished Nigerians. We applaud the respect for his mother. But I believe Nicon-Noga Hilton in Abuja would have fittingly served that purpose. Should he or Professor Victor Osodeke, the Chairman of ASUU, appreciate and understand the need to support Nigerian youths from poor families?
Second, Your Excellency, consider the issue of repayment of the planned student loans. Several youths with unrecognisable surnames float upwards of ten years to look for what will keep them out of the group economists describe as underemployed. While they wait, private employers advertise for “recently qualified” persons which knock the longsuffering ones out like the invalid at the pool of Bethesda. They ‘manage’ with teaching jobs in private schools for monthly salaries of ₦15,000 or lower or a little higher. Ten percent of ₦15, 000 means ₦1,500 per month, or ₦18,000 per year. Student loan, if the expected amounts will be advanced, will last like the shell of a tortoise throughout their lives.
In essence, does the country have jobs or plans for jobs to absorb the borrowers, to give them the means to repay the loan, or is the case in the U.S. we are copying from? Ask your Chief of Staff whether in eight years any government or private member’s Bill on job creation entered the National Assembly. When you create mud, you provide water for those who have contact with the mud to enable wash their hands and, or feet.
Some Nigerians, way back in 2000, wrote on the government’s Universal Basic Education (UBE) scheme which made no plan for children who would end in Junior Secondary School (JSS) 3 and those who would have Senior Secondary School Certificate (SSSC) and either seek jobs or want to go for higher education. Your Excellency, when will public policy be comprehensive and futuristic?
Third Sir, will your administration provide controls in the administration of the Student Loan Fund? Or in two years, will the Chief Executive Officer (Director General) chat with the Department of State Services the way our man Emefiele, the former governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, does at present? It should be the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, but the last two Executive Chairmen have presented pictures which tell a sad story, although like the last but one, the current ex-Chairman before the DSS will receive promotion after a time.
Let me avoid boredom given the height of food, nay problems on your plate. Mr President, in the name of everything that is good, leave tertiary education subsidy as it is. Nothing in a developing country such as ours provides an avenue for the poor to break the glass ceiling like tertiary education. Nothing expands worldview, nothing encourages flexibility, nothing gives as much hope of movement up the socio-economic ladder like higher education.
Yes, jobs are few and far between, but let every young person from the backwoods, the community secondary schools, from waterside to hamlet who desires to access higher education be allowed to do so.
If they have no jobs, at least they can fry and sell groundnuts by the roadside in a way a semi-literate or someone with SSSC cannot. Or they can access jobs abroad, which in another post, I have endorsed without hesitation.
Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and several others regard earnings abroad as huge chunks of their Gross Domestic Product. A youth with a tertiary education certificate can move among jobs and have part time jobs to supplement actual job income. At 60 or higher, he or she can go back for higher degree from the comfort of his or her home.
Your Excellency, to remove or cut funding for tertiary education will take Nigeria several years back. It may increase youth restiveness and, make no attempt to believe ENDSARS has entered history books and has no chance of reoccurrence. Youths cried out against Police brutality, but they were in school. When they are home, hungry and hopeless, bullets may be regarded as a more honourable way out than suicide.
Let sociologists of education think of something other than application of the concept of conflict theory on your administration. The theory says those in the upper and middle classes (in fact Nigeria no longer has a middle class) use education to segment the society. Children of the poor are crowded out to ensure they become poor adults, while children of the rich are positioned to become rich adults. Allow youths to aspire, after all Nigeria stands miles from the United Nations Development Programme recommendation of 15% of annual budget for education.
The Federal Government budgeted ₦663 billion in 2023 to education, which meant 3.23% of the ₦20.5 trillion budget. Maybe we should expect zero percent for education in the 2024 Federal budget, because we would rather let market forces determine everything. Or just enough to pay salaries, provide for imprest, and buy gasoline for the gas guzzlers known as SUVs, which political office holders use. These folks, along with public servants who contribute little or nothing to justify the opulence they enjoy, will be just fine with a lean budget for education.
Your Excellency, as Professor Mallinson once noted, the reading nations are the leading nations. Nigeria will never join the league of developed countries without formal education with tertiary education as the key.
Please find out the role of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) because without the agency, public tertiary educational institutions in Nigeria would have folded up. But the agency has its limit, and to eliminate all allocation will be a disaster. When I served in a Federal institution one capital project – the only one – stayed uncompleted for four years because of near zero funding.
To conclude, Your Excellency, we should bear in mind that the Student Loans Boards in some states of Nigeria in the 1970s, which I believe all states scrapped because they were drain pipes. When you create a Board, or as is common today, a Commission, billions of Naira will be allocated to the operatives and the Governing Board. All the characters there will believe you have opened a farm for them. They will say, like Dr. James Ene Henshaw, “This is our chance”, which you have made popular as emi lokan. Billions will go for administration, billions will go to consultants and contractors, billions will be disbursed to non-existent students, and after a time, there will be panel after panel to probe the Fund, accusations and counter accusations, and then silence.
What has happened to the Nigerian Social Insurance Trust Fund? Are we through with the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) forensic audit? It went silent when the Minister went to the Senate to announce the names of parliamentarians who had received contracts till someone shouted “It’s alright. Off your mic” and it went into a good-natured song by the National Association of Seadogs. When you actualize the Student Loan Fund, abracadabra will start and the lyrics of a new song will be written. Can you save this country from this unending drama which has chipped away at our international image?
Allow Nigerian youths to go to school with public support. Several countries of the Middle East run by Moslems like you use crude oil money to provide 100% free education for citizens. Why should the case of Nigeria, the giant of Africa be different when the resources are there?
With all sincerity I wish you will become a surprise to naysayers and write your name in gold by revisiting the Student Loans Fund.
Yours sincerely,
Citizen Bassey Ubong
Dr Ubong, a writer and public policy analyst, lives in Uyo
