 I'll seal the breakfast and plus TV Africa and for a second conversation we're going to be looking at why there's been you know low benchmark despite rising concern for the educational sector. However, President Mohammed Buhari had made promises at recent international forum that our location to education sector will be increased by at least 50% in the next few years by 100% by 2025. Well, let's even say that that has not been the case if you look at all the years in terms of allocation. For instance in 2016 of the 6.06 trillion total budget of 369.6 billion which is 6.7% was allocated to public education in the country while looking at 6.7% in 2016. Now in 2017 550 billionaire which is 7.38% was allocated to education out of the 7.29 trillionaire budget while in 2019 605.8 billion which equals 7.04% was given to education out of the 9.2 trillionaire budget. In 2019 620 billion with the 7.05% was allocated to education out of 8.92 trillion while in 2020 671.07 billion which is 6.7% was given to education out of the 10.33 trillionaire. Now 2021 we had 774.5 billionaire which is 5.6% allocated to education out of the budget proposal of 13.6 trillionaire. Allocation to the sector in 2022 was no different because estimate also fell short of stakeholders expectation at 1.29 trillion of 7.9% was allocated to education out of 16.37 trillionaire appropriation bill presented to the national assembly and fast forward to 2023. The 2023 budget the sector got 1.79 trillionaire a representation of 8.2% of the appropriation bill of 103.29 billionaire allocated to universal basic education. I mean I'd like to take that again my 10.329 billion was allocated to the universal basic education commission while a transfer to tertiary education trust fund that's a tech fund for infrastructure project and the tertiary institution is about 248.27 billion 470 billion was allocated for tertiary education revitalization and salary enhancement if you want to say well in the context they say that the education sector that's according to the minister of education saying and finance however that the education sector got the second largest allocation in the budget at a defense and security sector which account for 2.98 trillionaire representing 13.4% of the budget however let's have our guest this morning Dr. Peter Ogudor who's an educationist right here in legacy joins the conversation Peter Ogudor it's good to have you join us good morning good morning it's my pleasure to join yes please I'd like to ask you I know that you are an expert in the education sector maybe you have an idea why we have constantly locate allocated low to the educational sector despite the importance of education usually there's this saying that says there's a face and a statement that you know education is a bedrock of every nation and if that's the case why have we not you know putting so much funds and resources to the educational sector let's even start from 2016 well you should know naturally you your heart is always in the place where your treasure is for now the politicians in Nigeria do not place education high on national you know agenda and it's here to prioritize that they're here to see education as an indispensable tool for accelerating development here and so without appropriate philosophy without the awareness that nothing happens positively for any individuals family groups organizations of countries in the absence of good education you can't start investing heavily the way you want you know this college has to invest in education they don't know is is value for national development they keep getting their priorities wrong because the idea that you know we have bandits here spend are challenging us and so let's put more money into security is it's a wrong idea the reason why we have i'm robust all over the place give nappa is just because people are idle young people are idle and it is education that will get the mark of idleness as we have always said and believed and the devil has a way of finding jobs for people who are idle the education system you have in your country at the moment is not an education system that is functional so young people are dropping out of school those who finish don't have this case the knowledge and the values to be able to function productively within Nigeria and globally and so the point i'm trying to make is that the reason why we have where we are in terms of allocation budgetary allocation to education is the fact that the politicians who are on this country uh haven't appreciated the value uh the indispensable place of education in national republic and i think that's a very um you know sad commentary on our nation all right dr ogudu let's talk about uh where we are coming from to where we are at right now last year 923.79 was budgeted for education in 2022 well this year the budget for education is 1.79 trillion naira representing 8.2 percent of the national budget i know it is a far cry from the recommended unesco's uh uh benchmark of 15 to 20 percent but most nations have not been able to attain 15 to 20 percent would you really say that uh we have improved maybe marginally as it were in terms of allocation yeah it may look like we have moved um a little bit uh but if you um look at it in the context of where we are in with respect to inflation the value of money you would just call the trillion you are mentioning is not in and again most of this money will be spent by politicians for those of you who haven't been in government before i have i i wasn't the public service for up to 10 years before i i left as a result of the frustration i was expressing in the sector politicians are going to waste up to 40 percent of this money um you know freight it away um generating all kinds of contracts that will add no value to the education system and so if you remove what the politicians are going to steal you discover that there isn't much left for you to embark on coming to develop and even though when we talk about company development in the sector most of the contracts will be executed by by people who are not engineers by people who are not educationists but just politicians who are looking for um you know channels through which they make money to be able to send their own children abroad you or you know uh that i believe is an open secret but these politicians are who are who are doing this disservice uh to our country by the way they neglected question i'm not training their own children here so that's why they do not want to uh do uh script can't live more than they are doing now uh those of us who do research in the sector know that the money politicians use to train uh less than 10 percent of of Nigeria so uh most of the man had their own children abroad uh is significantly higher than the entire budget for training the rest of us who are about 99 percent of the population in terms of training in the in the public school system here we have over 50 billion children and young persons in the Niger school system and this is the kind of money you're mentioning to take care of those uh we haven't started and it doesn't look like um uh if we maintain the current or that things are going to change but um you know it also worries me uh when you see the likes of Ghana even though in Ghana the argument would want to be that there's been a decline in different you know time for instance if you say uh you want to compare the statistics of the percentage from 2016 and that of 2017 or 2018 moving upwards you'll find out that there might just be a decline and in the in the next year there might be an increase but however Ghana seemed to be spending so much on higher education or are located so much in terms of our budget uh as of 2016 uh 22.09 percent was allocated you know to the educational sector and in 2017 they recorded 20.10 percent and of course in 2018 there was a decline but however that's still you know above what we're still spending my question is why is it that uh the likes of Ghana seem to be allocating so much to our educational sector when you compare that to the giant of Africa and also in the same region west Africa. Quality of political leadership that's the answer for now is an open secret that the people running our country at the political level don't don't have the right skills the right awareness and generally square pegs and round holes and so in Ghana I've got the scrutinized the profile of the people who are in charge of critical sectors in their country and go to several other countries around the world where education has been given is pride of place you discover that the people who are the political masters in those places are people who have gone to proper schools they have the awareness they understand that indeed education is the bedrock for our country we have we have been very unlucky the people running the political space are people who are unfortunately for us are truly square pegs and round holes so until you get such people out of the system and put the right people in place technocrats people who understand what education means you won't why do you want to use an account and for example to run the education ministry who hasn't even got a master's degree when there are professors of education in this country so he doesn't understand the values you know and that we should promote he doesn't understand the he doesn't have the intellectual tools to be able to understand the problems that that develops as a country and go and look at the essential agencies of of of our country you also discover that even though people may have titles that look like they are professors the question is professor of what what discipline you know and somebody is a professor of geography and you make him minister of education and some another person is a is a medical doctor and you make him minister of labor and productivity when there are people who study HR so the answer to your question is the fact that you have the wrong people in the in critical sectors of our country and so long as that continues to happen and be the case we are not going to get it right all right Dr Peter Ogudou let's do talk about the young people the children and the youth who say the youth are the leaders of tomorrow but according to the UNESCO data about 20.2 million children are youths and youths are actually out of school Nigeria is actually the largest in Africa and the third globally this year we are actually budgeting 103.2 in nine billion there for universal basic education just how far can that go I do research in this sector and I know that a lot needs to be improved upon when you hear the basic education commission or interestingly there is money in the accounts of universal basic education which states are not accessing because the states have failed most of them have failed to make provision for their own counterpart funding the arrangement by the law is that for a state to access the money that universal basic education commission provides they have to make their own initially investment if they don't provide that initially investment the universal basic education is not going to release funds today you have to understand how that agency works and they don't they don't intervene directly they intervene through states universal basic education in the world in the various you know states of the country so most of those boards are populated by politicians who know nothing about education so they are not prioritizing education at a state level and so long as that remains the case they are not going to be able to access this fund that will keep dropping the cost of universal basic education you know commission and I'm suspecting that when the politicians look in there and see that there is idle money they are likely to you know ask for it and usually to do their political campaigns because the states are not accessing the money since they have failed to provide the counterpart funding so that's where we are I'm directly connected to these agencies I research and work with the principal officers of these places and the information I get is that where we are it's not a pretty place so let's talk about what we can be now do you think that we can actually move away from six six point seven percent seven percent eight percent you know just go a little bit higher in terms of our budgetary allocation to the education sector and if you think that that's the case is there anything that we can do as a country let's talk about those who are formulating policies you know the citizenry herself and every other person involved in the entire process yeah quite a lot I must also put it on record that it's not only money that you need to fix education the most critical element that most education forward is the quality of the math power you have in the sector starting from the policy maker so we need to ensure that as we prepare for the next election we have to scrutinize the people who want to run our country as governors and of course as president number one citizen of the country we have to be sure that the people who are going to get there are people who know the true value of education because if you get it right by way of having the right person as minister of education then it will trickle down that person will recruit directors in the critical units in ministries of education and related areas who will do very you know a lot of jobs that will move us forward as a country and so it's not just money because if you even if you give 25 percent of our national budget to education and you have the wrong people running the equation system they always see so first ensure that you get the next minister to be truly an education is who runs the place and then that person should look into the ministries of education both at the federal and state levels and then show that through inspiration and deliberate policy and actions he has sensed those ministries only permanent secretaries who have an education background and who understand that indeed without getting into the level of education we can no move forward as a country and then when they're supposed to start working they should prioritize the quality of instruction we give to our children by returning teachers we should put more money into retraining our teachers the average teacher today starting in any classroom anywhere in our country across our level from kindergarten to university is a teacher you are not you should be proud of because they can't even define learning and so if they don't know what learning means what are they you know wasting time in the classroom doing and so if we get it right in those areas and then when it comes for example the university in kushan that has been very problematic uh to us and we have always experienced us going on strike the way to fix that is to get the right um funding model now here is a poor country this entire budget that we're discussing is um it's not even up to you know the value of microsoft the value of facebook of facebook just one company in america and so if that is the case we should not put full access into believing that government can fund education alone parents must get involved and we need to get people who have negotiation skills who have bargaining you know uh techniques who are able to use appropriate communication strategies to get parents and other stakeholders you know to the to the tip where we ensure that is not we are not going to control to leave the funding of education in the house and parents must get involved uh private sector organizations must get involved because they are also uh employers of left uh if we don't control to provide you know the right manpower they will continue to struggle because without skills uh even when you have all the money in the world you are not going to be able to uh uh uh you know remain productive and that's that's what we know through the side that's the evidence that we have you know and that's what that evidence is and so and that's what i would prescribe let's get it right in terms of manpower the people who are on the system and then we can start talking about um uh even their location but but definitely the money we are pumping to education is not is not significant we should move to minimum of 15 percent and so let's choose the next set of leaders right all right dr ogudo uh as we begin to round off now for news originals there might be another crisis aluminum in the tertiary education system this time around them samu uh there are another round of crisis now we hear that um uh it may lead to strike in public investment over alleged inability of the government to conclude renegotiation of the 2009 agreement what i'm trying to say is that uh about a 103.29 billion naira you know has been airmarked as transfers to sorry 248.27 billion naira has been airmarked as transfers to tet fund you know with asus trike sanus trike back and forth since last year how do we ensure a permanent solution to this issue in the nation's ivory towers yeah we go back to political leadership you know that the current minister of labor productivity is a medical doctor is not a trend negotiator he knows nothing about industrial relations technically the current minister of education is an accountant he knows nothing about education he knows nothing about how to negotiate that's not his area of of training and so if you continue to have people and and then the the deputy to to to the minister of labor is a lawyer he is not a trained HR you know practitioner he's not an industrial relations expert so and they are not professional communicators really so until you are able to put in those critical units of government individuals who have the technical know how who understand how to negotiate how to understand the processes it takes to get everybody on the table and demonstrate um open-mindedness listen to the other side and appreciate the value that lecturers and other uh supportive staff bring to the education sector until you are able to get people who have this level of awareness who control to struggle so let's let's keep this up loud and I I expected that by now this should have resigned on their own how can you be minister of education minister of labor productivity and a critical sector of the economy you know went went went down for eight months and we are still holding on to your position no no sensible person does that in in center societies and that we should move away from this from from this kind of uh all right the facility as a populist all right thank you so much i dr godo that's as much as we can take care on this segment we are completely out of time thanks for all the insights and um you know the issues and concerns you have raised concerning the nation's educational sector would you appreciate all of them thank you so much well that's the size of our conversation just in we have to go we appreciate our guests this morning for the in-depth analysis it's been quite insightful very very if you are asking but hey it's one thing to talk about all of this and it's okay to understand that we have people who understand the challenges that were faced with and who have solutions to offer but hey the level of implementation is also another thing so it's one thing to talk about it is another thing to implement uh that's the size of our conversation this morning we take a break and when we return we'll be joining the newsroom at nine fourth and he's brief i am messy boko and i'm just in uh can you stand by for the new step of the hour and the breakfast return to game seven am tomorrow