COVID-19’s Children’s Day celebration without fanfare or euphoria

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By Chris Otaigbe

Today is May 27, 2020 and it is Children’s Day!

However, it would be marked all over Nigeria in a very ‘un-Children’s day’-like manner; without the usual euphoria and fanfare.

There will be no march-past. The excitement of preparing for the day had gone, let alone the joy of dressing up for the occasion; rushing from home to the school from where children will be taken to the stadium to celebrate. All that was wiped out by the month-long lockdown!

CHILDREN’S DAY is one dedicated to celebrate “childhood”; it is on this day that tribute is paid to all kids in the world.
They are loved by one and all, charming over our hearts with their angelic eyes and innocent smiles.

Children’s Day is an event celebrated in many countries around the world. The holiday is simply set to honour children and minors.

The International Children’s Day has its origin in Turkey in April 23, 1920, and later in the World Conference for the well-being of children in Geneva, Switzerland in 1925.

Children’s Day was first celebrated worldwide in October 1955 under the sponsorship of the International Union for Child Welfare in Geneva.

The idea of a Universal Children’s Day was mooted by Rubab Mansoor, grade 8, and adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1954.

First proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1954, it was established to encourage all countries to institute a day, firstly, to promote mutual exchange and understanding among children and secondly, to initiate action to benefit and promote the welfare of the world’s children.

It was also chosen as the day to celebrate childhood. Generally, children get all excited and eagerly await the day.

All local schools go to their local stadium where each school has a special march they perform, from where the school with the best marching performance wins the honour for that year.

First established by the United Nations in 1964, the day, May 27, remains important in the lives of many Nigerian kids and has been traditionally sustained as the Children’s Holiday in Nigeria.

On this day, every year, children are granted a holiday while several social activities are centered on them. Excused from school, most kids converge at stadiums and centers to commemorate the event.

Children’s Day and its accompanying excitement have been eviscerated by the Nigerian government panic response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
In Nigeria, it is no different. In fact, it is worse as the nation’s leaders, political, religious and the rest across the spectrum are not clear what they want to do going forward.

Over one month of staying at home have brought home-fatigue to the children who miss playing around and studying with their friends and classmates.

For those who could afford internet, particularly in the private schools, zoomed their way around class schedules and lectures. While children of the poor in public schools were left to their fate during the lockdown.

The Covid-19 lockdown has revealed a lot about government policies, sincerity and clarity of government officials saddled with the responsibility to administer that strategic sector for the rich and the poor, the weak and the strong in Nigeria. It also exposed the true mindset of the people to the development of the sector. At a time, when they were called to look out for each other, the strong to protect the weak, while the rich were supposed to watch the back of the poor, the Haves conveniently forgot about the children of the Haves-not, who had no internet to Zoom their virtual classes.

While the people can be pardoned for their collective ignorance, government cannot be forgiven because it the leader that everyone looks to, to provide direction. In Nigeria’s context, it was scandalously absent.
Due to this unhealthy situation, the number of children who are dropping out of school keeps rising.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the population of out-of-school children in Nigeria has risen from 10.5 million to 13.2 million, the highest in the world. That makes the number of Nigerian children less than 5% of the 263 million children worldwide who are missing out on school. Many of the children are out of school, while some have never been to school.

Most of these children are in Nigeria’s northern states of Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa, where Boko Haram insecurities have disrupted academic activities.

The indistinctive chatter of young children playing outdoors is very familiar. The boys are playing football while the girls are jumping around.

This period only further reveals the deepening crisis in the sector across the tiers of institutions: from Primary, Secondary to Tertiary. This crisis is so visible; the prevalent danger to the nation taunts and haunts the people every day.

Currently, the Universities are on strike, no thanks the annual Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU)-government tango.

At the base of that hurtful conflict, is incompetence on the part of the nation’s education sector managers and the inadequate funding.

Consistently, year-in, year-out, Nigeria’s budget has always been within the axis of seven percent, at best, below the 10% bar as opposed to 15-20% recommendation by UNICEF.

In Africa, Nigeria’s allocation to the education sector may be among the lowest.
While Ghana is over 31%, Cote D’Ivoire, 30%, Uganda, 27%, Morocco, over 26%, South Africa, 25.8%, Swaziland, over 24%, Kenya 23% and so forth. One noticeable point among the aforementioned nation’s Education allocation is the fact that they are above the UNICEF/UNESCO recommended figure. There are others that are below the UN Agencies Education budget radar and they include: Botswana with 19%, Tunisia, 17%, Lesotho, 17%, Burkina Faso, 16.8%. All these countries below the recommended threshold revolve around the 17% mark, just three percent short of the maximum but above the UN Agencies’ tolerable minimum.

An inquiry into the fiscal operations and developments of Nigeria revealed that federal government expenditure on education is categorized under the social and community services sector. The implication is that education is an impure public good. The importance of education is reminiscent in its role as a means of understanding, controlling, altering and redesigning of human environment. Education also improves health, productivity and access to paid employment. Education has a link with economic development.

It has been discovered that economies do well, as a result of increase in national income and per capita income, which is a function of education. Those differences among nations can be better explained by differences in the endowments of human, rather than physical capital. This underscores the reason why the ‘Asian Tigers’ in the past three decades allocated between 25-35% of their annual budgets to their education sector.

Education funding in Nigeria involves the Federal, States and Local Governments’ Appropriation and Releases for Capital and Recurrent Expenditure. It also includes Education Trust Fund, Donor Agencies, Interventions, as well as Scholarship awards by Federal, States and Local Governments.

The missionaries relied on donations by missions and school fees paid by the students. In other areas, communities also participated in the running of schools. The funds used in running these establishments were derived from local taxes voluntarily levied on the host communities and other donations from philanthropists. Individuals running educational institutions mostly carry on with the motive of making profits and fees charged are relatively higher than that of the government and community-owned establishments.

As more states were created from the regions by the military administrations, more secondary and tertiary educational institutions were created. To regulate activities of these institutions, regulatory bodies were created. The major ones being the National Universities Commission (NUC) for Universities, the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) for Polytechnics and Colleges of Technology, National Commission on Colleges of Education (NCCE), National Teachers Institute (NTI), and Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC). Tertiary education (Higher education) in Nigeria is provided by universities, colleges of education, and polytechnics and the colleges of education. So far, budgetary allocation to education is not in any way encouraging, as it falls far short of expectation in a country like Nigeria.

Unfortunately, rapid expansion in number of universities is not matched with available qualified lecturers and increased funding, either by Federal or State governments, since most of the expansion took place at periods of economic decline in real terms. The level of funding of education thus, declined over the years with attendant decay of infrastructure and low staff morale.

It is governments’ statutory responsibility to bear the cost of higher education in the country but the instability of the oil market and the monolithic nature of the Nigerian economy have conspired to make funding of universities and other higher education decline sharply.
Funded in a number of ways, the proportion of funding and modalities for higher institutions in Nigeria, vary across institutions. The government believes it has the responsibility of providing Nigerians with free and quality education. Consequently, government through the National Universities Commission (NUC) makes it mandatory for all Federal Universities to generate 10% of their annual funds internally.

All Federal universities receive bulk funds from the federal government through the National Universities Commission (NUC), separated into capital and recurrent grants with the recurrent grant to be disbursed based on NUC funding criteria of 60% on personnel cost and 40% on overhead cost, out of which library cost, research cost and capacity building cost are allocated 10%, 5% and 1% respectively.

The budgeting processes and expenditures have to adhere to budgeting and expenditure formula stipulated by the National Universities Commission (NUC) as follows: 60% for total academic expenditure; 39% for administrative support; and 1% for pension and benefits (Hartnett, 2000).

It is mandatory for all federal universities to generate 10% of their total yearly funds internally through various revenue diversification means. The Education Tax Decree No. 7 of 1993 stipulates the payment of 2% of assessable profits of limited liability companies registered in Nigeria as an education tax to be disbursed according to the ratio of 50: 40: 10 to higher, primary, and secondary education respectively.

The share of higher education is further allocated to the universities, polytechnics, and colleges of education in the ratio of 2: 1: 1 respectively.

Currently, ASUU and the federal government are still in a their traditional logjam of ‘I nor gree, you nor gree, no way to go’ argument (as the man on the street will describe it), while the education of the nation’s children, and aspiring managers of the country’s future, hangs in the balance, with no one giving a damn.

As today fades out on the celebration that should have been but for Covid-19 interruption/disruption, children stay home to continue their indistinctive chatter with boys running around, playing catch-me-if-you-can or intensely engaged in football tournaments blocking passageways for cars and passers-by. The girls, on the other hand, would seize on the time to continue their gossips, while playing games little girls play across streets and neighborhoods.

Whichever way one views it, it is a time for children to while away their time, legitimately because it is their day. While wealthy parents would use it as time to take their wards for treats at eateries or to picnics etc., for the poor, it is a time to have the undivided attention of their children to do home chores and in more cases than one, send them out to hawk in traffic to generate the money the family can survive on, for the time being.

While Covid-19 may have disrupted the celebration of this year’s edition worldwide, in Nigeria, it looked like it would not have made that much difference anyway because the fabric of the education sector has already been torn, severally and in several ways, to shreds.

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