Nigerians spending half a billion dollars to school in America

The rot in Nigeria’s educational system is costing the country hundreds of millions of dollars.

Over the past academic year, the economic impact of spending by Nigerian students studying in the United States reached $514 million, data from the Institute of International Education shows. The figure outstrips the economic impact of students from France, Germany and the United Kingdom in the US.

Keeping in trend with a long-standing preference for seeking education abroad, Nigeria was the only African country ranked among the top 25 origin countries for international students in the US over the past year.

The entire budgetary allocation for education in Nigeria for 2019 came in at $1.7 billion (620.5 billion naira), which critics pointed out was 15% to 20% below the minimum level recommended for developing countries by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Nigerian students studying in the US crossed the 13,000 mark in the last academic year—double the number at the start of the decade. In comparison, there have never been more than 50 US students studying in Nigeria each year in the last decade.

The choice of seeking education in the US is largely driven by local problems. Perennial under-funding of education in Nigeria has resulted in significant decline in both the quality of teachers and infrastructure in schools. At the tertiary level, the problems are compounded by recurring strike actions by public university lecturers amid protests of low wages and benefits.

These problems have fueled a rise in expensive private universities which offer the promise of fixed calendars without strike action and better facilities as viable alternatives for middle and high-income families seeking higher standards. But there’s still a capacity problem as Nigeria’s university system, which holds over 150 schools, remains mostly over-populated. As such, only one in four Nigerians applying to university will get a spot. Between 2010 and 2015, only 26% of the 10 million applicants that sought entry into Nigerian tertiary institutions gained admission, according to Nigeria’s statistics agency.

The appeal of foreign universities also goes beyond the availability of better facilities as parents typically seek to unlock a higher level of opportunities for their children. It’s a sentiment that’s currently driving migration of middle-class Nigerians to Canada and Europe.

In cases where the students return home, their expensive, foreign degrees also provide an edge in Nigeria’s very competitive labor market. In comparison, about half of graduates from Nigerian universities annually are estimated to remain unemployed.

By Yomi Kazeem

Quartz

First sex offender register launches in Nigeria

Campaigners have hailed the launch of Nigeria’s first sex offender register as a vital step towards tackling reported cases of sexual abuse, which are rising across the country.

The publicly accessible onlineregister of people prosecuted for sexual violence since 2015 will allow public bodies and police authorities to conduct background checks and identify repeat offenders.

Oluwaseun Osowobi, the director of Stand To End Rape, a Nigerian non-government organisation that supports survivors of sexual violence, said: “If a case is reported anywhere in the country, the case is now on the register. It means that offenders have nowhere to hide.”

Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons, along with 15 non-governmental organisations, supported by the British Council, will monitor reported cases of sexual abuse, providing monthly updates to the online register.

“This is the first of its kind in Nigeria”, said Beatrice Jedy-Agba, the executive secretary of the agency. “It enables bodies such as schools, hospitals to conduct background checks and it will deter sex offenders because they will know their names will be published, affecting their employment and role in society.”

Data on the number of reported cases is scarce in Nigeria, where patriarchal traditions stigmatise people who come forward. According to Unicef, one in four girls in the country have experienced sexual violence by the age of 18 and hardly any receive any form of support.

In Lagos, one of only two of Nigeria’s 36 states to document sexual offenders before now, the most frequently assaulted group are children, many of whom are abused by relatives or family friends known to them, according to police authorities.

Police and suppor groups say the number of reported cases in Africa’s most populous country has risen rapidly in recent years.

As the number of cases has risen, failings in the criminal justice system have let down victims, many of whom report stigmatisation by authorities, exposure to their alleged abusers, and a low likelihood of prosecution.

Under the new system, sexual referral centres run by NGOs will be able to feed in data they collect on recorded incidents into the register, strengthening cases during prosecution.

Osowobi said: “We have cases where victims are being questioned in front of the perpetrators or in open spaces and criticised by officers for not remembering details like the road where the rape occurred.”

According to Stand To End Rape, which supports people who report sexual abuse and provides counselling services, the majority of sexual abuse cases are not prosecuted in Nigeria.

“Cases of sexual abuse are not prosecuted for flimsy reasons,” Osowobi said. “How police collect data is unprofessional and archaic. Police regularly misplace case-files or evidence. Eventually victims become exhausted by the system and give up.”

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