One of the most important indicators of a country’s readiness for global competitiveness is education, or the lack of it. Many years ago Ghanaians were trooping to Ibadan to drink from the University of Ibadan’s fountain of knowledge which by the standard of those days was considered considerably high. Not only were there high quality faculty members from Europe and America but there were also a lot of Nigerians who had honed their teaching skills in some of the top grade universities abroad. Not anymore.

Instead of Ghanaians coming to Nigeria the reverse is the case. Many Nigerians, unwilling to send their children to the glorified secondary schools that pass for universities in Nigeria and unable to pay the fees for top grade universities abroad are now carting off their wards to Ghanaian universities. Not that these Ghanaian universities have the accoutrements of high grade universities but they are considered to be sandwiched somewhere between the worst and the best.

Nigeria has 95 universities, 27 federal, 34 state and 34 private but in the list of 4,000 top ranking global universities, there is not one from Nigeria.

In fact, the top 23 universities are all in the United States of America with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) taking the gold, Stanford University the silver and Harvard University the bronze. Is there any doubt as to why the United States is leading the pack of inventors, scientists, economists, technologists and the large army of Nobel laurettes. No.

In terms of simple literacy Nigeria records only a miserable 55.4 percent, that is educated people aged 15 years and above. Of this figure 67 percent are men while 44 percent are women. In the years before we negotiated the bend that took us to this century the noise in Nigeria was “education for all by the year 2000.” It never happened because it was not intended to happen. Nigerian leaders believe only in sloganeering. They never put their money where their mouth is. By the estimate of the 2007/2008 UNDP Human Development Report, Nigeria only spends 0.9% of its GDP on Education. This low public funding of education therefore puts Nigeria in the category of Low Human Development along with such basket cases as Senegal, Eritrea, Tanzania, Guinea, Rwanda, Angola, Benin, Malawi and Zambia.

Since the public expenditure on education is low, there is a crisis in admissions to tertiary institutions as there is no space for all the kids who want to study. The result is that unapproved universities have been mushrooming and admissions racketeering has become a growth industry. For a huge population like Nigeria the following statistics of admission are alarming. For the 2005 UME exams into tertiary institutions only 76,984 students were admitted, for 2006 only 88,524 and for 2007 only 107,370. The unlucky millions have to stay home and start the rat race again the following year or their parents get irritated and offer to buy places for their kids so that peace can return to their homes. Even though the JAMB admission process had solved some of the nagging problems, it threw up many others in its wake, making the universities to decide on aptitude tests to ascertain the suitability of the candidates for their programme. So if you have an uncanny combination of poor facilities, choked classrooms, unmotivated teachers who auction handouts or grades, you are likely to have half baked graduates who can contribute little or nothing to the growth of the economy.

At the faculty level almost everybody wants to be a vice-chancellor. The resort to juju is not found only in Chukwuemeka Ike’s ‘Toads for Super’. It is present in real life because vice-chancellorship is the quickest route to the Kingdom of ‘chop-chopism.’ Recently the Executive Secretary of the Education Trust Fund, ETF, Professor Mamood Yakubu, advertised for vice-chancellors to step forward and collect about N20 billion in unutilised funds due to them. Too good to be true, I said. But I later learnt why the funds are lying unpicked: The vice-chancellors have not accounted for their last expenditure. I said, aha…

In two decades, India has become a formidable force in the world, thanks to its attention to education. Today, India produces an average of 400,000 engineers yearly. Every year they send from every corner of the globe millions of dollars to boost the Indian economy. Today, India is noted for its advances in medicine. It deals with top killer diseases such as heart, kidney and cancer complications and thousands from every corner of the planet are jetting to India and boosting what it calls medical tourism. And now, the cheapest car, Nano, manufactured by an Indian company is just driving in. With N300,000 you will get a brand new car and India will get brand new rupees, tons of it.

Next week: What to do