By Prof Sylvester Odion Akhaine
Mr. President, I focus on the Student Loan Act, which you signed into law enthusiastically on April 3, 2024. Many uncritical thinkers have applauded you over this matter. I cannot join the trend. Instead, I will ask questions and provide information that will inform a better understanding of the points at issue.
In summary, the Student Loan Act revised as the Access to Higher Education Act, 2024, aims to provide easy and equal access to higher education for indigent Nigerians through interest-free loans from the Nigeria Education Loan Fund provided for by the Act to provide education for all. The objective is an oxymoron of sorts. The loan would empower the indigent, and provide education for all. A loan by its nature is a liability, hence the commonplace saying: “Those who go a-borrowing, go a-sorrowing”.
There is the voice of Jacob in this matter loud enough from the echo chamber of the Bretton Woods institutions (BWIs) that desire that we will invest in entrepreneurs without philosophy. I guess we are already harvesting them with ‘terropreneurs’ everywhere. Also, the student loan scheme is an abandonment of responsibility for the funding of education, a perennial issue in the education sector in Nigeria. The BWIs are inclined to attack the poor through the reproduction of what I have conceptually referred to as secondary uneven development. The latter means those policies of the agencies of global governance that reproduce and entrench the primary gaps between the so-called advanced countries and the developing world that were in the main caused by slavery and colonialism. Those gaps are never meant to be filled. They will do everything to ensure the status quo, and where there are resistances, they will deploy the jackals (apologies to John Perkins, author of The Confession of an Economic Hitman). The latter would ensure a regime change.
In Nigeria, the idea of student loans dates back to the early 1970s when the Nigeria Student Loans Board (NSLB) was created to grant recoverable loans to indigent Nigerian students in the country. It has since then undergone several changes culminating in the current manifestation. The conditions for qualification, though revised, are still insurmountable for the poor (Even the warped leadership of the students argued over these collaterals instead of outright rejection). Given the gloomy Nigerian economy and widespread poverty, it would amount to non-performing loans. Advanced countries with similar schemes have not been able to surmount the level of default on the loans, how much more of a very corrupt country. However, as I have already mentioned above, the latent function this time is not ennobling, it is sheer abdication of responsibility to make education a public good considering its centrality to every aspect of social production.
Some leaders in the West in pursuit of neoliberal policies, introduced the student loan scheme. British Tony Blair, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, in the abandonment of Labour values that he was never committed to ideologically espoused the so-called ‘third way’, by way of down-sizing the state in terms of its public responsibility. It was under his administration that a tuition fee, a so-called top-up fee, of about 1000 pounds per annum was introduced in Britain in 1998 to fund tuition for undergraduate and postgraduate. Nevertheless, the state shoulder the responsibility for the poorest or low-income to access a university thereby accounting for high enrolment for university education in Britain.
In America, the belly of the capitalist beast, the student loan has the same objective as the Nigerian one under discussion—to provide access to higher education. The loan must be repaid only dischargeable under bankruptcy. As Abigail Johnson Hess has noted in her 2018 essay published in CNBC news (Here’s how much the average student loan borrower owes when they graduate): “Most college graduates have one major thing in common: student debt. Today, 70 percent of college students graduate with a significant amount of loans. Over 44 million Americans collectively hold nearly $1.5 trillion in student debt. That means that roughly one in four American adults are paying off student loans. When they graduate, the average student loan borrower has $37,172 in student loans, a $20,000 increase from 13 years ago. With that money, borrowers could put a down payment on a home, purchase a new car or bootstrap their own business.” Bernie Sanders, a Democrat and former presidential aspirant in the United States, also noted that “an entire generation of young people carry an outrageous level of student debt and face the reality that their standard of living will be lower than their parents’. And, most obscenely, low-income Americans now have a life expectancy that is about 15 years lower than the wealthy. Poverty in America has become a death sentence” (Cited in “Why Coup may happen in America”, Sahara Reporters, February 22, 2022).
There are supporting viewpoints. There is the argument that “well-executed student loans can create a sustainable and equitable financing system for universities. The idea is to lend to students and be paid back by the professionals. This approach can ease taxpayers’ financial burden, provide essential funding for universities, and instil accountability among students while ensuring that the cost of educating an elite group is not borne by low-income taxpayers” (Woodhall, 2004 cited in Mayowa Agbelusi, 2023, p. 63).
Professor Lilian Salami, Vice Chancellor of the University of Benin and Chair of the Committee of Vice Chancellors of Universities of Nigeria, argued that the Federal Government could no longer fund tertiary evident in the paltry budgetary allocation to education over the year and that parents need to bear the burden of education of their wards. Some pertinent questions would have been proper instead of playing the devil’s advocate. What are the services that the Nigerian government renders to its people? Is there pipe-borne water in the country? Does Nigerians enjoy electricity? Are there good roads in the country? Can Nigerians sleep with two eyes closed? How many Nigerians have access to primary health care? How many Nigerian children are out of school? How free is the Universal Basic Education? What has the ruling clique done about the huge cost of governance and pillaging of national resources through corruption? In all ramifications, the Nigerian state has defeated what we political scientist calls ‘the reason of state’. Salami’s position was reinforced by This Day in its April 5 Editorial to the extent that antagonists of the Loan Act failed “to understand is that we cannot continue to train manpower for a free market economy at no cost to parents.”
Mr President, education is free in Germany, it is free in Sweden, it is free in Norway, and it is free in Finland. Education should be free in Nigeria at all levels. Funding education might well curb the bleeding of national resources by politicians through non-productive accumulations.
