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I hear come next session, a government in the South West might stop paying the WAEC fees of public school pupils.
I believe that will be a good development.
In the first instance, it is a sign of stopping the farce called free education in those states. Even though, I personally believe that, with careful planning and improvement in their internally generated revenue drives, free education is more than possible.
Indeed, it has become a permanent feature of the South West, first in the days of Chief Obafemi Awolowo as premier of the Western region and in the second republic (1979-83).
As a matter of fact, each politician that comes in as governor brandishes free education as one of its programmes. It’s even in the party manifesto. It is one of the things people use to differentiate between progressive and not so progressive parties in Nigeria.
For a government to now decide otherwise is an admission of abject failure. But let’s thank the government that, at least, it has been honest to itself.
The payment of the said WAEC fees has been sectional in that government does not pay the WAEC fees of pupils in private secondary schools. Did the proprietors of those schools refuse governments’ gesture?
Discerning parents should not wait to be told that they might soon start paying school fees. And, of course, they might soon start buying books for their wards.
Maybe with that, necessary renovations will start coming to the public schools.
By the way, there are hardly any library facilities in our public schools. Did you hear that? How can a school be a school when it does not have a library.
So, if the education is free, it is no longer qualitative.
Our so called free education will not be missed!
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