The World Bank and the British Department for International Development (DFID) have issued a grant of $180 million to help finance the Nigerian education sector so that more students can be admitted into Nigerian Universities.
The roadmap project for the Nigerian education sector is a comprehensive implementation document that will address most of the problems in the Nigerian education sector. It tries to identify all the challenges education has, proffer solutions and then set a time line on how to achieve the solution.
More than one million Nigerians take the University entrance exams known as the Joint Admission Matriculation Board examination (JAMB) every year, but little only about 10 per cent are admitted into Universities because of carrying capacity.
However, the Minister of Education, Sam Egwu, has assured Nigerians that the loan will be used for the provision of more classrooms, infrastructure, laboratories, library facilities, and all the facilities that will enable the various universities take in additional students.
The World Bank grant is reported to be enough to cover the upgrading of infrastructure in secondary and tertiary institutions, create access and equity, standards and quality assurance, technical and vocational education, and training and funding.
According to the education minister, there will be deliberate effort to give to educational institutions to enable them improve intake of students. Private and public institutions will also be encouraged to work closely with each other, and internally generated revenue will be encouraged amongst institutions.
Locally provided grants such as the Education Trust Fund and the Universal Basic Education (UBE) grants have been hampered by inadequate implementation procedures and so nothing has been done to improve the state of tertiary institutions in Nigeria.
About two-thirds of the universities are federally owned, and a majority of the remaining others are state-owned; there are 13 federally owned, 14 state-owned polytechnic colleges and a handful of private universities in the country.
