Politicisation of Education in Nigeria: Implications for National Transformation

Abstract

Many countries across the world have developed on the wings of their intellectual capacity For several decades past governments in Nigeria have made futile efforts through several policies and the reshaping of institutional mechanism to revamp the education system The current deterioration of the Nigerian education sector proves no less good Several literatures on the education system in Nigeria attributes the deploring condition of the education sector to poor financing implementation and monitoring as well as the copy- syndrome This paper argues on the contrary that the problem with the education sector in Nigeria is beyond the identified bottlenecks The paper contend that politicisation of the education sector based on primordial identities such as ethnicity religion and godfatherism are rather responsible for the deploring condition of the education system Nigeria which has multiplier effect on national transformation The paper concludes that Nigeria s education will impact positively on the national transformation when the politicisation of the sector along these identities is discouraged and the trend reverted