The Gambia is looking to Nigeria’s Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) model for education financing, even as Ekiti and Abia struggle to put enough teachers and health workers in the schools and health facilities citizens depend on.
Development Diaries reports that Ekiti State has extended the deadline for its teacher recruitment examination, Abia State is preparing to recruit more health workers, and The Gambia recently announced plans to study the TETFund model for possible adaptation.
Nigeria has a teacher deficit running into hundreds of thousands at basic education level, while the country still has one of the world’s largest populations of out-of-school children.
Similarly, the health sector faces its own shortage, with Nigeria’s health-worker density below the World Health Organisation’s recommended level and the continued migration of trained doctors and nurses making the gap harder to close.
Recruitment will mean little to communities that remain without teachers and health workers, as a teacher recruited in Ado-Ekiti does not solve a vacancy in a rural school in Ikole or Oye, just as a nurse employed in Umuahia does not fill a gap at a primary health centre in a remote Abia community.
The recruitment process also needs transparency because when governments do not publish selection criteria, shortlists and final results, vacancies become vulnerable to political patronage, while poorly qualified workers can remain in public service for years.
The same problem appears in education financing, as TETFund has become one of Nigeria’s most established public education funds, with an education tax on company profits providing a dedicated source of money for public tertiary institutions. The Gambia’s interest in the model is therefore understandable.
Nigeria should also explain what the TETFund model fails to address. Universities have a dedicated funding mechanism, while basic education depends heavily on UBEC grants that require states to provide counterpart funding.
States that fail to meet that requirement can leave federal money inaccessible while schools continue to struggle with teachers, classrooms and learning materials.
That funding gap is a big deal because children in poorly staffed schools eventually become the students entering the tertiary system that TETFund supports.
A country can therefore have a relatively strong university financing mechanism while failing to adequately finance the education system feeding those universities.
The consequences fall hardest on communities farthest from state capitals, with rural children more likely to sit in understaffed schools; girls being withdrawn where schools lack female teachers, sanitation and safe access, and children with disabilities being excluded where recruitment does not provide specialist teachers.
In rural health centres, the absence of midwives places poor women at particular risk because private alternatives are often beyond their reach.
Section 18 of Nigeria’s constitution directs the state towards free, compulsory and universal primary education, while the Universal Basic Education Act 2004 provides the legal framework for basic education. Section 17(3)(d) also requires the state to make adequate medical and health facilities available.
Applicants in Ekiti and Abia should demand published recruitment criteria and shortlists and document any payment request. Parent-teacher associations can report teacher shortages in their schools to SUBEB, while community health committees can document staffing gaps in primary health centres and ask their lawmakers what is being done about them.
As for the Ekiti SUBEB and Abia’s health authorities, they should publish the number of vacancies, recruitment criteria and final postings, including the rural and urban distribution of recruits.
UBEC, on its part, should publish the amount of matching grants each state has left unaccessed, while TETFund and the Federal Ministry of Education should publish institution-level funding and outcome data alongside any presentation of the TETFund model to The Gambia.
While Nigeria shares TETFund’s lessons with The Gambia, it should also share the unfinished business of getting enough teachers into classrooms and health workers into health facilities.
