The Nigerian Constitution is clear and explicit, the government is to “provide free compulsory and universal primary education”, continued with free university education. The government is also to provide “adequate medical and health facilities for all persons”. But we all know that these rights will only be won with robust and united action by all the trade unions in the education and health sectors.
Governments at national and state levels have failed to invest in public education and health. They have completely failed to achieve the key international norms for funding these sectors. Funding of education and health would have to be tripled to reach these targets.
56 developing country governments, members of the Global Partnership for Education, agreed to spend at least of 20 per cent of their total annual budgets on education. Yet Tinubu is planning to spend only 7% of his budget for this year on education. So education funding would need to be nearly three times higher to meet this target. As a result, Nigeria is the out of school capital of the world, with perhaps 12 million children not in primary schools.
In 2001 African governments pledged to spend at least 15% of their budgets on health in the Abuja Declaration. But Tinubu is planning to spend only 5% of his budget for next year on health. This is even less than the African average of 7%. As a result, according to the World Health Organisation, over three quarters of a million people die each year from preventable diseases like chest infections, malaria, diarrhoea, tuberculosis and birth complications. This is equivalent to over 75 times the deaths caused by insecurity across Nigeria.
Many workers in the education and health sectors have bravely taken strike action this year. Primary teachers and health care workers in the FCT struck for over three months. Nurses and midwives held a national strike in July. Resident doctors held a national strike in September. There have been many other strikes at individual universities and hospitals. What is missing is a major united national strike by all the relevant unions across the two sectors, supported by a general strike, to demand increased funding for public education and health.
We all need to be demanding the trade union leaders deliver such robust action. This is the only way to secure adequate public funding for these two vital sectors and so finally achieve our Constitutional rights.
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