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Universal Primary Education in Nigeria: Its Problems and Implications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2016

Marg Csapo
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Nigerian educational administrators find themselves engulfed by a tidal wave of swiftly swelling pupil enrollment. The rapid rate of growth poses the challenging question of how much time is left for solutions. Niger State is one example. In April 1976, 244 primary schools offered instruction to 15,796 pupils. Four months later, the state needed 931 primary schools for an additional 63,384 pupils: a growth rate of almost 400 percent. In 1978 there were 1,091 primary schools to serve 179,861 children. This amounted to a real growth of over 1000 percent in two years. This experience was repeated across a number of states. The comparison of enrollment in the first year of primary school between 1975/76 and 1976/77 school years, for example, shows a percentage increase of 557 percent in Niger, 491 percent in Kano, 442 percent in Kaduna, 263 percent in Benue. The smallest increase was 11 percent in Gongola State. Parallel to the pupil enrollment was the percentage increase of the number of primary schools between 1975/76 and 1976/77, 301.3 percent in Niger, 227.1 percent in Kano, 196.4 percent in Kaduno, 142.9 percent in Benue. The smallest increase reported was in Imo State, 1.5 percent.

This recent explosion in Nigerian primary school enrollment was the direct result of the Universal Primary Education (UPE) scheme launched in September 1976. It marked the dawn of an educational revolution with pervasive social and economic implications (Bray, 1981). The political expectations were that universal free primary education would enable the nation to overcome the hurdles caused by unbalanced educational and economic development which resulted in southern dominance and educational imbalances of urban opportunities over the rural, and the preponderance of male over female enrollment in schools.

Type
Articles
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 91 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1983

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