THE STUDENT LOAN ACT: An analysis of the taxonomy of corruption that could handicap the scheme.
By Kay Aderibigbe.
As crude and as dysfunctional as the Nigerian education system seems currently, an idea in the form of a non-commercial and uncollateralized loan, for students from families with moderate incomes, to sponsoring their education is candidly a good development.
Though, the whole scheme, if not isolated from the ‘Nigerian milieu’ could be a bit disproportionately impactful. But nevertheless, our people are expected to entertain less of social scepticism on this ‘new order of higher education’. We should rather, instead, think collectively around the circumference of how to make the scheme fare better in real time.
It is an axiom that, there is basically no facet of life in Nigeria that is devoid of or unsusceptible to corrupt practices. According to Mathew. T. Page (2018), “Corruption is the single greatest obstacle preventing Nigeria from achieving its enormous potential”. He went further and emphasised that . . corruption in Nigeria is not always clear-cut or limited in focus, but rather it is interconnected involving a range of behaviours that cleave across sectors.
Over the years in Nigeria, many laudable policies have graced the political scenes, but the time for implementation is always fraught with the awakening of various invisible hands from various quarters that will steer in different directions, the functionality of the very professional directorate of the state meant to execute the policy. These invisible hands are capable of manifesting in diverse forms.
One amazing uniqueness of political corruption in this clime is that, all the prospective beneficiaries of the nefarious activity are interested in different degree of benefits. Some are after the 'immediate' or ‘main functions’ of the organisation to which they intend to benefit from. For instance, an undocumented and unverified loan form the Bank of Education. While some are looking forward to getting themselves fixed in the ‘position of authorities’ embedded in the institutional settings of the organisation in question.
In the same vein, some are targeting the 'loopholes in the legal framework' of the organisation so that they could profit from the laxity that exists between the state and the practical being of the organisation. The most embarrassing and the last set of corrupt practitioners are the political jobbers/officials, who are excessively used to perquisites to the point that, they see those 'largesse as legalised form of corruption'. People in this category are the ones that sell off physical assets of parastatals when the material existence of a government functionary is liquidated.
This is exactly why the Anthropologist, Daniel Jordan Smith, in his landmark book, ‘A culture of Corruption’, argues that, “corruption in Nigeria is deep, emotionally-ladden, and illustrative of the personal mannerism of the majority of conscious persons that are in charge of a function of facilities that are meant for servicing the state or the people”.
As at the last time I saw the ‘clean copy of the bill’ (the last stage of a bill on the floor of the house), it only extrapolated the operational imperatives of the whole scheme; and not the detailed specifics of the various units and sub-units that will make up the aggregative whole of the Bank of Education.
Availability of many loopholes in a project may cause policy somersault and eventual dismal failure. We should envisage that school authorities, through the faculty of student affairs could cook up fictitious lists of loan applicants with fake matric numbers just to divert funds. Officials of the Bank of Education themselves can grant loans to their cronies and make it all evaporate like a bad debt. The ministry of education can politicise the loan procedure through the use of NUC (Nigeria University Commission).
In a case where NUC gets politically entangles with the Bank of Education, the effervescence effect is that, the much advertised university autonomy and academic freedom being propagated by ASUU would become more compromised. This is one of the reasons I wrote elsewhere that . . . .”federal government should allocate/grant some oil wells, with a reasonable start-up capital to ASUU in order that higher education might be properly funded; while university autonomy shall materialise automatically as a result of financial independence.
Apart from the avalanche of ‘prebends’ that will systematically corrupt the operationalization of the student loan programme, various public school authorities are earnestly waiting in the wing to exploit the scheme by hiking school fees. Many university councils shall justify such move by correctly claiming that successive government have largely neglected a long overdue university funding.
Divergent opinions have flooded the mainstream media ever since Mr president signed the Bill for student loan. Some said, the programme is a gimmick in the hands of experienced political psychologists to douse the palpable animosity seething in the youths across the country. Some see it as a flag designed to enrich some party loyalists. While some view it as a positive step and a feat that is worthy of appreciating its progenitor(s).
Well, whatever the scheme represents in anyone’s mind is basically immaterial for now. All that is sacrosanct is for Nigerian students to benefit from the programme, and we should not allow too much of corruption to tear down such an idea. Does it sound unlike me to have priced down the amount of corruption in this wise? Politicians will have their ways whether we like it or not.
Little wonder did Steven Pierce, in his ‘Moral Economies of Corruption: state formation and political culture in Nigeria’, (2016), opined that, “the best solution to combating Nigerian government corruption is not through attempts to prevent officials from diverting public revenue to self-interested ends, but to ask how public end can be served by accommodating Nigeria’s history of patronage as a fundamental political principle.
In my own view, the judgmental aspect of public policy analysis for the regime of Bola Tunubu is not yet due. We shall take whatever his government serves and that which is even not displayed as what it is for now. In the words of Yeheskel Dror, both that which a government does and did not do is still public policy.
