Africa Region Human Development Working Paper Series The Capacity of the Nigerian Governement to Deliver Basic Education Services Eliezer Orbach Copyright April 2004 © Human Development Sector Africa Region The World Bank The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this report are entirely those of the author and should not be attributed in any manner to the World Bank, to its affiliated organizations, or to members of its Board of Executive Directors or the countries they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this publication and accepts no responsibility for any consequence of their use. Cover design by Word Express Cover photo: Brigitte Duces / AFTH3 World Bank Table of Contents Foreword 6 Acknowledgments 7 Abbreviations an Acromyms 8 Executive Summary 9 A. Introduction 14 Objectives and Methodology 14 B. The Division of Labor in the Basic Education System 16 The Division of Labor among Tiers of Government and the Principle of Concurrency 16 The Takeover of Primary Education by the Federal Government 17 The Fragmentation of Responsibility 19 The Impact of the Division of Labor and Fragmentation on Capacity 22 Implications for Government Strategy and Project Design 23 C. Leadership and Direction in the Basic Education System 25 The Presence and Clarity of Vision 26 The Sharing of National Objectives at States and LGA Levels 27 The Completeness and Realism of Vision 30 The Strength of Strategy and Planning 31 The Real Commitment to Education 32 Implications for Government Strategy and Project Design 34 D. Financial Resources and Capacity in the Basic Education System 36 The Capacity to Mobilize Financial Resources 36 The Allocation of Available Resources in the System 39 The Loss of Direction in the Allocative Process 40 The Allocation of Non-Financial Resources 41 Expenditure Control in the Basic Education System 43 Implications for Government Strategy and Project Design 44 E. Human Resources in the Basic Education System 46 The Lack of Norms for Deployment of Non-Teaching Staff 46 Overstaffing and its Impact on Capacity 49 The Utilization and Efficiency of Staff 50 2 The Mix and Level of Skills in the System 50 Training and Professional Development 52 Task Definition and Incentives to Perform Well 53 Implications for Government Strategy and Project Design 55 F. Material Resources in the Basic Education System 56 The Critical Shortage of Material Resources 56 The Neglect of Existing Physical Resources 57 The Consequences of Poor Provision and Neglect 58 Implications for Government Strategy and Project Design 59 G. Annex 1: List of States and Local Government Authorities Included in the Study H. Tables Table 1 The Functions of NPEC/UBEC, SPEBs, LGAs & District Education Committees according to Decree No. 96 of the Federal Military Government of 1993 Table 2 The Organizational Units of a Typical SPEBs and the Functions of each unit Table 3 X State Aspirations on Primary Education Table 4 State X ­ Position Paper on the Work Plan for the Ministry of Education for the Year 2001 Table 5 The Vision and Strategies of State Y Table 6 Selected Verbal Statements of Vision Made by Executive Chairmen of LGEAs Table 7 Number of Staff within Selected MOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs ­ by Type of Agency and Function Table 8 Personnel and PRS Staff in MOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs as a Percentage of Total HQ Staff Table 9 Excerpts from Internal and External Audit Reports Table 10 Ratios Related to the Sizes of the State Primary Education Systems and the Non-Teaching Staff Servicing Them Table 11 Ratios Related to the Sizes of the LGEA Systems and the Non-Teaching Staff Servicing Them 3 Table 12 Ratios Related to the Sizes of the State Secondary Education systems and Non-Teaching Staff Servicing Them Table 13 Staff in Grade Level 1 to 6 as a percentage of Total Non-Teaching Staff in SPEBs and MOEs HQ Table 14 Lagos Local Education Districts Table 15 Examples of Under-Utilization of Staff in SPEBs, SMOEs and LGEAs Table 16 Number and Percentage of Non-Teaching Staff with Academic University Education in 8 MOEs and SPEBs and 11 LGEAs Table 17 Approved Budget Allocations to Maintenance and Staff Development at MOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs Table 18 Budget Allocations to Staff Development and Training as a Percentage of Total Personnel Cost Table 19 Schedules of Duties for Personnel Management Department at SPEB and LGEA Levels in Plateau I. Bibliography 4 FOREWORD This report is the third of a set being prepared by the Africa Region of the World Bank and its Human Development Department to generate and provide basic information on some key aspects of the educational system in Nigeria. Each of the reports is based on considerable work undertaken by Nigerian consultants, both individuals and institutions. The initial purpose of the work was to increase understanding of some of the constraints on the Federal Government's policy of encouraging the universalization of basic education throughout the country, and to initiate debate. Over time, this focus has widened to encompass aspects of the whole education system. This third report focuses on the capacity of the Nigerian government to deliver basic education services, especially at the state and local government levels. This paper examines a number of factors that influence this capacity: the division of labor among key agencies in the basic education sector; leadership and direction in the sector as a whole and inside these key agencies; the availability, allocation and control of financial resources; the management and efficiency of human resources, and the availability and utilization of material resources. The report is based on a number of detailed surveys and studies, carried out in 13 states and the Federal Capital Territory in Nigeria, and provides a large information base of current practices and situations at state and local government levels. The capacity of the states and local governments to implement an effective and efficient education system for all has been weak for many years. Over the last twenty years the Federal Government has attempted to address this weakness, but has done so by trying to strengthen its own capacity to make up for the weak capacity at state and local level, rather than by building the capacity of the states and local governments themselves. Clearly, although some constraints on capacity seem to be very complex and difficult to address, there are avenues for substantial improvement, particularly at state level. Whether or not improvement will be achieved depends, however, on the Government's strength of political will to carry out the necessary reforms and build the required capacity. At local government level, the constraints on capacity are extremely severe on almost all dimensions. Serious rethinking will be required to determine the roles and responsibilities and the accompanying capacity building efforts required at that level. This report does not addressed all the problems of capacity constraints, nor does it survey the entire landscape of education in Nigeria. Especially at the federal level, much additional research remains to be done on the roles and structures of the federal ministry and the para- statals that are currently in place to deliver the services. It is hoped, however, that the report will start a process of thinking and of discussion to make changes and improvements in capacity wherever required. Birger J. Fredriksen Senior Education Advisor Africa Region, World Bank 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper has been written by Eliezer Orbach, based on a set of reports compiled by a team of nine Nigerian consultants. The team was led by Professor Mamman Shuaibu and included Prof. Adeyemo A. Aderinto, Prof. Ben E. Aigbokhan, Prof. Eric Arubay, Prof. Titilayo Hassan, Prof. P. K. Ojedele, Dr. E. E. Oluchukwu, Prof. W. O. Olu-Aderounmu, and Prof. Uka Ezenwe. Each of the consultants conducted a series of in-depth interviews and discussions with high-level officials in State Primary Education Boards, State Ministries of Education and Local Government Education Authorities in at least one state; each also collected a large number of documents as an additional source of valuable information. The efforts made by the high-level officials to meet with the consultants and to provide the documentary material are highly appreciated. Each of the consultants analyzed carefully the interviews and the documentary material and wrote a report about the capacity of the education system in the state visited to deliver basic education services. Professor Shuaibu, who visited one of the states, also integrated all of the reports into one document. The work was initiated by Brigitte Duces, Team Leader for Nigeria Education and Birger Fredriksen, Senior Education Advisor, Africa Region, as part of a wider exercise to deepen the understanding of the Nigerian education system. It was financed by the Norwegian Education Trust Fund (NETF) and by a Professional Human Resource Development grant from the Japanese Government. The National Institute for Education Planning and Administration (NIEPA), under Professor Taiwo Ajayi, arranged the logistics and supervised the work of the consultants. Earlier versions were read by Victoria Kwakwa and Michael Stevens, and useful suggestions were made by Olatunde Adekola, Keith Hinchcliffe and Brigitte Duces. The final version of the paper was presented at a workshop organized by NIEPA and attended by officials from all the participating states as well as the team of consultants. Typing and editing support were provided by Ngozi Blessing Ede. The Japanese Professional Human Resources Development Fund and the Norwegian Education Trust Fund for Africa have generously financed the present study, and are continuing to provide financing for additional studies of the education system in Nigeria. The Nigerian Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA) played a key role in carrying out the studies and provided the necessary coordination and management of the national consultants, involved in the work. Finally, the study would not have been possible without the cooperation and assistance from local, state and federal authorities in Nigeria. Their cooperation and assistance is very gratefully acknowledged. 6 Acronyms B.A. - Bachelor on Arts B.Ed. - Bachelor in Education BTOR - Back to Office Report CEO - Chief Executive Officer CEOs - Chief Executive Officers DPRS - Dept. of Planning, Research & Statistics EFA - Education For All FCT - Federal Capital Territory FFAC - Finance, Fiscal and Allocation Commission GDP - Gross Domestic Product FMOE - Federal Ministry of Education HQ - Head Quarters LGC - Local Government Council LGA - Local Government Area LGEA - Local Government Education Authority M.A. - Masters of Arts MOE - Ministry of Education N - Naira NA - Not Available NEPA - Nigerian Electric Power Authority NIEPA - National Institution for Educational Planning & Administration NITEL - Nigerian Telecommunication NPEC - National Primary Education Commission PAYE - Pay as You Earn PER - Public Expenditure Review PRS - Planning, Research and Statistics SPEB - State Primary Education Board SPEBs - State Primary Education Boards SOME - State Ministry of Education SMOEs - State Ministry of Education TORs - Terms of Reference UBE - Universal Basic Education UBEC - Universal Basic Education Commission UNESCO - United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNICEF - United Nations Children's Fund VAT - Value Added Tax 7 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Division of Labor in the Basic Education Sector The Nigerian constitution does not articulate fully the division of labor among the three tiers of government in the education sector (and many other sectors). It assigns a few functions clearly and exclusively to the federal government or the states, but treats most functions as a responsibility shared concurrently by the federal, state and local governments. It does not define the role of each, but allows each to define its own role. In the primary and secondary education sub-sectors, the broad understanding behind the constitution is that the federal government's main role is to determine national policy, set standards (including the curriculum) and monitor performance, while the role of the states is to design, develop and deliver the services. Contrary to this understanding, the federal government has taken over almost full control of primary education from the states. Through a parallel structure consisting of NPEC/UBEC and the SPEBs, it manages the primary school system, using the LGEAs to run the schools. As a result the state ministries of education have lost control over the single biggest part of their business, and with this also many opportunities to build up their own capacity. The LGEAs that were weak to begin with became even weaker and lost almost all power. Other than assigning the formulation of national policy and standards to the federal government, and the running of primary education system to the states, the constitution does not divide the labor among the three tiers of government. Most functions are defined by it as concurrent, meaning that each can, but does not have to, get involved in them. As a result, the primary education sub-sector is highly fragmented. Each tier, each organization, is doing something in almost every functional area, but none is accountable for any. The various functional areas suffer from lack of leadership and direction. They have no integrated approach ­ no coherent conceptual framework, policy or strategy. Some areas, such as early childhood education, and some functions, such as policy analysis and research, receive insufficient attention. But other areas, such as construction and maintenance of schools, the management of human resources and school supervision, receive a lot. In these areas there is considerable functional duplication and waste. All organizations in all tiers of government are involved in them ­ each doing something. However, this is done with little coordination and much bureaucracy. A recent Supreme Court ruling will restore primary education to the states, but the division of labor among the three tiers of government still requires a clear definition. There is a great need to determine who is accountable exactly for what in all of the concurrent functional areas. In many of these areas, a fresh conceptual framework and fresh vision, policies and strategies are necessary. Strategic decisions must be made with respect to the integration of the SPEBs with the SMOEs, and it would not be advisable for the federal government, as well as aid agencies, to make any further investments in them before these decisions are made. The integration of the SPEBs with the SMOEs, provides a major opportunity to improve the management of the state education systems, but it is a major activity, requiring good strategic planning and implementation. Long-term strategies and plans will be needed to improve the capacity of the new SMOEs. It will be necessary also to greatly improve the capacity of LGEAs, because in the 8 end not even the states can manage basic education well in a centralized way in a country as large as Nigeria. Leadership and Direction At the national level, Nigeria has an excellent vision, with two very clear sets of objectives for the education sector. One relates to what kind of society Nigerians want to build and the other relates to the types of values the schools should nurture. It has also charted a number of strategies to achieve these objectives. The broad central goal is to attain universal basic education (UBE) by the year 2015. The key complementary objectives include improving equity, quality and learning, as well as the expansion of early childhood care and education and adult literacy. These objectives have been broken down to a larger number of sub-objectives. Most of the objectives and sub-objectives are clear and many specify target outputs and the time by when they must be achieved. With some exceptions, the broad goal of UBE is known to all and understood by all. But its interpretation, as well as the knowledge and understanding of its complementary objectives and sub-objectives, are not shared by all, particularly at local government level. Senior officials in state and local governments throughout the system give different interpretations and state different objectives, in different orders of priority, when asked to tell what is their vision for education. Most of them refer to the overarching goal of UBE. However, many do not mention early childhood education, or adult education, for example. Some do not hold the view that all girls must be at school for the duration of basic education and do not refer to the elimination of gender disparities. Some are not happy with the curriculum, saying that it is too thin on moral content. It would be wrong to assume that the 37 states and 774 LGAs share fully a common basic set of objectives. The most that can be said about them is that they share broadly the goals of `increased enrolment in basic education' and `good education', but they give these goals different interpretations. There is no full common understanding of, and agreement on, the universality of education and the meaning of good education. The commitment of the federal and state governments to the stated objectives is not as high as the statements made by them suggest. This is reflected in the allocation of financial resources among the various sectors as well as the allocation of financial and human resources within the education sector itself. During the years 1997 to 2002, during which UBE has become the central theme of the national education vision, the recurrent expenditure on education as a share of the total federal expenditure declined from 12.3% to 9.1% and the share of capital expenditure has remained unchanged. The federal and state governments are not allocating sufficient financial resources to accommodate even today's enrolment, let alone resources to prepare for those who will come if UBE is to be achieved. Despite the clear objectives of increasing enrolment and improving quality, the number of staff in School Services Departments ­ the units that are the most directly involved in universalizing basic education and improving its quality has been much smaller than the number of staff in administrative units. Personnel Departments, where personnel professionals as well as a host of Grade Level 1 to 6 unskilled and semi-skilled staff are placed, are by far the biggest departments in all MOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs. 9 Current conditions in the 37 states and 774 LGAs are very different. Some states and LGEAs are already close to UBE today, while others have a long way to go. Thus, the magnitude of the job to be accomplished by each is different, and the resources required by each are also different. The federal and state governments have not done a feasibility analysis of the resources needed to implement UBE and the costs involved. At the national level there is no strategy yet to address the large differences among the states, and at the state level there are no strategies yet to address the differences among the LGEAs. The formula for the allocation of funds to the states and LGAs from the Federation Account is not structured well to compensate for these differences. In the absence of some sort of an `equalizing mechanism', it is unlikely that a `standard', common objective can be achieved in so many states and LGAs that have uncommon conditions. Thus, purely from a financial point of view, it seems that the vision of achieving UBE throughout Nigeria by the year 2015 is unrealistic, unless productivity increases and unit costs go down. There is a need to re-think the national vision, identifying feasible national objectives, realistic strategies and minimum targets that will be common to all states. Each of the states needs to re- think its own vision and strategies, building on the national `minimum' and adding to it realistic objectives, and/or targets based on its particular circumstances. The capacity to conduct analytical work which is the foundation of policy and strategy formulation, and the capacity to carry out education planning that is more than the counting of pupils, teachers and classrooms, is very limited in the primary education system. PRS departments are under-staffed and under-resourced. They have lost the focus on policy and strategy analysis, because they have internal units dedicated to physical planning and school construction. The number of employees in PRS departments is very small compared to all other units. Even at the national level, at the FMOE, whose first and foremost job is to develop national policies, there were only 100 people in DPRS in 2001, compared with a total staff of 31,883 and a Personnel Management Department of 1,473. Financial Resources and Capacity As indicated above, the education system in Nigeria faces a critical shortage of funds. At local and state levels, the shortage emanates from a very high dependence on the federal government. The capacity of the LGAs and the states to generate revenues by levying taxes and mobilizing communities is very limited. At the national level, the shortage emanates from the almost total dependence of the federal government on the highly unstable revenues from oil. These revenues are not big enough to meet the needs of the government, based on current work practices and productivity within the sectors, as well as practices of resource allocation among the sectors. But the practices of resources allocation themselves are not adequate, and the shortage of funds in the education sector is also the result of a poor link between the mandates that the federal and state governments are giving to the sector and the funds that flow into it. The mandates ­ such as to attain UBE ­ are big. The formulas for resource allocation do not take them adequately into account and the funds provided do not match them. However, important changes are eminent at least in the formula for vertical allocation of funds from the federation account to the states and the local governments. The states and the LGEAs will get a larger share and education may benefit from this larger share. 10 The state and local governments may try to mobilize additional funds, as well as labor and materials from the communities, but this will not suffice. As suggested above, the federal government needs to develop a full and realistic strategy for achieving the objectives of UBE by the target year of 2015, or modify these objectives. Any new strategy needs to be based, among others, on a very serious attempt to improve productivity. The productivity of the primary education system in Nigeria currently is low. The mix of resources used in running and managing the education system is not appropriate and the utilization of those resources that are in the mix is low. The efficiency of the resources when utilized is also low. There is, therefore, a significant potential to improve productivity and thereby reduce the unit cost of primary education, which will make it possible to educate more students with the limited funds available to the system. A reduction in the unit cost is imperative if the objective of UBE by 2015 is to be achieved. Very good mechanisms to control expenditure at all levels of government already exist in the primary education sector. Organizationally, there are accounting and audit units in each LGEA, SPEB and SMOE; these units are well staffed. Adequate procedures for the release and use of money, for the keeping of books and reporting expenditures are in place as well. Numerous rules aimed at ensuring that allocated funds reach their intended destination and that no overspending takes place are on the books. But these mechanisms are not being properly used and the actual control of expenditure is very weak. Corruption is widespread and people that resort to corrupt practices, or just mismanage money, are generally not held accountable. Three key reasons account for this situation: lack of transparency, insufficient incentives to control expenditure, and the lack of positive role models for expenditure control following the long period of military rule. Resource Allocation Financial, human and material resources are generally not allocated in an operationally optimal way or on the basis of any principles of equity. Often, allocation is based on historical precedent. Last year's allocation serves as a benchmark for this year. Sometimes, no specific norms are used at all. But when norms are used they are based, by default if not by design, on proximity to the source and on management status. Those who are closer to the resource allocation process get more resources. There is indeed a clear difference in the availability of resources between organizations in the center and organizations in the periphery. SPEBs get a lot more resources than LGEAs, and the headquarters of SPEBs, LGEAs as well as SMOEs get a lot more than their field offices. There are big differences between the three groups of organizations: the SMOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs. But, there are also equally big or bigger differences among different organizations in the same group - among different SPEBs and MOEs, and even among LGEAs reporting to the same SPEBs. There is equally a clear difference between those who are in high-level management positions and all the rest. Top managers surround themselves with more human and material resources and give themselves much larger budgetary allocations for overhead, than all the rest. In both cases, operational requirements do not justify the big differences. A lot more attention needs to be paid by the government therefore to the manner in which resources are distributed in the education system. It is important to develop norms and standards that are based on operational requirements. 11 Human Resources and Capacity The management of human resources in the education sector requires great improvement. MOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs are bloated with non-teaching staff. There is no link between the sizes of the education systems that need to be managed and the sizes of the administrations that manage and service them. Larger systems are managed and serviced by smaller administrations and smaller systems are managed and serviced by larger administrations. In the states where this assessment was carried out, the ratio of teachers to all non-teaching staff varied from 2.2:1 to 20:1 ­ usually closer to the lower limit. In the SPEBs there were between 8 to 32 administrators for every 100 teachers. In the MOEs there were between 3 to 66 administrators for every 100 teachers, and in the LGEAs the figures were between 3 to 70. There is on average about one non-teaching staff somewhere in the system for every two to three teachers. In a system whose only business is teaching, the presence of so many non-teaching staff is highly questionable. It is a drain on financial resources and it exerts pressure on office space and facilities. It also consumes management time, and reduces the efficiency of everybody around. One of the most important measures that the government can take, therefore, is to establish the necessary norms and standards, conduct analyses of work, as well as staffing reviews in all the organizations in the sector, and then embark on a program to adjust the non-teaching labor force. Within the non-teaching staff, the most bloated ranks are found in Grade Levels 1 to 6 and the most over-staffed function is the Personnel Management Function. Grade Levels 1 to 6 consist of unskilled and semi-skilled persons. They account for 30% to 50% of all non-teaching staff. Many of them are attached to the personnel management units, and this is why these units are so over- staffed. The proportion of people engaged in pedagogical matters is very low compared with the proportion of those engaged in non-pedagogical matters. In the MOEs and SPEBs, 27.9% and 18.9% respectively of all non-teaching staff are deployed in the School Services Departments, where all pedagogical work is carried out, compared with 72.1% and 71.1% in all other departments, where no pedagogical work is carried out . In the LGEAs the percentages are 29.8 and 70.1. Many staff have very weak incentives to work. Many are underutilized and inefficient. Some of the difficulties in the management of human resources stem from civil service rules and practices and can be addressed only in the broader civil service context. But many difficulties stem from internal rules and practices that are fully within the control of the SPEBs, the SMOEs and LGAs. They need to be addressed, therefore, by internal action. The utilization of non-teaching staff in the system is low. There are numerous indications that people have much `idle time' - not only because there are so many of them. This is also because of a frequent lack of material inputs needed to do the work and because of difficult physical conditions at work. There are equally strong indications that the level of efficiency too is low, that when people are working, they take longer time than necessary to complete their tasks and they do not meet reasonable standards of quality. Several factors contribute to this low efficiency. Poor job definitions and inappropriate work methods and procedures are important factors. `Schedules of duties' are often not available to the jobholders, and where found, are very general, superficial and open-ended. Lack of incentives is another factor. There are few, if any, incentives in the education system to work efficiently. On the contrary, low pay, poor working 12 conditions, political intervention in matters of education, and general inefficiency in the system encourage people not to work hard or at all. A general low level of skill is characteristic of the education sector as a whole. While higher level staff have higher level skills, very few people are highly skilled. A number of functional areas seem to be particularly short of skills. The most obvious is general management, but equally important are policy analysis, information technology, financial management and accounting, and pedagogical supervision and management. The government needs to include in all education projects components aimed particularly at skills' enhancement for the staff engaged in these areas. There is also a need to strengthen the capacity of training institutions. Material Resources and Capacity There is a great shortage of material resources in the education system. Generally speaking, the shortage has resulted from inadequate funding. But the funding is inadequate, among others, because of the huge proliferation of states and LGAs between 1975 and 1996, which affected not only the number of staff deployed in the system, but also the requirements for material resources. The lack of funds is so severe that the shortage of material resources includes even the most basic resources such as office space, desks, chairs, filing cabinets, typewriters and electricity. The shortage is `mild' in the SPEBs and slightly worse in the SMOEs, but it is critical in LGEAs. It is also different among the LGEAs themselves. The shortage is not dealt with in an operationally sensible way within the organizations in the sector. High level officials have a first claim on all new material resources, whether they need them or not. There is no asset management and no preventive maintenance of any sort in these organizations. Equipment that requires regular servicing is frequently not being serviced and equipment or vehicles that break down are repaired only if and when money is available. The impact of this situation on capacity is great. It reduces the utilization and efficiency of existing staff and creates poor incentives to work efficiently. At the same time it also increases the need for even more human resources. The federal and state governments needs to formulate minimum standards for office related material resources ­ something like a Fundamental Office Environment Standards for SPEBs (if they continue to exist as distinct organizations), SMOEs and LGEAs. Then they need to formulate strategies to achieve the standards. Moreover, the organizations need to drastically improve their capacity to maintain facilities and equipment. They need to have asset management units with well-defined jobs to take care of all assets. They need to adopt policies that give priority to the servicing and maintenance of existing facilities and equipment, before new facilities and equipment are bought. They needs to put in place arrangements, such as earmarking, that will ensure sufficient funds for regular service and maintenance. Until this is done, it makes little sense for the government and for aid organizations as well, to continue investing in material resources for SPEBs, SMOEs and LGEAs. 13 A. INTRODUCTION Objectives The education sector includes the sum total of all organizations ­ public, civic, and private - involved in the management and delivery of instruction. In Nigeria, these include the schools at all levels, as well as the agencies that provide them pedagogical and technical support, manage and run them at the federal, state and local levels. The analysis of capacity here focuses, however, on the public schools sub-sector and, within it, on the organizations charged with the implementation of UBE - the organizations that manage and run the basic education system. These include the State Primary Education Boards (SPEBs), the State Ministries of Education (SMOEs), and the Local Government Education Authorities (LGEAs). The Federal Ministry of Education (FMOE) and the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) are referred to in different contexts, but no specific analysis of their capacity was undertaken for this study. The objectives of this analysis were (a) to determine the general capacity of the basic education sub- sector to manage its operations, (b) to identify strategic issues related to this capacity and (c) to propose practical measures for capacity building where appropriate. Methodology Underlying the analysis is the premise that capacity is a product of several factors, all of which must be present, if an individual organization, or a sector, has capacity. How much capacity an organization or a sector has depends on the extent to which these factors are present in them. The factors are as follows: · An optimal division of labor (a) among the organizations in the sector and (b) within each organization · A clear sense of direction in the sector, expressed in a well-formulated mandate, a vision and a set of strategies, shared by all organizations · A provision of financial resources that matches the mandate, and an ability to allocate these resources in line with the mandate, the vision, and the strategies · Rules and mechanisms for financial management and expenditure control ensuring that allocated funds reach their intended destination ­ and when required · A staff complement in each organization that matches the work to be done in number, deployment, and mix of skills · A provision of infrastructure, equipment and material resources that matches the work to be done, and · A management culture that promotes productivity, that is, that increases full utilization of all human and material resources and improves the efficiency of these resources when utilized. The analysis below focuses on these factors. Each factor, except for the last one is dealt with in a separate chapter. Management culture and practices are not discussed in a separate chapter because they come into the fore in most other discussions. With respect to the first 14 factor ­ the optimal division of labor ­ the analysis focuses only the division of labor among organizations in the sector, and not within them. Not enough information was available to analyze the internal division of labor within each type of organization. All factors are referred to in more than one chapter, but are dealt with predominantly in one. The analysis is based on the findings of a group of eight Nigerian consultants who were trained in the area of organizational capacity and studied the organization and management of the basic education system in 13 states and the Federal Capital Territory in two rounds of visits. The states of Bayelsa, Borno, Imo, Kano, Niger, and Oyo, and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) were included in the first round. The FCT assessment included also some discussions with the Federal Ministry of Education (FMOE) and the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC). The states of Ebonyi, Kaduna, Katsina, Lagos, Plateau, Rivers and Taraba were included in the second. The consultants conducted semi-structured interviews with key officials in these states and collected documentary material. In each state they met with the State Primary Education Board (SPEB), the State Ministry of Education (SMOE) and two Local Government Education Authorities (LGEAs). In some states they met also with community leaders. Thus, the consultants visited 13 SMOEs and the FMOE, 13 SPEBs and UBEC, and 26 LGEAs ­ all together 54 organizations in the primary education sector. The interviews were designed following a series of three missions to Nigeria conducted by the author, during which he gathered some first-hand information and trained the consultants. The lists of states included in the study and the LGEAs visited is included in Annex 1. The list of papers and reports is included in Annex 2. The analysis is based not only on information collected by the consultants, but also on the observations made by the author and on information included in a number of recent papers and reports. The papers and the reports were used where possible to provide further support to findings and conclusions that were based on incomplete information. Indeed, much information was not available, or accessible to the consultants. In some cases, even basic data is missing and in others the data is unreliable, containing many errors and some contradictions. In almost no case it was possible to compile and compare statistical data from all 54 organizations - or just from all MOEs, all SPEBs, or all LGEAs ­ on a single variable. The findings reported and the conclusions made are based, therefore, on a qualitative analysis guided and supported by incomplete quantitative data. They are tentative, and it will be necessary to review them, once better information is obtained. Two questions relating specifically to the design of projects in the basic education sector were considered based on this analysis. The first was whether or not the organizations involved in the basic education sub-sector have capacity to implement new projects and, if not, what can be done to improve this capacity. The second was what additional capacity building activities, apart from those aimed at ensuring that the projects themselves will be implemented well, could be included in each. Tentative answers to these questions, are presented at the end of each section under the heading Implications for Government Strategy and Project Design. 15 B. THE DIVISION OF LABOR IN THE EDUCATION SYSTEM The Division of Labor among Tiers of Government and the Principle of Concurrency The current division of labor among tiers of government in Nigeria evolved over time and is stated in the 1999 Constitution, in the Second and Forth Schedules. The schedules do not clearly and fully articulate this division of labor. Part I of the Second Schedule describes the exclusive legislative rights of the federal government. According to this part, the federal government is fully responsible for functions of national concern, such as defense, foreign affairs, law and order, railways, posts, and communications. Part II of the Second Schedule describes the concurrent areas in which both the federal and the state governments can act. These areas include education, health, infrastructure, agriculture and industry. The Fourth Schedule provides a list of functions that are the responsibility of Local Government Councils (LGCs), as well as a list of functions for which the states are responsible, but the LGCs can "participate" in their delivery at the discretion of the states. The functions for which LGCs are responsible include the provision of urban infrastructure, water, sanitation, and refuse collection. The functions in which LGCs can participate are: · "the provision and maintenance of primary, adult and vocational education; · the development of agriculture and natural resources, other than the exploitation of minerals; · the provision and maintenance of health services; and · such other functions as may be conferred on a local government council by the House of Assembly of a State". The thinking behind the 1999 Constitution was that in the concurrent functional areas the federal government will only provide policy direction, determine norms and standards and monitor achievement; it will leave implementation in the hands of the states. Furthermore, it will let each state determine the nature and extent of the involvement of LGCs in the delivery of services in these areas. In summary, then, the 1999 Constitution has a list of areas that are the exclusive responsibility of the federal government and a list of areas that are the exclusive responsibility of LGCs. Between the two, it has a list of areas that are concurrent. There is no specific allocation of responsibility for them in the constitution: the federal government can get involved in them, the states are presumably the main parties responsible for them, and the LGCs can participate in them, if the states so desire. Primary and secondary education are among these areas. The lack of specificity in the country's basic law regarding the division of labor in these concurrent areas opened the door to the federal government and, to a lesser extent, to the states to do what they want in these areas ­ to assume responsibility for some functions and avoid others. This was done through laws, decries and policy pronouncements, that were often promulgated independently of each other. It has greatly weakened the capacity of the Nigerian Government, in all of its tiers, to deliver services in the social sectors. It did so by allowing the federal government to take over roles and functions that belong to the states, introducing excessive fragmentation into the performance of some concurrent key functions, and reducing the level of interest in, and attention to, others. 16 The Take-Over of Primary Education by the Federal Government In the education sector, there are a Federal Ministry of Education (FMOE), 36 State Ministries of Education (SMOE), and a Ministry of Education for the Federal Territory. There are also 37 State Primary Education Boards, 774 Local Government Education Authorities (LGEAs) operating as departments of Local Government Authorities (LGAs) and 20 parastatals under the FMOE. The Federal Government's role is primarily to provide funds for education from the Federation Account and to set up minimum standards for education throughout the Federation. The standards relate to the objectives of education, the content of the curriculum, and the provision of textbooks, other instructional materials and physical facilities. Other roles of the federal government are to maintain a national register of primary school teachers, to collect, analyse and publish national statistics on primary education and to monitor and enforce the compliance of SMOEs and LGEAs with its minimum standards. The role of the SMOEs is in turn to manage and run primary, secondary and post-secondary schools based on these standards, with the help of LGEAs in the case of primary and junior secondary (or basic) schools. To perform its role, the federal government has the FMOE, but it has also set up the 20 parastatals that are regulatory and professional bodies. These include the National Universities Commission, the National Board for Technical Education (Polytechnics), the National Commission for Colleges of Education, National Board for Technical Education, the Education Tax Fund, the Education Bank and the Joint Matriculation Board. The FMOE also participates in the West African Examinations Board. During the last fifteen years, the federal government has virtually taken over the management of primary education from the states. The process started in 1988, when the National Primary Education Commission (NPEC) was established for the first time to help revitalize primary education in Nigeria. The Commission was dissolved in 1991 in an attempt to shift the responsibility for primary education back to the local governments. However, during the period of 1991-1993, when the responsibility was in the hands of local government, "the country's primary education almost fell to the brink of total collapse. All over the country, primary school teachers embarked on incessant and prolonged strike actions to press home demand for their unpaid salaries...and teaching and learning suffered disastrously" (Okoro, in UNICEF p. 46). The Federal Military Government responded, through Decree No. 96, by re-establishing NPEC, and requiring all states to establish the State Primary Education Boards (SPEBs). The decree provided for deploying NPEC and the SPEBs as channels for the disbursement of the federal funds needed to finance the primary education system. But it went much beyond the transfer of financial management to these organizations. It transferred to them also the management of human and physical resources - the most important other resources of primary education. The functional division of labor prescribed by Decree No. 96 is summarized in Table 1. Since then, NPEC ­ now called the Universal Basic Education Commission or UBEC ­ and the SPEBs became a parallel structure to that of the SMOEs. They have indeed taken over the management of primary education in the states, using the LGEAs to run the schools on a day-to-day basis, but not to manage the local government education systems. In practical terms, this take-over of responsibility is reflected in the organization structures of the SPEBs and in their `schedules of duties' which describe the functions of each unit. The structures of all SPEBs are almost 17 identical and the schedules of duties too are similar in most respects. Table 2 contains an example of the structure and functions of one SPEB. In the parallel structure thus created the LGEAs report directly to the SPEBs, the SPEBs report directly to UBEC and UBEC reports directly to the Federal Minister of Education. Although the LGEAs are within the structure of the LGAs and thus the local government in the State, they report directly to the SPEBs. The SPEBs were formed by the states, and theoretically they report both to UBEC and to the state governments, but in practice they are not within the authority structure of the states. The chairmen of SPEBs are not members of the State Executive Councils and are not reporting to the Councils through the state ministries of education, or through any other organization. They report only to UBEC, which is a federal organization. One of the results of this take-over has been that the State Ministries of Education lost control of primary education in their own areas of jurisdiction. They do not manage the biggest sub-sector of education in their own states. In some states, the SMOEs have begun losing control in other areas as well, as a result of the anticipated shift from universal primary education to universal basic education. In one state, for example, it is reported that the SPEB has taken over from the SMOE the management of every area considered to belong to basic education. This includes nomadic education, early childhood development, adult and non-formal education and all the junior secondary schools. The federal government justified the establishment of NPEC at the time, saying that the local governments did not have the capacity to manage primary education. During the years that passed since 1993, not much was done to help the SMOEs and their LGEAs improve their own capacity. The FMOE's has continued to rely on the parallel structure for the implementation of its universal basic education policy. Until recently, no plan has been made to gradually shift the responsibility for primary education back to the states and the LGEAs. This situation has created duplication, as well as an imbalance of power and an imbalance of capacity in the education sector. Although the function of managing primary education has been taken away from the SMOEs, the ministries have kept organizational units and staff dedicated to primary education. There are `Primary and Secondary Education Departments' and `Primary and Teacher Training Departments' with `Primary Education Units' in them; there are `Primary Inspectorate Departments', or Inspectorates with Primary Education Units; there are even `Primary Curriculum Units' in Curriculum Departments. There are staff in these units with schedules of duties that read as if the SMOEs are in full charge of primary education. For example, the function of the Directorate of Inspectorate Services in one state is "to coordinate the implementation of programmes and projects of primary and secondary education as contained in the national policy on education...." The function of the Deputy Director for Primary Education in another state MOE is "to initiate and implement Government policies on matters affecting...primary education in the state", "to take charge of primary and pre-primary education programs in the State". And the overall function of the Primary Education Department in yet another State MOE is "to ensure the implementation and maintenance of Government policies in all primary schools in the state". These duties cannot be performed by the staff in charge at the SMOEs, because primary education is managed by the SPEBs. The consultants reported, therefore, that some primary education units do not have much substantive work and that their staff are not fully utilized. 18 Even more important are the imbalances in power and capacity. The power is now concentrated in the hands of the federal government. The federal government controls 75%-80% of the resources going to the states and more than 90% of the resources going to the local authorities, and it also manages the biggest part of the sector. UBEC and the SPEBs have been in charge, and state ministries of education have little say about primary education in their states. LGEAs administer the schools under the SPEBs. They do not control and manage financial and human resources in their own systems ­ a fact that has prevented them from improving their own capacity to manage and actually weakened them. As will be seen later, LGEAs are the organizations that require most strengthening in the education sector. SMOEs have better capacity, because they still do manage the secondary schools system and state-owned tertiary education. Indeed, in this area of secondary and tertiary education the SMOEs are answerable to the State Executive Councils and there is no direct line of command between them and the FMOE. Though better, their capacity is nevertheless limited compared to the capacity of the SPEBs. The situation described above will change as a result of a ruling made by the Nigerian Supreme Court on April 5th, 2002. The Court ruled that the jurisdiction of the federal government with regard to primary education should cease to cover financing through first line charge allocation. This made it unconstitutional for the federal government to hold state allocations from the Federal Account and channel them to the LGEAs through the SPEBs. The ruling does not change the mandate of the federal government to provide general national guidelines, evaluation, monitoring and benchmarking for basic education. However, it does put the role of UBEC, and the entire parallel structure, in question and it provides an opportunity to restore the intended division of labor between the federal government and the states and to build a better division of labor between the states and their LGAs. It remains to be seen now how the ruling will be implemented and what role will remain in the new context for UBEC. The SPEBs remain the strongest organizations in the education sector. Once the states are allowed to fully manage primary education, they will be able to use the SPEBs, which are legally state-based organizations. This is an important asset that, if integrated into the state system and used well, will help them boost their own capacity greatly. The Fragmentation of Responsibility When a function does not have a clear unified organizational home it often happens that everybody is doing something about it, but none is taking the lead. There is a tendency for nobody to assume full responsibility and manage the function as a whole. Thus, nobody formulates vision, policies and strategies for it, fights for resources and monitors implementation. This is what happened in the Nigerian case: a large number of functions were left within the basket of concurrent areas, without a clear division of labor among all the players. In this system each player has been free to decide what functions, or even activities within functions, it would carry out, and the decisions were not clearly guided by the view that all players need to complement each other and together create a system that is well-integrated. To assess the level of functional integration in the primary education system in the states included in this study, 12 key functions involved in the delivery of education at this level were 19 reviewed. Two of the functions belong clearly to the federal government and one function belongs clearly to the local governments and the schools. Nine functions fall into the areas of concurrent responsibility. The review suggests that at least two of the three functions that do not fall into the concurrent areas of responsibility are led and managed better than the nine that do fall into these areas. These are the development of the basic common curriculum, and the conduct of national monitoring, evaluation and certification ­ both of which are responsibilities of the federal government. There is a Department for each of them in the FMOE. The Primary and Secondary Education Department (which is the largest department in the FMOE) is in charge of curriculum development and the Inspectorate Department (which is the third largest) is in charge of school supervision and the granting of accreditation and certification.1The third function that is not in the concurrent basket is the daily management of the schools and the actual delivery of instruction in them, for which the LGEAs and the schools themselves are the clear responsible parties. This does not include the general management of the local systems of education, which from a legal point of view is a SPEB/LGEA/SMOE concurrent function and from a practical point of view a SPEB/LGEA concurrent function. Viewed in this narrow interpretation, this function too is led and managed relatively well compared to the concurrent functions. The nine concurrent functions are as follows: general management, curriculum adjustment/development at state level, pre-service teacher education and in-service teacher training, construction and maintenance of schools, inspection and quality assurance, personnel management, planning and budgeting. These functions are being performed much less efficiently and effectively, not because `everybody' is involved in them ­ everybody could, and sometimes should, be involved. It is firstly because everybody is involved with too little coordination, and secondly because nobody is taking the responsibility to lead each of the functions. The bottom line is that split responsibilities with little or no coordination make it difficult to integrate systems. They open the door to duplication and waste. At the same time, the lack of clear leadership makes it impossible to hold anybody accountable for any function. A number of examples are discussed below. One example concerns the function of school supervision. At the federal level, there is a Federal Inspectorate Service with 1,296 staff that supervises the schools and also grants accreditation and certification. UBEC has a fully-fledged Monitoring & Evaluation department, responsible for monitoring all aspects of the primary education programs. Ten zonal offices across the country aid this department, each supervising 3 to 4 states. Monitoring officers at these zones visit the SPEBs as well as the primary schools. SPEBs have School Services Departments whose officers too inspect the schools. In addition, the consultants report that it is common for the permanent board members of SPEBs to visit the schools and/or to go over the visitation reports of other officers who visit the schools and report to the chairmen of the boards. Most, if not all, SMOEs too conduct inspections in the primary schools. As indicated above, many SMOEs have organizational units dedicated to Primary education, and these include primary sub-units within their Inspectorate Departments. LGEAs too have school supervisors who visit the schools and compile school reports. Finally, in many cases, SPEBs and SMOEs have special monitoring teams set up to monitor specific projects and programs. 1[On the point that these functions are led and managed better see also Okoro's paper, pp.34-51, and Akpofure & N'dupu's paper, pp. 120-125 in UNICEF]. 20 With all these supervision activities, there seems to be no shared, coherent and complementary vision for school supervision within the states and between them. Even fundamental policy matters require attention. For example, supervision has many objectives: to provide pedagogical support to the teachers, to monitor the quality of instruction in the schools, to check on the condition of physical facilities, to verify that government policies, rules and regulations are being met, and to monitor the progress of specific plans and programs. The various parties that conduct supervision need to carefully consider these objectives and consciously select a focus for each. They need to complement each other. The consultants' reports and the documentary material suggest that there is little coordination among them, and that everybody seems to be doing a bit of everything. While some schools are visited quite frequently, others "have not seen an inspector or any other official for years". There is also no evidence that much is being done with all the information being collected. School construction and school maintenance provide additional examples of this situation. The NPEC decree of 1993 places the responsibility for "undertaking new capital projects" on the SPEBs and the responsibility for "undertaking general maintenance of primary school buildings and infrastructure" on the LGEAs. In practice the LGEAs can only suggest and recommend where to build and where to conduct some maintenance activities. SPEBs and UBEC make the decisions. They allocate the funds, conduct procurement and control disbursements in this area. Only where communities are involved in construction and maintenance do LGEAs have a bigger role to play. With UBE funds, there is also a serious debate between SPEBs and the FMOE. The FMOE argues that funds for UBE are in the federal capital budget, and that therefore contracts for capital investments under UBE need to be granted and managed at the federal level. SPEBs disagree. Some SMOEs too have entered the debate, saying that they should play a significant role in construction and rehabilitation for UBE, since they are the entities that carry the ultimate responsibility for achieving UBE, each in its own state. Again, the point being made here is not that there ought to be only one player in each functional area. It is that there ought to be a lead player accountable for each. If the states are responsible for achieving UBE, then the most logical lead player should be an organization, and a unit, within the state. Federal funds that are to be used for school construction, rehabilitation, maintenance and repair need to be given as special purpose transfers to be managed by the states and not by the federal government. At the moment, it is not possible to hold any player responsible and accountable for this function as a whole. The management of the human resources is yet another example of a highly fragmented function. Each organization in the sector does something in this area, sometimes in isolation from the rest, but neither the FMOE, nor UBEC, nor any of the SMOEs has developed an integrated vision, a comprehensive policy, or a development plan for human resources. To begin with, the human resources function as a whole - the recruitment, appointment, promotion, training and disciplining of staff - is split between the LGEAs and the SPEBs. The LGEAs manage lower level staff in Grade Levels 1 to 6, but all higher level staff are managed by the SPEBs. With respect to teachers specifically, the LGEAs are the ones who advise on the needs for, and deploy, the teachers; but they don't plan teacher training, don't manage it and don't hire the teachers. They can only recommend the numbers of teachers to be recruited and interview candidates. The 21 SMOEs are responsible for the planning and implementation of pre-service teacher training, but teacher training is carried out by tertiary institutions with little input from the SMOEs. The SPEBs are the ones who decide on the numbers of teachers to be hired, who employ them and post them to the schools. The SPEBs must, in turn, follow the rules of the Civil Service Commission, as well as guidelines provided by UBEC. No case has been reported in any of the states included in this study of the four parties sitting together to formulate state plans for teacher training, development and deployment in the schools. Finally, the function of policy analysis and research is an example of a concurrent function that is almost totally neglected at state and local government levels. All of the organizations, at all three levels, have Departments for Planning, Research and Statistics, but except for the FMOE perhaps, there is little or no research and policy analysis in any of them. In this case, it is not just a matter of a function where everybody is doing a little bit without leadership and direction. Rather, it is a function where few, if any, are doing something. Most, of the research seems to be done by donor agencies that fund it and also carry it out with the help of external consultants. Even at the FMOE, there seems to be not enough statistical work and research and, as reported, if not for the help of UNICEF, it would have not been possible to process the 1997/98 data. Policies are being made and programs are being developed at various levels, but both are not research-driven. The Impact of Division of Labor and Fragmentation on Capacity Functional fragmentation usually results in a lack of an integrated, coherent and holistic approach to the performance of fragmented functions. To take the function of human resources discussed above, in the basic education system in any of the states it is nobody's mission and responsibility to develop a holistic integrated approach to the management of human resources. Of course, in the end teachers are trained, they and other staff are recruited, posted and promoted in the system; everybody does get paid; performance is assessed and funds are devoted to in- service training. But all of this is done in a haphazard way. The reports written by the consultants, and the documentary material provided to them, suggest that none of the states in this study has a full policy on human resources development. The states do not have comprehensive, integrated human resources development plans. Jobs are not being analyzed using any of the technical tools available for job analysis. Job-descriptions, or `schedules of duties', are weak and superficial. No systematic analysis is done with respect to the skills' content that these jobs require, the skills that jobholders have, and therefore the gap that needs to be covered by training. No work load analysis is done with respect to the number of staff required on these jobs, and no deployment analysis is done with respect to the distribution and placement of staff in headquarters, field offices, urban and rural districts and individual schools. Within the LGEAs, the SPEBs, and the SMOEs, it is the role of the Personnel Management Departments to provide the leadership necessary for the human resources function. But the fragmentation and their own weaknesses have prevented them from playing this role. Thus, they cannot be held accountable for it. A similar situation applies to many other concurrent functions. The highly fragmented responsibility, together with the take-over of primary education by the federal government have disempowered the SMOEs and the LGEAs, and in the process also made it impossible to hold 22 them, or units within them, accountable for their work. The loss of accountability has been severe. At the LGEAs, the overwhelming dependence on transfers from the Federation Account, and the inability to make almost any substantive decision on matters of resource allocation and deployment, meant that all failures of delivery can be attributed to those who allocate resources and make decisions. At the SMOEs, the transfer of primary education to the SPEBs meant that, despite statements to the contrary, the SMOEs were no longer playing a significant role in UBE. The federal government claims that the SMOEs were given a chance to adequately participate in the policy-making process as it relates to primary education, but the SMOEs' perception has been that they were merely called upon to rubber-stamp FMOE decisions. This has resulted in a culture characterized both by abdication at the SMOEs and dependence on the federal government at the LGEAs. In both cases, it is the federal government that SMOEs and LGEAs hold accountable for all that is taking place in primary education. IMPLICATIONS FOR GOVERNMENT STRATEGY, CAPACITY BUILDING AND PROJECT DESIGN The current division of labor among the three tiers of government and the organizations involved in education needs to be reviewed and, once decisions are reached, clearly articulated. The division of labor must conform to the spirit of the constitution, as well as the stated objectives and intents of the federal government to focus on policy, strategy and standards and to let the states and local government authorities take charge of the delivery of education services. In reviewing the roles and functions of all agencies involved in basic education, it is particularly important to deal with the concurrent functions. There is no need to do away with the principle and practice of concurrent involvement that calls for the participation of two or three tiers of government, or a number of organizations, in the delivery of education services to the public. But there is a need to do away with the principle of concurrent accountability and the practice of not defining precisely the responsibility of each party in the concurrent arrangement. Accountability must be unitary. The accountability for basic education needs to be placed, clearly and unequivocally, in each of the states. The responsibility for different inputs can be placed at different levels and in different organizations, but needs to be very clear and precise. The need for a functional review and a clear division of labor refers not only to the overall, `global' responsibility and accountability for education. It refers also to each and every individual function within the education system. There is a need to determine clearly who is responsible and accountable, for example, for school construction, rehabilitation and maintenance. The overall responsibility and accountability must be located in a given tier of government, and a given organization/unit within that tier. Other tiers and organizations can make specific, concurrent contributions and should be held responsible and accountable for their contributions. A clear, fully articulated, division of labor is needed, likewise, in the management of human resources, planning, the provision of instructional materials and all other functions. In order to achieve an improved division of labor it is necessary also to review the purpose and content of many functions, as well as the way they are being carried out currently. A prime example of a function in need of fresh conceptualization is the function of supervision, where it is necessary to review and refine the objectives, improve the content, optimize work practices and coordinate a large number of concurrent contributors. Other functions too will benefit from a new conceptual framework. 23 Once a modified and clearer understanding of key functions is achieved, and an improved division of labor among the tiers of government and the organizations in each tier emerges, it will be important to review also the internal division of labor ­ the organization structure ­ of each type of organization. This is going to be particularly important for the SMOEs. The Supreme Court's important pronouncement with respect to the responsibility for primary education will require the federal government to make a strategic decision with respect to the roles of UBEC and the SPEBs. The SPEBs are not likely to disappear. As the organizations that currently manage primary education in the states, they have the best capacity. It is recommended, however, that they will merge with the SMOEs. The Supreme Court has created an important window of opportunity to do away with the parallel structure and return primary education to the states. As will be discussed later in the chapters on vision and on financial resources, the achievement of the Government's UBE target by the year 2015 depends on its ability to reduce unit costs and improve productivity in the education sector. One of the best ways to do so is to merge the SPEBs with the SMOEs. No more than one organization needs to manage the LGEAs in the states. This will require the SMOEs to drastically restructure themselves and improve their capacity. The implications of this situation for capacity building and project design are significant. To design capacity building activities, the government and aid organizations need to know for sure (a) whose capacity is in question and (b) to do what. It would be a mistake to help organizations improve their capacity to carry out certain functions if the organizations, or the functions, are going to change. This means that projects supported by aid organizations should not aim to improve the capacity of UBEC at this time. Rather, they should focus directly on the SMOEs and the SPEBs ­ and only after it becomes clear how will the two organizations come together. The projects should also help build the capacity of LGEAs gradually, over time. This needs to be done, however, indirectly through the SMOEs. The LGEAs are extremely weak. They are also too numerous to be addressed by any central agency. Only states will be able to help them ­ when the states have the capacity to help themselves. It is advisable, therefore, to help the states develop their capacity first and to address the LGEAs through the state agencies later. Because the division of labor among all of the organizations currently involved in the education sector is so unclear, aid organizations need to ensure when embarking on new projects that there is full clarity at least with respect to the responsibility for the projects they support. They need to establish where will the management responsibility and the work responsibility lie for each component, sub-component and activity included in the proposed project. C. LEADERSHIP AND DIRECTION IN THE BASIC EDUCATION SECTOR Capacity depends, among others, on whether or not the sector as a whole and the organizations in it have direction. It is the role of leaders to provide direction, and the most important tools of direction that they have are vision statements and strategies. Good vision statements describe where the sector, or the organization, is at present and where it wants to be in the future, on the basis of broad principles (or policy decisions). Thus, by definition, vision statements include overall objectives. Good objectives, in turn, include measurable targets ­ both output targets and time-related targets, that is, by when they must be achieved. Thus, in examining the vision in the 24 primary education sector, the focus was mainly on the presence of good objectives, their clarity and the degree to which they are shared by all. Strategies describe how the sector, or the organization, intends to achieve these objectives. There is usually more than one way of achieving an objective. Good strategies are, therefore, products of choice among alternative ways. They are based on careful comparison of the alternatives, including a comparison of the resources required and the costs of these resources. Thus, in examining strategies in the primary education sector, the focus was mainly on the question whether stated strategies were true representations of careful selection among alternatives, or just a collection of alternatives unsorted by important criteria. The key criterion considered was cost. Strategies that were not costed were regarded as inappropriate from a management and capacity point of view. In the public sector it is often the role of legislative bodies to provide broad direction, and the role of executive bodies to interpret, and elaborate on, them. In federal systems, national legislatures typically pronounce the fundamental principles and formulate broad objectives. Sometimes, they also provide broad strategies. They leave the elaboration of both to the national executive branch and to the legislative and executive branches in the states. Local governments get to formulate their own objectives and strategies, within the broader framework, only in areas of service that are fully delegated to them. In all other areas they are merely the implementers ­ moving in the direction provided by the higher authorities. The Presence and Clarity of Objectives in the Education Sector In the case of Nigeria, the Federal Government formulated a very clear and comprehensive vision in its White Paper on the National Policy on Education in 1977, which was revised it in 1981, 1991. Two sets of key national policy principles and objectives are included in this vision. They are as follows: (a) to build · a free and democratic society · a just and egalitarian society · a united, strong and self-reliant nation · a great and dynamic economy · a land of bright and full opportunities for all citizens (b) to inculcate values with respect to · respect for the worth and dignity of individuals · faith in man's ability to make rational decisions · moral and spiritual values in interpersonal and human relations · shared responsibility for the common good of society · respect for the dignity of labor; and · promotion of the emotional and psychological health of children2 2[For a review of the National Policy on Education see Sofolahan, National Policy Review Issues, in UNESCO, pp. 3-9] 25 In 1999, the Federal Ministry of Education brought to the National Assembly the Basic Education Bill and in June 2001 it also produced a draft document called "Education for All in Nigeria, Current Status and Plan of Action". This last document in particular has provided considerable elaboration on the objectives provided in the National Policy on Education, adding to them in many instances both indications of target output and target time for achievement. Based on this last document, the objectives of the Nigerian system of education are to: · "expand and improve comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children" · "ensure that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances, and [children] belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality" · "ensure that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes" · "achieve a 50% improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults" · "eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieve gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls' full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality", and · "improve all aspects of the quality of education, and ensure excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and life skills" Thus, at the national level, the Federal Government and the FMOE have really passed the first test of vision from a capacity point of view ­ the presence and clarity of objectives - with flying colors. The Sharing of National Objectives at States & LGA Levels Discussions with high-level officials at national, state and local government levels, and a review of documents coming from SMOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs suggest that many of these officials are not fully familiar with, and/or do not fully articulate, many of the objectives expressed in the national vision. This lack of awareness and articulation is particularly serious in the LGEAs, but is true also of the SMOEs. Even at the FMOE itself "none of the interviewees was able to produce a copy of the Ministry's mission statement" and most were aware only of parts of the national vision3. They were also not fully familiar, or in some cases not fully in agreement with the objectives and target deadlines expressed in the MOE's plan of action. There are few written statements of vision and objectives at state level. There are even fewer written statements at local government level. But the few written statements that were obtained by the consultants reflect this situation. The structured interviews that were conducted by the consultants focused specifically on the issue of vision and the consultants asked all of the officials interviewed what were their visions and objectives. Thus, they did collect many verbal statements. These too reflect lack of familiarity with the national vision and objectives and a difficulty of articulation. 3(p.11 in the Assessment Report). 26 One State Government, for example, set up a Committee in 2001 to consider primary education in the state. The committee was asked to be specific as to the aspirations, or objectives, of the state in this area. A comparison of the document produced by the committee with the FMOE's Action Plan reveals that three key objectives on the Federal government's list received no mention in the document produced by this committee. These are to expand and improve early childhood education, to ensure that all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances, and [children] belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to free, compulsory primary education, and to eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education. Understandably, therefore, the state document also did not have any recommended strategies and action to meet these objectives. The comparison reveals also that different meanings may be attached by different states to seemingly identical objectives. Good quality education is defined in the Federal Government's document as one that has measurable learning outcomes in literacy, numeracy and life skills. In the document written by the committee in this state, it is defined also as one that has learning outcome in moral and ethical behavior ­ in this case, an education that combines Western and Islamic content. This may be just a difference of emphases, because clearly the Federal Government too regards moral education as part of quality education. But it is important to recognize that differences in emphases can lead to difference in priorities and in the selection of objectives for action. Thus, while the objectives of expanding early childhood education, access and gender equity were not in the vision of the state in question, the objective of "incorporating the Islamiyya and Koranic schools with primary education" was there.4 The point being made here is not that states should not have their own objectives. They should. But they should share in the national objectives and their own objectives need to come in addition to and not instead of national objectives. In another state, the MOE issued a position paper on its work plan for the year 2001. In this paper it stated the Ministry's vision, it mission, strategy and activities. Neither the vision nor the mission statements contains the objective of universality ­ of education for all. None of the strategies refers to universal education and provides any target date by which it should be achieved. The same is true for gender equity. There is no mention of the national government's objectives of ensuring that all girls, all minority children and all children in difficult circumstances have access to, and complete, primary education. There is also no mention of any objective with respect to early childhood education and adult literacy.5 It seems as though the national vision that is quite clear at the top of the system is losing some definition ­ and changing some definition - as it is disseminated down through the three tiers of government, among the 36 states and the 774 local government authorities. The loss of definition is particularly severe at the local government level. The consultants found no written statements of vision and objectives at the LGEAs that they had visited, but as indicated above, they did obtain verbal descriptions of visions and objectives from senior officials there. These officials described to them much less specific and precise sets of 4 [See Table 4 for the full list of the aspirations of this state]. 5 [See Table 5 for the full statement of vision, mission and strategies in this state and Table 6 as another example, where the vision included only the objective of access, even though the strategy may have been directed also perhaps at quality]. 27 objectives. Their descriptions did not reflect well the national, or even the state, objectives. Seven statements made by Executive Secretaries of LGEAs, in response to the question `what is your vision for the education sector in your state/local government area?' are included in Table 7 to illustrate this point. Each of the first 7 statements represents all that the Executive Secretaries had to say about the vision in their own words. The following two excerpts represent typical situations encountered by the consultants in their discussions on vision with the executive secretaries: · "The LGEA had no clear written statement of vision or objectives... There were no clear agreed, stated strategies to achieve vision or objectives... The consultant was told that the vision was the same as that of the SMOE and the SPEB. According to the Executive Secretary and the officials interviewed [the vision] had to do with the welfare of staff and pupils, supply of materials to schools and provision of free and qualitative education" · "On arrival...a prepared report was handed to the consultant.... A statement of vision was contained in it...It did not bear the characteristics of a clear statement of vision... none of the managers could regurgitate the "vision". The [written statement] addressed issues of quality of education only. Fundamental issues of UBE and especially the Federal MOE's targets were not addressed" Based on all the documentary material and verbal responses obtained at state and local government levels, the most that can be said about vision in the education sector at the local government and state levels is that it is a general vision of `increased enrollment', and `good education'. It reflects the objective of `increased enrollment', but does not always equate it with universal education, and does not state it in specific output and time-bound terms, such as from what number to what number will enrolment increase and in how long a time. Many of the officials interviewed did not specifically refer to universal education, and most did not mention the target year of 2015, or any other year, as the year for achieving it. No time parameters were stated with respect to the objectives included in the vision in most of the state and local government organizations visited. The education sector's vision reflects also the objective of `good education', but what is `good' differs from speaker to speaker. For some it refers to the conditions in the classroom, while for others it refers to the content of instruction, or the level of scholastic achievement to be reached by the students. The choice of the words `increased enrolment' and `good education' here is calculated. It reflects the situation found on the ground, where there is a shared understanding of the objectives of education in the country only at a high level of abstraction, but once the specific implications of these objectives are concerned, there is less common ground. It would not be correct to say that there is a shared objective of achieving universal education by 2015, because in most cases the SMOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs did not include dates in their written or verbal statements. It seems as though many state and local government officials agree that universal education is a goal, but do not think it is practical to determine a date by which they will achieve it. The reason, quite clearly, is the high level of uncertainty about the availability of funds to achieve this goal. As will be discussed in the section on Financial Resources, the federal government has not determined the cost of achieving universal education by 2015, before announcing the date. The cost will be very high. The provision of funds for education from the Federation Account so far has been very inadequate and state and local government officials are not confident that it will improve sufficiently. In addition, in several states not all of the officials interviewed, particularly at the local government level, regarded the attendance of girls in the schools as a high priority. They do want to increase enrolment, but not necessarily to bring all girls to school. 28 Equally, it would not be correct to say that the meaning of `good education' is shared by all, mainly, but not only, because of differences regarding what is the desirable content of education. As we saw in the case of State X, some of the `western', secular content of the curriculum is not regarded by all as contributing sufficiently to `good education', because it does not give sufficient attention to ethics and moral behavior. State X is also worried about "the concentration of female teachers especially in urban areas (which is) a source of concern", indicating that it does not necessarily fully share objectives related to gender equity. State X is not the only state that has some difficulties with parts of the Western secular content of education. Okoro, in his chapter on `Basic Education ­ Emerging Issues, Challenges and Constraints' in the UNESCO publication, writes that in the predominantly Muslim states, particularly in rural communities, parents have avoided enrolling their children at western-style schools. They have done so, he writes referring to some research, because of their perceptions that in these schools children are diverted from the true path of Islam.6 There is agreement by all that education has to be relevant, but the definition of `relevant' differs from state to state. The point being repeated here is not that all states in Nigeria must have one common understanding and agreement on, what is relevant and, therefore, an identical curriculum for all states. It is clear that vision and objectives are not, and could not be, fully common. But, it is possible in the Nigeria case, to have a common definition that establishes a core common curriculum and allows for each state to add to it locally relevant content. This is a good example of the utility of concurrent responsibility arrangements. However, the written or verbal statements of vision and objectives gathered by the consultants indicate that the states and local governments visited in this study do not have objectives related to the further development of the curriculum, within the national framework, to fit their own needs. The Completeness and Realism of the Vision One important objective is conspicuously missing even from the national vision expressed in the National Policy on Education and FMOE's recent statements: to increase the productivity of the education system, to improve the management of all resources, increase their utilization and improve their efficiency. The primary education system in Nigeria is facing a huge challenge while suffering from an acute shortage of funds. It needs to do a lot more, and a lot better, with very limited resources. The only way to do so is to improve productivity- to increase the utilization of all resources, to improve their efficiency when utilized, and to cut waste. As will be discussed later, chief among these are human resources. Yet, there is very limited discussion in the public, in the media, and among education officials on this matter and none of the objectives in the country's vision for education refers to the need to be more productive. From a national point of view, the single most important objective in the education vision is to achieve universal basic education by the year 2015. However, to suggest that this one objective can be adopted as a common `standard', a common objective, by 37 states and 774 LGAs that have uncommon conditions is unrealistic, unless the system of resource allocation in the Federation is structured well to compensate for the different conditions. As will be discussed later, the resource allocation system is not structured well for this purpose. The states and the LGAs differ greatly in how far they are away from UBE. The proportions of school age children 6. (p.37) 29 not attending school at all, or not attending the full cycle of basic education, differ from some 40% to 10%. Thus, the magnitude of the job to bring them all to school and retain them there for 10 years differs too from state to state and from LGA to LGA. Yet, the current system of resource allocation does not take the magnitude of this job into account. It does not provide states that have a bigger job with more funds. The formula for allocating funds to the states and the local governments from the Federation Account takes into account, in a relatively modest way, only current enrolment. It does not take into account at all current non-enrolment ­ the additional number of children that need to be brought to the schools, and the additional amount of resources needed to bring them there, if UBE is to be achieved. To take but one example, Kaduna State had 927,600 children in the age group of 6 to 11 in 2001. About 841,600 were enrolled in the primary schools, while 86,000, or 9.3% were out of school. The total recurrent budget received by the Kaduna SPEB from all sources for that year amounted to N 3,782,321,395, or an average of N 4,077 per child aged 6 to 11. In Katsina during the same year there were 1,062,000 children in the age group of 6 to 11 ­ more or less the same order of magnitude. However, only 692,600 were enrolled at school. Some 369,000 or 34.7% were not in school. With a total recurrent budget of 2,890,749,810 the Katsina SPEB had an average of N 2,722 per child aged 6 to 11. The Strength of Strategy and Planning The FMOE, the SMOEs and, to a lesser degree, the LGEAs have relatively good ideas on what could be done to achieve `increased enrolment', UBE and `good education' ­ they know what types of measures bring more children to schools and improve the quality and relevance of education. But they have not translated their knowledge into coherent strategies and plans. As indicated above, the essence of all strategies is choice among alternatives based on careful analysis and comparison of all the alternatives, including an assessment of the cost of each. They are based also on the specific output targets and time deadlines indicated in the stated objectives. In this sense, though they have good ideas, none of the organizations in the education sector have good strategies and good plans. The strategies as well as the plans that the SMOEs, the SPEBs and the LGEAs presented to the consultants were lists of all sorts of activities. There was no evidence of an attempt to carefully select courses of action, to assess their cost, or to determine the feasibility of achieving the intended output targets and completion times (if these were indicated in the objectives). The lists often did not link with the stated objectives. Frequently, they seemed to be influenced more by political considerations and less by educational, economic and logistical ones. [See Tables 5 and 6 again, for examples]. Even the Federal MOE that has an excellent set of objectives is presenting very large lists of strategies and activities to achieve them. It has not yet determined the costs of these strategies and activities and has not yet made the difficult choices of alternatives and actions that is implied in the making of good strategies and plans (see EFA in Nigeria, pp. 17-28). What these two examples in the annexed tables illustrate is a weak capacity to develop good strategies. The capacity is weak partly because there is a weak incentive to strategize. The incentive is weak because the political and economic situation is unstable. There is no coherent economic program at the national level, and thus, it is not possible to develop a coherent educational program at that level ­ as well as at all other levels that depend on it. The frequent 30 and abrupt changes in economic conditions, and the sometimes-protracted face-offs between the executive and legislative arms of the government over appropriations bills, have resulted in unstable and unpredictable budgets at all level of government, and in a very late and partial release of funds. Thus, many people reached the conclusion that it makes little sense to invest much time and energy in developing strategies and plans for the future if the future is so unpredictable. But even where the will to develop good strategies and plans does exist, senior managers in the SMOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs find it difficult to do a good job. All of these organizations, as well as UBEC and the FMOE, have Planning, Research and Statistics Departments. Yet, there is a dearth of reliable information on the schools. PRS departments have had great difficulties collecting reliable statistics for a long while. By their own admission, some of them were instrumental in some cases in actually distorting the numbers. UNESCO, in its 1998 report on the status of education in Nigeria, concluded that "perhaps the greatest administrative obstacles to achieving the set of goals of the National Policy on Education have arisen from the use of inadequate or unreliable data in the making of major policy decisions..." (p.7). It also approvingly quoted a Nigerian author who had attributed "a series of debilitating crises within the education system", among others, to poor and ineffective planning (p.18). The FMOE itself has confirmed that the lack of data is "a huge challenge that must be faced up to in the national response" (EFA, p.16). Moreover, PRS departments are also in charge of research, but none of the departments interviewed for this assessment has been doing any research. Their staff are mostly ex-teachers, or persons with background in architecture and civil engineering (because PRS Departments usually contain the Works Units) with little knowledge of research methodology and statistics and their ability to conduct analytic work is therefore very limited. Very few people have been trained to strategize, plan or conduct research. 31 The Real Commitment to Education Commitment can be judged by resource allocation. Leaders and managers that are committed to an objective, or a course of action, allocate adequate resources to them. The resources include funds, people, time and attention. Thus, it is possible to determine to what extent are leaders and managers committed to their own stated objectives by analyzing the budgets that they make, the distribution of staff reporting to them, the tasks to which the staff are assigned and the way they react to crises. Judging by these criteria, it may be said that the real commitment of the Federal Government and the state governments to education has not been as strong as their stated commitment. As concluded by the lead consultant, on the basis of all the assessments, "confronted with competing demands, the education sector is least likely to receive extra attention. For instance, when there was decay and crisis in the oil and power generating industries...it translated immediately into queues in the petrol pump stations, absences from work, damages to transmission pipes etc. Huge extra-budgetary allocations were made immediately to address the problems. When the education sector is decayed, managers shop for causes and effects through committees!"7 The sentiment expressed in the quotation above is reflected in real numbers. During the years 1997 to 2002, recurrent expenditure on education as a share of the total federal expenditure has decreased from 12.3% to 9.1%. At a time when the Federal Government has declared the importance of achieving UBE, an objective that requires a very large capital investment, its capital expenditure has remained at the level of 6% (with a few ups and downs), and its total expenditure has decreased from 9.9% to 8.0%.8 UBE provides another example regarding commitment, illustrating the difference between statements and reality. UBE was declared not only important, but also the highest priority on the national education agenda. Yet, during the same period of time, while the share of primary education in the Federal Government's expenditure has declined from 9.7% to 7.5%, the share of universities and polytechnics has remained stable around 52% and 16% respectively, and the share of secondary education has increased from 10.4% to 15.6%. A similar trend, though with different numbers, has emerged among the states9 . As suggested above, it is possible to assess the level of commitment of organizations to given objectives and strategies also by an analysis of how they allocate human resources. It stands to reason that if the SMOEs, the SPEBs and the LGEAs are committed to increased enrolment, or universal education, while the demand for education is not strong enough to bring all children to the schools, then they will seriously attempt to increase the demand. If they are committed to the provision of `good education' ­ the enhancement of quality ­ then they will seriously attempt to do something about it. In both cases, they will allocate not only financial resources, but also people, to do the job. An analysis of staffing patterns at SMOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs, provides reason to wonder whether the stated commitment to these two broad objectives is indeed reflected in the allocation of human resources. In all of these organizations, the units that are in charge of increasing enrolment and improving the quality of education are the School Services Departments. They are the only units that do real `educational' work ­ that visit the communities 7[Overall report, p.16] 8(Hinchcliffe, p. 8.) 9(Hinchcliffe, p. 10) 32 and go to the schools. One would expect these units to be well staffed to do their job, both in absolute numbers and in relation to other units. Yet, with a few exceptions, the proportion of people working in these units in the organizations that were visited by the consultants seems to be low. In six SPEBs for which the numbers were available, the percentage of headquarters' staff in the School Services Department ranged from 8.3 to 24.2 with an average of 18.5. In 12 LGEAs for which the numbers were available, the percentage ranged from 3.9 to 33.8 with an average of 17.7. All the rest are non-educational staff. By comparison, the range in Personnel Departments in the six SPEBS, was between 24.7% to 57.1% of all staff with an average of 38%. And in the 12 LGEAs, Personnel Department staff ranged from 14.2% to50.7% with an average of 30.4% (see Table 8). A similar assumption may be made with respect to the function of developing policies and strategies for the education system. It is clear that the system at all levels needs creative strategic thinking. It is clear, as indicated earlier, that one of most serious problems is the lack of good data and analysis. If the country wants `to face up to the huge challenge of lack of data', as is stated in key FMOE documents, then one would expect to see a greater commitment, and a greater allocation of resources, to the PRS departments at all levels. However, the proportion of human resources allocated to PRS departments does not reflect an attempt to face up to the situation. At the Federal Ministry of Education in 2001, there were only 100 officers in the PRS Department, compared with 1,473 officers in its Personnel Management Department. Its financial provision for the PRS was only 0.42% of its total budget, compared with 3.28% for the Personnel Management Department (FCT Assessment Report p.9). The Ministry's first main job is to formulate national policies and strategies for the education sector and plan its growth and development ­ a job that requires considerable planning and research. It is surprising, therefore, to observe such an imbalance in the number of staff and the size of the financial provision allocated to PRS relative to other functions. As indicated in the FCT assessment report, the understaffing and under-budgeting of this Department has greatly affected its performance. "The PRS Department collects a series of data and census of teachers... However, according to an interviewee, data collection has not been very effective because of logistics. Data processing is very slow, to the extent that UNICEF had to assist with the processing of 1997/98 data. Data for 1999/2000 are yet to be collated [as of April 2001]. Where up to 10 computers are required, only one is available. For the past five years, the Statistics Division of PRS Department has not in any year got more than N 130,000." (pp.14-15) 10 Implications for Government Strategy, Capacity Building and Project Design Nigeria has the building blocks of a national vision on education. At the national level, all of the objectives, with the exception of the need to improve productivity, are recognized and accepted. At state and LGEA levels the basic issues are recognized, but many have not yet been elevated to the level of stated objectives. Due to fragmented and weak leadership, as well as the lack of reliable information and good analysis, these issues are not fully defined and quantified, nor have they been systematically prioritized. Broad courses of action, or strategies, too have already been charted, but without analyses of feasibility costs. Also, there are differences among the states ­ 10 [For more details on the size of the PRS function in SMOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs see paragraph 79 in the section on Resource Allocation]. 33 both in what they wish to achieve and in their ability to achieve it `at entry'. These differences are not well understood and documented. There is, therefore, a need to re-work the national vision ­ to review all the objectives and prioritize them, and to select feasible strategies based cost and other considerations. There is a need for feasible national objectives, realistic strategies and minimum targets that will be common to all states. Each of the states needs to re-think its own vision and strategies, building on the national `minimum' and adding to it realistic objectives, and/or targets based on its particular circumstances. A possible sequence of steps may be as follows: · Conduct some preparatory analyses on the most recent education statistics that were collected nationally by FMOE with the help of UBEC and the states · Identify issues requiring further research, commission and complete the research speedily · Call a first national conference to develop in a highly participatory way a draft national education vision and strategic alternatives for achieving it · Follow with state conferences, requiring them to select the strategic alternatives that suit them best. Provide technical assistance in assessing the feasibility and costs of all alternatives being considered. · Call a second national conference to discuss the visions and strategies developed by the states and formulate the `final' national vision and national strategies for education. The objective of improving the productivity of the education system in Nigeria needs to be incorporated into the national vision and placed very high on the priority lists of all the states. As will be seen in the chapter on financial resources, the achievement of UBE by 2015 may depend on the ability of Nigeria to reduce the unit costs of basic education and this depends, in turn, on increased productivity. Therefore, strategies and programs need to be developed to help reduce waste and to greatly improve the utilization and efficiency of human, financial and material resources. Some senior managers at state and LGA level have an incomplete and limited knowledge and understanding of the vision and strategies adopted so far. It is clear that once national and state visions and strategies are reformulated, it will be necessary to ensure efficient and effective dissemination of them throughout the system, particularly but not only at the LGA level. Dissemination needs to be regarded as an on-going, regular activity, and strategies need to be formulated to make it such an activity. There is a need to improve the match between objectives and resource allocation both at the national level and in the states and local governments. The current formula for the allocation of funds from the Federation Account to the states and local governments does not adequately take into account the magnitude of the job to be done by each state. At state and local government level, there is a need to review carefully the entire system of staff allocation and improve the balance between those who do the educational work and those who provide the administrative, financial, and logistical support. [See chapter on Human Resources]. 34 There is a need to analyze the work of PRS departments and re-conceptualize it. The inclusion of physical planning in these departments may have taken the focus of these departments away from real education planning, policy-making and strategizing. Moreover, it is quite clear that the function of policy and strategy research and analysis within these departments, as well as the departments as a whole, are not getting a fair share of the resources available to the key organizations in the education sector. All senior staff in the FMOE, the SMOEs, the SPEBs and the LGEAs need training on matters of leadership, vision, strategy and planning. It is recommended to include in the proposed project a variety of `organization development' activities aimed at the development of leadership in these organizations and the strengthening of their capacity to formulate vision and objectives, to strategize and to develop good action plans. Current managers need to improve their leadership skills, but there is a need to also develop a new cadre of leadership. Finally, when projects are prepared it is necessary to ensure that they fit within a national vision and that they support priority objectives. Much attention needs to be devoted to the formulation of clear objectives for the projects, and much more attention than has been given in the past needs to be given to the dissemination of these objectives. It is necessary also to ensure that every organization, unit and manager that is responsible for the implementation of a project activity is informed of this responsibility and understands it fully. It would help greatly, if TORs for each project operation are written and provided to the designated organization, unit and manager in charge. D. FINANCIAL RESOURCES AND CAPACITY IN THE BASIC EDUCATION SYSTEM The Capacity to Mobilize Resources The largest source of funds that the Nigerian government has is the revenue generated by federal taxes and duties. Taxes and duties on petroleum provide most of these revenues. In the year 2000, Nigeria's oil exports accounted for about 95% of the country's merchandise export, 90% of the Federal government's revenues, and 70% of state and local governments' revenues11. Based on the Constitution, all federal revenues are pulled together and placed in the Federation Account and from there are divided among the three tiers of government, the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. A Finance, Fiscal and Allocation Commission (FFAC) was set up to develop and apply the formula by which the government divides the funds. For the federal government, the Federation Account is the only source of funding. For the states and the LGAs it is the largest but not the only source, since they collect additional revenues from state and local taxes. Thus, how much the federal government, the states and the LGAs can mobilize for the delivery of services depends almost totally on the size of the federation account and the revenue sharing formula. The size of the federation account depends, in turn, mostly on world oil prices, and to some extent also on the capacity of the government to collect the taxes and duties. A $1 increase or decrease in the price of oil in the year 2000 would have changed Nigeria's foreign exchange 11(Sokol, p.2) 35 earnings by some $770 million and would have changed public revenues by $300 million in that year (Sokol p.2). The federal government cannot influence oil prices, and its ability to increase revenues through a more efficient collection system is limited. The most important way it could mobilize more resources for itself in the past was to influence the allocation formula and retain a larger share of the Federation Account. This is not possible any longer. The formula has been changed recently in favor of the states and the federal government will retain less in the future. The ability of the states and the LGAs too to collect more revenues from local sources ­ through a value added tax and the Education Tax ­ is limited and they depend very much on the Federation Account. This is why the revenue sharing formula is one of the most difficult and contentious issues in Nigerian politics. Over the last 30 years the international prices of oil, and therefore the revenues that the Nigerian government derived from oil have fluctuated greatly and frequently. Thus, the amount of money that flowed into the Federation Account ­ and the funds available for distribution to the states and the LGA ­ fluctuated as well. Throughout this period, the assumptions made by the government on the prices of oil in its budget estimates were often too optimistic. Moreover, the government did not have an effective mechanism to stabilize the revenues available for distribution by setting aside resources when the revenues were high for the "rainy days" (Sokol p.3). This has become one of the biggest problems not only for the economy as a whole, but also for the education sector. The external economic shocks were translated into internal shocks both for the economy as a whole and for the education sector. Estimated national budgets, and estimated education budgets did not materialize. Significant funds from the Federation Account were not released to NPEC and the education ministries of education and did not, therefore, reach the LGEAs as well at all, or on time. In the year 2000, for example, NPEC did not get its personnel budgets in full in 4 out of 12 months, and did not get its overhead budget at all in 7 out of the 12 months. By the end of the year, only 78% of the approved personnel budget and 77% of the approved overhead budget were released. The monthly allocation for procurement of instructional materials from the National Fund was also not released in full in 7 of the 12 months. By the end of the year only 76% of the budgeted amount was released12. This has been the general pattern over the years. It has greatly constrained their ability of SMOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs to plan and to implement even annual plans, let alone any longer-term plans. It explains many of the difficulties encountered by the education system and illustrates a basic fact: that its capacity depends not only on factors internal to it, but also on external macroeconomic as well as political factors. There is generally a weak link between the resource allocation formula used by the FFAC to distribute funds to the states and the LGAs and the functions and responsibilities assigned to the states and LGAs by the Constitution, or given to them by the federal government. State and local governments are often `mandated' by the federal government to deliver additional or different services, without receiving additional and adequate funding. The revenues that they receive from all sources are simply not sufficient to carry out the new or modified mandates. In the case of education, a prime example of this situation is the impending legislation concerning universal basic education. The federal government is now in the process of enacting the Universal Basic Education Act, which will require all states and local authorities to provide free and compulsory basic education to all by the year 2015. Obviously, the implementation of this mandate will 12(FCT Assessment Report, Annex 7) 36 require a much higher level of support from the federal government to the states and the local authorities. Even without the 2015 UBE mandate, it is clear that the education sector in Nigeria needs to mobilize much more resources than it currently has. The sector is seriously under-funded. As found by Hinchcliffe, "there is evidence that some LGAs have teacher salary bills that exceed their total allocation from the Federation Account and from VAT collections ­ and this is with only 60% of the children in schools, and a ratio of pupil teacher of 50:1". Hinchcliffe concludes that "the call for universal primary, let alone basic, education is unrealistic within this setting without a considerable increase in the level of resources utilized in the sector...the issue of whether universal primary education is really to be a national target, needs to be raised"13 Recent economic analysis done by the World Bank accentuates this conclusion. It states that in the near future the Nigerian government will have less money ­ not more. ["The states are chronically under-funded. The Assembly approved a federal budget on N 1 trillion for 2002, a 10% real increase over 2001, despite oil revenues lower 25%. Compensating increases in non-oil revenues have failed to materialize. Large injections of liquidity in the first half of the current year are fueling inflation (19%) and threatening the Naira. A consequent slide in reserves has crystallized an awareness of the unsustainability of the current fiscal stance. Also the Supreme Court's ruling that `first charges' against oil receipts are unconstitutional, leaves the approved budget in legal vacuum. The Executive and the Assembly are now discussing a `prioritized' reduced expenditure plan for the second half of the current year..."14. The gap between the government's objectives in education and the resources available to achieve these objectives is very big. The federal government's hope of generating much higher revenues, some of which will then filter through to the education system and significantly reduce the gap, are much in doubt. Other ways must be sought, therefore, to reduce it. A change in the allocation formula used by the FFAC aimed at providing more funds to the states from the Federation Account could help and is indeed forthcoming. However, it is not clear yet how much the education sector will benefit from the new funds. Other ways to address the gap include: mobilizing funds, labor and materials at community level, changing some of the objectives of the education sector or the specific targets attached to each, taking more time to achieve these objectives or the targets, and improving the productivity of the education system. According to data in the Poverty Profile for Nigeria, 1980-1996, both the ratio and the number of poor in Nigeria have risen sharply from 28.1% or 17.7 million people in 1980, to 65.6% or 67.1 million people in 1996. Thus, it is unlikely that any form of user charging can effectively help increase the funds available to the education sector. All of the consultants reported indeed that officials interviewed at the LGEAs object to user charging not only because primary education is supposed to be free, but also because user charging will compel parents to withdraw children from the schools. Nevertheless, they added that at school and community level, there is some potential to improve resource mobilization ­ in the form of funds, labor or materials ­ since communities are eager to take action. For example, in Qua'an Pan LGEA, with a system of 113 schools, 19 schools received a special mention for their self-help in the construction of new classrooms in 2001. The UNESCO report states that "communities in Nigeria have contributed 13[p.32]. 14(Stern, 07/08/2002) 37 immensely to the financing of education through their self-help projects. In many places they have built and equipped schools and then invited government to take over their organization and management. Instances abound of communities who have contributed funds to assist the recurrent expenses of schools e.g. renovation, supply of equipment, or the expansion of infrastructure facilities"15. Some aid organizations too are willing to provide additional funds, if the funds go directly to the communities involved. However, to take advantage of this willingness, it is necessary to improve the capacity of local organizations ­ LGEAs, community- based organizations, as well as School Councils. Currently, the capacity of these organizations is greatly constrained. There is also a very wide scope for the improvement of productivity in the education system. To begin with the mix of resources used in education can be improved through improved resource allocation. The current balance among the different resources, such as the balance between human and material resources is not optimal. The balance within human resources ­ between the skilled professionals and the unskilled and semi-skilled staff is not optimal too, as will be discussed in the chapter on human resources. Secondly, the utilization of all resources in the mix can be greatly improved. As will be seen in the chapters on human and material resources, many staff are not fully utilized because of excess recruitment and poor management, and many material resources lie idle because of the lack of funds to service them, or to buy consumables. Thirdly, the efficiency of these resources when utilized can also greatly improve. People can become more efficient at their jobs through training and improved management. Physical resources ­ particularly vehicles and office equipment ­ can become more efficient through improved servicing and maintenance. The Allocation of Available Resources in the System The allocation of federal revenues to the states for education is based on a formula that was decreed by the FFAC in 1993 (No. 96) and amended several times since then. The most recent amendment took place in 2002. After the April 2002 Supreme Court Ruling on resource control, the RMFAC has revised the resource allocation formula and the revised formula has been presented by the Executive for legislative approval. The President has already issued an executive order instituting a split of 54.68 percent, 24.70 percent and 20.60 percent to federal, state and local governments respectively, which increases the share of the state governments by 1.87%. However, since the Supreme Courts ruling prohibits the Federal Government to transfer any revenues to special funds, and since in the past the Federal Government appropriated most of these funds, the actual reduction in the Federal Government's share will be around 9%. This share will go to the states. However, the horizontal revenue sharing arrangements, the distribution across states and local governments, as well as among sectors have not changed. Mobilizing more funds for education means less for some other sectors. At least so far, the application of this allocation formula to the overall conditions prevailing in the states has not resolved the differences among them. Poorer states cannot generate substantial internal revenues and are very dependent on the formula. According to Hinchcliffe, between 1995 and 2000, states have generated internally between 20% to 25% of their income and the rest came from the formula. Some of them are said to have actually lived on the edge of 15(p.17). 38 insolvency. The few which were able to generate more internal revenues and were better off ­ including Lagos, Rivers and Delta States ­ gave more to education. The rest gave less. Though the formula redistributes income among the states, its capacity to overcome the differences among the states in basic social and economic conditions is very limited. Therefore, what different states had allocated to education out of their total revenues was a function of their needs in all of these social and economic areas and not just education. In the year 2000, Bayelsa State allocated 15.52% of its total capital budget to transport, 8.89% to health and 8.81% to education. Rivers State allocated in the same year 20.31% to housing, 16.32% to infrastructure and only 5.92% to education. Katsina's highest priority was water and rural development. It, therefore, allocated 19.1% of its capital budget to it, while giving education only 9.67%. Hinchcliffe analyzed education expenditure as a share of total expenditure in 12 states in 1999. His analysis revealed wide differences among the states. Oyo State allocated the lowest share - 11% - while Benue allocated the highest share - 29.9%. This was almost three times as much. Oyo had been at the bottom of the list in four out of the five years, while Benue had been at the top of the list in four out of the same five years, for which information was available. As indicated earlier, LGAs receive statutory allocations from the Federation Account as well as proceeds from the centrally collected value added tax. They also generate internal revenues. In 1999, statutory allocations made up 76.6% of their revenue, value added tax made up 15.7%, and internally generated revenue made up 7.7% (Hinchcliffe). As is the case among states, there are big differences also among LGAs even within the same state. In fact, differences in transfers per capita within states seem to be bigger than between states. One measure of this difference is the share of deductions at source made for primary education from the LGAs allocation in the Federation Account. According to Hinchcliffe, "this share ranged from 20 percent to 95 percent implying enormous differences in the burden between local governments and states...." These differences in the availability of funding are clearly reflected in the availability of human and material resources to the different LGEAs. 16 The Loss of Direction in the Allocative Process As described in the PER, each level of government the funds available both for recurrent and capital expenditure are allocated among the various organizations and within them based on annual plans or 3-year rolling plans. The plans are supposed to be based on a bottom-up approach, i.e., schools submitting their plans to LGEAs, who submit them to SPEBs, who submit them to UBEC for final approval. In practice, the plans have been prepared at the SPEBs, based on guidelines given by UBEC, and have been finalized at UBEC . They have been typically based on an incremental approach to annual planning and budgeting: the recurrent budget plan is last year's allocation plus or minus a little; the capital budget plan is a long wish list of projects and activities (p.39). It was indicated earlier that plans are often quite removed from stated visions, long-term objectives and strategies. This is so because of the use of inappropriate criteria, or the influence of unstated priorities and poor planning skills and processes. One state, for example, declared in 2001 that its highest priority in education is to ensure that every child attends a primary and a 16[See Chapter F on material resources]. 39 junior secondary school. One strategy that it was going to follow in achieving its priority was "to increase enrolment through social mobilization". But the actual plan followed by its MOE had nothing to do with social mobilization and there was no budget in it for social mobilization. Most of its discretionary budget during that year was allocated to the establishment of a university and a college of arts. There are many examples like this. Many LGEAs declare in their planning that their top priority is to improve the quality of education. Many LGEA officials declared so in their discussions with the consultants. At the same time, a review of LGEA budgets in these LGEAs reveals that the monthly overhead allowances received by their executive secretaries are often bigger than the monthly overhead allowances received by the entire School Services Departments ­ the units that are looking after quality. In addition to the inadequate link between objectives and plans, there is also an inadequate link between plans and approved budgets and between approved budgets and actual releases. The budgets approved are often very different from the proposed budget that are based on the plans, and the actual releases of funds are often drastically different from the approved budgets. This is mainly, but not only, because of the major swings in the prices of oil and their impact on federal revenues. The government's inability to use some mechanisms that will cushion external shocks and stabilize the flow of funds into the Federation Account means that transfers from this account to the states and LGAs swing in tandem with the oil prices. The planning and budgeting techniques used by the SPEBs, SMOEs and LGAs are not sophisticated enough to deal with the unpredictable financial and economic situation. Finally, according to the consultants' reports, funds released to the states are often not used for the purpose for which they were released and in line with the approved budget. There are many cases of sizable overspending and under-spending; there are also cases of unplanned and undeclared spending. Large sums of money are spent on some items that did not appear in the approved budgets and larger-than-planned sums of money are spent on items that were supposed to get smaller amounts. As one consultant reported, "Whereas all of the sub-heads provided for in the Approved Estimates [for the year 2000] were grossly under-funded, there was an over- expenditure by as much as 236% in Grants Contributions and Subventions to Voluntary Agency Schools and tertiary institutions... Similarly, the Entertainment and Hospitality sub-heads were over-spent by 323%... The Sports sub-head that had no approved allocation initially ended up with N 21 million." The consultant concluded that "the state government has been expending money without reference to the budgetary provision." The result of this chain of changes is that there is no stable and transparent medium or long-term direction in the movement of state systems of education. Some direction is lost at each step on the way. Strategies do not fully follow declared objectives; plans do not fully follow strategies; approved budgets do not fully follow the plans and releases of funds do not fully follow the approved budgets. And, then, the released funds are sometimes not spent fully for the stated purpose for which they were released. At the end of the chain, the actual directions in which the education systems are moving do not look much like the directions indicated in their stated vision, mission and strategies. The Allocation of Non-Financial Resources Funds are used to acquire inputs that go into the system ­ mainly human resources, recurrent activities, such as maintenance and staff development, and physical resources. Even when funds 40 are available and the inputs acquired with them are relatively abundant there is a need to allocate these inputs within the system and within each organization in an operationally optimal way. What this means is to distribute the resources among the various components of the system on the basis of some norms that reflect operational requirements. If the resources are distributed without reference to norms that reflect operational requirements, then the other norms take precedence. Often, these other norms represent proximity to the source and status. In other words, those who are closer to the resource or input being distributed, and/or those who are higher up on the ladder, get more of it ­ not because they need it for operational reasons. This phenomenon weakens the capacity of the system to do what it needs to do, because those who can improve performance with certain inputs are deprived of the inputs, while those whose performance is not much influenced by the inputs do get them. This is exactly what is happening in the Nigerian primary education system. There are no norms based on operational requirements for the allocation of human, material and other resources (see the chapters on human and material resources for more on the lack of such norms). Proximity to the source, status as well as simple randomness are by default if not by design, the norms in use. There is a clear difference between center and periphery, or head office and field offices, as far as the availability of resources is concerned. There is equally a clear difference between those who are in high-level management positions and all the rest. Central organizations receive much larger allocations of resources than local ones; headquarters offices receive much larger allocations than field offices. And chairmen, commissioners and directors receive much larger allocations of resources than their own staff. The SPEBs, for example, capture a very high proportion of the available resources compared with the LGEAs, raising the question whether this is operationally justified. There are many examples of this situation in the material collected for this study. In one state, SPEB allocated in the year 2000 about 8.1% of its own personnel cost to the training of its own staff, while the 13 LGEAs under it together were given a staff training and development allocation of 0.2%. In the year 2001, two other SPEBs allocated 10.8% and 12.9% of their recurrent expenditure respectively to their own staff development and training, while all the LGEAs in both received 0.2% and 0.3% respectively. A year earlier, the staff development budget per person in all LGEAs in one of these states was an average of N119 per person. During the same year, the staff development budget for SPEB personnel was on average N 75,000 per person (see also Tables 17 and 18). In the three-year period of 1999-2001, the financial distributions allocated to one SPEB increased 60 fold. At the same time, the allocations to the two LGEAs visited by the consultants in the same state increased only by 2.5 and 4 folds. A similar situation can be seen also in the allocation of physical and material resources, such as office space, office equipment, and vehicles as will be discussed in the section on material resources. In 1998, one SPEB had an allocation of N15.8 million for capital expenditure, while all of its LGEAs together received nothing. In 1999, a total amount of N16,445,799 was allocated to capital expenditure in another State. Of this, 70% went to the headquarters, while 30% had to be divided among all of the LGEAs. In 2000, the allocations that one SPEB received in its approved recurrent budget for its own maintenance was 5% of its total budget. In the same year the allocation received by all of its LGEAs together for maintenance was 0.66% of their total budget. 41 One of the unstated criteria for resource allocation in Nigeria generally, is management status. The higher the status, the more resources are allocated to the status holder. These allocations cannot be fully justified on the basis of operational need, because much of the resources given to them are not needed by them personally for management. These resources simply reflect status and power. As reported in the 1999 NAC document, this is indeed a common practice in the civil service. "Complementary facilities such as telephone, fax e-mail, vehicles, air conditioners, electronic typewriters, photocopy machines, and computers were not functional in most institutions, and where they were functional, were not accessible to staff that need the facilities for their operations (NCA, p.20). The education sector is no exception. The offices of the Chairmen and Secretaries of SPEBs, or the Commissioners of SMOEs, appear much too big for operational and even reasonable status reasons, when compared with the offices of all other staff, who often have very little working space. At the LGEAs, managers sit in larger than necessary offices while many staff sit in very crowded offices, or have nowhere to sit at all. All consultants have reported that scarce resources ­ from motor cars to photocopiers are kept by, or in the offices of, chief executives, providing very limited access to the staff who may need them. [More on this in the section on material resources.] As indicated earlier, the planning, statistics and research functions throughout the Nigerian primary education system are grossly under-funded. Neither financial, nor human resources are allocated to these functions in line with their mandates. This is true of all levels and organizations, including the Federal MOE, whose most important job is to formulate national policies, strategies, plans and standards on the basis of good statistics and research. The Federal Ministry's lack of adequate support for these functions was discussed in Paragraph 49 in the section on commitment. Table 8(a) provides additional information to show that PRS Departments at all levels do not receive adequate resources. As can be seen, among the 8 MOEs for which there is information, the percentage of PRS staff out of total HQ staff varied between 5.1 to 18.4, averaging at 7 percent. Among the 8 SPEBs it ranged from 7.4to 14.3, averaging 10.5, and among the 14 LGEAs it ranged from 4.2 to 29.0 percent. It is important to note that these are percentages only of the staff who are in HQ, and not of all non-teaching staff in these MOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs. Moreover, PRS departments in all of the organizations involved include units that deal with physical planning and civil works. Most of their staff are architects and civil engineers, rather than education planners. Therefore, these percentages do not reflect the number of people engaged in the collection and analysis of data and in any form of research and analysis. Thus, when viewed against the percentage of HQ staff that work in personnel departments ­ averaging 35.1%, 33.9% and 29.8% respectively for MOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs - they strongly support the suggestion that the planning function is not receiving the support it deserves. In a system that depends so much on full and reliable information, yet does not have it, such an imbalance in the resource allocation process does point at questionable priorities. This is reflected also in the allocation of material resources, particularly computers. There are several anecdotal observations in the assessment reports referring to the fact that where computers do exist, they are not found in the PRS departments. Expenditure Control in the Basic Education System Very good mechanisms to control expenditure at all levels of government already exist in the education sector. To begin with, there are established procedures for the release and use of money, for the keeping of books and reporting of expenditures. Numerous rules aimed at 42 ensuring that allocated funds reach their intended destination, that no irregularities occur, and that no overspending takes place are on the books. To ensure that these procedures and rules are adhered to, there are internal statutory audit units in each organization at all levels, and one of the rules is that they should conduct both pre-expenditure and post-expenditure audits. Moreover, in all of the states the law requires also an annual external audit. The Audit Units are placed in most cases directly under the chief executive of the organization. These units are well staffed; they have between 5 and 10 persons even in small LGEAs and many more in larger agencies. Based on several samples of the reports they have submitted in recent years, it is reasonable to assume that their staff have the skills required. But these mechanisms are not being properly used and the actual control of expenditure is very weak. The consultants who visited the 13 states and the 54 organizations reported numerous cases illustrating this weakness. In many cases, despite repeated requests, they were not given access to financial reports and audits; in many ­ they were told that no audits had been carried out in recent years. Where audits were carried out and documents submitted to them, they found much evidence of deviations from financial procedures and rules, and little evidence that audit queries indicating these deviations were answered. Nine excerpts from internal and external audit reports are provided in Table 9 to illustrate these two points. At least three key reasons may account for this situation: lack of transparency, insufficient incentives to control expenditure, and lack of positive models of expenditure control. Nigerian public sector organizations are generally not sufficiently transparent. Public information is not public. The amount of information released to the public by public sector organizations is very limited. All of this is true for the education sector as well. Financial information is particularly hard to get and, as indicated above, even the consultants that conducted the research for this assessment did not get it. Access to audit reports was particularly hard to get. Less than 15 of the 54 organizations visited gave the consultants even just one copy of an audit report. Corruption and bribery are considered by many people in Nigeria to be the most effective way of getting things done. People resorting to corrupt practices are generally not held accountable for these practices. People who just mismanage money too are not held accountable. People who, in the face of so much corruption and mismanagement, do not resort to these practices are not rewarded in any way. Thus, the incentives to control expenditure are very weak. The lack of positive models of expenditure control refers to the long legacy of the military rule. Most of the rules concerning expenditure control were dispensed with during this military rule and the mechanisms established to enforce them were disabled. Money was moved at will from one account to another, or squandered altogether; audits were not carried out. It will take some time root out the deeply entrenched practices of financial mismanagement that were followed at that time. Implications for Government Strategy, Capacity Building and Project Design The federal government has to develop a full and realistic strategy for achieving the objectives of UBE by the target year of 2015, or modify these objectives. All analyses indicate that the education sector cannot mobilize as big a share of GDP and the national, state and local 43 government budgets as is required to reach UBE by 2015 and maintain it from then onwards. But all the analyses are based on current unit costs, and the current unit costs are based on current productivity, that is, the way the education system is organized and operated at the moment. If it is possible to improve productivity and reduce unit costs, it may be possible to achieve UBE by 2015. Therefore, any strategy for achieving UBE must be based on a very serious attempt to improve productivity. Of course, the feasibility of any strategy that will be proposed needs to be based on a thorough analysis of all the resources required and their costs. It is recommended, therefore, that the Nigerian Government embark on wide-scale productivity improvement campaign. This campaign should start with a thorough analysis of the current way the education system is organized and operating, and then adopt determined and, if necessary, drastic measures, to organize it better, eliminate waste and reduce the unit costs of basic education. The analysis needs to be guided by productivity experts, working in specialized organizations, such as the South African National Productivity Institute, that have experience in sectoral productivity analyses. There is a great need to address the loss of intended direction in the education system. The process whereby strategies do not follow the overall vision and the objectives of the system, whereby plans do not follow the strategies, whereby estimated budgets do not follow the plans, and whereby actual funds released do not follow the budgets, needs to be improved. Not much can be done by the education sector about budgeting practices and the release of funds, since these are not sector-specific. But more can be done to ensure that strategies match the objectives set and that plans emanate clearly and directly from these strategies. This can be done through training, as well as the introduction of better systems, procedures and rules that `compel' people to follow adequate methodologies for strategy formulation and planning. A lot more attention needs to be paid by the government to the manner in which resources are distributed in the education system, both among large units, such as states and local authorities, and among smaller ones, such as main offices and field offices. The issue is not just one of identifying disadvantaged states, or disadvantaged local authorities, or even `disadvantaged offices'. The inequities among these need to be removed, of course. But, it is also a matter of determining norms and standards for the distribution of resources ­ both human and material ­ among these entities, so as to prevent future distortions. The federal government has already established some criteria for identifying `educationally disadvantaged' states, so as to give them more resources; but the states too need, in turn, to identify educationally disadvantaged local authorities and give them more resources. Though more a matter of efficiency than equity, all SPEBs, SMOEs and LGEAs need to examine the ways they distribute resources internally. They need to find ways to reduce the huge gap between the resources available to managers and to headquarters and the resources available to non-management staff and field offices. It is recommended that technical assistance be provided in future projects to help analyze these issues more deeply and identify ways to address them. Projects need to be designed so as to ensure that the material resources acquired under them are spread as equitably and efficiently as possible not only among the SPEBs and local authorities in the participating states, but also among various local authorities themselves. This must not, however, detract from the point that the key organizations whose capacity should be strengthened first are the SMOEs (once plans are made to merge them with the SPEBs). To the 44 extent possible, the project needs to help reduce the gap in the provision of material resources between managers and other workers, if such gaps cannot be justified in terms of management efficiency. Corruption is endemic in Nigeria, in all sectors and at all levels. It is probably one of the most difficult areas for capacity building. The education sector alone cannot remove it. The issue is not lack of mechanisms to control expenditure, nor lack of staff to operate these mechanisms. No mechanism will do the job if too many people are not willing to follow the rules, and if too many leaders, including the leaders of the education sector, are not willing or able to enforce the rules. There is no doubt that to improve the capacity of the basic education system to deliver services it will be necessary to give initially states, and later LGEASs, more and more responsibility ­ and with it more and more funds. This will not be possible if the will and the ability of the states and the LGEAs to control expenditure do not improve. The Nigerian government needs to find the way. E. HUMAN RESOURCES IN THE EDUCATION SYSTEM The Lack of Norms for the Deployment of Non-Teaching Staff An analysis of the information found in the documentary material obtained by the consultants and a review of the actual observations made by them during the study indicate that there are no norms for the deployment of non-teaching staff in the sector. The absence of norms for deployment may be observed when the relationship between the sizes of the state and LGEA education systems being run and managed by the SPEBs, the LGEAs and the MOEs and the sizes of the `administrations' that runs and manages them is reviewed. There seems to be no connection between the sizes of the systems and the sizes of the administrations that run them. The underlying assumption made here is that the larger is a system, the more staff may be required to service and manage it. It is assumed further that if some norms based on size (and possibly a few other factors reflecting complexity) are available to guide the recruitment and deployment of staff, then it may be possible to prevent both overstaffing and inequities in staff strength among the state and local government systems. The key factors that determine the `size' of a system of education are schools, teachers and pupils. The number of schools to be managed, the number of teachers to be recruited and engaged and the number of students to be taken care of, greatly influence the number of people that need to manage, engage and take care of them. For the purpose of analysis, therefore, the size of the education system is represented here by these three factors. With respect to the SPEBs one additional factor is important: the number of LGEAs that it has to manage. A SPEB that has many LGEAs may require more staff than a SPEB that has few ones. Taken together, then, four factors have been reviewed as follows: · the number of LGEAs that a SPEB has to manage · the number of schools that each LGEA runs daily and the total number of schools that each SPEB manages through the LGEAs 45 · the number of teachers that each LGEA deploys and the total number of teachers that each SPEB manages through them, and · the number of pupils in the care of each LGEA and the total number of pupils in the SPEB system. The size of the `administration' is represented by the number of staff not engaged in teaching - in the schools, the field offices and the head quarters of the LGEAs and the SPEBs, even if they are teachers by profession. This includes the clerical, professional, technical and managerial staff, as well as a host of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, including office helpers, messengers, drivers, handymen, watchmen and other workers. Four ratios were then developed to find out whether the size of the administrative force does indeed have any relation to the size of education system. These ratios were applied first to the SPEBs and than to the LGEAs: · The number of SPEB HQ and field staff per LGEA · The number of SPEB HQ and field staff per school · The number of SPEB HQ and field staff per 100 teachers · The number of SPEB HQ and field staff per 1000 pupils · The number of LGEA HQ and field staff per school · The number of LGEA HQ and field staff per 100 teachers, and · The number of LGEA HQ and field staff per 1000 pupils Tables 10, 11 and 12 present the results of the statistical analysis. Table 10 focuses on the SPEBs. As can be seen, there are very large differences in the sizes of the primary education administrative machinery among the states. The ratio of administrative staff to LGEA among the 11 states for which there is information ranges from 5.5 to 13.8 staff. The ratio of SPEB and LGEA administrative staff to school among the six states for which there is information ranges from 0.8 to 4.7. The ratio of SPEB and LGEA administrative staff to 100 teachers in the 7 states for which there is information ranges from 7.5 to 31.6. Finally, the ratio of SPEB and LGEA administrative staff to 1,000 students in the five states for which there is information ranges from 1.9 to 6.2. There does not seem to be any link between the number of SPEB HQ and field staff to any of these factors. For example, Katsina SPEB with 34 LGEAs has 118 administrative staff while Plateau with 17 LGEAs has 234 administrative staff - that is twice as many staff for half the number of LGEAs. Kano is running a system of 2,270 primary schools with 2.4 administrators per school while Lagos is running a system of 913 schools with twice as many administrators. Katsina, with 13,655 teachers in its primary education system has 32 administrators for every 100 teachers while Kano, Lagos and Plateau, with much larger numbers of teachers have 28, 26 and 14 administrators for every 100 teachers respectively. The differences are even starker among the LGEAs as can be seen in Table 11. The ratio of LGEA administrative staff per school among the 22 LGEAs for which there is information ranges from 0.4 to 9. The ratio of administrative staff to 100 teachers in the 25 LGEAs for which there is information ranges from 3 to 70.4. Finally, the ratio of administrative staff to 1,000 students in the five states for which there is information ranges from 0.5 to 23.2. There does not seem to be any link between the number of LGEA staff to any of these system factors. For example, Katsina LGEA runs its system of 35 schools with 9 administrators per school, while 46 Ibadan North runs its system of 64 schools with less than one administrator per school. Ibadan North has 1,850 teachers in its system and it manages them with a small administration of 1.5 staff per 100 teachers, while Kokokuma that has only 267 teachers manages them with an administration of 70 staff per 100 teachers. Maiduguri with 1,690 teachers has 5.6 administrative staff for every 100 teachers, while Yenagoa with 768 teachers ­ in the same state and under the same SPEB ­ has five times as many staff: 25.6 per 100 teachers. Differences among LGEAs that are managed by the same SPEBs are great in all of the ratios. In all of the nine states for which information is available on two LGEAs, there are differences of up to 400% in the administrator/school, administrator/teacher and administrator/student ratios. Table 12 contains information on the situation in the secondary education, where the MOEs run the schools. The ratio of administrative staff to school among the six MOEs for which there is information ranges from 1.0 to 5.4. The ratio of administrative staff to 100 teachers in the five states for which there is information ranges from 3.4 to 66. Finally, the ratio of administrative staff to 1,000 students in the five states for which there is information ranges from 2.1 to 7.3. There does not seem to be any link between the number of MOE staff to any of these system factors. For example, Rivers MOE runs and manages a system of 546 secondary schools with 9 administrators per school. Ebonyi, runs and manages a system of 132 schools with 38 administrators per school. Katsina, with a small secondary system has 66 administrators for every 100 teachers. Kano and Kaduna, with much larger secondary systems have 41 and 4 (!) administrators for every 100 teachers. Ebonyi, with roughly as many teachers as Katsina, has almost one half the number of administrators. According to these observations, the most bloated grade levels are Grades 1 to 6, and the most bloated function is the personnel function. Grade Levels 1 to 6 include all the unskilled and semi-skilled persons in the SMOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs. Personnel departments often include all the messengers, cleaners, drivers and office helpers that are found in these grade levels. The consultants' reports are full of anecdotal stories of excess. There are stories about SMOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs that have more drivers than vehicles, (including `drivers', `chief drivers' and `chief driver mechanics'), or LGEAs that have one operative ­ a clerk, or a messenger or a workman ­ for every two or three schools. In one office, where there is only one telephone, there is a telephone operator. In another, there is a Transport Unit "that does not undertake repairs and maintenance, and the drivers are under personnel office, so the unit does not perform any significant function". In all offices, information circulates through long channels of communication from the heads of departments to their deputies, from the deputies to principal officers and from them to the officers concerned ­ all in physical files. It also goes back up in files through the same channels. A large force of Personnel Assistants is employed to move the files. One LGEA, for example, has 10 messengers to move the files among 117 staff. It also has 13 workmen/artisans to serve a total of 35 schools and 24 typists/clerks, to support its small system. Over-staffing and its Impact on Capacity The civil service as a whole in Nigeria is overstaffed, particularly with lower-level, unskilled and semi-skilled staff. At the same time it is short of mid-level and senior managers as well as highly skilled technical and professional staff. As reported by the authors of the NCA in 1999, "33 47 percent of the institutions surveyed admitted that they were overstaffed and there was a lopsided staff structure with staff concentration in the semi-skilled category, while qualified staff was lacking in critical areas..." [p.18]. It is not surprising, therefore that this is also the situation in the education sector. There are similar ratios of non-teaching staff to teachers in some developed countries. In the United States, for example, the overall ratio is also one non-teaching staff for every two teachers and in countries such as France and Germany the overall ratio is one non- teaching staff for every three teachers. But there is a big difference in the roles played by the non-teaching staff in these developed countries and in Nigeria. In these countries many of the non-teaching staff perform educational roles, such as the provision of psychological services and career guidance, or roles that are closely related to education, such as curriculum development and school-based research. In Nigeria, a very high percentage of the non-teaching staff are unskilled and semi-skilled people who do not serve the teachers and the schools in any pedagogical or broader educational capacity. Rather, they serve the administrators and professionals in the head offices and the field offices. They are the typists and low-level clerks, the drivers, messengers, handymen, cleaners, cooks and guards ­ all in Grade Levels 1 to 6. As can be seen in Table 13, in the headquarters of SPEBs and MOEs, they make up 45.2% and 48.8% respectively of the total non-teaching staff. In the LGEAs too, unskilled and semi-skilled staff make up a large percentage of the non-teaching staff. Table 14 shows the percentage of Grade Level 1 to 6 staff in all the LGEAs of Lagos State in 1999. The percentage is 33.6. A few more recent examples (from 2000 and 2001) reflect an even higher proportion. In Bali and Zing LGEAs, in Taraba State, they make up 47.3%, in Katsina LGEA they make up 53.5% and in Khana LGEA, in Rivers State, they make up 65.9%. In a system whose only business is teaching, the presence of so many non-teaching staff who do not play an educational role is highly questionable. Their deployment does not seem to help improve learning or enhance the system's capacity in any way. According to the consultants' reports the performance of Primary IV pupils in all of the states visited in the learning achievement tests that had been conducted in 1996 in three subjects was below the national average. For example, two of the states that have the largest numbers of non-teaching staff per teacher had the lowest averages. The performance of pupils in states that had fewer non-teaching staff per teacher was better. The question is, then, whether the large number of non-teaching staff in MOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs is improving their capacity to deliver primary education. The answer seems to be to the contrary. The large number of non-teaching staff actually diminishes capacity. To begin with, it is a drain on resources. The fact that many of these people are in low paying grades does not mean that the costs of employing them are low. In one state MOE, in the year 2001, the salaries of all non-teaching staff amounted to 13.3% of the total Ministry salary bill. In its SPEB, it amounted to 22.7%. In another state during the same year, the salaries of grade level 1-6 MOE staff amounted to 19.6%, while in yet another state during 2000 it was 10.6%. One state MOE had the highest percentage in the year 2000: the salaries of its non- teaching staff amounted to 35.9% of the total salary bill. Since most of these non-teaching staff are civil servants, they will also receive retirement pensions. This means that the burden of paying them will continue for a long time even after they retire. But the presence of these people constrains capacity in other ways as well. It exerts pressure on office space and on facilities, it consumes management time, and it reduces the efficiency of everybody around since they circulate in the system without much to do and keep other people busy. 48 The Utilization and Efficiency of Staff The utilization of staff in the public sector generally is low. Much of the idle time results from the excessive number of staff. But there are also many other reasons. These include lack of the inputs required to do necessary work, difficult, if not harsh, physical conditions at work, inadequate remuneration and poor work ethic. Together, these factors provide powerful incentives to do little, or to engage in other income generating activities17. The utilization of non-teaching staff in the primary education system is not different. The consultants' reports provide a good indication of this situation, citing numerous observations of `idle time'. A list of examples, referring to each of the causes of under-utilization is included in Table 15. The Mix and Level of Skills in the System There are indications that the level of efficiency too is low. In other words, when staff are in office and are doing their work, they do not work efficiently: they take longer time than necessary to complete the tasks assigned to them and they do not meet reasonable standards for task completion. Four key factors contribute to this low efficiency: a low level of skills, poor job definitions, inappropriate methods and procedures, and a lack of incentives to perform well. No comprehensive and precise information is available on the level of knowledge and the mix of skills needed to run and manage the education system in Nigeria efficiently. However, the information gathered by the consultants, both in interviews and in documents, provides a general picture of the situation. The non-teaching work force is divided into two distinct groups: the minimally educated workers in Grade Levels 1 to 6, and the educated workers in Grade levels 7 to 17. The first group consists mostly of unskilled and semi-skilled workers. The second group consists mostly of skilled ­ but not highly skilled ­ technicians, professionals and managers. As can be seen in Table 16, a relatively high percentage of the staff in the second group, who are serving in ministries of education, have university education and academic degrees. In the six states where information was available about the education background of MOE non-teaching staff, close to 59.4% possess a B.A., B.Ed. or MA. In the SPEBs, the percentage is higher. In the five states where information was available 71.78 possess these degrees. In the LGEAs, the percentage of non-teaching staff with academic degrees is very low, standing at 12.7. All in all, information on the education background is available for a total of 3,098 persons working in the MOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs. Of these, 1149 persons, or 37.1% have an academic university education. Most of the staff holding these degrees studied teaching subjects and general education in Nigerian universities. A large percentage of them are professional teachers. They have not had international exposure and now that they are not teaching they do not have the necessary skills in many of areas over which they have responsibility. Of these areas, the most important ones are general management, financial management and policy analysis. Information technology too is an important area, but in this area the problem is not that the people are in place and they do not have the higher level skills; rather, the people are not even in place. Nevertheless, the fact that 37% of the non-teaching staff in the system have university education is an important capacity enhancing factor. These people have the necessary foundation and are 17(NAC, pp. 19-20). 49 trainable. It means that the potential for a much better performance is there and that training can make a difference. It is important to note, however, that there are great differences both among the MOEs, the SPEBs and the LGEA and within each group. The finding that SPEBs have a lower percentage of staff with academic degrees than the MOEs is surprising and needs verification. The finding that LGEAs have a very low percentage of staff with academic degrees is not surprising, but is very worrying. The daily management of the schools is in the hands of the LGEAs. With only 12.8% of the staff having a university education, LGEAs simply do not have the critical mass of minimally educated persons to lead and run their education systems. This was reflected, among others, in the responses that the consultants got at the LGEAs to their questions about vision, objectives and strategies. The average figure of 12.8% also hides very large differences among LGEAs. As can be seen in Table 16, the number of staff with academic degrees among the 11 LGEAs varies from 1 to 19. Four out of the 11 LGEAs have only one or two staff with an academic degree. This presents a great challenge to the local government education systems. It will be necessary to address this situation if the current performance of LGEAs is to improve; and until this is done, the scope for giving LGEAs additional powers in the context of decentralization is very limited. It is important also to emphasize that a shortage of skills does not necessarily mean shortage of people. There is a real shortage of people only in the information technology area. In most other areas there is a sufficient number of people and they have some level of skill, but the level of skill is not high enough. This is the case with pedagogical supervision and management. The main problem in the area of supervision is that the people do not have skills that are higher than the skills of those being supervised. In the area of general management, virtually all positions are filled. But as indicated earlier the managers lack management skills and experience. The information gathered in this study indicates that they need to display strategic thinking and lead better. They need to improve the way they plan and implement activities; they need to set objectives for their staff, to delegate a lot more responsibility and authority, and to monitor performance regularly. The lack of management skills is characteristic of all levels of management, but is true particularly for senior and top managers. This is also where it is most damaging, because leadership comes from the top. Two reasons why this lack of skills is true particularly of the highest grade-levels are a high concern in Nigeria for the `federal character' of the civil service [to be discussed below] and the role of politics. As indicated by the authors of the National Capacity Assessment, in the civil service "there was widespread political interference in decisions about appointments...[that] were based on serving largely the narrow political interest of office holders to the detriment of the larger public. Consequently, many decisions were not based on merit" [p.28]. Because of the political instability and turmoil in Nigeria, this political interference has also resulted in a very high turnover of managers at senior and top levels in the civil service. The authors of the report stated that frequent changes of chief executives are a common phenomenon in the civil service. Half of the respondents to the questionnaire conducted for their assessment confirmed that their CEO, had been changed between 6 to 10 times during the years 1989 to 1998. The main consequences of this turnover for the system have been 50 discontinuities in policy and implementation. For the CEOs it meant an inability to accumulate sufficient knowledge of the system and sufficient management experience. In the education sector the shortage of people with good technical, administrative and managerial skills may also be attributed, at least in part to political interference. Indeed, a number of consultants have sited this factor in their reports. But, there are three other important reasons. The first is an inadequate supply of highly skilled people in the technical areas, such as information technology. The second is the existing recruitment and selection policies that give prominence to the cultural and ethnic origin of candidates for employment in the public service, and the third is a poor design and implementation of training programs. As is typical in many culturally and ethnically divided federations, the government of Nigeria attaches much importance to the proportional sharing of all public sector posts among the different ethnic and cultural groups. It established a Federal Character Commission whose role it is to devise the formula for sharing, to monitor compliance with this formula, and to enforce it. The need to comply with the requirements of proportional sharing reduces the pool of skilled people from which candidates can be selected for jobs in the public service, including of course the education sector. It is not possible to compromise on the principle of proportional sharing. Thus, if there is a need to make compromises in the selection of candidates, the compromises are made at the expense of quality and skill. Training and Professional Development From a policy point of view, professional development and training are important activities in the Nigerian Civil Service. The Nigerian government has a National Policy on Human Resources Development and Utilization and two of the guidelines in this policy are that all senior staff should go on training at least once in two years, and that 10% of the personnel budget should be allocated to training activities. But there is much evidence that the policy has not been fully and effectively implemented in recent years (NCA, p.11). According to NCA "the 10 percent of budget earmarked for staff training was either not fully released or not used for the purpose for which it was set out..." (p.14). More than 70% of the civil service institutions sampled reported that they could not meet their training needs. The government has neglected training institutions in the country over time, and many of them have consequently badly deteriorated [p.18-19]. The documentary material collected by the consultants and the reports they wrote suggest that much of this is true for the education sector as well, but the picture is not as clear-cut. Table 17, displays budget allocations to staff development and training (as well as maintenance) in various years by MOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs as a percentage of total recurrent budget. Table 18 displays such allocations as a percentage of total personnel cost. As can be seen, the MOEs and LGEAs, for which there is information, allocate very small percentages of their budget to staff development and training. As far as the MOEs are concerned, percentage allocations as a proportion of total recurrent expenditure range between 0.18% to 1.40%, and as a proportion of total personnel cost between 0.2% to 5.9%. This is much below the policy guideline of 10%. The LGEAs are in a much worse situation. With respect to the proportion of staff development and training allocations as a percentage of total recurrent budget there is information on all LGEAs in two states: Kano and Rivers. With respect to the proportion of staff development and training allocation as a percentage of total personnel cost, there is information on all LGEAs in four 51 states: Kano, Rivers, Bayelsa and Ebonyi. Whatever the measure, the allocations are close to nothing. They range between 0.2% to 0.3% of the total personnel cost, and between 0.03% and 0.15% of the total recurrent expenditure. The SPEBs allocate more resources to training and development ­ of their own staff. Their allocation range between 0.74% and 6.71% as a proportion of recurrent expenditure and between 7.0% and 17.5% of the personnel cost. Again, the variations within each group are very large. It is clear from the reports that even though some training activities do take place at all levels, such activities are conducted in an ad hoc fashion and are not based on well-conceived staff development programs. In most cases, individuals who identify training opportunities register themselves and seek approval for them. Training is not planned proactively by the units and the organizations to which they belong, based on an analysis of the skills they need for the job. Training plans and programs often consist of lists of approved training activities - workshops, seminars and courses ­ that happen to be on offer by some organization at a given time. As indicated in the chapter on resource allocation, the people who benefit most from the training are those who are closer to the training budgets ­ mostly higher-level officials and, as seen in Tables 17 and 18, mostly in the SPEBs and the SMOEs, not in the LGEAs. It is quite clear that LGEAs get drastically smaller budgets for training. With the much lower level of academic education background to begin with, this weakens even further their capacity. Generally, unskilled and semi-skilled staff in the education system remain unskilled and semi-skilled. Task Definition and the Incentive to Perform Well Poor task definition is another important cause of low efficiency. The tasks of units, as well as individuals, are defined through job descriptions ­ called `Schedules of Duties' in Nigeria ­ and through performance objectives. No system of management by objectives is being practiced in the Nigerian education system. Organizations, units or individuals do not get periodical objectives, their performance on these objectives is not being systematically monitored and the performance appraisal system is not used to motivate them and give them the incentives to work well. Managers do provide certain information on the performance of their staff to personnel departments. However, the appraisal is confidential and the managers do not discuss it with the staff, or inform them of its content. Thus it cannot serve as a tool to clarify individual work objectives and to provide incentives for better performance. Schedules of duties do exist in many of the MOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs. In some cases they are unit-based, describing the duties of a whole unit. In others, they describe what individuals have to do on specific jobs. Their very existence is an important factor from a capacity point of view, because the lack of clear job definitions can be quite costly to all organizations. It causes considerable duplication and waste and makes it difficult to determine staffing requirements. However, the way the schedules of duties were developed and are being used leaves much to be desired. One of the reasons for this is that they are not written by professionals, but instead by the managers of the units, or the job-holders in question. Their quality differs greatly, depending on the level of understanding and the ability of the writers. Thus, one can find some very good schedules of duties and some very poor ones even within the same organizations. The consultants collected schedules of duties from almost all of the organizations interviewed. They were written in different formats, and indeed varied in quality, even within the same 52 organizations. Some were quite detailed, while others were very short. Some were typewritten, while others were hand-written. Some were being used and could be located easily, while others were long forgotten and could not be found. In too many cases the schedules were very superficial and open-ended. They listed areas of responsibility, but left too much room for interpretation, for gaps and overlaps. They did not refer to the overall objectives of the functions or jobs in question and, therefore, provided no guidance to the jobholders on what they need to achieve. An example to illustrate this point is included in Table 19, where the schedules of duties of the Personnel Director at one SPEB and the Heads of Personnel Department at the two LGEAs visited are included verbatim. A comment made by one of the consultants in his assessment report is quite illuminating in this regard. The consultant wrote that "the three members of the Board, whose functions are unclear, or insignificant, and whose schedules of duties are undefined, read visitation reports from senior officers in zones under them and make recommendations to the chairman." Finally, there are few, if any, incentives in the education system to encourage managers, as well as administrators, professional and technical staff to work efficiently. On the contrary, there are many factors that serve as disincentives, such as the low pay and delays in payment, poor working conditions, bureaucratic environment in which the system operates, and the political intervention in matters of education. A large number of seemingly unnecessary, out-of-date public service rules, regulations and arrangements surround operatives in the civil service and within it the education sector, inhibiting their ability to work efficiently. The very long chains of command, the very slow flow of information up and down these chains and the lack of delegation make it very difficult to move at any reasonable speed. In the current situation, one would not doubt the need to impose very strict rules for the handling of financial resources, for example, but these rules mean that all decision regarding expenditure take much longer than otherwise. All decisions on human resources management throughout the system and particularly human resources in the LGEAs take very long as well, not only because of the civil service rules, but also because the SPEBs are the ones who make decisions on LGEA staff. This situation creates a very strong sense of dependency in the minds of the people working in the sector ­ a sense that can only decrease motivation and increase apathy. Implications for Government Strategy, Capacity Building and Project Design There are no norms and standards for the deployment of non-teaching staff in the education system. The system is bloated with staff. One of the most important measures the government can take, therefore, is to establish such norms and standards and conduct analyses of work, as well as staffing reviews at the SPEBs, SMOEs and LGEAs. Based on such reviews, it will be necessary to turn these organizations into leaner, but more productive organizations. The analyses and reviews will be particularly important if the government decides to merge the SPEBs with the SMOEs. The action recommended here cannot be taken by the education sector alone. This is a civil service matter, involving possible downsizing. It will require severance schemes, compensation and voluntary retirement. Projects funded by donor agencies may include components to fund at least the work involved in developing standards for non-teaching staff in the education system and the work load analyses. 53 The government is talking about the need to revive its efforts at creating a professional civil service. This applies fully to the education sector, where the enhancement of skills is a critical matter. It is recommended further to include in all education projects skills' enhancement components that will provide funding for administrative, technical and managerial training for the staff of SPEBs and SMOEs. The projects should support also job analysis and skills' analysis, since these are required for the development of training programs. It would be a good idea for each participating SPEB and SOME to have a training and development program as part of the package of support it will get. There is also a need to strengthen the capacity of training institutions, such as state management development institutes. Of particular importance to the education sector is the National Institute for Education Planning and Administration (NIEPA), since it is one of the few institutions serving particularly this sector. It is clear from the information gathered so far that the management of human resources in the basic education system requires great improvement. Some of the capacity weaknesses in this area stem from general civil service practices that are beyond the control of the education system, but many practices are within the control of the system. The SPEBs, the SMOEs and the LGEAs can do a lot better, if they want to change the situation. It is recommended to conduct an in-depth study on the management of human resources in the education sector and identify the most important changes that are within the control of the sector and that can help improve it. Among all the organizations in the education sector the LGEAs are the most deprived in terms of human resources, yet have received the least support so far. A long-term plan to develop the human resources in LGEAs, through better recruitment, more training and an improvement in their physical conditions is imperative, if the government's decentralization plans are intended to devolve more powers to the local government level. But even if this is not the case, LGEAs require a huge investment in staff training and development, even in order to just improve what they are doing now. It will be very challenging to let LGEAs manage directly aid agency projects in their areas of jurisdiction at this time. Any such attempt will have to be accompanied by intensive support. Finally, the people who will have to implement proposed projects are likely to be deficient on skills and low on motivation. It will be useful to build into the design of projects both targeted training for the job to be done and some incentives for the delivery of project results on target and on time. Moreover, The poor management skills and the lack of accountability that prevail in the education sector introduce an element of risk into the implementation of projects. As was indicated earlier, one of the key measures to be taken in planning projects is to assign clear responsibility for each and every component, sub-component and task to an organization, a unit and a manager. It is recommended that all of the managers who have responsibility for such project elements, and all of the persons that are going to manage the overall project, receive project management training immediately upon the commencement of the project. F. MATERIAL RESOURCES IN THE EDUCATION SYSTEM The Critical Shortage of Material Resources 54 There is a great shortage of material resources in the education system. This includes not only `advanced' resources such as photocopiers and computers but also `regular' ones, such as office space, furniture and equipment, electricity, communications and transport. Some of the resources that are missing are basic e.g. a place to sit, electricity, telephones and vehicles. In the category of furniture and equipment, there are offices without enough desks, chairs, filing cabinets and typewriters. The shortage is the `mildest' in the SPEBs and slightly worse in the SMOEs, but it is critical in LGEAs. It is also different among the LGEAs themselves. All that can be said about this difference is that some LGEAs are `mildly critical' while others are `seriously critical'. As indicated earlier in the section on the allocation of resources, the shortage is not dealt with in an operationally sensible way within the organizations. If there are any computers, they will be found in the offices of high-ranking officers and perhaps used as word-processing equipment. They will not be used in Departments of Planning, Research and Statistics, or in Personnel Departments, where they can improve the recording, analysis and storage of data. If there are photocopiers, telephones and fax machines, they will be found mostly inside the offices of the highest-ranking officers, behind closed doors, where frequent and regular access to staff is not possible. If there are operational vehicles, they will be held by the highest-ranking officers often for their exclusive, including private, use ­ with little or no access to those who need to go to the field, to visit the LGEAs, or the schools. Here are a few examples from the consultants' reports: Generally speaking, the shortage is the result of inadequate funding. But the funding is inadequate, among others, because of the huge proliferation of states and LGAs. Between 1975 and 1996, the number of state governments increased from 19 to 36 and the number of LGAs increased from 113 to 776. Each new state required a new SPEB and each new LGA required a new LGEA. This affected not only the number of staff deployed in the system, but also the requirements for material resources. The revenues of the Nigerian government did not increase in equal proportions to the increases in the needs for material resources during the same period of time. They simply had to be shared among many more authorities, resulting in less for each. The Neglect of Existing Physical Resources There is no asset management of any sort in the state and local government education systems. Office furniture and equipment, as well as vehicles are not registered regularly in asset registers. Asset registers sometimes exist but, as reported, they are not in use. New equipment sometimes is not installed for a long time. As reported in one assessment report, computers supplied by the World Bank for use in field offices in 1988 and 2000, "are yet to be installed in some offices" and in one of the offices a functioning generator too is yet to be installed. There is very little, or no, preventive maintenance, and equipment that requires regular servicing, such as motor vehicles, photocopiers and fax machines, is frequently not being serviced. There is very inadequate maintenance and repair even when assets break down. When buildings and facilities deteriorate, only minor repairs are carried out ­ sometimes after months and years of neglect. When office equipment as well as vehicles break down, they are repaired only if and when money is available. Consequently, a very large percentage of the physical facilities are in need of repair and an equal percentage of all equipment is not operational. The reports written by the consultants contain numerous examples of this situation. The consultants wrote that they had 55 seen broken equipment lying around in the offices, and many broken vehicles outside the offices, that have been waiting for repair for months and even years. Much of the equipment and many of the vehicles have been abandoned. Although precise figures are not available from all the organizations visited, it is suspected that between one third and one half of all vehicles in the hands of SPEBs, SMOEs and LGEAs are out of commission. In many cases they are being `canibalized' to obtain spare parts for other vehicles. Several reasons account for this situation. Inadequate funding and poor logistics explain much of the lack of materials and spare parts. Table 17 presents figures on the maintenance budgets of six MOEs, six SPEBs and all LGEAs in two states, in several years. As can be seen in the table, the budget allocations to maintenance in MOEs and LGEAs are extremely small. In the MOEs, they range from 0.07% in Plateau in 2001 to 1.9% in Bayelsa in 2000. The average of the six figures is 0.68%. The 23 LGEAs in Rivers received an allocation of 0.05% in 2001, and the 44 LGEAs in Kano received 0.66%. The situation was better in the six SPEBs. They ranged from 1.2% in Bayelsa in 1998, or 3% in Plateau in 2000, to 7.05% in Kaduna in 2000. The average of the six SPEB figures was 4.55%. In many states, the policy is to repair not only buildings and physical facilities, but also vehicles and other equipment only through Ministries of Works, where there are "excruciating bureaucracies" according to the consultants. But in addition to these factors there is a poor maintenance culture and a general apathy to government properties throughout the public service [See NAC, p.20]. This is true of the education sector as well, as reported by the consultants who visited the 14 states. As one consultant reported, "the maintenance culture is so bad that some items have been out of service for years and many vehicles that need just a little effort to resuscitate them were abandoned. Senior staff prefer sending their cars to private garages than to official maintenance units." The Consequences of Poor Provision and Neglect This situation greatly impedes the capacity of the SMOEs, and the SPEBs to manage the primary education system, and the capacity of the LGEAs to deliver it. In a general way, poor working conditions create poor incentives to work efficiently, as indicated earlier. But the lack of certain material resources affects capacity also in two additional, mutually reinforcing ways: (a) it reduces the utilization and efficiency of existing human resources, and (b) at the same time it increases the need for even more human resources. The lack of telephones and fax machines, for example, affects the efficiency of communication not only within each organization, but also between different organizations. It takes longer to generate action ­ to deliver instructions from the SPEBs to the LGEAs, or from the LGEAs to the schools, and to receive messages and information back from them. It means also that staff in the LGEAs are not efficiently supervised by the SPEBs and that staff in the schools are not efficiently supervised by the LGEAs. This makes it easier for staff at the schools and the LGEAs to engage in private business and personal activities during working hours ­ a phenomenon that is reported to be very widespread. As seen in the chapter on human resources, without telephones it takes longer even to communicate and deliver instructions internally. The need for messengers increases and large numbers of messengers are employed to carry files from office to office within each organization and to carry correspondence from organization to organization, so as to facilitate communication. In one SMOE, the inability to communicate by phone "resulted in massive physical movement of 56 people from one office to another and from one organization to another resulting in a tremendous wastage of man hours." In one SPEB, 10% of the staff in head office are messengers. Other examples relate to the effect of the lack of physical facilities such as office space, desks and seats in LGEAs, and lack of equipment such as vehicles and typewriters, on the utilization and efficiency of staff. The examples portray staff sitting in very crowded offices and offices that have far fewer desks and seats than staff. They show clearly how the people who have nowhere to sit are not only doing little themselves, but are also disrupting the work of others. The examples describe offices where the number of typists is larger than the number of typewriters, and where the number of drivers is larger than the number of vehicles in running condition. With respect to the typewriters, this means that some typists are not working full time. With respect to the drivers, this means not only that the drivers are not fully utilized, but also that those who depend on transport for doing their job, such as inspectors who are supposed to visit the schools, are not fully utilized. In one State, inspectors go to the schools by bus. They are at least utilizing their time, but not in the most efficient way. From a management point of view, the most important resources that managers in the sector lack are the hardware, the software and the systems required not only to improve communications as discussed above, but also to use and manage information. Whether or not we classify information as a material resource is irrelevant. The important factor is that both the information and the hardware and software systems needed to collect, process, analyze and store it are by and large missing. The consultants' reports contain many examples of the lack of even the crudest form of information storage ­ archiving and filing facilities. In many LGEAs, there is no space even for the storage of current and active files, such as personnel files, let alone files that need to be kept for a relatively long time as records. Implications for Government strategy, capacity building and Project design The Nigerian government needs to formulate a strategy to address the extremely poor physical working conditions in education offices and the material-resources starved environment in which they are operating. One of the building blocks of such a strategy could be the development of what may be called Fundamental Office Environment Standards for SMOEs/SPEBs and LGEAs. With these standards as guidelines, each state can conduct a full survey of all of its facilities and adopt a policy that directs new capital investment resources into the meeting of these standards, as a matter of priority. Except for special circumstances that need to be well defined, no office that has already met the minimum standards should receive additional space and equipment before all offices have met the standards. The fundamental standards should be developed however only after policy issues relating to the division of labor in the sector have been resolved ­ particularly, after it is known whether or not the SPEBs are going to merge with the SMOEs. It is recommended that the aid organizations provide funds for the establishment of the standards as well as the conduct of the surveys by the participating states. It makes little sense for the Nigerian government, and for aid organizations, to continue investing in material resources for SPEBs, SMOEs and LGEAs until these organizations have adequate capacity to maintain the resources reasonably well. As a minimum, adequate capacity in this context requires organizational homes for maintenance in each organization, a realistic 57 maintenance policy and a realistic, earmarked budget. Just like it was necessary to guarantee at one time the payment of salaries to teachers by earmarking and by a deduction at source, it may be necessary to guarantee the maintenance of certain expensive assets, such as vehicles, computers and photocopiers, by a special arrangement. This is not a recommendation to let higher level organizations retain the maintenance money for lower level ones. But it is a recommendation to make sure that appropriate funds are allocated to maintenance and are not diverted for other uses. In projects that contain any component involving LGEAs, where these LGEAs themselves are to be responsible for certain operations, it is necessary to verify carefully what material resources will be required by them and ensure that the resources are available. 58 Annex 1 List of States and Local Government Authorities Included in the Study 1. STATES 2. LGEAS Bayelsa Yenagoa Kokokuma Borno Maiduguri Magumeri Ebonyi Abakaliki Ohaukwu FCT MUNICIPAL Imo ORLU Ikeduru Kano Nassarawa Gwarzo Kaduna Kaduna North Kajuru Katsina Katsina Batagarawa Lagos Ojo Kosofe Niger Chanchaga Lapai Magama Oyo Ibadan North Oluyole Plateau Jos North Qua'an Pan Rivers Khana Etche Taraba Zing Bali 59 60 1 ull all Military (a) of sgn of and materials schools ed Committee LGEA renovation adequacy ent teaching and Federal the and buildi the adequacy primary inform the of tod (b)d non (c)d enrolmd all in 96 Education repair school and equipment goo EAGL ary ary the No. recommen prim recommen teaching recommen ensure District 1. necess to 2. of staff 3. teaching 4. attendance 5.keep Decree to of ansfertr ofen itsni to 07 y non and estimates, according SA ng, and levels allowances 01-06 onthlm ees LGE nistrationim discipli otion posti and grade annual and level schools prom teaching in of Board salaries 93 5. ady nt,e ary ntm otion recommendations on of grade staff the oft Committ 19 1 n of to-da-y jurisdiction ission accounts to prim prom on of appoi kingam SPEB above enmy pa 1.da the 2. and staff area 3. the discipline teaching and 4.subm annual returns 5. Table ducatioE Government ary District ,tnemt fo staff e of transfer ovided State abov ntemy pr and nds ndasA prim and fu SPEB of State appoin discipline non-teaching 07l 4. deplod inter-state of Federal effective the and ent an LGE in and leve ang both up Bs, nagementam otion including recruitment, grade from postin it SPE 1. schools 2. prom teaching on 3. staff 4.disbursem to resources 5.setting BEC,U in for ation the FCT leb with ai C the allocate theh , NPEC/ of mumniim Primary the a of wit educ on and and sponsored education for ent Niger advise responsi in include and National SPEBs consultation plan will NPEC/UBE the primary arym nd...from ation Nigeria of into pri the Fu theot agencyy Educationyram accordance Governments after Functions 3. Government hout ofg Government in erstam educ plans an Government Pri State to ula... the The prescribe inquire receive fund collate, the 1. standards throug 2. Federal fundin Nigeria 3. Education Federal the and Federal Special projects form 4. all periodic balanced...developm primary 4(a) 2 area the in problems educational of the to on on all tos all of rtso lly to school schools and on step rep duringy staff ent area and feedback staff distributi its ary otion running reactionss SPEBs especia education all in primary teaching area prim all to and equipm general of infrastructure asonablere all prom theni regular people' theot authorit ear,y the non ng itsni and schools and enrolment in ng on educationtne annualehtg all of and als full schools ulating ittees benefits dertaking ovidi acquisition stim pr SPEB vernm uress go ensurin rendered preceding supervisi mm and 6. materi primary 7.un maintenance buildings 8.taking ensure attendance 9. participation primary 10. the to mea 11. are activities the teaching 12. co of on of it non- of staff e ers ng uny of reports hoolscs rvees of to matt capital and and servic auditi re-absorpti funding of Governments annual pervisor and newg ainingrt teaching and allowances non-teaching atht headsyb dnaslainom leave vacation service... su appointed ent al,v of of with annualg staff ment ands and schemes Stateyb dertakin on up them un appro assess rendered teachers functional 6.retirem teachers 7. project 8. retraining teaching 9. salarie teaching based drawn 10.ensuring are on under testigniraperp.11 es annual dealing ensurin certificat 12. including 13. accounts iny of nit ary ish adequate national and arym portu prim publ pri State and op include in to basic and each in equal ation will the syllabusd instruction use ze ry relating Nigeria for educ that an plans inear Nigeria analy in regularatuo audit in ngi the necessa als ation collate, carry Federation proposals primary Nigeria 4(b) `ensuring curriculum other materi schools 5. inform education 6. personnel the 3 sA C-SPEBs-LGE NPEC-UBE of Functions the @Nigeria Table 2 The Organizational Units of a Typical SPEBS and the Functions of Each Unit Unit Functions Executive Chairman Overall responsibility for management, supervision and quality in all primary schools Appoint, post, promote, transfer, dismiss, discipline all teaching and non-teaching staff GL 07 and above Draw up schemes of service, including provision of vehicles, housing loans for staff Assess and fund salaries and allowances Disburse funds provided from Federal and state sources to local authorities Prepare annual estimates and establishment proposals and ensure annual auditing of accounts Secretary to the Board Coordinate heads of departments Prepare daily briefs for the executive chairman Follow up on decisions of the Board Directly responsible for coordinating the public relations unit of the Board Help the Board to formulate administrative guidelines Permanent Members of the Chair committees of the Board Board Sensitize public opinion on education; obtain public reaction on government policies & programs Act for the Executive Chairman Responsible for general supervision of schools in designated LGEAs: projects, operation of LGEAs and district Committees and schools, performance of officers Internal Audit Unit Check, verify and audit: payment of salaries and other expenses, revenue, stores Monitoring & Evaluation Unit Monitor & evaluate the performance of each Education Secretary and key officers of LGEAs Ensure proper implementation of approved budgets and policy Ensure quality control of primary education Monitor performance of school headmasters and teachers Personnel Management Monitor the activities of LGEA personnel management units All HR functions with respect to staff of the SPEB Staff development and training Staff welfare and medicals Industrial relations Office accommodation for staff at the SPEB Office cleaning Planing, Research & Statistics (a) Statistics & Records Unit Collection, organization & up-dating of educational data (b) Planning & Research Unit Responsible for academic planning, preparation of rolling plans Responsible for physical planning; annual budgets for capital projects Research related to improvement of curriculum contents, books development and teaching Establishment, maintenance and supervision of library service Monitoring of each development plan (c) Land Matters Unit Land acquisition and control for new schools development (d) Works Unit Setting up and control of tender board secretariat Implementation 6. SCHOOL SERVICES (a) Inspection Section School inspection & supervision (b) Curriculum Unit Curriculum development Training ­ seminars, workshops External examinations (c) Special Services Section Guidance & counseling Special education Nomadic education (d) Islamic Studies Section Islamic activities Finance & Supplies LGEA/SPEB accounts: salaries and other Cash management Stores Transport: control, fueling, maintenance of all vehicles; supervision of drivers Procurement of supplies Table 3 X State Aspirations in Primary Education "The Committee identified the following aspirations to be pursued by X state Government in Primary Education. 1. To produce an egalitarian and self-reliant society; 2. To produce literate society in both Western and Islamic Education; 3. To reduce the number of school age children roaming the streets, hawking, instead of attending Primary Schools 4. To ensure that the majority of school age children about 80% are attending primary school in the next three years 5. To produce good candidates for admission into post primary institutions and thereby setting sound foundation for secondary education; 6. To give qualitative primary education without sacrificing quality for our children to gain admission into Federal Government Unity Schools and cope up with students from other parts of the country; 7. To have 100% transition from primary to Junior Secondary level; 8. To incorporate the Islamiyya and Koranic schools with primary education; 9. To incorporate koranic schools with western type education, the committee observed the existence of Model Integrated Schools in X Village of X Local government Area. The school is a simple Koranic boarding institution. It provides Koranic instruction like Koranic schools in the area, but in addition, the pupils receive lessons in western education, i.e reading, writing and arithmetic. The pupils do not go for begging (bara) instead, on market days of the village, the pupils engage in petty trading and the money realised was used to buy food stuff for the on-coming week. During the wet seasons, the bigger students are employed on other people's farms as labourers, the money they get is used by the school for their up- keep." Table 4 State X: Position Paper on the Work Plan for the Ministry of Education for the Year 2001 Our Vision: 1. The vision of the ministry of Education is to be the catalyst for a fair, just and equitable society through the all round education of the nation's future leaders in a conducive, congenial and friendly teaching and learning environment in all (public) schools in the State. 2. The Ministry of Education Mission Statement To provide free and qualitative education that will empower the child to grow into an effective and efficient citizen in an ever-changing world and facilitate return of schools to their former owners. 2. Strategies: The strategies employed to actualize the above stated objectives* are: (i) Provision of free and qualitative education (ii) Return of schools to their former owners The specific actions to be carried out in providing free and qualitative education include: (a) Massive rehabilitation of schools.... (b) Speedy execution of the millenium classroom projects... (c) Supply of furniture, fixtures and fittings for teachers and pupils/students (d) Total quality control (management) to ensure provision of qualitative education (e) Maintenance of a high level of discipline in the education sector (f) Fencing of schools (g) Prompt conduct of examinations and release of results (h) Supply of science materials (i) Constitution of all councils and boards (j) Assurance of autonomy of all higher institutions (k) Commencement and completion (where possible) of capital projects of all parastatals; and (l) Maintenance of industrial peace and harmony in the education sector * No objectives were stated above. Rather, this was preceded by a list of `Programs and Activities' which included a description of the responsibilities of each department in the Ministry. Table 5 The Vision and Strategies of State Y The vision of the Y State MOE, though not written, was stated as "making education accessible and affordable to everybody in the state to create a literate populace". The strategy as stated in the state's Blueprint on Education (1999-2001) is as follows: · Staff training and development · Provision of inspectorate services · Establishment of teaching aid production centers · Rehabilitation of schools · Procurement of instructional materials · Enrolment and retention drive campaign · Construction of new schools and additional classrooms · Provision of furniture · Furnishing of libraries at LGEA headquarters · Provision of sports and related activities · Construction of staff houses and inspectors offices, and · Introduction of a regular newsletter Table 6 Selected Verbal Statements of Vision Made by Executive Chairmen of LGEAs 1. "to raise the level of functional literacy to greater heights" 2. "to ensure that all facilities that would enable primary school children to have a good education are in place" 3. "to ensure that no child roams the streets" 4. "to maintain facilities and mobilize communities to increase enrolment" 5. "to make qualitative and quantitative basic education accessible to all children of the State" 6. "to ensure adherence to FMOE objectives" 7. "to produce honest, sincere, loyal and acceptable members of society, who will be useful to themselves and to the community..." Table 7 Number of Staff within Selected MOEs, SPEBs, and LGEAs ­ by Type of Agency and Function Agency Name Total (a) (b) (c) (d) (a)+ (a) + Type No. of Personnel School PRS Finance (d) (c) + Staff Services Supplies (d) at HQ Admin. MOEs Ebonyi 118 68 15 6 29 97 103 Katsina 390 154 67 28 38 192 220 Lagos 432 111 125 23 52 163 186 Plateau 185 39 89 8 Rivers 281 93 187 43 43 136 179 Borno 361 130 35 24 62 192 216 Kaduna 242 84 41 132 216 Total 2,009 679 559 132 356 1,035 1,167 MOE Averages 287 97 80 19 59 172 195 Average Percentages of Total 33.8 27.9 6.6 20.6 59.9 67.9 SPEBs Ebonyi 168 42 36 24 23 65 89 Kano 264 22 21 38 Katsina 118 50 17 16 17 67 83 Rivers 147 65 16 17 12 96 113 Taraba 168 69 39 17 27 96 113 Imo 217 82 37 16 37 119 135 Kaduna 194 48 47 23 72 120 143 Total 1,276 356 214 134 188 544 657 SPEB Averages 182 59 31 19 31 91 103 Average Percentages of Total 34.9 18.9 11.2 18.3 53.8 60.9 LGEAs Abakaliki 62 20 6 18 18 38 56 Ohaukwu 51 17 2 15 14 31 46 Katsina N. 117 21 8 11 32 Batagarawa 106 15 8 9 24 Jos North 90 22 29 18 23 45 63 Qua'an Pan 118 35 14 34 24 59 93 ETCHE 91 35 21 13 16 51 64 ZING 79 23 16 18 22 45 63 BALI 73 17 20 9 19 36 45 Ikeduru 71 36 10 6 19 55 61 Kaduna N. 79 36 17 14 12 48 62 KAJURU 71 19 24 16 12 31 47 Total 1,008 296 175 161 199 495 600 LGEA Averages 84 25 15 16 17 41 60 Average Percentages of Total 29.8 17.9 19.0 20.2 48.8 71.4 Table 8 Personnel and PRS Staff in MOEs, SPEBs and LGEAs as a Percentage of Total HQ Staff Type of State/Local Total No. Staff in Personnel Staff in PRS Agency Government of HQ Staff Number Percentage Number Percentage MOE Borno 361 130 36.0 24 6.6 Ebonyi 118 68 57.6 6 5.1 Kaduna 242 84 34.7 24 9.9 Katsina 433 154 35.6 - - Lagos 432 111 25.7 23 5.3 Plateau 185 39 21.1 8 4.3 Rivers 281 93 33.1 43 15.3 Taraba 130 86 66.2 24 18.4 Total* 2,182 765 35.1 152 7.0 SPEB Ebonyi 168 42 25.0 24 14.3 FCT 196 Imo 217 82 37.8 16 7.4 Kano 264 105 39.8 40 15.2 Kaduna 194 48 24.7 23 11.9 Katsina 118 50 42.4 16 13.6 Oyo 181 100 55.2 20 11.0 Rivers 147 65 44.2 17 11.6 Taraba 168 69 41.1 17 10.1 Total 1,653 561 33.9 173 10.5 LGEAs Abakaliki 62 20 33.3 18 29.0 Ohaukwu 51 17 33.3 15 29.4 Katsina 118 21 17.8 - - Batagarawa 106 15 14.2 - - Jos North 90 22 24.4 18 20.0 Qua'an 118 35 29.7 34 28.8 Apan KHANA 93 29 31.2 6 6.5 ETCHE 91 35 38.5 13 14.3 ZING 73 17 23.3 18 24.6 BALI - 19 - 9 - Kaduna N. 79 36 45.6 14 17.7 Kajuru 71 19 26.8 16 22.5 Ikeduru 71 36 50.7 6 8.4 FTC/Muni 288 70 24.3 12 4.2 Total 1,311 391 29.8 179 13.7 Table 9 7. EXCERPTS FROM INTERNALAND EXTERNALAUDIT REPORTS The following excerpts from the assessment reports illustrate the point that the control mechanisms are not being used: " At the heart of efficient financial management is the system of expenditure control. In this sector, the SMOE appeared to have failed badly. There was no single external auditors' report of its account. The claim that the account was annually audited by the Department of State Auditor-General could not be substantiated" "All the organizations within the sector appeared to have built-in mechanisms for expenditure control... Each organization had an internal auditor attached to the office of the chief executive. Each said it had annual financial reports, though these were not made available even on request...audit reports for any of the organizations could not be made available..." "There are however no audited accounts for recent years. In fact, none was available for inspection, even if dated... Thoug respondents in the ministry claim that procurements are sometimes done by tendering, no document was readily available substantiate this claim. Moreover, based on responses to other questions, it would appear that the tendering system is not properly followed." "The FMOE has in place mechanism for controlling expenditure, as evidenced by the existence of an Internal Audit Unit... There was no immediate evidence to suggest that the unit does not control expenditure well...[however,] it was not possibl obtain a recent audited account of the Ministry. Though respondents in the Finance and Supplies Department claim that procurement is through tendering, no document was immediately available to substantiate this claim." The following excerpts taken from internal and external audit reports that the consultants did receive illustrate the point that the rules and procedures are not always being followed, and the types of deviations from them: "Evidence that accounts were audited both internally and externally abound... Yet all the reports, without exception, carry rather disturbing reports of `unaccounted for' funds, misappropriation and sometimes, outright embezzlement. There were indications that audit queries were answered and that in cases where officers have been charged, that such officers have refunded or paid in charged sums of money." Books of accounts are still a set of incomplete records. The modern Kalamzoo Accounting Books bought in 1995 at a cost o 1.5m are still unutilized"; records like Debtors Ledger, Creditors' Ledger, Staff Advances Ledger, Cheque Issuing Register Fixed Asset Register were neither kept, nor updated." (SPEB external auditors' report 1999) "The cashier has not been balancing his books of accounts at appropriate time, which made it difficult for the Audit Unit to check; many transactions carried out by the Authority are carried out without proper documentation; supplies are being m to outsiders not on local purchase order, but on proposal using one of the staff; the internal audit unit observes with disma that despite the warning given to store keepers not to receive supplies without calling the internal audit unit to come and inspect and certify the goods before they are received falls on deaf ears and makes it difficult to check the store...because their ledgers are not orderly" (LGEA, internal audit unit 2000 and 2001) "It was reported that revenue collection in the Inspectorate Department was done without issuing official Revenue Collecto Receipts to the Payer..." (MOE external auditors report, 2000) "The deposit ledger for deducting PAYE, NUT, Retention money, etc. is not in operation; impres cash book not in operation, Register for utility services (NITEL, NEPA, WRECA) not in operatio logbook for drivers in HQ and the LGEAs not in operation; loan repayment register not availabl (SPEB, internal audit report 2000) of per 1.9 4.2 6.2 4.1 2.7 No. SPEB and LGEA 1000 Staff Students of per 7.5 28.5 31.6 25.9 15.0 24.4 8.1 No. SPEB and 100 LGEA Staff Teachers of per 1.1 2.4 2.3 7.4 2.4 0.78 No. SPEB and LGEA Staff School 8.5 6.0 3.5 5.6 5.5 6.4 emst of HQ Field per 13.0 8.0 10.3 13.8 10.5 Sysno No. SPEB and Staff LGEA ati Educ Themg of at 777 738? icin No. and HQs 704,5 403,4 782,4 143,2 587,2 121,1 Field imary Pr rveS Staff Staff Total SPEB LGEA and Together 10e aff blaT Statee St at th ofse ngihc No. 861 217 196 462 811 502 139 181 432 741 861 Staff SPEB and Field Staff HQ Siz n-Tea Total of the theot dtea Noehtdna No. of 405,049 707,760 841,569 692,644 504,822 872,148 675,304 414,051 Total Students 1,288,997 Rel tios Ra of Total No. 10,343 14,428 18,010 19,022 13,655 16,475 Teachers ?087,61 23,716 15,594 11,436 13,851 of 217 022,1 226,1 072,2 248,1 319 307,1 841,1 624,1 Total No. Schools of 31 72 32 44 43 02 52 33 71 32 61 Total No. LGEAs State iynobE o Im anudaK onaK anistaK sogaL regiN oyO uaetalP sreviR abaraT 0 5 9 47 43 20 65 1 20 34 58 8 2 3 0 24 42 11 nts 001, of. LGEA ff No Stude per Sta 12. 32. 45. 0. 2. 8. nts 18 05. 23 11 04. 42. 98. 01. of. per No LGEA Staff 0001 Stude ff 29. 39. 5. 6. 1. 3. 8. 6. 9. 7. 3. 7. 7. 3. 4. Them Sta 29 50 20 11 11 55 97. 44 63 42 19 34 25 70 65. ingciv of. 100 No LGEA per Teachers Ser afftS ngih EAGL 21. 31. 09. 62. 43. 33. 21. 25. 80. 63. 18. 04. 43. 43. 72. of per No. Staff School Teac- 8 7 6 8 3 2 9 5 8 6 1 4 8 Non f 37 99 31 15 13 12 20 59 59 35 61 34 19 19 19 18 69 af the St d an of. Field Nol LGEA emst and ta Sys To theta HQ Offices of. 54,3 74,0 47,3 54,8 98,6 36,1 16,0 39,1 02,7 20,5 00,0 00,0 LGEA Nol nts 34 43 42 32 18 15 52 86 82 21 96 10 the ta ofse To Stude Siz . 9 7 8 1 9 4 4 1 4 9 8 7 0 6 83 the Nol 051, 071, 31 876 12,1 721, 061, 17,1 487 669 328 99 54 76 26 691, 17 to ta dtea To of Teachers Rel . s 16 67 53 16 04 83 8 3 2 16 11 11 98 67 78 75 75 63 32 Nol ool Ratios taoT Sch of AEGL ikialkabA u kwuahO anistaK awaragataB n EF E JO O OSO K hrtoNsoJ Apana'auQ G eri HANA TCH IN ALI K E Z B awarassaN orzawG aoganeY amukokoK irugudia guma M M 11 i ony anis uaeat rse o Table State Eb Kat Lagos Pl Riv Taraba Kan asleyaB onroB 1 2 9 8 6 9 2 9 33 21 85 48 26 30 891, 831, 03. 74. 21. 02. 83. 23. 50. 50. of 169 MOE No. Staff Students per 7. 20 39. 39. 57. 7. 10 95. 4. 12 151. 03. of per 5.9 No. MOE 1000 Staff Students 64. 01. 11. 62. 21. 03. 70. 40. emstsyS of per 38.0 66.0 no No. MOE 100 atic Staff Teachers 8 28 55 17 5 10 28 87 86 82 32 Eduy Themg of per 4.5 0.5 ar icin School cond rveS No. MOE Staff Se 12e aff St of 720 blaT State the and 1,101 the ngihc 205? No. at 1,385 Offices 82,2 74,0 97,1 14,0 02,7 02,0 59,9 11,3 ofse MOE HQ n-Tea Total Staff Field 18 15 90 40 20 21 52 42 Siz the to Noehtdna No. of 0 39,1 985 7 7 76 391, 667 1 311, 745 0 2 dtea 121,987 851, 77 Total Students Rel of Ratios 1,925 2,146 2,787 06 35 46 14 96 62 89 46 Total No. 18,672? Teachers No. 231 524 712 of RLU u agah Total Schools Secondary eol UNICIPAL O M urdekI .NanudaK AJURU APAI K anchC L .NnadabI uylO State iynobE anistaK sogaL uaetalP o anu r ge o FCT Im Kad Ni Oy 467 222 136 348 2.1 4.5 7.3 3.0 9.0 41.0 3.4 9.1 0.1 8.2 7.2 468 130 654 5,407 1,092 242,916 89,029 358,105 1,200,000 5,165 13,260 16,833 542 921 132 383 sreviR abaraT onaK anudaK oyO Table 13 Staff in Grade Levels 1 to 6 as a Percentage of Total Non-Teaching Staff in SPEBs and MOEs HQ Type of Agency Name Total No. of HQ Total No. of Staff Percentage Staff Grade 1 - 6 of Staff Grade 1 - 6 MOE Ebonyi 117 59 50.4 Katsina 689 416 60.4 Lagos 205 57 27.8 Plateau * 4316 1143 26.4 Rivers 468 142 30.3 Taraba 130 54 41.5 Total* 1,609 728 45.2 SPEB Ebonyi 119 60 50.4 FCT 197 125 63.5 Katsina 118 56 47.5 Lagos NA NA NA Plateau 234 122 52.1 Rivers 147 73 49.6 Taraba 168 44 26.1 NPEC HQ + 10 442 226 51.1 Zonal Offices Total** 983 480 48.8 * This figure refers to HQ, as well as field staff and staff at the schools. The total of 1,609 does not include it. ** The total does not include NPEC and its Zonal offices. Table 14 Lagos Local Education Districts Grade Level 1 to 6 as a Proportion of Total Staff in 1999 LED Name Total No. of Staff No. of Staff in GL 1-6 Agege 26 8 Ajeromi Ifeldun 14 5 Alimoso 37 4 Amuwo-Odofin 19 7 Apapa 16 3 Badagry 27 12 Epe 30 15 Eti-Osa 16 4 Ibeju-Lekki 25 15 Ifako/ljaye 28 7 Ikorodu 33 10 Lagos Island 24 8 Ikeja 27 4 Kosofe 27 9 Mushin 33 9 Ojo 22 8 Oshodi/Isobo 20 7 Somolu 19 5 Surulere 30 10 Total 446 150 % 100.00 33.6 Table 15 Examples of Under-Utilization of Staff in SPEBs, SMOEs and LGEAs · "The inspectorate is not fully utilized due to lack of logistics." · "Staff working in local government areas distant from H.Q. were not fully employed either because they could not be effectively supervised or because necessary logistics and materials did not reach them" · "without electricity and the harsh weather, many valuable man hours are lost per day as staffers rarely sit to work in their offices after the noon prayers" · "In Nassarawa, while there is ample office space, there were some junior unskilled staff who sat under the shade of trees, apparently no designated office for them" · The "rural teacher is more of a farmer and the urban teacher is more of a trader. Administrators rarely work at full utilization." · "Staff members [in this LGEA] simply stroll in and out of office to neighboring markets" · "The work environment is lax. Offices were not open until close to 10 a.m., and this is general practice..." · "There are too many staff floating around the offices apparently doing nothing" · "Many junior staff appear not to be doing anything" · "Officers of higher rank are assigned trivial functions, most of which are performed only occasionally. Many officers carry out some functions, differing only in locale... Thus, job holders may be doing their jobs, but have so little to do it is inconsequential whether they are on their seats or not..." · "According to some of the interviewees [at UBEC] there is still the tendency to have cadres of staff that are not really needed, but are there due to political considerations." ci 34 4 37 43 62 6 6 B.Ed GRAND LAT medacA 55 4 52 1 9 121 450 94 24 1 16 8 BA/ MA TO 89 92 74 39 26 18 42 22 11. No. Persons omhw 346 597 894 257 is Total of for Data Available - ation ci 12 4 4 10 6 36 ducE sityrevi medacA B.Ed 91 4 4 1 01 9 51 2 1 2 8 57 BA/ MA Un LGEA ademic LGEAs latoT 211 98 29 47 58 39 16 931 18 71 22 568 Staff Ac 11 10. a with and 16e aff e St gn kuma blaT SPEBs maN N. Jos Qua'An- Pan Zi Bali Khana Etche Abakiliki Katsina Batagarw aoganeY Kolo Total aching and ci 22 18 1 NA NA AN 11 52 Non-Te of MOEs8 SPEB medacA 40.9 B.Ed 36 23 22 NA NA 22 AN 24 127 18.5 In BA/ MA 9. 234 168 104 NA NA 118 AN 62 686 Percentage Total Staff 100.00 and ci AN 51 24 95 61 AN 6 71 191 28.6 B.Ed Number MOE medacA AN 52 98 054 43 AN 41 65 866 BA/ MA 81.34 8. AN 031 804 498 26 AN 52 842 Total Staff 745,1 00.001 E STAT Plateau Taraba Rivers Lagos Ebonyi Katsina Bayelsa Kaduna Total % 279 9.0 870 28.1 tne % 1.40 0.69 0.99 0.18 0.20 0.21 0.10 0.99 0.26 0.55 3,098 100.00 sA 4.1 LGEdna mpoleveDffatS N in 166,670 2,000,000 1,850,000 4,850,000 6,750,000 3,000,000 4,330,000 1,000,000 3,000,000 Amount SPEBs 8.67 % 1.90 0.95 0.49 0.09 0.32 0.40 0.22 0.07 1.69 0.68 00.001 MOEs,ta e N pmentloeveDf in Maintenanc 000,096,2 000,065,2 000,063,2 000,023,3 000,000,5 004,777,7 000,000,2 000,000,2 000,001,1 17e af % % blaT Stdna Amount nce nae int Recurrent Ma 139,945,000 268,633,480 049,143,684 923,341,982 65,075,774 to Expenditure 3,699,112,320 1,520,536,895 1,998,191,425 3,041,541,694 Total cationso Allt Year 0002 9991 0002 0002 0002 1002 0002 1002 0002 dge Bu oved EO EO EO EO EO EO EO EO EO Appr M M M M M M M M M Agency B LE State SA 12. AY Ebonyi Imo Kaduna Plateau Rivers Average 0.74 6.71 4.03 4.88 5.38 2.04 0.92 3.11 3.47 0.15 0.03 0.09 1,423,400 5,000,000 5,000,000 4,500,000 9,000,000 3,500,000 1,508,345 6,000,000 2,939,533 1,228,336 1.20 5.40 3.59 7.05 6.30 5.00 3.00 4.90 4.55 0.66 0.05 0.35 087,772,2 000,000,4 000,005,4 000,005,6 000,005,01 000,005,8 627,388,4 000,006,11 12,435,774 2,400,000 192,711,886 74,472,579 123,768,087 92,153,611 166,986,267 171,331,128 162,526,941 236,316,732 1,873,810,021 4,885,508,916 8991 0002 1002 0002 1002 0002 0002 1002 2000 2001 BEPS BEPS BEPS BEPS BEPS BEPS BEPS BEPS LGEAs LGEAs All All E VERAG Bayelsa Imo Kaduna Kano Plateau Rivers A Kano Rivers Average Table 18 Budget Allocations to Staff Development and Training as a Percentage of Total Personnel Cost State Agency YEAR Total Allocation to Allocation as Personnel Staff a Percentage Cost Development of Total Cost and Training Bayelsa MOE 1999 11,692,330 700,000 5.9 Ebonyi 1999 12,095,460 1,850,000 15.3 Imo 2001 3,511,251,770 49,620,000 1.4 Kaduna 2000 1,014,302,518 3,000,000 0.3 2001 1,120,908,520 4,330,000 0.4 2002 1,968,205,800 10,300,000 0.5 Plateau 2000 508,115,122 1,000,000 0.2 Rivers 2000 60,321,444 166,670 0.3 2001 172,331,835 5,000,000 2.9 Average Ebonyi SPEB 2001 61,600,000 5,000,000 8.1 Imo 2000 30,172,579 5,000,000 16.5 2001 71,068,087 5,000,000 7.0 Kaduna 2000 25,603,611 4,500,000 17.5 2001 53,236,267 9,000,000 16.9 Kano 2000 32,538,822 3,500,000 10.8 Rivers 2001 46,431,151 6,000,000 12.9 AVERAGE Bayelsa All 1998 164,327,195 1,423,000 0.9 Ebonyi LGEAs 2001 136,434,463 328,824 0.2 Kano 2000 1,795,479,394 2,939,533 0.2 Rivers 2001 400,225,164 1,228,336 0.3 Average ment ttersam Depart E.S. by reports Personnel tablishment ateau and Pl of Es assigned in Affairs and are duty Levels Head­2 ntem state welf leave ploy other EA A Inter Personnel Staff Em Discipline Transfer Entertainment annual Any LG LGE (a) (b)Communication (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) (h) (i) (j) and ment ni nt,e be and of and n SPEB for ofe rof at nte School ction may for Depart of ntemy appointm teaching training non-teaching of service that mentst Secretaryn conju ities of of LGA Secretary 19e governm deplod andtn schempu and in ofs staff ers ntsemt par blaT De activ ang heads duties matt the Personnel depar of Department staff of of Educatio drawing preparation other to recruitment, applications/request retireme approval teaching ntale disciplining the certificate leave Education nning of for for staff ofg inter-locald forg teachers other of for both partm non-teaching the Management Head­1 ruy and an with postinrof of managing nda de with with anygin for and operations by A onnels Responsible -daot- otion other Processing Processin Liasing Processin Processing Responsible Responsible onialsm Dealing Liasing Perform LGE (a) day (b) prom non-teaching (c) inter-state transfers (d) Supervision teachers (e) reabsorption (f) retraining staff (g) service with (h) testi teaching (i) (j) effective (k) delegated Per for on 06- of GL staff Duties on mmittee of Primary of nnel Board meetings the committees Secretary the Co onialsm to State nte staff at the the Perso of service testi in by Schedules of ofyr Board leave mmitteeoC ducationE of ittee and related rs ctor the Secreta nte ons requisitions es of Establishment all comm Boards tteam Board assigned Dire­ to Departmeht nte of annual of of on of tiona the conditi governm budget Tender on duties matters Disciplinary fo certificatfo gema SPEB adviser erb with training)g erb erb Man other otion/ Local deals Chief Supervisi Approval Represent the Mem Authorization Mem Mem Issuance Coordinati Any (a) personnel (b) (c) 12 (d) Prom at (e) (that includin (f) (g) (h) (i) service (j) Schools (k) Bibliography List of Papers and Reports 1. Nicholas Stern, Visit to Nigeria (July 1-5): Assessing the Transition, Internal Memorandum, dated July 8, 2002. 2. Michael Stevens, Nigeria BTOR, dated February 27, 2002 3. Federal Republic of Nigeria, Education for All [EFA] in Nigeria, Country Report on EFA Since Dakar and National Plan of Action, august 2001 4. Jose B. Sokol, Managing the Budget with Volatile Resources, A Case Study of Nigeria, WBI Workshop on "Parliament and the Budget Cycle", Abuja, December 13, 2001. 5. World Bank, Public Expenditure Review, National Report for Nigeria, April 1998 6. Keith Hinchliffe, Public Expenditure on Education: Issues, Estimates, and Some Implications, World Bank, July 2002 7. Federal Republic of Nigeria & World Bank, Nigeria ­ National Capacity Assessment, October, 1999. 8. UNESCO, The State of Education in Nigeria, Lagos, December 1998