Since the beginning of last year, cost of things, especially education, has significantly risen.  Families are complaining of how difficult it is to pay their children’s school fees at every level of education and feed them.
The most worrisome level is the primary, which is the basic as well as part of the secondary, that is the upper basic, including the secondary school. The basic is the foundation of every educational level so it deserves serious attention.
Students in the universities are also complaining of how expensive meals are on campus. A plate of food which costs between N350 and N400 cannot go anywhere when consumed.
You will note that for your child to acquire quality education, one has to spend a lot of money in private schools. This is because some parents believe that enough is not done in public schools.
Training a child in the secondary school has become very expensive because this is the level that determines whether the child will further his or her education or not. This is a level, where the child sits for the two major external examinations, the West African School Certificate  Examination (WASCE) and the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) before proceeding to the university.
Many believe that their children cannot get what they want in public schools so they prefer to send their wards to private schools. Some of them charge as high as N1million. There are private schools that charge between N200,000 and N250,000 and provide boarding facilities.
Since there are a few public boarding schools in Nigeria, a lot of private individuals who know the importance of boarding schools decided to establish such schools. Parents who fall within such category surely want value for their money.
When you visit some public schools, the kind of facilities available in private schools are not there. Some public schools preparing students for SSCE and UTME do not have laboratory facilities for science students. Science teachers are not there. They prefer to spend the money where their children will get the best.
One can say that being a day-student is cheaper whether in the public or private schools, but the boarding system gives room for more serious academic work as well as taking care of oneself when one finally settles down in life.
Another disturbing issue is that some of the mission schools are very expensive. There is a mission in Port Harcourt that established schools and made it free. The church also sponsors undergraduates to study overseas free. If others cannot make it free, they should, at least, subsidise the fees for the average parents and their children to partake.
In the case of kindergarten and primary, some parents who are engaged in tight job schedule send them to boarding schools to enable them face their jobs. They pay heavily for such schools.
Concerning some tertiary institutions, parents pay as high as from N400,000 to N1.5 million depending on the course of study in private universities. One reason for such preference is the incessant ASUU strike. Another reason being lack of facilities and unconducive academic environment.
Another problem in public schools is the attitude of some students. It is worrisome that some undergraduates smoke cigarettes in the hostels thereby inconveniencing others. This is not just about the males but the females are also involved. Meanwhile, the universities employ porters whose job is to take care of the students. This cannot happen in the private universities.
The demand for tertiary education by youths in Nigeria has continued to rise in recent years, thus giving rise to the establishment of more universities. The Federal Government has also continued to grant licence to individuals and missions to establish more but does not check the kind of fees charged in those schools.
I thought the essence of establishing private schools is to ensure that more universities are established to accommodate the teeming youths seeking university education since government cannot do it alone.
The fees in some of the state universities are getting out of hand. Some of them have increased fees to as much as N120,000 to N380,000 for indigenous students and N500,000 for non-indigenes.
Why the discrimination in the payment of school fees in Nigeria as per indigenes and non-indigenes? Is it in the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria? I thought that every Nigerian student can attain university education wherever he or she secures admission. This is a serious issue which stakeholders in education should look into.
One of the premier private universities in Nigeria charge as much as N850,000 for medicine and N895,000 for law, to mention but a few. Before now, those were the kind of fees paid for overseas study. In the case of federal universities, the charges are still minimal to the tune of N40,000 to N50,000.
It will interest you to know that some private primary schools charge as high as N14 million as take-off and N5 million subsequently. Others pay N5 million to start and N2.5 million for other terms.
There are also persons resident in Nigeria but their children attend primary and secondary schools in other countries. Their fees are paid upwards in foreign currency. It is high time relevant authorities looked into the problems. If the cost of acquiring education continues to rise in Nigeria, I don’t know the fate of a Nigerian child whose parents cannot afford expensive schools.
Government has made basic and secondary education free and compulsory but one of the things most parents complain about is the teachers’ performance. The teachers in both private primary and secondary schools teach to ensure the children obtain credits in relevant subjects in SSCE and scoring high in UTME to qualify for university admission.
The teachers in public schools should also teach like them because they all possess the same qualification. The urge for parents sending their wards to private schools is because the teachers in the public schools do not give out the best.
This is worrisome and should be looked into. The teachers in public schools are government employees who are remunerated regularly. Some proprietors do not pay as much as states and federal government. So, the public-school teachers should perform better than the private ones where school fees cannot be afforded by some parents.
With all the high fees charged by private ones school proprietors, some of them still pay peanuts to the teachers. A mission school operated in Port Harcourt made primary school education free. Education in other mission schools that are not free, should be subsidised.

By: Eunice Choko-Kayode