Is our well poisoned ? A historical / economic analysis of Christian higher education in Nigeria

Higher education right from ancient times to our contemporary time has been full of challenges in all areas. All countries in our global community have one form of story or another to tell in the area of education and most especially higher education. Just as higher education in America is in the midst of profound challenge and transformation so is the situation in some other countries of the world. The world today seems to be more interested in science and technology and believes that other areas of education are not important. It is a truism that in most of American Universities and Colleges political conflict and social unrest have been especially visible indicating some of the signs of change and stress. In Nigeria, the situation is not too different as almost all higher institutions which include Universities, Polytechnics and Colleges of Education are bedevilled with all kinds of political conflict and acts of cultism which always result in violence among students. This paper asked a fundamental question “is our well poisoned?” and thereafter the paper explored the historical/economic analysis of Christian higher education in Nigeria. The question “is our well poisoned?” is asked from the point of view of the “well” being used as a symbol in this work. In the ancient world and in many developing countries today the well provides a source of water for many. If the well which is one source of getting water is poisoned it certainly deprives many from getting water which is used for so many purposes in various societies. This question is asked against the backdrop of how education started in Nigeria through various Christian missionary bodies from different parts of Europe and America. During the era of the early Christian missionaries in Nigeria, most of the schools built were under the management of the Christian foreign missionaries. During the period, education was given freely to the people without the missionaries thinking of economic gains. The absence of institutions of higher learning in Nigeria during the missionary era prompted the missionaries to send young promising Nigerians to Europe and America for higher studies. Such educated elites eventually became the harbingers of higher education and political leadership in post colonial Nigeria. Nigeria today can boast of several institutions of higher learning though not as many as those in America. Many of such institutions are government owned while some others are owned and managed by religious bodies such as Christianity and Islam. When reference is made in this work to higher educational institutions we shall focus on Christian established educa1 He is Associate Professor of Church History & Mission Studies Department Of Religious Studies, Kogi State University, Anyigba, Nigeria. He can be contacted at felixenegho@gmail.com. Is our well poisoned? 237 tional institutions. Our aim in this paper is to assess the quality of higher educational institutions in Nigeria and their availability to the children of both the affluent and the poor persons in our society. But it is common knowledge that many higher educational institutions in Nigeria are not only poorly funded but are mostly attended by the children of the poor while those in political leadership as well as the affluent send their kids for higher education in Europe and America. Even in the Christian educational institutions which are most times better funded than those owned by the government, the fees are often too high for the poor. The implication is that only the kids of the very rich get to attend such schools. Which bring us again to the question “is our well poisoned?” If the foreign missionaries in the past could make sacrifices for the development of Nigeria why can the Christian higher educational institutions not do the same? This and other questions shall be analysed in this paper. The research methodology consist of a combination of socio – historical and evaluative approaches


Introduction
The place of education in any society cannot be overemphasized and Nigeria is not an exception.The debate is even more imperative when we refer to higher education which is the thrust of this paper.For an in-depth assessment of higher education there is the need to properly understand what education is all about.Education begins in any human society from the known to the unknown.What this implies is that it starts from the family.The family being the first teachers and then relations, peer groups and the traditional society as is the case with every Nigerian community.
The history of education and invariably higher education is incomplete without a discourse on the impact of Christian missionaries.Such influence emanated via evangelization and the various areas and levels of education.The aim of this paper is to assess higher education in Nigeria and to analyse the level of growth and development of the educational system as well address the synergy between the kind of education that emanated from the foreign missionaries especially in the area of higher education and what is presently being practiced today by the various higher educational institutions founded and funded by the various Christian bodies.
It beats ones imagination why Christian higher educational institutions are very expensive making them almost unaffordable by majority of the poor people who crave to attend such schools because of the positive history of previous missionary education.The focus in this paper is higher education in Nigeria via the lens of a Catholic scholar.

Education defined
Education comes from the Latin word 'educare' which means to rear plants, the process of growing up, rearing of the young: referring to both physical and mental process.In the Roman epoch, education referred to the general process of bringing up.However, the definition of education in the strict sense is a bit complicated.Only the descriptive type is likely to give us the factual terms of education.Education must involve the transmission of what is worthwhile, the valuable, the desirable -desirable condition.Education must involve knowledge and understanding and kind of cognitive perspective -knowledge condition.Education also rules out certain procedures of transmission, those that lack willingness and voluntariness on the part of the learner -procedural condition (Ndalahwa 2016: 92 -93).
For R.S Peters, the three conditions above need to be fulfilled in any activity called education.The first point deals with the valuable aspects of education, i.e. what would be taught, desirable or worthwhile and so it is called normative criterion.The second point refers to what is to be learnt, knowledge and understanding must be acquired during education.This is called the cognitive criterion.Both criteria point to the content of education.The third point refers to the procedure, i.e. the methods to be used and therefore it is also known as creative criterion.In the broadest sense, education is not only the art that awakens and cultivates cultural refinements of each individual member of society in accordance with his/her gifts and appointments but also comprises the ability that assists in transmitting and preserving which invariably further cultivates the skills of those who have inherited them through different kind of experiences (93).

Early Education in Nigeria
From the beginning, mankind was interested in the struggle for survival.Early civilizations came forth when human beings started to control nature and manipulate the environment so as to satisfy everyday needs.With the discovery of fire, the use of water and the making of iron tools human beings left their pre-historic helpless, hapless and submissive state and started to produce food instead of gathering only wild fruits.Human beings domesticated animals and cultivated plants initiating as such the age of agriculture.This agricultural revolution changed every aspect of human beings way of life, material things, socio-political institutions, habits, customs and ideas.This revolution was essentially economic.Slowly the evolution of man started to improve.Social and productive divisions started to crystallise and to perpetuate themselves.The ability to communicate began and oral communication was gradually replaced by pictographic and ideographic writings.The demand on the memory of human beings led to the invention of writing bringing about a better preservation of knowledge.The pictographic and ideographic representations of oral tradition and law were in fact the first textbooks to curricula which, eventually, would eventually take place inside, i.e. in schools.Education had become an institution.It was a very significant step in civilization which became on behalf of Africa for the first time visible in Egyptian education (96).

Indigenous Education in Nigeria
Africans had developed their own systems of education long before the Arabs and Europeans came to the African continent.The notion held by majority of Europeans who first came to Africa, was that Africans were savages, pagans with no history and culture to perpetuate, that Africans were primitive, and knew nothing and that Africans never taught their offspring.This sort of mistaken belief, reflected the ignorance of the Europeans about African education systems and explains why the first European educationists never considered that the 'formal' schools they were introducing stood in relation to the largely 'informal' education African children were getting from their communities.The basic assumption was that they were bringing forth something totally new.This way of looking at African traditional education presupposes that there was no social interaction or socialization (96-97).Many other scholars assumed that the inability of many Africans to read and write implied that Africa had no system of education and hence had no contents and methods to pass on to the young.To such scholars, education in Africa meant Western civilization.To define education only in terms of school or reading and writing, is certainly a fallacy.Schooling and education are definitely not each other's full synonyms (97).
Education can be referred to as the 'whole process by which one generation transmits its culture to the succeeding generation' or better still as 'a process by which people are prepared to live effectively and efficiently in their environment.'African traditional education was effective since the evolution of the African continent as a race of people; it was not elusive or visionary, but it was tangible, definite and clearly intelligent.In the past Africa had no single indigenous type of education and the same is in our contemporary time.Societies differing from each other developed various systems of education to transmit their own particular knowledge and skills (97).

The Missionary Connection
The burning issue in the nineteenth century missionary movement was the need for re-defining the motives of the missionary enterprise with a view to re-establishing the Mission on a permanent basis.By the start of the century, the French Revolution had finally administered a coup de grace to the missionary edifice which had long been shaken by such factors as the extraordinary high mortality rare among the white missionaries, the padroado or "patronage" controversies, and the suppression of the Jesuit Order.What was left after these scourges were mere ruins, and according to estimates, there were only about 300 Catholic missionaries in the whole world at the beginning of the nineteenth century.In the continent of Africa, the number of Catholics -including the Coptic and Abyssinian Christians -amounted to only 47,000 souls.The duty to be assigned to the school in the impending restoration of the Missions depended to a reasonable extent, on a re-evaluation of the hitherto accepted interpretations of the biblical command: Docete omnes gente (Mt.23,20;Mk. 16,15) (Omenka 1989: 1-2).

Colonial Government' involvement in Education
Education seems to be involved in a variety of ways with the phenomenon of change and conversation.The relationship of education with patterns of social and economic advancement, nationalism, tradition, modernity, revivalism, separatism and regionalism is being increasingly studied today by the social scientists and anthropologists.The Educational institutions also are being studied in a broader perspective (Azami 1995: 256).
In many African countries education differ in content, length of the courses and qualification of teachers.As a result during the colonial era education was seen by its recipients as a means of identification with the values of attitudes of an imaginable high society far from reality.Those who did not receive this type of education felt inferior and were dominated by the educated ones who were associated with the dynamic urban life.The colonial government had the intention to provide education for Africans for the sake of their own growth.Those who were trained were not many and were those who were expected to offer services to the colonial government.Colonial type of education encouraged the individualistic instincts of mankind, rather than of cooperation and self -reliance.It was observed that colonial education was not transmitting the values of society from one generation to the next but was deliberately attempting to change those values and to replace traditional knowledge by a knowledge coming from a different society (Nyerere 1970).
Majority of African nations imbibed the educational system of their colonial masters which had as its aim the creation of workers to serve the socio-economic interests of the colonizers.The few Africans who were educated then were offered white-collar jobs which they had been prepared for.In the colonial era, for instance, education focused on producing manpower for government services like clerks, tax collectors, interpreters and artisans.This kind of formal education did not prepare a person with tools to liberate him/herself from poverty, ignorance and diseases.It had no direct intention for individual transformation.It meant that such person would continue to be dependent on their employers without any form of entrepreneurial initiative  With a population of over 160 million and ample natural resources, Nigeria is Africa's sleeping economic giant.While one-third of its population pursues a life style oriented in various degrees towards Europe and North America, the other two-thirds struggles to survive on less than one dollar per day (World Bank 1996).
The country's business environment is distorted and restrictive.In spite of substantial oil revenues, per capita income is lower today than it was in 1970.The non-oil economy is stagnant.A survey of international businesses working in Sub-Saharan Africa found that Nigeria is one of the most difficult countries in the world for private business (Center For International Development 2000).On balance, the material conditions for development appear to be available, but the human and cultural conditions that enable development to occur are not yet in place.In recent years, the economic success of newly industrializing nations (e.g., the "Asian tigers") has been linked to substantial prior investment in human resources.These strategic investments, together with particular institutional and policy choices concerning the nature of the university system, the extent of intellectual property protection, the historical evolution of industrial R&D organization, and the division of labour between private industry, universities and government in R&D performance and funding combine to form what is called a "national innovation system" (NELSON 1993:9) Research suggests that public policy plays an important role in shaping national innovative capacity by determining human capital investments and creating incentives for innovation.Countries that have increased their innovative capacities have invested heavily in science and engineering education, and also in promoting competition as the basis for innovation (William Internet Source ).
Does Nigeria possess the necessary elements to develop a national innovation system?The facts are not encouraging.Available data indicate low levels of investment in research capacity and education, and help to explain why the country's non-oil economy has remained consistently sluggish during a decade of international economic expansion.On the research side, Nigeria's number of scientific publications for 1995 was 711 -significantly less than its output of 1,062 scientific publications in 1981 by a comparatively much smaller university system (TASK FORCE 2000).In contrast, scientific publications were 3,413 for South Africa, 14,883 for India, 310 for Indonesia, and 5,440 for Brazil (TASK FORCE 2000).The country's low research output probably reflects the low priority accorded to research and development by government decision-makers.For example, Nigeria's federal university system spends only 1.3% of its budget on research (William Internet Source ).
For education, Nigeria spends an estimated 2.4% of its GNP while Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole spends 5.1% (HINCHLIFFE 2002;UNESCO 2000).In Nigeria, pri-mary education enrols 81% of the relevant age group and graduates 69% of these.Therefore just over half of all children complete primary school.School drop-out rates have been rising and educational standards have reportedly declined (ON-WEH 1997).Secondary education enrolments grew at roughly 10% yearly during the 1990s, but access remains constrained (less than half of secondary school age children attend school) and significant regional disparities in access are evident.Technical education is substantially neglected by policymakers and oriented to the teaching of traditional hand skills that are often divorced from labor market requirements.Higher education enrolls a very modest 4% of the relevant age cohort.This level compares poorly with economic competitors such as South Africa (17%), India (7%), Indonesia (11%) and Brazil (12%) (TASK FORCE 2000).The elements of a national innovation system are clearly not yet in place.In this, politics has played a part (William Internet Source ).

Historical/Economic Analysis of Christian Higher Education in Nigeria
The primary goal of aspiring to leadership position in Nigeria is to get money and power; you get one to get the other and it does not matter which comes first.Force and fraud are the two cardinal virtues!Anybody who wants to prevent the powerful from acquiring any of these two is simply eliminated and the law enforcement agencies can only get to the root of a criminal case that the powerful wants them to get to.The police themselves are starved of weapons and funds; only the cronies of the powerful are well fed.The politicians and the political parties have no guiding principles: hence, they easily decamp to any party that will give them money and power.The nation is not lacking in endless empty promises.Apparently, the populace approve this, as long as only their relatives are in power, or the politicians share some money among their sycophants (Olusegun 2010: 25 -29).
The most saddening event in all these is that the Church is involved in these rots, both inside and outside the Church.Some Church leaders are sycophants of the decadent politicians because of a pot of porridge and many are even decadent themselves.The tussle for power in the Church may not be better than that in the society at large.But, the Church knows that this is a failure on its part.However, this is not the concern of this writer in this article.Rather, the concern is how the Christian Church can contribute to the reform of the society through university or higher education ( 25 -29).
The Church's contribution as an organisation, the recent involvement of the Church in establishing universities in Nigeria is a welcome event.It is hoped that the Christian ethos that had been brought to bear at lower level schools will similarly be brought to bear on the Christian universities.But universities are not primary and secondary schools neither are they theological seminaries.Hence, it is important for the administrators of the Christian universities to put our critical appraisal of government universities in mind, By now, the administrators must have known that universities are very costly to run.They must not because of this admit candidates more than what the university facilities can cope with; this will automatically defeat the purpose for which the university is established.Similarly, the qualities of teachers employed have to be carefully watched.The qualification of teachers expected to teach must not just be a born-again Christian with a higher degree.We need to encourage excellence in producing quality art, outstanding literature, great music, serious scholarship and first-rate research, while developing Christian scholars and students who can be salt and light in the academy.It also means that such apparent non-issue as architectural design have to be carefully considered (25 -29) In modern Nigeria, it is the individual Christian that has more responsibility in reforming university education.This is because there are many professing Christians in the universities that have been critique.The question is: where is their impact?The universities are full of campus fellowships, as pastors can be found among lecturers in every Department.But, where is their testimony as Christians?
The Christians, as individuals should bear in mind that they have responsibility before God to live out Christianity before the society at large.The lecturers, especially should reflect carefully and realise that, they are moulding the society of the future by their living, teaching and publication.Since, anybody who goes to the university in Nigerian society will definitely be a leader that is a senior staff, the Christian teacher should bear in mind that, the young students before them will be in positions of power, at most in a decade after.What will the students remember of the lecturer?(25 -29) Leadership in economic policies and sustainability in critical for peace in Africa today.Religious leaders in Africa have not played very active roles in monitoring development policies in Africa.However, a few religious institutions and universities have been involved in the monitoring of development policies or speaking against policies that marginalise the poor.Religious institutions, while providing 30 -40 percent of basic social services, such as health and education, have sometimes been accused of misappropriating funds.It is critical that religious leaders demonstrate leadership in the management of the common good and particularly financial resources (Opongo 2014: 291).
In his post-synodal exhortation, Pope Benedict XVI addressed the African Catholic bishops in the following terms: "Make your message credible, see to it that your dioceses become models in the conduct of personnel, in transparency and good financial management."The emphasis on financial transparency and accountability by the pope demonstrates that there have been serious concerns about the Church's manner of managing its financial resources, and this situation has weakened the Church's capability of acting as a prophetic witness against corruption and financial misappropriation by government and public officials (291).
Religious leaders need to emphasise that development is key to liberating human beings from the oppression of poverty and suffering.This concept has constantly been used to refer to the material consumption and progression in society; material consumption becomes the measuring index for progression.But the debate has recently shifted to focus more on the human person as the object of development.Thus, development ought to be reflected in the people's conditions of life and accessibility to the basic commodities (including University education which modus operandi by Christian Churches has appeared to be suspect and therefore requires serious attention) (292).

Is our Well poisoned? The Christian Challenge in Higher Education in Nigeria
Attainment of quality university education in Nigeria requires continuous and holistic improvement which necessitates cost sharing among stakeholders both internal and external.Stakeholders' collaboration is about exploring partnership with another organization or group owing to lack of resources or competencies.Collaboration will help to trigger improvement in university system.Such collaboration could be achieved through universities establishing a close link or relationship with employers of labour/industries and other external stakeholders, or by utilization of technologies and expertise from the environment to perform activities that staffs are not competent in performing.The figure below shows internal and external stakeholders of higher education like Nigerian universities (Asiyai 2015).
Our religious leaders have certainly established the fact that education is a solid building block for a stable and successful future in a child's life; they have gone as far as building Universities to physically state their point.We applaud the congregation of these churches who offered their tithes, donations and weekly offering to see this vision come to light; in turn expecting that their widows might pay off when their children can acquire a decent education through these schools.Not an unreasonable assumption I must add.On the bright side, these universities have long been completed unlike most projects in Nigeria, the downside is you need to have bagged some cash to afford sending one child let alone two to the now termed 'Nigerian Elite Universities'.
Here are a list of these universities and an approximate fee that you need to pay to attend.1. BOWEN University owned and operated by a Baptist Convention, charges ₦650,000 as tuition fees All of these universities were built from tithes and offerings of the people who now cannot afford to send their children there to study.Where has the moral of the church gone?
These schools were all built by the efforts of their congregations who kept sowing seeds; special offering seeds, first fruit seed, redemption seed, thanksgiving seed, harvest seed, tithes, pastor's birthday seed, church building seed, evangelism seed, father's day seed, mother's day seed, children's day seed, pastor's cake seed, olive oil seed, insecticide seed, indomie seed, ground nut seed, miscellaneous seed, etc seed.These schools are now elite schools, only for the children of the rich.The gainers then use the proceeds to buy private planes and jets to fly up high in luxury while their members sleep hungry and next Sunday, they will read and preach Malachi 3:6-12 .
Many other Christian Universities exist in Nigeria and the story of high fees paid by students is not different from the ones listed so far.Many are wondering why the contemporary Church founders who established these institutes of higher learning are not following the footsteps of the early Christian missionaries who were selfless in promoting and developing early education in Nigeria with fewer burdens or no burden at all on the shoulders of the parents.Churches in Nigeria saw the need for a change in the absolutely ridiculous educational system and did something about it.They did not just sit there to complain and join the growing list of town criers in the society.They took a very bold step.It's not easy to run a university.
There is the need to examine more closely the Christian Universities that charge high school fees and do not reflect this in the university.For example, Madonna University charges N350,000/session and the place looks absolutely dreadful.On the other hand, Covenant University though charges exorbitant tuition infrastructures are being built daily, labs are being maintained, and students are being enlightened.The system works.There is a world class library, stable power supply, decent accommodation, exceptional lecturers, etc.
Many who are not properly informed of the economic situation in our world today and invariably in Nigeria would be fast at asserting that our well has been poisoned simply because they are of the view that Church founders who established Universities or those thinking of establishing Universities in Nigeria are not admitting students into the various programmes at no cost from such students.

The Need to Cleanse our "Well" of Christianity in Nigeria in relation to Higher Education
There is a clear indication that the well of Nigerian Christianity just as elsewhere around the world is grossly poisoned by all sorts of ideas and actions emanating from the leadership of the church in Nigeria; this invariably affects the entire Church and society.Many are not comfortable with the higher education given to many in Nigeria most especially by the Church.If many people complain about the low standard of education provided by both the federal and state government, they expect a better deal from the church.However, there is this anger and frustration from many of the poor within the church who feel that they are being exploited by the hierarchy or leadership of the various churches.To such disillusioned persons the essence of Christian higher education is to bring qualitative higher education closer to the people, but what they get is qualitative education only affordable by the children and dependants of the rich and the very wealthy people in the society.
In political economy, it may be desirable that all people are socioeconomically equal, but human nature and power being what they are, achieving that equality is impossible.Egalitarian redistribution has almost always led to greater poverty for most people (a point admitted -unusual for politicians -by the great African statesman Julius Nyerere on his retirement regarding the ujumaa experiment in Tazania) and greater wealth for a governing elite that dishonestly claims to "administer" resources for "the people."(Here we need think no further than George Orwell's cautionary fable Animal Farm and countless African and global examples we all know (Egan 2015: 249).
Nigeria and the entire continent of Africa have not lost hope for its integral development even though new challenges thrive, may be more than ever.For instance, policies on education have been strengthened on the assumption that Africans will be much more equipped to know, control and predict their future.However, this critical shift in educational sectors needs to be challenged, may be by the word "evangelization".It seems that education and evangelization are both part of God's command although we do not state that to educate is to evangelize or to evangelize is to educate because that could be an unwholesome blending.We can evangelize through education and educate through evangelization (Mvumbi 2016: 95).Christian higher institutions in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa must look beyond the financial gains they are likely to derive from the setting up of schools and be more concerned about their use of such schools for the purpose of evangelization.It could be evangelization through deeds rather than through words alone.

Conclusion
Education has no beginning and has no ending.It is a lifelong process by which every individual goes on acquiring and accumulating knowledge skills attitudes and insights from daily experience and exposure to the environment at home, in the work place, at play from examples and attitudes of families, friends from travel, from reading newspapers, books or by listening to the radio or viewing films or television.
In this paper attempt has been made to assert if our well is indeed poisoned from the perspective of how higher education is administered in Nigeria today especially from the Christian perspective.This is against the backdrop of insinuations by many who are disillusioned with what they regard as the way Christian higher education is organised in Nigeria.Many believe that the operators of such institutions care less about the overall wellbeing of the students but are more concerned about the economic benefits such institutions would bring to them in the long run.The question to be asked at this juncture is "have the higher educational institutions in Nigeria under the control of the Churches that established them met the desire and aspirations of the recipients of such learning in terms of quality?"It is a truism that the above question is a bit complicated if one puts into consideration the fact that no human being or institution can fully meet the standards desired of him/her or such institution.
Though there is so much noise about the high tuition charged by higher institutions of learning under the control of Churches, it is also significant to state that many of such schools are caught in the web of the present global economic crises and therefore cannot administer their services for free.What may have been poisoned is not "our well" but the" individual well" meaning the mindset of people who still believe that whatever they need to get from Churches must be given without any financial implication.
When one puts into consideration the gains recorded by Nigeria and Nigerians during the era of the foreign missionaries and the losses if any, one can rightly state that the gains surely supersede the disadvantages recorded.It is time for Nigerians and Africans to stop the blame game in all aspects of life and focus more on how to build positively on the legacies left behind by the foreign missionaries, for the progress of the Nigerian and African Christianity (Enegho 2017: 109) Higher education in the twenty first century must prepare the individuals to deal with the complexity and the rapid change in our global community.In our contemporary time we are faced with the challenge of religious extremism that leads to ter-rorism and failure to live together in the global village.Education ought to take up the obligation to prepare individuals with better skills of how to live at peace with one another and inculcate in them the spirit of tolerance.In most cases, ignorance, poverty and human greed will remain great obstacles for the commonly desired development of human society.The aim of education and higher education should be for the purpose of achieving a self-reliant nation but we should not necessarily need to improve on our methods to fit the concept of self-reliance.For Nigeria to be transformed through the acquisition of higher education is the responsibility of Nigerians.Free lunches are very scarce to come by these days due to the global economic crises.So, rather than condemn the Churches and the founders of Christian educational higher institutions for the woes of the Nigerian people there is the need for Nigerians to work hard.Giving free education or cheap form of higher education is no longer the solution to effective and qualitative higher education in Nigeria, the same way distributing free food to healthy, able bodied people is not a good solution to the problem of poverty.Any positive change in the system of education must involve empowering the Nigerian people with competency to know how to see the available means and resources for sustainable transformation of the quality of their lives for the their individual benefit and of their community.
REDEEMERS University owned by The Redeemed Christian Church of God , charges ₦450,000 as tuition fees per session.6. AJAYI CROWTHER University established by The Supra diocesan board of the church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion), charges ₦350,000per session.7. MADONNA University a Catholic University charges ₦350,000 as tuition fees per session.