The Challenge of Christian Education in Higher Secular Institutions in Nigeria

by Musa A. B. Gaiya

Let me start by defining what I mean by Christian Education in this paper. By Christian education, I mean the inculcation of Christian values through the process of dissemination of knowledge. Here I am thinking of a Christian way of educating the youth in secular institutions in Nigeria. This type of education does not limit itself to Bible or religious knowledge; it embraces all branches of knowledge, both secular in teaching subjects like physics, chemistry, political science, botany and the rest and also religious. I agree with B.J. van der Walt when he writes that although Christianity seems to be growing in Africa, there is also a creeping influence of secularisation of the Christian faith.[1]

At the Ahmadu Bello University, one of the first generation of universities in Nigeria, established in 1962, I had a teacher at the Institute of Education who declared proudly that his students hardly recognised that he was a Christian when he taught biology. Some of them were actually shocked to see him in church. This professor is not the only one. Many would create distinction between professional career and professional faith in their attempts to privatise faith. I am afraid to say this trend is more a tendency with Christian intellectuals than Muslim ones. Islam claims to be holistic and permeate all sectors of knowledge. Muslims talk of Islamic understanding of Chemistry, Physics, Geometry, Navigation, Astronomy, Architecture or the relationship between faith and politics and religion and economics etc. Robert Briffault writes, “Science is the most momentous contribution of the Muslim civilization to the modern world.”[2]

This idea of excluding religion from so called secular sphere of life is a post-enlightenment phenomenon. European Enlightenment which came about more than two hundred years ago temporary stopped religious war, at least in Europe, but it also ushered in the era of secularity. An era in which life was divided into two: the religious and the secular.  As Western societies grew the two areas of life were considered mutually irreconcilable. Religion was privatised, as Niccolo Machiavelli declared, “if religion must exist, let it be confined to the personal sector of life.”[3] In fact, as Western Christianity developed, the secular impinged on the religious and not the other way round, what van der Walt calls “the de-Christianisation of the Christian faith”.[4] That is, religion itself was secularised. This ideology forced Harvey Cox, to prophecy the extinction of religion in the 1970s in The Secular City. But Cox was forced to make a reversal of this thesis due not only to the resilient of religion but also its upsurge as a result of the Pentecostal explosion in the 1960s and 970s in another book, Fire from Heaven. P. L. Berger has said that “man is inherently a religious being who consequently seeks for sense and meaning which goes beyond his empirical existence. Deep down every human being needs greater security than that which the superficial secularist religious worldview can offer.”[5]

Recent happenings globally, however, have not only proved Voltaire wrong when he declared that Peace of Westphalia ended the influence of religion (what he called “abominable monuments to fanaticism”[6]) on politics in Europe, but have brought religion into the centre stage in world political and economic discourse. Religious imagination and actions have been brought to the public domain, that no country in the world can brush religion under the carpet.  Although many of the events that pushed religion to the public domain were not altogether pleasant, they were very serious to forced secular governments throughout the world to begin to study and think about how to understand religion and it place in society. 9/11 was perhaps the pick of these events and certainly the world has never been the same since that event. Behind these events, generally called religious terrorism or religious fundamentalism or religious intolerance, is the desire for a change, whether politically as it is in the Middle East and Northern Ireland or culturally as it is in the United States or religiously as the case with Nigeria, Iran (especially the revolution of 1979), Japan and India. In all these cases religion is the major motivation.  Thus as Juergensmeyer reports, the United States list of most dangerous group in the world in 1998 had thirty and half of them religious ones.[7] But why is religion becoming a major international concern? Jeurgensmeyer supplies the answer, which I agree with completely:

Lurking in the background of much of religion’s unrest and the occasion for political revival, I believe, is the devaluation of secular authority and the need for alternative ideologies of public order.[8]

In sum, what appears to be happening is the collapse of the boundary between secular and religious concerns. In fact there has been the utilisation of religious institutions for the common good and religious institutions serving as harbinger for social justice. The case of the former is President George W. Bush “faith initiative.”[9] The latter is, as Abdullahi A. An-Na’im submits can be seen in the way religion was used in Indian under Ghandi and the Latin American Liberation Theology. Thus An-Na’im has proposed that religious groups, a part of global civil society, may push for social justice to the economic globalisation championed by the United States of America. These religious civil society groups would “moderate the harsh social consequences of economic globalization.”[10]  Another moderating influence of religion as seen in some Islamic countries and countries with Muslim majority is the utilisation of the Shari‛a. In all of these cases religion provides the moral conscience and cushioning effects of globalisation.

Correlation between Religion and Higher Education in Nigeria

There is no gainsaying the fact the education is the best way of inculcating society’s values. It is well known fact that both American secularism and the Soviet Union’s communism were transmitted through public schools. The United States was perhaps luckier because it had/has private schools, otherwise one wonders what would have become to that supper power of the world.

My third son, who is studying medicine at the University of Jos, came to me one day and said he was disturbed by a statement one of his lecturer made. The lecturer had said that there was no need to pray over his course because no amount of prayer could make a student pass the course. Well I told him, I know the teacher wants you to study heard. But that should not exclude trusting God for mental, physical and emotional health. And I added that his elder brother who did the course and passed without relenting in his prayer in addition to studying hard. Certainly this lecturer is also not alone. He is among many lecturers who do not see any relation between the acquisition of knowledge and what other aspects of a person that a play important part in acquiring it. This totality of all these aspect, I think, is what Young-Gil Kim and Youngsip Kim means by “a whole person education.”[11]

In the history of Nigerian higher education there was a time when, alien ideology, like Marxism was the vogue. In this ideology, personal faith had no place.  A one time Vice-chancellor of Ahamdu Bello University, Professor Abdullahi Madadi, describes what happened during this period:

This is was the time of upsurge in Marsist-Leninist era. Accordingly, a welter of theories, doctrines, philosophies, ideologies, beliefs, and views were (sic) bandied all over the University campuses throughout the country. This was also the era of wearing of worn out jeans and singlet bearing the pictures of Marx, Lenin, Angles, CheGuevarns, Fidel Castro, and hosts of others. Posters of these revolutionaries were pasted all over the place, in the offices of academic staff, lecture halls, students hostels, notice boards, indeed, in every available piece of space. There were also seminars, conferences, etc. either in memory of the revolutionaries or to celebrate their birthdays.[12]

In this place, religion, which by this time had formed the bedrock of local communities’ culture, had no relevance. At that time, knowledge acquired within the four walls of the universities was considered universal and timeless. But such knowledge must have, as Mahadi writes, “a social and cultural stamp to it…and purpose and a commitment to a particular world view.”[13]  This is why Alhaji Junaidu decried this form of education as he writes,

I must state that your University, like all others in Nigeria, is cultural transplant whose roots lie in another tradition. Like other institutions to which we have been struggling to adjust, it is part of the cultural baggage bequeathed to us…our Universities appear to belong to us only in the location ad their names. Few are the occasions when African ideas and moral system are taught in the humanities curriculum. In the study of politics, attempts are not made to study African politics and African political behaviour in terms of their moral values and beliefs of these societies. The view more often expressed is that African politics is less than politics while real politics belongs elsewhere. The organisation and structure of government in Hausa, Yoruba, or Kadara society [are] dismissed as irrelevant, mistakes of underdeveloped imaginations…What I wish to say is that a truly universal view of human knowledge does not set out deliberately to eliminate whole culture from the education of the children of that culture.[14]

Nigeria today is a multi-cultural society. The major cultures are underpinned by the traditional, Islamic and Christian (Christianity in Nigeria is the conservative/Pentecostal brand[15]). Any education given to children that would be meaningful for development must respect and adapt these cultural backgrounds.

Perhaps to domesticate education in Nigeria, Federal Government formulated the philosophy of education. The document was published in 1975 and revised in 1981. The Philosophy stipulated that

…the quality of instruction at all levels has to be oriented towards inculcating the following values:

(1)   respect for the worth and dignity of the individual;

(2)   faith in man’s ability to make rational decision;

(3)   moral and spiritual values in inter-personal and human relations;

(4)   shared responsibility for the common good of society;

(5)   respect for the dignity of labour; and

(6)   promotion of the emotional, physical and psychological health of all children.[16]

One of the aims and objectives, as stipulated in the Policy, is “the inculcation of the right type of values and attitudes for the survival of the individual and the Nigerian society.”[17] Let me say that this policy needs serious overhaul in view of the serious problem of education, especially of higher education in Nigeria. The immediate backlash of the policy was the unprecedented expansion of school enrolment beginning from the Universal Primary Education (UPE). Professor Ishaya Audu, another former Vice-chancellor of Ahmadu Bello University describes the situation:

The UPE scheme forced not only a rapid expansion of the primary education, but with only a short notice period, the phenomenal expansion of secondary education as well. Secondary schools meant to cater for say 600 pupils soon found themselves having to cope with two to three thousand or more…The grossly inadequate to virtually absent attention to pupils inevitably resulted not only in drastic lowering but almost total disappearance of standard.[18]

To illustrate the fallen standard of education Audu quotes Professor Idris Abdulkadir, who said that a certain candidate for a common entrance examination had the recourse to ask the invigilator to translate into vernacular language the examinations’ rubric on the first page of the examination question paper.[19] This trend affected admissions in higher institutions of learning.

Religious bodies, mainly Christian ones were pioneers in the provision of Western Education in Nigeria. This they did from 1943 to 1972. Missionary education was comprehensive. The missionaries did not compartmentalise education as A. F. Leach observed a typical Roman Catholic education:

The missionaries had to come with the Latin service-book in one hand and the Latin grammar in the other. Not only had the native priests to be taught the tongue in which their services were performed, but their converts…had to be taught the elements of grammar before they could grasp the elements of religion. So the grammar school became in theory, as it often was in fact, the necessary ante-room, the vestibule of the Church.[20]

Schools built by missionaries grew and expanded. These schools and other established by non-government organisations were called Voluntary Agency Schools. Even when government of Nigeria began to invest in education in the country, the Voluntary Schools fared better academically and also, as a former governor of Kano State, Alhaji Audu Bako said, they were “excellent in sound moral training and inculcating good discipline.”[21] However in the early 1970s, almost all these Voluntary Agency schools were taken over by the government. Ishaya Audu says the take over was necessitated by “good reasons of national security.” But he went on the lament the consequence of such take over: “The national security issues involved were resolved but the adverse moral consequences of this action on morality especially among the nation’s youth have been short of nothing [but] catastrophic.”[22]

To ameliorate this ugly situation in Nigeria’s education, churches demanded government return schools it took over from them in 1970s. When government was unwilling to do so, these churches and mission organisations began to set up nurseries, primary and secondary schools as a fresh start to redeem future generations of Nigerians from the corruption and moral decadence that had permeated government schools. But the schools could be run as mission schools were due to the difficulties of financing them. So they charged exorbitant fees. They attracted not only children of Christian elites but even Muslim ones, who later demanded the teaching of Islamic studies in the schools. In Kano state, the hotbed of Islamism, all Christian schools must include in their curriculum Islamic studies. Another problem was that products of these new private schools went to government universities where the moral situation was not better than in the public primary and secondary schools. The establishment of private universities was not allowed until 2000.

Problems of Higher Education in Nigeria

The first higher institution in Nigeria was the Yaba Higher College which was established by the colonial government in 1932. Before then Nigerians who sought higher training went to Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone, upgraded in 1876 to award degrees of Durham University, England. Yaba Higher College was upgraded to a degree awarding institution and relocated to Ibadan in 1948 and renamed University College Ibadan. Like Fourah Bay, University College Ibadan degrees were of the University of London. In the early 1960s further developments in higher education were made with the establishment of universities in Lagos, Ife, Zaria, Nsukka and Benin known as first generation universities in the post-colonial Nigeria. In 1975 seven additional universities were opened to meet the demand of higher education with the implementation of the Universal Primary Education launched in 1976. These were located in Kano, Maiduguri, Sokoto, Calabar, Port-Hacourt, and Jos. These were second generation universities. Further additional universities, with emphasis in the training of technologists were established in the 1980s. All these universities, totalling 24, are owned buy the Federal Government of Nigeria. State governments also opened universities in the 1990s. Most of the 36 states in Nigeria have their own universities. Up until the end of the last millennium, government had the monopoly in the provision of university education. Needless to state that university enrolment burgeoned. The enrolment was over five hundred thousand. The University of Jos alone has an enrolment of about twenty thousand! This has resulted in the overstretching of teaching and learning facilities and infrastructures. This development has led to the collapse of morality and law and order in the universities.

Perhaps the one of the major challenges in Nigerian universities is the cult phenomenon. Cults have been a phenomenon in the universities for as long as the beginning of university education in Europe. In the Middle Ages, cults groups were operated as guilds or universitas.[23] There were teachers’ guilds and students’ guilds; but these groups were essentially founded to protect members form outside harassments and victimisation. They were not terrorist groups. The Nigeria students’ cults groups use terror and intimidation to achieve their goals; most times such goals are sinister. There are many students’ cults in Nigerian universities. The latest count put them at more than sixty.[24]

Rival cults members often clashed leaving casualties among members or innocent fellow students. But in recent time, some of their victims have been lecturers. The University of Jos has last three professors as a result of cult groups’ attacks in the last one year. All attempts by the university authorities to eliminate cult activities on campus have proved unsuccessful. Although students Christian groups have increased from three in 1980s to more than thirty today, most of these groups put out a “holy than thou” attitude and would have nothing to do with students outside their folds.

Other challenges include poor funding of higher education by the governments of Nigeria with attendant strikes by teaching staff and students demonstration causing serious disruption of academic calendar, examination malpractice, sexual harassment, admission racketeering, corruption, and plagiarism. In fact plagiarism is taken as par of academic exercise. The University of Jos is dealing with an incident in which a Ph.D. candidate submitted a dissertation for defence which was a copy of another dissertation that had been defended in a university abroad. Unfortunately for this candidate, her external examiner was the author of the dissertation she plagiarised. This is why most universities abroad would not accept degrees from Nigeria.

It was due to plethora of problems in the public universities that made private individuals and organisations to put pressure on government to allow private participation in higher education. In 1999, the government lifted the ban on the establishment of private universities. Today there are 32 of such private universities in Nigeria most of them owned by churches and individual Christians. The problem with private universities is that they are very expensive thus making them elitist. Some of them ask for payments in foreign currency!  Furthermore, private universities are having a tough time recruiting high calibre of academics; this has made a renowned educationist to called them “glorified secondary schools,” because as he argues, “the staffing of most of these new universities leaves much to be desired.” [25] A member of the visitation panel to one of the private universities was alarmed at the calibre of academic staff there. He says, “You go to a university, you find out that the head of department is an assistant lecturer, every other lecturer is a graduate assistant. So you wonder what kind of education is being imparted on the students.”[26] Needless I mention the poor quality of laboratories equipments, lack of academic books and journals.

Ways IAPCHE can assist Higher Education in Nigeria

As I pointed out above, at the root of problem of higher education in Nigeria, is the fact that faith and academic have been separated or are assumed to be so. Public Universities in Nigeria are populated by people (both staff and students) who profess one faith or another. Most would either be Christians or Muslims. With the increasing number of adherents of these faiths, it is easy to think universities in Nigeria and indeed in Africa do not face the threat of secularisation. This is far from it. The secularisation of higher education will continue unless something is done to check it. This is where I think IAPCHE can help. At the University of Jos, we have been looking for the possibility of setting up of a consortium that would bring the best Christian scholars in theology through out the country to teach and supervise post-graduate students on part-time basis. The emphasis in the curriculum is the integration of academic and faith within public schools. This will provide students with the opportunity to take post-graduate degrees of international standard. The International Institute for Christian Studies has offered to render limited assistance, mainly in the area of academic personnel. IAPCHE can help in similar direction and with finances for scholarship to promising scholars. This facility can be extended to other disciplines in the sciences and social sciences.

Another possible area of collaboration is in the development of private universities. The Christian schools are very clear in their goals, which are to give the best education and to raise godly a generation. Their curricula perhaps need to be streamlined to make them specialised in certain disciplines. IAPCHE can challenge scholars from abroad to assist these schools on a short-time or long time bases. Scholarship schemes can be put in place to assist good and talented young men and women who come from poor homes.  In addition, IAPCHE can assist with books and journal, particularly scientific journals written by evangelical Christians or Christian scientists who see the hand of God in nature.

Conclusion

This paper has tried to argue that in spite of the growth of Christianity in Africa, the demographic shift, as submitted by Andrew F. Walls, Lamin Sanneh, Philip Jenkins, Jonathan Bonk and others, secularity seems to be growing in public universities in Africa. I have used Nigerian public universities as a case in point.  I have argued that secularisation trend should be checked by encouraging scholarship that coexists with faith. The problem with the university as a system is that it tries to pursue absolute academic freedom, but this must not be done at the expense of faith. Otherwise the universities in Nigeria, for example, may not be able to help fight the national moral calamities. The other solution, as I submitted in this paper is strengthening the over thirty private universities, most of them own by Christian organisations, especially churches.

References

Abdul M. O. A., Religious Challenges of National Development, Ibadan: University of Ibadan, 1986.

An-Na’im, Abdullahi, “The Politics of Religion and the Morality of Globalization” In Mark Juergensmwyer, Religion in Global Civil Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Audu, Ishaya Shuaibu, The National Moral Crisis: The role of Education, Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University, 1995.

Daily Trust,   November 7, 2007

Fafunwa, A. Babs, History of Education in Nigeria, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1975.

____________, New Perspectives in African Education, London: Macmillan Educational Limited, 1987.

Jenkins, Philip, The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Juergensmwyer, Mark, Terror in the Mind of God: The Global rise of Religious violence, Berkeley: University of California, 2000

_________________, “Introduction: Religious Ambivalence to Global Civil Society” In Mark Juergensmeyer, Religion in Global Civil Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

__________________, “Religious Antiglobalism” In Mark Juergensmeyer, Religion in Global Civil Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Kim, Youbg-Gil, Youngsup Kim, “A curriculum model of tertiary education with a global perspective” A paper presented at the IAPCHE Congreso International 2006 (C106), Granada, Nicaragua, 14-19 November 2006.

Lincoln, Bruce, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Mahadi, Abdullahi, Colonial/Neo-Colonial Education and the Underdevelopment of Nigeria, Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University, 1997

National Policy on Education, Federal Government of Nigeria, 1981.

Osuntokun, Akinjide, The Challenges Facing Universities in Nigeria, Jos: University of Jos, 2007.

van der Walt, B. J., Understanding and Rebuilding Africa from Desperation today to expectation for tomorrow, Potchefstroom: Institute for Contemporary Christianity in Africa, 2003.

van der Walt, B. J., Transforming Power: Challenging Contemporary Secular Society, Potchefstroom: Institute for Contemporary Christianity in Africa, 2007.