Teachers' strikes are the immediate cause of parents' disaffection. Arbitrary education levies also discourage schooling. And there is discontent about the wretched learning environment of primary schools everywhere in Nigeria. Most are tin-roofed shelters in varying stages of decay. Few have toilets and those which do are in such a foul state as to discourage use.
Classrooms lack electricity and water.
When the sun shines the children bake. Few authorities provide them. Not only that, but most want their daughters as well as their sons to go on to tertiary education. There are communal differences. Only 45 per cent of Muslim women in the North want university-educated daughters, compared to 73 per cent of pagan women and 72 per cent of Christian women.