ads…Why the KCOBA concession deserves support
For decades, the public discourse surrounding national infrastructure in Nigeria has been trapped in a tragic binary: government inadequacy or outright privatisation. When a public asset deteriorates, we either watch it crumble under bureaucratic inertia or contemplate transferring it into commercial hands, often at the risk of pricing it out of the reach of ordinary Nigerians. It is precisely within this false choice that much of the resistance to the Federal Government’s approved concession of King’s College, Lagos, to the King’s College Old Boys’ Association has emerged. To anxious parents, sceptical trade unions and well-meaning commentators, the word ‘concession’ understandably triggers a defensive reflex. It conjures images of corporate takeovers, soaring school fees and the commercialisation of a 116-year-old national institution. Those fears should not simply be dismissed. They are born partly from a national history in which citizens have repeatedly watched public assets deteriorate, become mismanaged or pass beyond their reach. Honesty also requires us to acknowledge other realities in this debate. There are interests that thrive in institutional dysfunction. Any reform that introduces transparent management, independent audit and measurable accountability will inevitably threaten opaque, self-serving arrangements sustained by the status quo. We should not confuse those interests with parents, staff and citizens who have legitimate concerns about affordability, access and accountability. Neither should we pretend that every defence of the status quo is necessarily a defence of public education. There is another problem, perhaps more subtle and ultimately more dangerous: the normalisation of decline.
