Affirmative action or removing the bar? a critique of admission requirements into government schools in Nigeria

Abstract

Affirmative Action is a positive policy designed to help disadvantaged groups who had suffered marginalization in the past. It comes with different designation. In Nigeria, it is called Quota System and/or Federal Character. These policies are meant to address regional imbalances in recruitments and appointments into federal government ministries, agencies, and departments. But beyond that, implementation of these policies is stretched to include admission into unity schools and higher institutions. This has obviously led to the discriminatory lowering of admission cut-off marks into these schools—with acute disregards for merit. This results to abuse of standard, process, and logic. This paper critiques the notion that certain regions in Nigeria suffered marginalization in the past. It questions the usefulness of these policy instruments in solving the problem of regional imbalances in the educational sector. Data are secondarily sourced and the theory of Distributive Justice is adopted for analysis. Its findings show that the Quota System policy was faulty from the get-go as its implementation is not time bound. This strips it of any justification as affirmative policy which is conventionally designed as temporary corrective measure. Though Quota System in Nigeria had some laudable objectives at conception, this paper argues that it has outlived its usefulness. Thus, it is currently counterproductive as it does great harms to admission process in Nigeria. It concludes that this policy encourages admitting students with abysmally low academic performance into public schools with absolute disregards for merit. It recommends equity—guided by merit—in admission process.