How many goats would schools like Covenant University accept if Nigeria was using goat-for-tuition fee policy?
In Nigeria, goats have been playing significant roles in rewarding academic performance recently, but the Zimbabwean goats are playing better roles in students' education.
Earlier this month, a school in Anambra state in a bid to celebrate its students' performance after their first term examinations reportedly gave out goats to the pupils.
The Katsina state government in November also impressed female secondary school students in the state by giving them life goats in the name of empowerment.
These two Nigerian instances show how far deployment of goats has gone into supporting the education of young Nigerians.
Perhaps Nigerian goats need to do more to be more relevant and recognised in the education sector like their Zimbabwean counterparts.
In April 2017, The Minister of Education in Zimbabwe, Lazarus Dokora announced that parents of students in public schools who could afford school fees could pay with their goats and other livestock.
The goat-for-fee initiative was prompted by cash crisis which necessitated Zimbabweans to use livestock such as goats, sheep and cows to back bank loans.
Sacrificing a goat to support your child education was a welcome idea for parents who could not afford tuition fees of their wards. However, the social media communities in the country did not seem to see any sense in the policy as some of them made a mockery of the seemingly rustic policy.
Did Katsina government steal the goat idea from Zimbabwe?
Maybe this is where the Katsina State government and the school in Anambra stole the idea of bringing goats into academic matters from.
The goat-for-tuition fee was implemented in April in Zimbabwe and the Katsina government executed a goat-based empowerment program for female secondary school students in November. Was the goat thing just a coincidence? Maybe.
But come to think of it, if goats were to be accepted for tuition fee in Nigerian universities, how many goats would schools like Covenant University accept?
Do you think this Zimbabwean policy if adopted in Nigeria could help peasants children to have access to tertiary education? Maybe and maybe not. All we know for now is that goats are recognition in African education system.