De-Regulation of Education in Nigeria: Implications for Citizen's Rights to Education

Abstract

Education is a social service that is globally recognized as an agent of socio-cultural and political development in all nations of the world. As an agent of social mobility for individuals and groups, education is equally a fundamental human right for all regardless of sex, religion, geographical location, class and political inclination. This was acknowledged and adopted by the United Nations over fifty years ago and Nigeria is a signatory to this resolution. Consequently, all United Nations member states are making efforts through various programmes and schemes to achieve universal education. This paper attempts to analyse the impact of de-regulation of education in tertiary institutions on the citizen's rights to education in Nigeria. In order to achieve this objective the paper identified the principles of citizenship right to education, deregulation of education, and the implications of deregulation of education to citizen's rights to education. The paper has offered some recommendations. One of the recommendations is that deregulation must be done gradually in Nigeria in order to uphold citizens rights to education.