Nigeria, Sept. 7 -- There is perhaps no more jarring illustration of Nigeria's confused understanding of educational opportunity and social investment than the widely criticised suggestion by Mrs. Oluremi Tinubu that beneficiaries of the Federal Government's Nigerian Education Loan Fund (NELFUND) scheme, having received an opportunity to acquire education, could also "start small" by selling akara and kuli kuli to support themselves.

On the surface, the remark may have been intended to emphasise the virtues of enterprise, resilience and self-reliance. Yet it exposes an uncomfortable irony: Nigerian students, born in a country that has earned hundreds of billions of dollars from oil and possesses vast deposits of gas and solid minerals, ...