REVITALIZING
NIGERIA’S EDUCATIONAL SECTOR
According to BBC English Dictionary, Education is ‘the process through
which a person is taught better ways of doing something or a better way of living’.
Same dictionary also recognizes it as the act of teaching people various
subjects in a school or college. In the same vein, the Wikipedia Online
Dictionary defines it as ‘a form of learning in which the knowledge, skills,
values, beliefs and habits of a group of people are transferred from one generation
to the next through story-telling, discussion, teaching, training, and/or
research’.
Whilst, Revitalization is simply the act or
process of making something more active, lively, or successful. So, to
revitalize something or a system means to make it more lively, active, or
successful, as the case may be.
Frankly, the survival of any nation as an entity depends solely on the
health status of its educational sector. In line with this singular fact, the
unavoidable role of education in the development of any society has been vastly
documented in series of global academic journals.
Presently, unequivocally Nigeria which is widely regarded as the giant
of Africa is still uncertain where she is headed regarding her educational system.
Suffice to say that, her destination is yet to be known by the concerned
citizenry. It is against this backdrop that the minds of many of our young ones
are preoccupied with the intention of leaving the country for elsewhere for
their academic pursuits.
It is no longer news that most educational programmes initiated both in
the past and present by the Nigerian government, have ended up serving as mere
siphons to transfer money to the bank accounts of the corrupt political
officers and their allies. To start with; since the commencement of the
Universal Primary Education (UPE) in 1976, the programme has failed to perform
effectively as anticipated as a result of lack of funds necessitated by
corruption, among other related factors.
Furthermore, the Universal Basic Education (UBE) initiative launched by
Chief Olusegun Obasanjo in Sokoto State on 30th September 1999,
which was intended to be universal, free and compulsory, has in the long run
seemed incapacitated due to the ongoing troubling revelation of the shortage of
teachers as well as employment of half-baked ones in our various schools, which
is also attributed to the aforementioned socio-political cankerworm known as
corruption. These and lot more similar programmes taking place in the Nigeria’s
educational sector have been hampered by corruption thereby crippling the nation’s
socio-economic system.
It is obvious that most of our
school structures are in dilapidating states, which shows that Nigeria has a
weird value system. Indeed, Nigeria is a society where priorities are
considered to be less-important. For example, the monthly wages of the
less/non-educated local government councillors are far greater than that of
university professors. Of course, something is apparently wrong with any
society that doesn’t take its educational system seriously.
As the disgusting culture of corruption persists, the public tertiary
institutions have been left to rot away. Some of the loans received from the
World Bank towards the revitalization of the nation’s educational system, were
rather used to purchase inconsequential equipment that could not be properly
installed or maintained, and several institutions received irrelevant books and
journals in this regard. Due to this anomaly, each year the nation’s tertiary
institutions send-forth hundreds of thousands of half-baked graduates in
different fields of endeavour to the nation’s labour market.
Sincerely, to restore the Nigeria’s economic sector, there is an urgent
need to revitalize the nation’s educational system, and this measure can only
be actualized by revisiting all the factors that currently affect the system in
question such as lack of infrastructure, teaching facilities, social amenities,
poor wages and incentives, substandard teaching curriculum, high tuition fees,
just to mention but a few.
First and foremost, we must begin from the grass root. The government
ought to as matter of urgency rehabilitate all the dilapidated technical
colleges situated in various locations across the country as well as provide
adequate facilities required to run the schools, and sufficient funds to
sustain the said structures and equipment. Honestly, the country’s anticipated
technological development or enhancement shall remain a mirage if the
grassroots are not properly addressed.
Most of the technical works
presently done in China is being carried out by the school children.
Nevertheless, barely few years ago, China was recognized as one of the
third-world countries in the world alongside Nigeria and other developing
nations. But today, China is among the world’s ruling class as regards science
and technology.
Also, there is an urgent need to reintroduce History subject, which has
abruptly vanished, in the Nigeria’s school curriculum. And, a law mandating
every tertiary institution in Nigeria to offer History as General Studies
should be enacted by the National Assembly. It is pathetic that most of our
young ones barely know their past or lineage, and such anomaly is solely as a
result of the sudden disappearance of History subject in the nation’s education
curriculum. It is worthy for us to note that without knowing our past, we can
never comprehend where we are meant to be headed.
Furthermore, world-class libraries, laboratories, and research centres,
should be establish in all the existing primary, secondary and tertiary
institutions across the federation, which would go a long way to enhance both
the reading culture and the practical method of teaching faced by the pupils
and students.
The medical and engineering undergraduates ought to be meant to pass
through befitting teaching hospitals and workshops respectively, to enable them
acquire the desired skills. Also, well-equipped national engineering workshops
are expected to be established at strategic localities in the country, so that,
any graduating engineering student would be meant to pass through any of them;
and it would serve as a prerequisite to
the mandatory National Youth Service Programme, just as it is observed
by the medical students.
In the same spirit, the ongoing Industrial Training and Teaching
Practice schemes embarked upon by the students of our Universities/Polytechnics
and Colleges of Education respectively, must be taken more seriously by the
concerned authorities. The officers assigned to supervise the students or to
visit the various firms or schools where they claimed to be, should endeavour
to pay regular sudden visits to the said establishments. This measure would
help to eradicate any form of insincerity found among the students/trainees
since most of them prefer to dodge the training, thereby enabling the
institutions to actualize the primary aim of the Students Industrial Work
Experience Scheme (SIWES). And the institutions involved must on their parts
endeavour to encourage the supervisors by providing sound vehicles and other
logistics for the concernment.
On the other hand, the tuition
fees of all the public citadels of learning in Nigeria must be revisited by the
appropriate authorities with the view of reducing the fees to their barest
minimum, so that, it would be affordable by every parent or guardian. Due to
payment of high tuition fees, some of the students whom are less-privileged
often indulge in menial jobs while in their respective schools in order to
assist their parents or guardians or to supplement what the said benefactors
have given to them. And by so doing, they would pay less attention to their
studies thereby indulging in examination malpractices, cultism, armed robbery
and other kinds of criminality which ends up affecting their academic statuses
negatively; most of them even become dropouts at the long run, due to the
financial challenge.
Most importantly, government ought to endeavour to employ qualified
applicants to teach in all the public institutions regardless of their levels,
including nursery, primary, secondary, as well as tertiary. Engaging quack
teachers in our public schools has cost the nation a very grievous harm and we cannot
afford to pay more for the damages. Thus, formidable and trustworthy agency
must be set-up in earnest by the government in this regard, in order to put to
stop nepotism, lack of due process, and all forms of corrupt practices.
Above all, conducive or enabling environment should be provided for the
teachers at all levels. At the tertiary level, befitting offices ought to be
allocated to both the academic and non-academic staff to enable them discharge
their duties effectively and efficiently. Also, revisiting the teachers’
salaries or wages is long overdue. They, especially the lecturers, should be
meant to receive reasonable amount of money regarding their levels/cadre as
salaries and they ought to be paid as at and when due; and all their entitled
incentives are expected to be revisited from time to time. No doubt, this
measure would help to eradicate all manners of corrupt practices namely,
admission racketeering, examination malpractice, sorting, and what have you,
taking place in our various schools; as well as help to eradicate the incessant
strikes embarked upon by the teachers at all levels.
In a more serious note; the private sector ought to also be mandated to
follow suit as regards revitalizing the nation’s educational sector. In view of
this, any private institution that is unable to live up to the expectation
should be shut down indefinitely by the appropriate regulatory body, such as National
Universities Commission (NUC), National Polytechnics Commission (NPC),
Universal Basic Education Board (UBEB), the state ministries of Education, and
so on, as the case might be.
For the above suggested measures to work, all hands must be on deck and
we must endeavour to tell ourselves the gospel truth. It is needless to state
that Nigeria has suffered tremendously in the area of education; therefore it
is high time we eliminated any form of hindrance behind the ordeal. Think about it1
FDN NWAOZOR
Public
Affairs Analyst & Rights Activist
-------------------------------------------------
frednwaozor@gmail.com
+2348028608056
