Restructuring and Repositioning Nigerian Education for Greater Effectiveness
Perspective
Oluwafemi Ayewoh
As a man whose sensibilities are purely Nigerian, a man who is deeply, emotionally invested in Nigeria, a man who sees the world through Nigerian -colored lenses, one who has had the good fortune to look in from the outside, realizing there is absolutely no reason for us to be underperforming as a country, I unapologetically make the following uncomfortable but honest statements:
• We are currently experiencing an enormous moral decay. We are mercilessly aiding and abetting the destruction of our able youths and therefore unwittingly robbing ourselves of our present and future. Those who can help standby powerlessly and do nothing. I am not a judge but your friend, brother and a stakeholder in the Nigerian project.
• Our youths have domesticated and taken internet fraud to a level where the very young ones want to study and professionalize “yahoo”. Drug abuse, drug peddling, robbery, kidnapping, banditry, blood money rituals, prostitution and several other vices are daily occurrences and are on full display on social media. All caution tossed to the wind.
• Our parents and first teachers have become helpless and some are forced to support and accept their children’s fraudulent, decadent and depraved acts. In many cases, unsuspecting parents have fallen victims to blood money rituals.
• Some of our religious leaders and moral leaders have become shameless beneficiaries of the ungodly proceeds from frauds perpetrated by our misguided youths.
• Some political and traditional leaders are complicit and have become godfathers, directing these criminalities with strong support from compromised and unprofessional security personnel.
Put simply, we are all complicit. We are co-authors of our own misfortune, especially by our inaction. Evil prevails, when good men do nothing. This has been our indirect contribution. We stood aside as criminals became mentors to our children. It is time to rebuild and reposition what is left of the ruins. We have suffered as a people. If we fail now, we must be ready for the cruel fate that will become ours in the very near future. The dreadful days are almost here.
1. If Covid-19, an equal opportunity virus, taught us nothing, it showed us how weak and totally helpless we are.
2. Pretty soon, countries of the world will be left with no options than to close their doors against us. Recently, we all witnessed the overt racial discrimination suffered by Nigerians at the Polish border, while trying to evacuate due to the Russian bombardment of Ukraine. They might as well have written the words “Nigerians are not allowed here”. These words could very quickly become reality and be boldly written across international airports, international borders, international universities, international organizations and other international representations. This is not because we have a deadly disease but because we have an epidemic of duplicitous behaviors and dishonest practices, we have left unattended.
The greatest pride I have ever experienced as a Nigerian was when I had completed a Post-2015 presentation on education to the Commonwealth Education Ministers’ conference in London. When I was done, other African countries were asked for additional comments and they said there was nothing to add because “Big Brother Nigeria has spoken”. This was only sometime in 2013. Today, some of the same African countries are beginning to treat us differently. We cannot blame other nations, including African countries, that treat us badly. We cannot set our house on fire and run to our neighbor’s house with fire in our hands and expect an embrace. First, we must put out the fire on us before running to our neighbors. We must begin to clean up before a generational curse happens to us as a nation.
Our fathers fought for us, we must do same for our children and grandchildren. An uncomfortable truth needs to be told. We have failed our children. We must strategically recalibrate to save our collective future. Our children might be 10% of our population, but they are 100% of our future.
The task appears daunting. However, we must stand to transform what appears to be seemingly impossible and make it achievable.
The Latin root for education is “educare”, meaning “lead out”. There are two ways to look at “lead out”. 1. Lead out of ignorance and 2. Bring out the best in people by polishing their innate abilities and skills.
Who and how is this done? Our first teachers are our parents. Our first school is the home and its environment. The second set of teachers are the professionals trained in what is to be taught (Curriculum) and how to teach (Instruction). Either way you look at it, children become what we pour into them at home, the immediate environment and the formal school setting.
Though the first education is in an informal setting, the family is the bedrock of every society and everything begins at home; deviants, heroes, champions, discipline, productivity, responsibility, et cetera. All begin at home.
An effective and functional education is the real secret to developing a great economy. Education is a socio-economic liberator, Education enhances our ability to make informed choices, Education is the only sustainable poverty alleviation program known to man, Education is a means to an end, not an end in itself, Education is a gift that keeps giving, Education is the mother of all professions, Education is life, Education benefits the individual and society, Education is at once a constitutional right and a human right imperative, Education is an industry.
Nigerians spend N1 trillion every year to study abroad. The reasons you have Cambridge, Oxford, Howard, Princeton and others are 1. Academic Excellence and Research 2. They earn revenue mostly from foreign students from countries like Nigeria, where education is either substandard, bastardized or criminally neglected.
There is a direct correlation between intellectual property and economic growth and prosperity of any country. USA employs and engages about 120 million highly educated people in her economy. Nigeria and other developing countries employ less than 10 million highly educated people.
When you add our poor attitude to work, misplacements, duplicity, disconnects and waste, Nigeria becomes highly dysfunctional and on a downward spiral.
To make matters worse, the highly educated in Nigeria are attracted and pulled to better economies. Hence the brain drain syndrome.
Where is global education? The world has moved from the purely academic to Robotics, Artificial Intelligence (A.I), Artificial Reality (A.R), to Nano Technology and Metaverse. We still seem to be struggling with academic content (learning information for practical application). I recently visited the secondary school I attended some 51 years ago. When I looked through the window into our old Science laboratory, I saw what appears to be the same old frogs, centipedes and other creatures, hanging helplessly, preserved in formaldehyde. Nothing seemed to have changed. While our professors do not have a hang on Robotics, A. I, A. R, Nano technology and Metaverse seem light years away.
Here is a troubling question: How do our ill-equipped children compete in the global market place that requires skills we have not taught them?
Answer: we must speed up to catch up and then keep up. No lip serve, no window dressing. If we don’t, we will continue to slide into irreverence, ineffectiveness and dysfunctionality.
It is instructive to add that Technology, Software Engineering, Coding, Cyber Security, Crypto, Automation, Digital Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Artificial Reality, Nanotechnology and Metaverse are changing the world.What therefore are the future implications for education? According to Futurists, the global marketplace will require and be dependent on (a) Competition of Creativity (b) Competition of Imagination (c) Competition of Learning. In the past we made people like machines. Now and in the years to come machines will be like people. The futurists believe that while the past was knowledge and manufacturing driven, the future will be creativity driven. Our ability to make, create and innovate will be of paramount importance.
Up until 2009, aerial news coverage required a helicopter, a pilot, a newsman, costing millions of dollars. By 2019, barely 10 years later, a simple drone costing less than a thousand dollars had replaced the helicopter, the pilot and newsman, to do same. The pilot, newsman lost their jobs.
Current trends include but not limited to the following:
•Singapore is the first country to make meat, without health hazard, from a laboratory.
•Blood clot in the heart that used to require open heart surgery is now carried out with a probe and no surgery is needed.
• Stem cell research is benefitting people with spinal cord injuries, type 1 diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, heart disease, stroke, burns, cancer and osteoarthritis.
•Human organs are being grown in laboratories for organ replacement.
• Machines have been developed to help stroke patients walk independently.
• Robots have been developed that can carry on conversations, provide companionship, complete everyday tasks, chores in the home or office. Machines now look like you and I, programmed to do all humans can do and do it better. I mean everything, except that they do not have a soul and cannot reproduce. It is almost impossible to tell them apart from real people, unless they tell you.
•The Japanese have Developed a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine that can record and re-construct your dreams for your viewing pleasure.
• A water bike has been developed for water travel or sport. Imagine traveling on a bike on water, like we do on road surfaces.
•. Drones are used to fight high rise fires. The drones can be purchased at half the cost of a fire truck. Soon fire trucks will practically be obsolete. Consider having a water source (hydrant) and firefighting drones by high rise buildings or businesses. Ebano and Next super markets in Abuja would have been saved.
• Dubai before our very eyes has changed from mostly desert to a global destination. Dubai has recently introduced the use of unmanned drone taxis.
•The rave of the automobile industry is the development of autonomous vehicles that can go from point A to point B without a driver. It will interest you to know that the best autonomous car so far was designed by Engineer Frederick Akpogene, a Nigerian migrant in the USA. He designed one he calls JEGO-pods. It’s spacious enough to accommodate enough commodities like a little store. Imagine we had these autonomous vehicles fully operational when Covid-19 was ravaging the world. Remember there was no movement. These driverless vehicles could have been used to deliver medicines and other lifesaving supplies.
We also remember that Covid-19 destroyed more than a million businesses. The JEGO-pod can be used to facilitate e-commerce without renting a store. JEGO, a multimillion-dollar business, provides a new commerce infrastructure powered by autonomous pods, connected to your mobile phones. These vehicles became fully operational by the end of 2022. Clearly, this never would have happened if Engineer Frederick Akpogene never left Nigeria. JEGO-pods would never have been created if Fred Akpogene depended on our dysfunctional educational and economic sectors. There are many more Fred Akpogenes, walking the streets of Nigeria, with undiscovered skills and talents. They are the 15 million school age children, who are out of school and the 35 million who have never been or dropped out of school.
When we add the millions of unemployed youths roaming the streets, we have a clear and present danger. Nigeria is rated as the world capital of extreme poverty and is number 10 in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) at 29.2. This puts us in the serious category and simply means millions of Nigerians die annually from starvation. It does not take rocket science to figure out that soon, there will be nothing left for the poor to eat but the rich. The current rate of kidnappings, banditry, armed robberies and terrorism speak loudly to this concern.
We must, as a matter of urgency, begin to recalibrate and change our narrative. Challenges in Esan education are the same across Nigeria. As such, prescribed solutions to the problem of education in Esanland can apply nationally.
There are 3 critical requirements for education reform:
1. Access: increased enrollment and drastic reduction in the number of out of school children. Also critical to access is a “drop-out-round-up”, through adult education and TVET (Technical Vocational Education Training) programs; critical to producing much of what we consume.
2. Quality: of curriculum and instruction.
3. Relevance: (a) in line with global trends (b) synergy between education and the economy (c) fit for purpose.
The word “Synergy” in Latin is “Synergia”. In Greek it is “Synergos” means working together. Broadly means combined action or operation.
Education trains for skill sets needed in industry. Therefore, we must have an on-going articulation between industry and education programs. The education sector researches, informs and trains for continuous improvement as necessitated by global trends in industry. Examples are navel oranges, seedless watermelon, green carrots, autonomous cars, A.I, A.R, Nanotechnology, et cetera.
Our tertiary education research centers must look into and engage in creating industrial value chains based on the needs, circumstances and peculiarities of the communities in which they exist. The school cannot live apart from the community. Researches carried out by Stanford University is the main reason Silicone Valley and all the multibillion-dollar businesses exist in California. Examples are: Apple, eBay, Cisco, Lockheed, Hewlett Packard, Netflix, Facebook, Oracle, Tesla, Hollywood, et cetera. California is the fifth largest economy in the world because inventions spewing out of Stanford University are converted to money making enterprises. And it is just a state.
Fortunately, we have universities in every state in Nigeria. The Agriculture Department of our universities could research into the economic value chains for local agricultural products, as we are mostly farmers. Such research findings will then inform the various associated businesses, like large scale farming, production, preservation, merchandizing, haulage, exports. The job opportunities so created will greatly reduce unemployment in Nigeria and refocus the attention of our intelligent but misguided youths into more positively productive directions.
It is important to interrogate our education and answer the following questions:
1. What informs the content of our curriculum? Is it input from industry, global trends or guess work?
2. How do we ensure the appropriate, adequate and effective instructional coverage of syllabi in all tiers of education?
3. Are skill sets taught at all tiers tested annually to ensure standard, quality of instruction and annual yearly progress?
It is important to mention here that Access, Quality and Relevance must be working seamlessly and concurrently, for desirable and predictable outcomes to take place. Please observe that I said “Outcomes”, not “Output”. Before now, our systems approach for education only focused on input, process and output. Output being the certificate. This focus on output is significantly why families will do anything to procure one. Hence the rise of miracle centers, examination malpractice and commercialization of grades. Afterall, in Nigeria, that is all prospective employers require. Our focus on the certificate has mostly been detrimental and counterproductive.
In great economies, employers do not require your certificate; they often ask to see your transcripts, usually to determine if you performed well in specific skillsets needed for the employment you seek. A shift in favor of producing “outcomes” is preferred because it speaks to what you have learned and are able to do, in a job situation. This new focus will most certainly change the sad narrative of the unemployable graduate and the functional illiterate. Above all, it will enhance our “fit for purpose”. It is more productive to have round pegs in round holes. You must fit the purpose for which you were trained.
There is an urgent need to shift from the old Blooms taxonomy to the new Blooms taxonomy. For instance, it is not enough to learn the causes of pollution. Rather, engage students in creating a pollution free city.
To restructure and reposition our education for greater economic impact, based on global trends, the following are highly recommended:
1. Reliable data on all aspects of education to drive reforms
2. Academic emphasis should be on Literacy and Numeracy at the primary level. Then Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematic (STEM) at the secondary and tertiary levels.
3. Create Magnet or Theme Schools based on a serious curriculum review and amendment to include robotics and drones at the secondary and tertiary levels.
4. Fully integrate information technology into curriculum and instruction; vertically aligned and rigorous.
5. Domesticate performance evaluation protocols with implications for promotion, retention and professional learning.
6. Conduct periodic impact assessment to ensure the effectiveness of research-based interventions.
7. Every tertiary institution must have a research center. Relevant researches are pivotal to driving our economy.
8. For our economy to thrive, we must produce more of what we consume and import very little. This will drastically reduce capital flight, while improving our GDP. Our debt profile is a major concern. There are those who think that we do not have a debt problem and say we have a revenue problem. The truth is that you have to have a productive economy to have revenue.
9. Nigeria currently produces very little and imports about 97% of what she consumes. Debt is not a problem when it is used to produce wealth, provide employment, build enabling infrastructures and industrialize.
However, all the trillions we have borrowed seemed to have gone into “voicemail”. Some crazy snake swallowed some, we gave traders some and we fed millions of school children in the height of the covid-19 pandemic, though they were not in school. The shame of it all.
It is often said that if we fail to plan, we plan to fail. Critical to any reform and social development is the leadership question. We need a fearless and determined political leadership that fully understands and appreciates the importance of functional education to the fortunes of our people.
We need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice. Not in love with publicity but in love with humanity and equity. The following describe such a leader: fearless, determined, deliberate, measured, enlightened, visionary, progressive, thick skinned, decisive, accountable, and he or she must have a track record of competence.
Nigeria, out of necessity, needs to develop a timed (5-30-years) to drive Nigeria’s Socio-Economic growth and development. She should set up a commission or a body to develop Technology and innovation. We can have Technology parks, Creative Hubs, Innovation Hubs, Agriculture Hubs and an improved cross-cutting intervention of mega power generation. Just my humble ten cents. Thanks.
