Education is essential for the growth and development of any nation, and Nigeria is no exception. However, the state of education in Nigeria has been a major concern for decades. Despite being the most populous country in Africa and having the largest economy, Nigeria has one of the lowest literacy rate in the world, with only 59% of the adult population able to read and write.
Nigeria schools and universities need to break with their colonial origins and focus on the skills that the country need. Education in Nigeria need to be updated and made fit for purpose. The educational sector of Nigeria suffers from several challenges which include; inadequate funding, low teacher quality, poor infrastructure, curriculum issues, amongst others. These challenges are highlighted below
Inadequate funding: one of the most significant challenges facing education in Nigeria is inadequate funding. Despite government promises to allocate 26% of its annual budget to education, this had not been achieved with the sector receiving less than 10% of the budget in recent years (UNESCO 2021). This has resulted in lack of resources, inadequate infrastructure and low teacher salaries etc.
Curriculum Issues: the Nigeria education system curriculum has been criticized for being outdated and irrelevant to the country’s need. This has resulted in a mismatch between the skills acquired by graduates and the skill required by the job market, leading to high level of unemployment among Nigerian graduates (IBE 2019).
The Nigerian government needs to review and update the education curriculum to ensure that it is relevant to the need of the country and the job market. This will ensure graduates of Nigeria acquire the skills and knowledge required to compete in a job market and contribute to the economic development
Poor infrastructure: Nigerian education system suffers from inadequate infrastructure, many schools are lacking basic facilities such as classroom, desk and chairs. This has resulted to over crowding with some classrooms having up to 100 students per teacher ( OYEBADE2020).
For meaningful development to take place in Nigeria education system, there is need for curriculum reformation, quality teacher training, embracing technology, as well as increased funding. The current monopolistic approach to acquisition of knowledge also needs to be changed. Technical education and innovation needs to be funded to make a better Nigeria, because for a country to experience development the citizen must be highly educated . Hence there is a need for urgent reformation of the educational sector of the country.
– John Esther Titilayo
Department of Mass Communication,
Prince Abubakar Audu University Anyigba, Kogi State.
