The development of a nation tops the priority list of every good leader who indeed has the onward movement of his people at heart. Sound and worthy education comes from a well planned, implemented teaching and learning policies. Intellectual advancement and growth is a product of an improved system of education being taken with all seriousness by all concerned stake holders.
Without prejudice, trail blazing academia serves as a benchmark upon which generational academic giants are raised into the society, capable of competing with international educational standards.
Teaching and learning with practical experiences is a vital tool which aids fast comprehension of the content being taught, it gives students the opportunity to learn in twinkles because they see with eyes and touch with hands the realities.In technologically advanced Nations of the world, dissemination of sciences’ knowledge is done with proofs. When it comes to production of any form in sciences, the needed gadgets and environment are available and that’s the reason students fly in colours of great prospects to future.
Ironically, they are universities in Nigeria where you undergo a course of study like Mass Communication without a knowledge of how a TV and Radio station’s studio looks like until it’s time for industrial attachments. In some instances, students even in final levels get sacred of Camera lens, owing to the fact there was no physical reality to it from day one till the climax of their stay in schools.
Johnson Oduwale, through Legit.com reported in 2018 that almost all of Nigerian schools lack training facilities which impairs adequate grabbing of taught lessons. In his words, “most schools and institutions in Nigeria are in very bad conditions. In most states, the teaching environment is not conducive, the schools lack technical and up-to date practical facilities which make education to be rather theoretical and quantitative rather than qualitative”.
To draw an inference from his report, it will be succinct to state emphatically that the Nigerian Government through the ministry of Education is doing less or nothing to improve the quality of education dispensed to average Nigerian children and this is questionable.
In most Government universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, they are poor structures of science laboratories for practicals, full of outdated facilities, while some do not even have. This hampers raising an effective generation of academic explorers who can directly take responsibilities to building a strong and viable Nigerian science world.
The labour market does not attend to emotions of men because it simply uses the acronym “GIGO”, Garbage in, Garbage out. That is, your income from the sector is premised on the value you add to the market. To be a medical Doctor without practicalities is as good as being a undergraduate that knows nothing about it, to be an engineer without the knowledge of how to combine certain elements for proper outputs is vain.
It was reported by Babatunde, an activist in 2017 that many Nigerian graduates are not only unemployed, but unemployable as their skills are largely divorced from labour requirements. He further stated that beyond the issues of corruption in the sector, Nigerian graduates are not marketable in the global economy as the institutions that produced them are lowly ranked due to a myriad of factors.
“To catch up with the strength of fresh graduates, it will be effort in futility to demand for their certificates to check, just let them write a short essay on any issue of their choices, that’s where you’ll realise how badly trained and unemployable they are,” Babatunde stated.
Truth be told, the education sector is nothing to write home about owing to the fact that the integrity of the system has been corrupted whose attendant effects are what we see today. In one of the universities within the country, in 2019, there was a report by an undercover journalist of how a procurement department siphoned the cash needed for the purchase of studio gadgets needed for NUC’s accreditation. This is one in millions of similar acts, militating against practical education in Nigeria where the man in charge prefers to fill up his personal pocket while killing the learning opportunities of innocent students.
You can’t give what you done have, graduates are not capable of handling most of intelligence demanding jobs in the labour market because the required skills are no where to be found in them. The author of this piece had a fair share of this ugly trend of theoretical education, except for instances where personal responsibilities were taken to know more about the nitty-gritty of a course of study.
To be called a mechanical engineer without the ability to loosen up the nuts of a 2KVA generator is possible in today’s Nigeria and it’s an offshoot of a tactically and intentionally bastardized education sector, where no one cares for adequate and updated information dissemination.
To get out of these issues of concern in the nearest future, Federal Government through the ministry of education must ensure that a large part of each year’s budget is allocated to the sector and every penny must be accounted for. In cases where the procurement department of every institution need to work, receipts and history of transactions must be verifiable for the purpose of transparency and accountability.
There’s need also, for a Presidential task committee on education, whose main function should be investigating independently about the use of monies sent to schools through Education Ministry for procurements. Such committee should be devoid of men and women of questionable character and integrity. President Muhammadu Buhari is known to be a man of integrity, such trait should be used to handle matters of lifting our education ministry to greater heights.
Students in higher institutions of learning should learn to appreciate every effort put in place by the Government through proper use of purchased gadgets for the purpose of durability. Science equipments are known to be costly and scarce, when they have been provided with one or more by the Government, high maintenance culture is required for the management of such tools. A broken facility must be replaced without much ado.
The 1999 constitution of Federal Republic of Nigeria should be reviewed and amended. Such amendment should be tailored towards making it compulsory for practical related courses to be taught with required facilities. The Government must be intentional about it by making sure that this law is set in motion as it should be and must be observed by all higher institutions.
The National Youth Service Corps should be empowered with the ability to test the practical knowledge of fresh graduates at the entrance of all camps within the Nation before admitting prospective members into the camps. In cases where a graduate knows nothing about what he claimed to have studied, such persons be sent back to his/her school for more training on practicals. The Corps should engage the services of practising professionals in various fields to engage intending Corps members in tests before accepting them into camps.
The ministry of education ought to as a matter of urgency review the curriculum of teaching and learning, adjustments that can take pull out theoretical knowledge dishing is needed. Teaching without physical realities should be desisted from, for the opportunity to raise students who will favourably compete with their international counterparts.
When the foundation is bad, the fruits will tell the story. The appointment of an Education’s minister shouldn’t be premised on belonging to a ruling political party, how much he/she has to buy the slot, who they know in presidency and the Geo-political zone to which they belong, it should be based on track records of achievements of such person. He/she must be an active educationist, currently practising and must not be above 50years of age for vibrancy in getting along with his duties. By these, we can achieve a revamped education sector where the future generation of leaders can be assured.
– Chigboja Gideon writes from Lokoja, Kogi State.
