By; MATTHEW UKACHUNWA, Lagos
The ever-growing decadence in Nigeria’s education system is caused more by lack of innovation management than by poor funding, Professor Oyewusi Ibidapo-Obe has said.
“We need to get fresh ideas in order to get away from where we are to where we want to be. We have to encourage innovation,” Ibidapo-Obe, a former Vice-Chancellor of University of Lagos, Akoka (UNILAG), stressed at the recent Aelex annual lecture series held in Lagos.
He urged education planners to focus attention on incremental innovation, breakthrough innovation and education innovation in order to bequeath right educational model and structure to future generations.
According to the Professor of Mathematics, “in preparing for the future it is important that our leaders think about education innovation.”
He criticized the clamour for increase in budgetary allocation to education mainly as if it is the only cause of the fall in the country’s standard of education. “There is concentration on the budget. We need more than funding; it has to be systematic upgrade of the system,” he elaborated.
For Nigeria to revive the education sector and achieve the desired high quality in its standard of education, the don said private sector of the 0polity should show more interest in developing education in the country.
“Knowledge that will drive national development can only be fuelled by proper education,” the professor related.
Among his regrets in the condition of the education sector is that education budget has not exceeded 10 per cent since the advent of democracy, contrary to what was obtainable in the first republic. “Education,” he emphasized, “should be given a pride of place in the federal and state budgets,”
He lamented that in the present day Nigeria most of the school products from every level of education do not reflect the expected learning. He pointed out that more than 50 per cent of students in Ghana are Nigerians, noting that with 180 million learners in Nigeria there is a lot of pressure in school system. “There is lineal regression in school system,” such as poor quality entrance to schools, Obe said.
His study has proved to him that there is a great difference between how children in the North and South are brought up. Having regard to this he said that Almajiri children in the North have to be integrated into the country’s formal education system.
Obe also called for the abolition of quota system in Nigeria’s education policy. “Quota system must go. It is wrong to give admission to one who is lesser gifted. We are building a nation; the quota system works against the system. Quota system is one of the many things that put Nigeria in chain,” he asserted.
The don highlighted other impediments to education in the nation, namely: poor teacher preparedness, poverty which he described as “number one handicap in education system. In addition, he stated that teaching and assessment that encourages rote learning and memorization work against student learning and understanding . Also, he kicked against incompetence of public school teachers.
The professor recommended government-industry-academia alignment as solution, in order to turnaround Nigeria’s education system and enable the country achieve the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDGs) on education. xxx
