Data published by the National Bureau of Statistics on population growth and education have startling implications for human capital development in Africa’s most populous nation with fertility rate of five children per woman.
The two main reports which contain the data that prompted this analysis and interpretation of data were “Demographic Statistics Bulletin 2015” which shows that the country’s population grew from about 140 million to 183 million by the end of 2015, a period of 10 years.
This means that the country received 43 million new Nigerians into its fold within the period and most importantly, the oldest of these new set of Nigerians is just 10 years old.
In 20 years, when today’s Nigeria’s children will be adults, the world will be totally different from the world we know today but sadly, they are not being given the tools to compete in that future.
The other report was “JAMB Candidates Admitted by State and Gender within Faculty – 2010 – 2016” published on Monday, 20 Feb. This report showed that of 11.7 applications that the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board received between 2010 – 2016 only 2.7 million candidates were admitted across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) between 2010 and 2015. This means about 77 percent of those who applied were not admitted or only three out of each set of ten candidates was admitted.
People familiar with the matter have alluded to two reasons in explaining the JAMB data, citing non-qualification of candidates and rapidly diminishing carrying capacity of tertiary institutions given both high fertility and population growth rates.
“There are two key reasons why candidates might not be admitted. The first is the non-qualification of candidates and the second is the carrying capacity of tertiary institutions in the Nigeria” said Solomon Adebola, director at Babcock University’s Centre for Executive Development and Dean, Babcock Business School, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State.
Adebola contended that the solution to the first problem is improvement in teaching and learning methods at the level of basic education. However, on carrying capacity there is more to it than the physical carrying capacity; various professional bodies wade into the mix to guarantee that graduates are employed without the labour market being oversaturated thereby weakening demand for such professional skill-set.
“For instance the National Universities Commission (NUC) based on the facilities at a university such as number of classrooms, laboratories, amphitheater among others allocates the university a quota of students to be admitted. Afterwards, the various professional bodies, such as the Nigerian Legal Council also allocate quota. The NUC might allocate a university say 100 for its law faculty and Legal Council could reduce it to say 90” added Adebola.
Adebola proposed an improvement in teaching and learning methods at the basic education level in order to deal with the problem of non-qualification of JAMB candidates but data from the NBS show that this might be a tall order.
Education data report published by the NBS in February 2016 show Nigeria had 62,406 public primary schools in 2014 with a total enrolment of 23 million children. These schools had 574,579 teachers resulting in an average teacher to student ratio of 1 to 40 comparable to what is obtainable in most parts of Africa but twice higher than what is obtained in Europe and America and even most parts of Asia.
This high student teacher ratio means that most students in these classes are not getting enough attention from teachers since the classes are overcrowded. This poor attention is compounded by the fact that only 11 percent of teachers in public primary schools have an educational degree while 56 percent have the minimum National Certificate of Education (NCE). The remaining 33 percent of teachers have other undefined qualifications.
According to a United Nations’ report “World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision”, by 2050, six countries are expected to exceed 300 million: China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the United States of America. Nigeria does not seem to be making provisions for this eventuality.
As this is happening Africa’s largest economy is stuck in its old ways and narrow understanding of human capital development, experts say.
“We still have a parochial understanding of education in general and human capital development in particular and how they both impact the management of unemployment, youth unemployment in particular” said Sunday Adeyemi, Registrar/CEO, Chartered Institute of Personnel Management of Nigeria at the launch of CIPM research report on managing national unemployment.
Adeyemi added, “we take skills development for granted in Nigeria. This is partly the reason why every youth thinks going to the university is the only way to earn a decent living. It is only in Nigeria, I suppose that anyone can open a barber’s shop without rigorous certification process.”
With a functional National Vocational Qualification Framework (NVQF), these vocational and technical skills will gain wider acceptance and reduce the need for traditional academic qualifications.
STEPHEN ONYEKWELU
