The Chancellor and founder of Gregory University Uturu, Abia state Gregory Ibe has called for the fusion of proper skills in the nation’s education system to ensure that Nigerian graduates are employable.
Ibe in his key note address on”Higher Education in Nigeria: Developing Human Capital for Global Competitiveness”. Organized by African Heritage Institution (The Big Idea Podium) noted that the idea of developing a nation without educating its people is not realistic because it possesses transformation power.
The Chancellor stated that the non-fusion of proper skills has made the nations educational results very pedestrian, and the youths in their innumerable numbers are better described as loiters.
“We have canvassed transition from the 6-3-3-4 to 9-3-4-system of education in Nigeria. The hype is on the burners again; on the assessment of the future implementation on technology subjects, just as we had it on the 6-3-3-4system. The 9-3-4 system claimed that there shall be merger of the former 6years primary education and the three years of junior secondary education of which the rationale is yet to be explained” he stated.
Ibe regretted that several privileged people now go to the schools outside the country because of the seeming decay in the Nigerian education system.
Ibe marvelled at the styles of the policy makers of the Nigerian educational system because their actions are intriguing and that the question of why education is considered dispensable in certain quarters remains a myth.
According the founder of Gregory University, the stakeholders, based on the policy, like the researchers, Teachers, Lecturers are left with no option than to manage the resources at their disposal for grooming the nation’s scholars, saying that the quality of the students rests on the aphorism.”what we garbage in is what we garbage out”. Asking that the research and education endowment funds should be put in proper use.
“The government is pushing an illusion, the ill-wind shall blow no one any good. In fact , we can be said to be completely off point, derailed or even deluded to imagine that we could develop our Human Capitals locally for global competitiveness without first discovering why our standard are not recorganized internationally”. Former governor of central bank of Nigeria, Chukwuma Soludo, in his contribution condemned the system where teachers are no longer employed based on merits.
He said most tertiary institutions now engage teachers from their ethnic group not considering their qualification and efficiency in teaching the children who would be the leaders of this country tomorrow. Teaching job should be one job that should be strictly based on qualification”, he said.
Soludo also condemned the idea of giving students from certain states in the same country lower cut off marks, saying that teaching should be a profession and not a part time business, adding that education today has been structured in such a way that the poor man’s children, brilliant indigent students can no longer go to good schools.
“The children of the poor and the rich should go to the same school, but today the children of the poor get no good education because the poor are made to study in a lower school. Even in the university, recruiting lecturers as a favour is not helping the education system”.
He advised those in the position of recruiting teachers to always think of the future of the 1000 children that would pass through them hence the best of the should be engaged.
Earlier, the Executive Director Ufo Okeke-Uzodike who described education as a vital commodity in every society that embeds attitudes, beliefs and ideas through which the value system of every human being is developed and shaped as cultures.
He said that the education inspires and enriches imagination and creativity.
Okeke-Uzodike however, lamented that successive Nigerian governments have not cared about entrenching education as the basis of the nation’s prosperity and peace.
According to him, the present administration has the lowest percentage allocated to education in more than a decade pointing out that the net effect is that Nigerian educational system is far weaker in 2018 than it was few decades ago.
“Most Nigerian graduates are no longer employable, because of years of insolence and corruption in our educational system, the average Nigerian university graduate packs all sort of bad attitude into postgraduate studies or into new jobs.
