ROBUST research and development (R&D) funding? How can we hope for a better tomorrow if today’s beneficiaries of student loans cannot find job tomorrow to pay back? How can education quality that can serve the needs of the 21st century be guaranteed when any close friends of the president or governor who may not have any competence or capacity can be appointed Minister and Commissioner of Education? How can we lead the black people of the world in 21st century if there is no robust remuneration policy to attract good teachers at all levels? How can education quality be achieved without making welfare and training of teachers a big deal as it once was in Western Nigeria before what Patrick Alley called ‘Very Bad People’ began to seize power in the same zone?
As I was saying here, let’s rise from this hall and remember how two countries, Singapore and South Korea without petroleum resources have developed human capital to wealth through education quality.
Recall that most orators and motivational speakers may have been entertaining us with the story of the good man, a leader who inspired Singapore from Third to First World, Lee Kuan Yew. It is always a good read, a wonderful biography of a significant Asian. But not many of our leaders may have studied some of the specific strategies the very educated Asian employed to achieve his goals that have become a national and organisational culture in Singapore.
It is important for us to note that the unique but least-talked about strategy Mr. Lee used was remarkable investment in education quality in that one city country of only 6.11 million people. There are 34 universities in Singapore, of which six are national. The two best known, the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) both feature very highly in the QS World University Rankings®️ 2021, offering courses in a wide range of subjects to their student populations of over 30,000 each.
Singapore’s global superstar, the National University of Singapore (NUS) is currently ranked 11th in the QS World University Rankings, and first in the QS Asia University Rankings… Within the QS World University Rankings by Subject, NUS displays a breadth of high performance, which can be rivalled by very few universities in the world. The school is now ranked seventh in the world for the engineering and technology broad subject area, and sixth for civil engineering. It’s also within the top 10 for social sciences & management.
I would like our Governors, indeed the Governor of Ekiti State to take this away as a major deliverable from this remarkable forum. Let’s explore Singapore more: According to Stavros Yianouka, of Project Syndicate, Lee Kuan Yew’s achievements have been the subject of much global discussion before and since his death. But one aspect of his success, which has been under-reported is his investments in education. His strategy, he would often remark, was “to develop Singapore’s only available natural resource, its people”.
Today, Singapore routinely ranks among the top performers in educational attainment, as measured by the very influential Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment. The powerful Asian country is though one-city-state of just about six million people, it normally boasts two universities among the top 75 in any Times Higher Education World University Rankings.
You may ask, what did Mr. Lee and Singapore do right? Let’s ponder over that question as we rise from this special gathering to recall that Lee Kuan Yew was once in Nigeria and he was at the University of Ibadan when there was a UI and he wondered why the colonial masters didn’t prioritise Science and Engineering Schools in the beginning. He reportedly remarked about the danger of prioritising Classics and other Liberal Art disciplines, which could only produce orators and more orators – nothing more!
Here is the conclusion of the whole matter: The battle for restoring the lost glory in higher education in Nigeria must be waged holistically. Thus, to improve the standard of education and her global competitiveness, Nigeria must first educate the educators and improve their level of “psychological satisfaction.” And Nigeria should begin now to appreciate and reward excellence! Poor working conditions dissuading talented youths from entering the teaching profession.
Nigeria is capable of reversing the trend and produce enviable world class scholars if the leaders can sufficiently fund the schools, motivate the teachers and students by providing good teaching and learning environment and create employment for the teeming population. Nigeria cannot benefit from the emerging global economy with the present poor state of the educational sector.
There should be more tertiary institutions that should be equipped with functional libraries and laboratories; and classrooms should have modern instructional technologies-computers connected to the Internet, projectors, audio-visual and video conferencing equipment, et cetera. Teachers should not be expected to perform miracles without the necessary teaching tools. Primary and secondary schools, which are the foundations of higher education, should be adequately funded and properly staffed too. However, university admissions should be strictly on merit and schools should offer relevant courses that prepare students for the challenges of the 21st century economy.
Higher institutions should be granted full autonomy and allowed unfettered hands to source funds through private sector partnership. The government should motivate students by providing them a healthy learning environment (modern classrooms and living quarters). At least in advanced nations good environment is known to provide good settings for teaching and learning.
An intractable culture of corruption has not allowed the government to provide good quality education to prepare the youths for further leadership position. Without the tools, how could they grow, develop, compete and effectively function in the rapidly changing global economy?
No nation will neglect its educational institutions and expect to progress. Therefore, the society should employ capable hands and motivate them to settle the much-vexed quality issues in the educational sector. Fanciful speeches cannot improve the condition of things. Miracles don’t just happen. Many Nigerians have been harping on moving the nation forward without taking practical steps to accomplish that. Nigeria cannot talk of improving its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) without improving its educational system and business environment. Good quality education and good business environment are among the primary means to spur an economy and improve the people’s productivity and their living standards, which would strengthen their global competitiveness.
The government should get off the high horse and take concrete action towards resolving the crisis in the educational sector. Because without treating the crisis in education as a public health issue that requires serious attention, as this writer had noted elsewhere, the youths would continue to receive inferior education. And they will continue to suffer mass unemployment and social vices, such as armed robbery, banditry, abduction, prostitution, peddling and consumption of illegal drugs could worsen.
Besides, the society will continue to have poorly educated leaders and barren political parties without ideology and Nigeria’s politics will continue to be violent. Nigeria will continue to fall behind economically, socially and politically and that will continue to impact negatively on the nation’s global competitiveness.
All told, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should immediately direct his Education, Labour and Budget Ministers to swallow their pride and vanity and resolve the ASUU-FG avoidable conflict now or never. It has become a symbol of suffering and shame to the governments of the federation. Here is the thing, there should be a national summit on education administration and funding for development. There should be no excuses about economic downturn when it comes to education funding.
Let’s reflect on this: in the aviation sector today, aircraft are serviced abroad in Africa’s most populous nation. So, some experts have asked: can’t policy makers and NUC encourage proposals for specialised universities that can take care of this priority need in aviation industry, instead of just licensing universities and replicating courses that are already available in existing ‘mega’ universities? Why do we get our children to be applying and registering for almost the same poorly funded courses, which do not trigger employability skills all over the country? The ordinariness of our curricula of studies has been worsening the employability index of Nigerian university graduates. Yet no one is thinking out of the box, in this regard.
Craze for universities of medical sciences: Since 2014 when the former Governor of Ondo State, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko looked into the seeds of time and saw the strategic importance of setting up the premier (University of Medical Sciences, in Ondo City, the craze for the specialised university hasn’t abated. What is more concerning at the moment, most political leaders who would like to ask for the so-called federal universities in their constituencies are asking for the University of Medical Sciences. In 2024, there was a breaking news item that the immediate past Deputy President of the Senate, Senator Ovie-Omo Agege was celebrating an approval of a University of Medical Sciences in his constituency in Delta State.
You would recall too that when President Muhammadu Buhari officially visited Ebonyi state before leaving office, he was so impressed by the initiative of the then Governor, David Umahi (now Minister of Works) that he announced compulsory acquisition of the State’s just completed University of Medical Sciences as a federal university. Politicians asked for them and they were given before the President suspended creation of more universities the other day. Curiously, why are the authorities not concerned about the state of existing Colleges of Medicines and Teaching Hospitals? Are the Universities of Medical Sciences being funded to have their own Centres of Medical Excellence? The answers to these questions are still blowing in the wind.
Besides, some other critical thinkers have urged the authorities in Abuja and the 36 capitals to be thinking about Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) in secondary schools to encourage the collaboration of the arts, science, technology, engineering and mathematics for national development. It has been argued that this too will drive innovation and research to create business solutions that will fuel long-term economic growth in this age of disruptive innovation and technologies.
More important, our leaders should brace up and urge our education managers to establish more Technical Colleges and Vocational Schools; not just conventional universities offering the same subjects. ‘Rushing’ for more conventional universities is just to have armada of universities that may not be relevant to the priority areas of national development. As such, our emphasis as a nation should be on competence, not ‘credentialism’; skill acquisition, not certificate. The nation can only survive on people with knowledge and skills, which can add value that innovative technologies trigger at the moment. We should look at even the Asian Tigers in China, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, India and see what they have done with their many Universities of Technologies. What laboratories do ours have?
We must be a focused society in consonance with the realities of our environment and the modern world. This way, the NUC and Nigerian universities will be celebrated even in global context because our tertiary education will be relevant to the needs of individuals and the society. What we need, in the main, are more and better universities with clarity of purpose on national development.
Excerpts concluded.
- Oloja is former editor of The Guardian newspaper and his column, Inside Stuff, runs on the back page of the newspaper on Sunday. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Monday.