Tunji Bello
25 March 2008
column
Lagos — "71 per cent of Nigerian graduates like bad cherries, won't be picked by any employer of labour because they are not fit for anything even if they were the only ones that put themselves forward for an employment test"
This was Professor Charles Soludo, the Central Bank Governor's damning verdict on our tertiary education when he gave a convocation lecture at the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Ogun State, last week. In his paper entitled "The unfinished business with the banking revolution in Nigeria", he said "if a company administers a test on 100 graduates from Nigeria higher institutions, 71 of them will not be suitable for the job". The Nigerian graduates according to him, are not only insufficient to provide the high level skills needed to tackle the challenges of post-recapitalisation operation in the banking sector and globalisation but also "they are not employable in the new economy".. He therefore urged the ivory tower to ensure the quality of their products to enhance their marketability in competitive globalised world.
Soludo is not alone in this lamentation. Just a few days after his sermon, came a reaffirmation from Akinsola Akinfemiwa, the Skye Bank Managing Director, who in an interview with a newspaper last Saturday, said that with all the euphoria about banks recapitalisation, the major dilemma is the lack of skilled manpower to run the banks in post capitalisation and globalisation era. Both chief bankers have not said anything new. If at all, they have only reminded us of what we have always known.
The only new thing is that Charles Soludo has only confirmed indirectly that he gave half-baked advice to former president Olusegun Obasanjo as his chief economic adviser. Charles Soludo was the architect of banks recapitalisation and consolidation "revolution" if after carrying out the "revolution" and then failed to plan for people to run it, then he must consider the revolution as a half measure.
In 2004, when Soludo and other Obasanjo's palace economists were being celebrated as Nigeria's latest whiz kids with their Vision 2020 that would propel the nation's economy to rank among 20 world economies by 2020, the reengineering of our education system was seen as very central to the attainment of that goal. In fact, in the document of the first phase of the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS), the poor state of education was identified to be in need of urgent attention. In the document, it is claimed that "the national literacy rate is currently at 57 per cent. Some 49 per cent of teaching force is unqualified. There are acute shortages of infrastructure and facilities at all levels.
Access to basic education is inhibited by gender issues and socio-cultural beliefs and practices among other factors. Wide disparities persist in educational standards and learning achievements. The system emphasises theoretical knowledge at the expense of technical, vocational and entrepreneur education. School curricula need urgent review to make them relevant and practice oriented." This was four years ago.. Since then nothing has changed. Rather situation continues to get worse. In fact, today, despite the Universal Basic Scheme (UBE), there are 8 to 10 million of school going age who are not in any school at all. Over 50 million Nigerians under the age of 35, going by UNESCO statistics, can neither read nor write. Since the issue of quantity or access to education is nothing to write home about, how can we even begin to talk of the quality of education the pupils get.
The tragedy that has befallen Nigeria's education system is mainly a product of the myopia and borrowed arrogance of our economic planners. It began in 1986 when the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) of the World Bank was imposed as the pathway to Nigeria's economic salvation. It was a programme of debt management, balance of payment problem and de-industrialisation through exchange rate mechanism.
SAP was anti-human capital, anti-agriculture, anti-intellectualism, anti-productive investment, anti-research and development, anti-self reliance, anti-manufacturing and anti-development. It was about monetarism, pro-banks, pro-exports of raw commodities and pro-speculation. Because the purchasing power of the otherwise contented academics and school teachers became destroyed, brain-drain set-in, teachers became merchants, many qualified personnel left for greener pasture abroad, standards became compromised because of general poverty, school enrolment declined as trading became more profitable than schooling.. And since there was no economic development plan except a short term monetary plan, the obsession for money became a national past time. From the leader to the led, money, money, money became the most important aspiration for everybody. Today, the craze after money has become a national virtue, because our leaders never set any goal or aspiration except personal acquisition and greed.
Who cares about education when there is cheap money to be made? From Babangida to Abacha, Nigeria's education system suffered its worst set back. When Obasanjo came, instead of embarking on serious national economic planning, he confused passion for vision, and the monetarist passion of his advisers took hold of him. Again, chained by foreign economic ideology, he began to confuse financial engineering with economic revolution. The former is only a component of the latter. Serious economic plan not only plans for sound and efficient financial base, it also plans for the human and material resources to keep the financial sector going. Under the Obasanjo-Soludo revolution, it was recapitalisation by any means.Money, money, money for those who can build enough capital base.
The most capitalised bank was more important than even when none of our over 70 universities cannot meet being included in the first 2000 colleges in the world. At a time of brain drain, when qualified teachers were lacking, Obasanjo-Soludo revolution dispensed with the services of 49 University teachers over petty politics. So how can we have qualified personnel?
Professor Soludo and his fellow bankers may lament over the lack of skilled manpower in their sector from morning till night, it will always end up being another talkshop as long as the nation does not have any integrated national plan that harmonises our educational, economical, social, technological and scientific needs.
The rot in our education system is too well known by our policy makers but they are not ready to do anything about it. Their attitude is to reduce the problem to money. Even where they had the money they misapplied and mismanaged it as we have seen with huge cases of fraud involving 20 states of the federation over the UBE Scheme. And if money were to be the major handicap, why would United States, Germany, United Kingdom, Spain among others that have spent more money on education for decades lag behind such countries as Canada, Finland, Singapore, Japan and South Korea. Last year, the Economist published its McKinsey report that rated education systems across the world. These latter five countries were rated the best five performing countries in terms of quality and objective attainment of education. Why? They invested heavily in the quality of teacher education. In Singapore alone, the teachers hail from the top 30 per cent of graduates. In South Korea, it is five per cent. In some of these countries, you need a masters degree to teach in primary schools because they believe that primary education is the foundation and once it is faulty, you can never produce a good educated mind. In Nigeria, it is that foundation that is most neglected while the issue of the teacher education and training is the least important.
Both China and Indonesia are said to be leaders in terms of mass literacy. But as they have also realised that this has not guaranteed needed qualified skilled manpower for their economies and industries. Despite having the world's largest science and technology work force of 35 million people, China still lags behind major developed nations in Research and Development (R&D) and innovation capabilities. As a result, few months ago, it designed a five-year plan of nurturing a highly skilled innovative workforce in order to meet up with Japan and South Korea. Where is Soludo's plan? It is only lamentation.
President Umaru Yar'adua has listed education as one of his seven point agenda, yet there's nothing on ground after one year of governance. In four years time, it will still be another lamentation. Yet the critical issue to be resolved is to pose the question: What kind of educated citizens and skilled manpower do we need to complement our economic vision? And how do we go about achieving it? If our schools must be made modern and global focus, the present school system, curricula and teacher training must be overhauled. Our primary school system is the starting point. The matching grant under the UBE scheme must be used to create competition amongst best performing states rather being made automatic which has only encouraged corruption. States with more students enrolment and in industrial settings as Lagos, Kano, Oyo, Abia, Rivers and Plateau require special attention and can be used for modelling as South Korea and China once did. The system must be made more practical and result oriented, environment must be made conducive for learning instead of present undue emphasis on theory and mass certification.
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