A professor of Political Economy and management expert, Patrick Utomi, says what Nigeria needs to do right now is to carry out reforms that will give priority to primary education over other levels of education, especially the university in the education sector.
He says this is necessary because the primary education is the foundation that any learner would build on.
Utomi gave this view on the sideline of a ‘Book Roundtable Discourse and Award 2022’ organised by the Flannel Business School (FBS), in Lagos, recently.
He was a guest speaker at the forum and spoke on ‘The book’ as an agent of change in a rapidly changing world.
According to him, it is at the primary education level that most people learn and form the basis of what they grow up with in life and the future, including good reading habits.
“And that is why as a country, we need to focus more on the primary education than tertiary education.
“If we do that, we will get quality products that will transit to both the secondary and tertiary levels’’.
However, the situation in the country now is what we can describe as ‘garbage in, garbage out.’’
Utomi, therefore, advocated that primary education should be run by the local government which is the closest to the people and for parents to have better input.
He said those who make decisions for university education in Nigeria for example are far from the people who are at the grassroots, adding that “to worsen the situation, most of them don’t send their children to Nigerian universities.”
He said that was why they gave series of excuses why the government could not afford to fund education as it should.
The scholar explained further that it was disturbing that the industrial action by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) could linger this far, blaming the people with the country’s resources for the development.
He said people in government should understand that shutting down public universities for this long is tantamount to toiling with the country’s future.
In his remark at the event, the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, eulogised virtues of the organiser of the event, the director-general of FBS, Lawrence Omidiora, saying he is dedicated to pursuing courses that are geared toward the good of the society.
He said the importance of books to self-development, life events and history such as the ones being promoted by the school is commendable.
On his part, the director-general of FBS, Lawrence Omidiora, said that the sole objective of the book roundtable was for stakeholders to chart the path toward revamping the dying reading culture in the country.
He noted that the award was meant to encourage more Nigerians to identify with the book industry.
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