Okebukola’s stance on the depressed quality of education in Nigeria

Since the inception of humanity, there has been an enduring matrimony between education and the society. The first two humans, in their paradisiac school, had this relationship with God. On the other hand, in this contemporary world, especially in Nigeria, it seems God has no business with education anymore. Everybody now thinks that the business of education is what anybody could dabble into. Many people believe that once they can read and write they are qualified to be teachers. However, not everybody thinks this way. Professor Peter Okebukola is one of them.

Okebukola said this much at the University of Ibadan, on 9 July, in his lecture entitled “Winning the Battle against Depressed Quality of Education in Nigeria” at the 11th anniversary of Splash 105.5 FM and the 79th birthday of Chief Adebayo Akande, the founder of the radio station. Okebukola, who started teaching at the age of 19, was once the deputy vice chancellor of the Lagos State University. He was the Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission, and is currently the chairman of the council of Crawford University and National Open University of Nigeria. He is arguably the most qualified person to venture into this kind of critical national issue.

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The preamble for his lecture was simple: “My thesis is that if we get the crooked path of education quality straight, many things that come with fast-paced development will follow.”

Given the fact that education is imperative for self-awareness and is a corner stone for national development, Okebukola launched into a critical analysis of Nigerian educational history. His analysis went way back to 1842 when the first primary school in Nigeria was established and seven years later, the first secondary school. Decades later, came the tertiary institutions. First was Yaba Higher College in 1932, followed by the University College, Ibadan in 1948, which later became a full-fledged university and renamed University of Ibadan in 1962. “From independence to date, the education enterprise has gone through tensions and fair weathers; high points and low points,” he said.

Okebukola, no doubt, knows his statistics well. According to him, there were less than 3,000 primary schools in Nigeria in 1960, but there are currently over 94,000 primary schools. Secondary school number increased from 1,227 in 1960 to 25,000 today. At the tertiary institution level, the trend is similar. From one university in 1960, there are currently 164 universities with over two million student population. He also talked about Technical and Vocational Education and Federal Science and Technical Colleges, who though their numbers are low nationwide, are pivotal to job creation. “Since population growth rate outpaced the education sectorial growth rate, such quantitative expansions failed to significantly reduce literacy rates,” he said.

While talking about the quality of products from Nigerian school system, he lamented that Nigerian education is anchored on sinking, sandy shores. He opined that what has inspired these discussions is the ignoble performance of secondary school leavers, university graduates and teachers on simple tasks that are traditionally assumed to be achievable by such persons in the past. “On the one hand, the operators of the school system blame those outside for it. On the other hand, others outside the school lay full blame on the students, their teachers and the managers of schools,” he said.

While addressing the question: Why is the educational system not anchoring well on job creation? he said, “No doubt several factors outside the school system are contributory, usually indirectly to the phenomena.” According to him, some of the factors that impact on job creation and service delivery include: challenge of policy and policy implementation, the challenge of the curriculum, the teacher challenge, student-related challenges, the challenge of facilities and the challenge of curriculum delivery.

“How do we win the battle of depressed quality?” Okebukola asked at a critical point in the lecture. “How do we reformat our educational system to ensure it is on firm grounds and to respond more effectively to the demands of job creation and service delivery?” He was of the opinion that curriculum reformatting, battle against low teacher quality, leveraging on education growth and diversification, addressing the challenge of access to university education and strengthening quality assurance are some of the ways the battle against depressed quality of education in Nigeria could be won.

Towards the end of the lecture, Okebukola spoke extensively on the recent armaments for winning the battle of depressed quality of education in Nigeria. “I am delighted to inform you that the dry bones of the Nigerian university system are preparing to rise again through the Abubakar Adamu Rasheed Revitalisation Plan.” According to him, the Rasheed 2018-2023 blueprint identified the key challenges facing the system. Some of them include inadequate funding, depressed quality of graduates, gender issues, inadequacies in access, academic corruption and other social vices, among others.

“We are in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the citizenry in Nigeria, young or old, male or female should be aware of the power of science in improving our lot at the individual, community and national levels,” he concluded.

 Kingsley is with the Nigerian Tribune.