Dr Olaopa stated this last week while delivering a lecture on the topic ‘All Works and No Play: Leisure, Excellence and Educational Values for Development’ to mark the 60th anniversary of the Senior Staff Club of the University of Ibadan.
The retired permanent secretary said although governance and political leadership will take 70 per cent responsibility for the crisis in the education sector, “the university system is precariously liable for the substantial part of the 30 per cent remaining.”
Olaopa said: “There are two indicators that demonstrate this failure. The first is the fact that Nigeria is now effectively a certificate society. This fact has so many implications. One, certification is hinged (on) university education; and the universities have now been reduced to theoretical laboratories that are often out of sync with external realities.
“Two, the fixation with university education has emasculated other tertiary level providers. The polytechnic, monotechnics and colleges of education have been left to rot and therefore unable to fulfill their specific objectives in articulating the different dimensions of functional education.”
He said further: “If we do a count of the ministers of education in Nigeria as vital though not the dominant indicator (as there are numerous intervening variables), we will discover that the bulk were academics.
“In a sense, one can then allege that academics with their ASUU collaborators have not provided required leadership in the education sector, and in over playing the preeminence of the university, they have precariously contributed in attenuating the noble objectives of say the 6-3-3-4 system, which if had been well implemented, with polytechnics, monotechnics, colleges of education, technical colleges and vocational institutions given their pride of place, our country would not have been in the mess it is today.
“Evidence of that leadership failure in the education sector is the large army of the unemployed and the unemployable graduates that flood the society yearly without any hope of gainful employment. This predicament ties in with the negative implications of Nigeria being a certificate society that privileges university education.”
He then added that the failure has greatly hinged on Nigeria’s development plan, noting that a large number of educated but not competent young Nigerians now dominate labour market.
According to him, “Certification without substance must inevitably lead to a state of affair where graduates could not fit into the nation’s human capital requirement for national development. This therefore complicates Nigeria’s development initiative because there is a large number of the unemployed who have been ‘educated’ but are not competent or capable of doing anything.
“If I am asked, I will say bluntly and plainly that the joy that comes naturally with learning and being educated has been emasculated by the unhealthy understanding of what education entails. For most people, and rightly so, the end of education has turned out to be to provide a meal ticket by which a graduate can make ends meet and not so much again learning and character.”
and then