‘Nigeria’s education system to compete with that of Finland, Singapore’
Peter Okebukola, a professor and former executive secretary, National Universities Commission, in this interview with KELECHI EWUZIE gives insight into Nigeria’s rebased GDP, topical education issues and steps to improve the sector. Excerpt:
The recently rebased GDP figures shows education contributing 1.60 percent to the country’s economy equivalent to 1.13trn of the total estimate of 80.22trn, what is your take on this new development?
First, it is a delight to note that Nigeria boasts the largest economy in Africa as a consequence of the rebased GDP. Since the announcement was made, I have been receiving congratulatory messages from my friends at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris and this is heart-warming since most recent reports are on killings, kidnappings and corruption in high and low places.
As a statistician myself, I will need to study how we arrived at education contributing 1.60 percent to the country’s economy. If I were to plough the education parameter into an equation showing the contribution of education to development, I am sure to get a higher value. The reasoning is that education sits at the bottom of the pyramid on which rests most (all?) other contributors to the economy.
You cannot partial out education completely from the contributions of other sectors such as telecoms and Nollywood which have largely accounted for the spike in the rebased figures. This mathematics is for another day but for the purpose of your question, the relatively low contribution of education indexes poor performance of the education sector on nearly all input, process, product and outcome indicators. High illiteracy rates, large number of children who are out of school, inadequacies in number and quality of teachers and poor quality of products from the school system are some of the numerous impediments to education contributing much more to GDP.
The interesting point to note is that all national reports on education over the last 20 or more years have documented the scenario I just described, yet our pace of improvement has been snail slow. Indeed, quality is worsening on all fronts. To ensure that we hike performance of education, greater attention should turn to improving the delivery of education at all levels.
Mind you, it is not all about throwing in more money into the system. It is about all stakeholders- parents, students, teachers, school managers, you the media, religious leaders, examination bodies and the general public contributing in some form to improving efficiency, effectiveness, relevance and quality at all levels.
The percentage figure for education is very low compared to other sectors, Why is this so? What steps should government take to better the contribution of education to the GDP?
I believe we should not be talking about steps that government alone should take. We all have to be part of improving education and hence its contribution to GDP. Most Newspapers devote six pages to sports every day and a few paragraphs to one or two pages to education a week!
What about parents? How many take the time to provide opportunity to learn at home for their children. The children are allowed to roam with friends after school, watching European league matches and chatting away on their instant messaging devices. The poor send their children to hawk wares after school.
Moving on to teachers, many do not inspire students and are willing to connive with invigilators to cheat during public examinations. What about school managers who receive funds from government? Tremendous leakage inhibits the money from impacting on the target areas needing improvement.
Since you want me to talk about government specifically, I will say that the necessary policy and practice environment should be provided for the delivery of quality education at all levels. I am not talking about federal government alone. State and local governments have their roles to play. We must invest more in education.
I will be comfortable with Finland (Europe), Singapore (Asia) and the US (North America).
The growth potential of education in Nigeria is stifled by inability to faithfully implement national policy provisions. This is the long and short of the story. The inside elements of the story include poor quality of preparation of teachers; students poor attitude to work; depressed reading culture; poor teaching, learning and research environment and a host of socio-cultural factors such as religion, early marriage, low value placed on the power of education of boys (especially in the some eastern states) and of girls (especially in some northern states).
Is Federal Government’s allocation for education sufficient to fund development in the Universities?
Noting that in the last seven years the allocation to federal universities has more than quadrupled, the federal government deserves praise in funding its universities.