Fresh Vision

With the inauguration of a new president in Nigeria last month, the promise of hope is quickly greeted with the numerous challenges that has held our nation underdeveloped. The endless list includes deficient power supply, poor health care system , security challenges, inadequate physical infrastructure and industries,  corruption etc., all exacerbated by  a large and growing population with attendant unemployment.  Simple logic posits that all of the above can only be overcome  by a team of prepared individuals, empowered with the right skills, determined  beyond defeat, pursuing a clear vision.  This Nigerian dream is surely achievable,  but only when all Nigerians are active members of the combat team, whose grooming  hinge on  the presently ailing educational sector.  As the new administration rolls out its agenda for improving this universal base on which all other sectors of the economy depend, one wishes to reflect on our educational fortunes, in a perspective that is scarcely considered.

Overture

Ancient wisdom tells any interested inquirer that there is power in numbers. Clan heads of African families in time past boasted about how large they were, and a father would pride in the  ability of his numerous children to work on the farm (optimal exploitation of natural resources), and where necessary constitute a formidable force against any aggressor. Indeed there is huge benefit in numbers when properly managed.

Just as a computer processor by logical lines of code could present helpful information, timely, orderly,  from large volumes of financial data input which otherwise  would disorient the non-Information Technology  compliant  accountant,  inversely, a large population , not guided by effective regulations (the code),  nor properly groomed by tailor designed institutions (the computer processor) will constitute  a conundrum to any government, with probable self-immolation.

The efficiency  of the Computer Program, as analogy, is traced to the efforts of the programmer who with a clear understanding of what he desires as output from his computer when data is imputed , takes the pains of analyzing, coding, running, and debugging of  the program, before deployment for predefined task. And where a failure arises, he bears the buck. Comparably, when a government has a clear-cut vision of what can be achieved using the population advantage, it sees as serious business the duty of implementing the sequence of programming.

Though much of the systems/policies  with which we operate  as nation were not  self-evolved, working with foreign tools have never been less challenging. This, also hasn’t prevented smart individuals from spending long hours studying how to operate and manipulate a purchased computer hardware / software to their advantage, moreover, inventions in this  age has greatly reduced difficulties associated with technology transfer, and understanding / adapting received knowledge and policies, rather than re-inventing the wheel.

Nigeria’s system of education today was in fact received, if not enforced of us by colonial masters. While some may attribute our inability  to optimise output from the educational sector  to the tyranny of received knowledge, it is seen that same procedures have yielded excellent result in the original lands from which they were sourced. And, the home-engineered modifications contained in the National Policy on Education, incorporating cultural demands and issues perceived as our  unique challenges, has not salvaged the debacle.

Delayed Enrollment And Wasting Destinies.

Several critiques have been made over time highlighting in detail the numerous lapses in our educational system at all levels, ranging from underfunding to examination malpractice, and diverse academic frauds. An effect, is the dismal performance of students in the past two years at Senior School Certificate Examinations, (o’ level), only last week, results released by Joint Admissions And Matriculation Board (JAMB) for the 2011/2012 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examinations (UTME) showed that  only 597, 494 out of 1, 493, 604 candidates, made the middle score of 200. About 40 % pass rate.

This prunes down possible enrollment by 896110, yet how many will eventually gain a place in a tertiary institution? With 117 universities, and 100 polytechnics and colleges of education at the moment, the  147, 000  admissions limit for this year, set by  Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC) on based on carrying capacity, will certainly deny many   access to tertiary  education  for reasons other than qualification. A consequence of this startling subsisting scenario is that numerous qualified candidates (unables) are not admitted to chosen fields of study each year because of  incommensurate available spaces. At his point, primary beneficiaries of our educational system are the teachers and administrators who exploit the desperate.  A few may eventually find their way to disciplines they completely have no interest in or are not just cut-out for. The deep thinker can tell the several possible outcomes of such voyage. But one obvious outcome is that such persons only go through the tertiary institution to obtain the certificate (possibly, also  with the minimum knowledge required) to avoid the peer stigma, without an intention of practicing in their field of study upon graduation.

For a few privileged ones, their affluent parents fetch them admission outside the country,  but of course at higher costs (this annual total sum exceeds the Ministry of Education’s annual budget – Capital flight). Thus the unables keep making attempts to beat ever changing admission  rules, or just pray to be lucky someday.  Wide spread poverty has also had its impact, as I have encountered some who obtained  admission offers by merit,  but could not muster enough resources for fees and initial charges.

The common excuse is that our population is too large!, others  just blame corruption. What is the implication? Talents are wasting by the day!. I  see talented young stars spend years “waiting at home” in pursuit of an admission offer. Some when encouraged try  to acquire skills that polish their talents, but many often eventually slip into depression and frustration.  Wasting the destinies of many, and the Nation in the long-run. We are forced to ask who are those opposed to the expansion of tertiary institutions or even their proliferation and liberalization?

Without a divergent attempt to launch a diatribe on the parlous  state of  tertiary education in the country, one only wishes to make some salient observations. Most disheartening, since this should be the interface, through which several inputs(students) would transform to  useful outputs (skilled workforce), expected to have acquired enough training and information to contribute in managing workplace processes, or become inventors of new schemes.

Tertiary Education In These Times.

For those who eventually get admitted, the mandatory years of study flows oftentimes accompanied with excessive  issues ranging from industrial actions  to  sex / bribe-for-grades (sorting), Etc. The outcome are graduates tagged half-baked. Very little is said about the bakers, their stale knowledge and plagiarism etc.  With the mass churning out of graduates annually into the already saturated labour market, the attendant widespread unemployment does not spear the serious minded. Indeed, I have encountered several graduates with  first  class grade  (even in the sciences and engineering) not able to find related employment in their disciplines. One begins to imagine the lot of  those with lesser grades. Even when opportunity exist, recruiting agencies say these graduates are unemployable, because  they have not been equipped with workplace skills.

Non-existent  background in entrepreneurship and small scale business management coupled with harsh economic climate makes self-reliance often fore-closed for the recent graduate. The poignant question festers, what have these ones spent between  4-6yrs doing?. Clearly, our educational system lacks the structure that encourages innovation and contrary thinking, technical skills and criticisms. Whereas, for the engineering profession where I belong, it is in the practicals and fabrications that you clearly identify where to make modifications and alter existing theory behind a design. Indeed,  what hinders a nation is the creativity of its citizens. When students are expected and confined to learning /memorizing existing procedures and approaches to problem solving, they end up becoming experts at preparing for examinations, propelled  by the fear of unemployment which the eventually still meet. For many, after their first degree they remain without a firm understanding of fundamental concepts in their discipline, as matter of fact ‘suitors’ to their fields of study, just as the degree is called ‘bachelor’s degree’. Remaining idle years after graduation, the archaic guidelines of our educational policy being responsible for their albatross. And in a society not known for suicide nor an offer of social security, with time depravity sets in. As simple logic, a large population should connote self-sufficiency, or very little need for foreigners as expatriates. For the a process engineer for example, beyond class room theories, much of today’s industrial workplace, requires competence in computer aided design and simulation packages, HYSIS, PROSIMS, CEASER II, MBAL, PDMS etc, most of which can be learnt within six months, and if integrated into the 5-year academic curriculum would make the fresh graduate more employable. What prevents this?

Mystery Academia

Have the lecturers helped?. First, a category of lecturers will want to be excused in the name of being products of this same feeble system. While, those who trained overseas would whine endlessly about the government’s funding for education; a hardly sufficient reason to hide in both cases. For the lecturers who had their own training in admirable institutions overseas, experienced, how things are done there, why are they unable to impart  accordingly, easier and more effectively even in class room teaching/ pedagogy? . As I refuse to buy the suggestion that foreign training doesn’t equip an individual with needed survival skills in Nigeria, one can only presume that the old mind set they had before leaving Nigeria prevented them from imbibing the  philosophy behind educational development in those countries. As usual, they studied hard over there, only working hard enough to pass exams, and returned with the degrees to a warm reception of friends and relatives  back home.

The world witnessed how nationals of several eastern nations at some point in history,  sponsored by their nations to study in the western world, upon completion of their studies, returned home and aggressively applied the acquired  skills to transform their technology and economy. For us, those who the nation sent to Harvard years ago, are known for no sufficient contribution to knowledge other than “they have been to Harvard!.”  A decade into the millennium, in a  Post-Graduate (PG) Advanced Thermodynamics  Class of  first generation Nigerian  university,  I witnessed the compulsion of students to the use of same old text, tutorials and conventions used by the lecturer more than 25 years earlier, when he was a student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). This wasn’t unique to that lecturer alone. Whereas much have changed, especially with the use modern computer tools (specialized application packages) in solving such academic engineering challenges

Particularly at the PG level, I have observed several lecturers teach as though they are offering the students an undeserved favour (are they being paid?), or as if they are losing something that is in limited supply. Still as part of the parochial mentality, many hide their knowledge (old principles that are fast getting outdated by the day) that could be improved upon by the students for the benefit of the nation’s future. Treason? or perhaps the fear of being replaced by their students. With a population like ours (150 million),  nobody (skill) should be indispensible.

Have I also observed that most higher degrees are conferred after an vague estimation of how the student has suffered? or maybe it is the assumption that given better conditions the student will perform, rather than standard of work and the flaunted guideline in the PG prospectus.

With globalisation we cannot feign to be an island. In our world today you may not be physically present in America, to know what is happening there. Thus laziness and primordial bias can be identified as reasons for the first excuse, where the prevailing psychology is “because I suffered to obtain my degree, let others also suffer”. Being products of a system that scorched their backs, they tend to have developed  a strategy to position themselves such that they eventually will be able to prey on the status quo having “paid their dues”. Thus they resist attempts at positive change. It marvels me to see young lecturers can  fiercely conservative, opposing change simply because they aspire to take advantage of the same weak system, and sense that  a change will see their machination fail.

Continuous change in our Educational Policy is a necessity, else we will be left behind in a rapidly changing world; an era that renown management doyen Peter Drucker describes as being characterized by  accelerated change, overwhelming complexity and tremendous completion. In certain ways, Nigeria is today very much different from what it was 11yrs ago at the dawn of the millennium. The telecoms industry, internet reach (blogging, social networking , affiliate marketing etc) and mobile banking has transformed the ways of surviving and doing business today. More change is certainly expected as Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc, continues to  roll out new products and services. But to what extent has our tertiary education adapted to joining the race for change? The information technology (IT) revolution started in campus by inspired students, empowered with relevant knowledge  by their respective institutions. For us, celebrating only excellent academic results from class work,  prevents the audacity for such inventions, as  lace the founding of these great IT corporations.  And even for those who have made strides that make our nation proud, it truly cannot be ascribed the workings of  our education, but the simple truth that, every nation has its fair share of nature’s  gifted brains.

Today, Information technology has become an indispensible tool in whatever field of endeavour. Obvious trends reveal a concentration of wealth in the direction of the ability to harness the ever increasing powers of IT in your field, if your efforts should create wealth The change is creating wealth as well as destroying wealth. India is today able to utilize the IT skills of its populace, to effectively satisfy external consumer needs majorly outsourced from the USA.

Population Probabilism

Indeed a huge and unmanaged population constitutes a terrible burden of social infrastructure, unemployment and underemployment is expected, and even the employed is threatened, because, where such individual is compassionate, his income goes into attending the needs of his numerous unemployed family members, loved ones and neighbours at the expense of continuous self-development, and goals. Increase in crime rate follows, like the Arch-Bishop Onaikan once asserted that “the poor cannot sleep because they are hungry, and ironically,  the rich cannot also sleep because the poor is awake” – preferring houses designed like prisons; the fear of  armed robbers. This continued idleness does not pass without stray thoughts, not immune to lascivious machinations. Thus a strong correlation exists between unemployment, sitting at home, lascivious machinations,  more pregnancies and population growth. A scenario where years after graduation an individual doesn’t find job, and worse still doesn’t  embark on any meaningful business, means that he cannot pay any tax,  so the government has a lot to lose from his situation. And for a society that has social security then his survival allowance is equally a national economic strain.

China may have had their experience of what a uncontrolled population growth rate can cause to national economy, but like India, we must note that increasing human population cannot be compared to the effect of weeds on a  farmland, or livestock overcrowding in an range. Humans have brains that can be productively tasked, each to sustain itself. All we need is relevant knowledge, a working tool which can easily constitute a mobile workshop for the bearer. Thus we must improve on the kind knowledge imparted by our tertiary institutions  and its relevance to our today’s society

Like has been clamoured severally, it is a knowledge-based economy, thus tertiary education cannot be more needed than now. Our curriculum must be ever dynamic to catch pace and beat rapidly improving technology. I was stunned at a curriculum development seminar when the  NUC Executive Secretary, (the regulatory organ for standards in Nigeria’s tertiary education) revealed that a new curriculum for the sector has to go through the national assembly, and that as at July 2010 when this lecture held , bureaucracy , and “perhaps bottle necks of legislative lobby”  had prevented the last curriculum sent to the National assembly by the NUC more than three years earlier from being approved. He unashamedly said even that one which is yet to be adopted had  become obsolete given the rapidly changing face of relevant knowledge the world over. So sad! Should political shenanigans interfere with appropriate education? Should a curriculum devoid of firm instructions in morals that produced this political class be allowed to persist? Can tertiary institutions modify their curriculum to  offer thorough training in locally needed skills so that the years spent in the university, meant for grooming in character and fundamentals theory won’t be a waste? It is not off-key to reason that where a  university is compelled to provide loans covering tuition and living expenses  from its coffers to excelling students (at least the indigent) repayable only when the student secures employment upon graduation, the University will be more proactive in its course delivery, ensuring that the training it offers  is relevant with the times, such that its graduate will easily find a place  in the industry to repay the loan.

The Population Advantage

With larger population, bigger volumes of task should be accomplished faster- by more hands; cheaper – due to competition as economics will reveal; and better -since more human brains are pushed to research  and development of new products and services. Today, before consumers around the world get satiated with an existing version of a software, or critical enough to reject it, the population advantage of India, enables her supply newer versions and diverse alternatives, at an even faster a rate, making her the software capital of the world. In this way, numbers can constitute an advantage.

For us, every sector of the society is challenged to sit-up. The trend is changing even for newspapers. It is no longer just  news, as news get stale in few hours after an incident. With this huge threat from the internet , new visions of publishing must evolve  to include articles of living, with a flavour unique to the publisher. Yet this comes with an even more profitable opportunity for newspaper publishing on the internet, some national papers with large viewership in  Nigeria that understand  this now profit more from online advertisements and Google ad sense than printing.

Indeed everyone in this age must be involved in manipulating the internet  to his advantage. Even in the legal profession, one can only imagine the bustling of that specialty that will comprehensively address intellectual property rights of internet users (issues of duplicating PDF files , copyright music downloads, etc.) or even misdemeanours in online financial transactions (forex  trading, money  transfers, online banking etc.). Such  legal framework and implementation which is the emerging legal hot spot for the future will require a legal expert thoroughly rooted in Information Technology. Now and in the future, IT entrepreneurship is the business to beat. From information gathering, to deep thinking, little strategic positioning, and investment , the results are unparalleled , stories of Ewen Chia, Kelvin Ham, Mark Zukerberg to the more popular Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Andy Bechtolsheim can testify.

Consummation

Nigeria’s tertiary educational system is surely in need  of surgery to both ideas , policies and persons that won’t let it bustle and convert our population challenge to relevant knowledge, technology and wealth. We must incorporate IT applications into our curriculum and teach what the industry needs. In today’s competence economy, and indeed in the emerging world, service delivery will not be a function of years of experience, as the aid of smart systems and clear grasp of their use,  will guarantee  efficiency. More work will be done by fewer hands, with smaller but smarter machines, and in less time. Yet no nation or government can bear the consequences of mass idleness or unemployment of its citizens of working class. The frustration that leads to depravity and the attendant issues of security and economic mischief would be unimaginable. A mid-point is needed. A working document and  firm implementation that will guarantee availability of tasks for the willing hands and encourage advancement it science to beat man’s numerous challenges, making living more pleasurable. This post-basic educational demand, only sequel concrete efforts of our nation at meeting the second millennium development goal of achieving universal primary education four years from  now, since tertiary education performance is a continuum from the basic. Undeniably, a massive population demands massive education which should translate into massive inventions and create massive wealth. Indeed Nigeria is a wealthy country whose expression lies in the education it’s populace,  emphasis on information technology, and less  wrangle over crude mineral resources. A responsibility for the incoming Minister of Education (yet to be appointed).

Solemn reflections on my 26^th Birthday. From  a concerned and affected citizen, on this day the 26^th June 2011.

Samuel Hanotu Kwelle