Nigeria lags as world accelerates with 4th Industrial Revolution

Nigeria is lagging behind the growth in the global knowledge industry or Fourth Industrial Revolution, mainly as a result of its obsolete university education system.

Stakeholders say Nigeria’s education system, particularly tertiary education, suffers from obsolete curricula that fall short of global best practices, dearth of dedicated lecturers, and extended, unfocused, incessant strikes.

This has not always been the case.

The First Industrial Revolution used water and steam power to mechanise production. The Second used electric power to create mass production. The Third used electronics and information technology to automate production. Now a Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on the Third, the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the last century. It is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.

“Thirty years ago, or in the 70s and even 80s foreign lecturers came for sabbaticals in Nigerian universities, because the standard met global best practices. Universities were well funded; the career path of lecturers began by being a first class student. What mattered was what you had upstairs not who you knew, or how politically savvy you were” said Victor Odumuyiwa, lecturer at the Computer Science department, University of Lagos.

Employers often prefer candidates with either a first degree or second degree from a foreign university, because of its perceived quality.

Exams Ethics International, a non-governmental organisation estimates that Nigerian students studying abroad spend more than N500 billion ($2.5 billion) on tuition.

Of this sum, Ike Onyechere, chairman of the group adds “annually, Ghana gets N160 billion of Nigerian students’ funds, while Nigerians spend over N80 billion on education in the United Kingdom. More sums go to USA, Canada, and Asia now,” Onyechere said.

Henrietta Onwuegbuzie, academic director, Owner-Manager programme, Lagos Business School (LBS) commenting on curriculum in public universities says that “the curriculum we continue to use were appropriate for the colonial and post-colonial era, where universities were intended to prepare graduates to fill posts in ministries.”.

Onwuegbuzie says, “society has changed fundamentally…” and recommends that to make universities respond to the new needs of the society, “the re-training of lecturers, as well as making fundamental changes to the curriculum,” will be necessary.

The fourth industrial revolution is a knowledge driven economy.

Peter Drucker, arguably the founder of modern management sciences was the first to articulate the concept, when he pointed out in Landmarks of Tomorrow, 1959 of the rise of knowledge workers.

“To be relevant, education in Nigeria today needs predetermined outcomes, for instance, 70 medical doctors or 70 nuclear scientists, annually. Vague targets like 40 percent arts, 60 percent science are recipes for disaster,” asserts Ike Mowete, professor of electrical and electronics engineering at the University of Lagos.

A knowledge worker generates value more by their minds than by their muscles.

“Universities must produce engineers, in the generic sense, that is, problem-solvers, people who design solutions. However, our education system produces people who memorise lecture notes and reproduce them, and the system neither encourages nor rewards hard work,” Odumuyiwa said of the UNILAG computer science department said.

In light of the fourth industrial revolution, the 2016 National Policy on Entrepreneurship Development meant to create “a critical mass of entrepreneurs to jumpstart the economy and create mass employment” abysmally misses the mark.

This is because it strives to get new outcomes from an ineffective education system and obsolete curricula.

“What is worrisome is that administrators in our tertiary institutions do not seem to realise that the approach is wrong and has not been achieving the intended results, but they continue to toe the same wrong path.” says Tope Toogun, MD /CEO of Accelerated learning’s systems limited.

STEPHEN ONYEKWELU