Nigeria needs a national strategy for technical education. Technical and vocational educational training is an important but neglected aspect of Nigeria’s education system.
We are crazy about certificates. We are preoccupied with “academics” and have ignored practical education. Our fiscal deficit is nothing compared to our human capital crisis.
There are lessons to be learned from Britain’s prejudice against technical qualifications and how it lost the first mover advantage in the industrial revolution. Britain’s industrial sector declined because it took too long to realise and develop a national strategy for technical education, and it failed to establish a network of technical education institutions.
In the late 18th century, Britain’s apprenticeship system was superb. Highly skilled workers, mostly apprentices, mainly little-known technicians, mechanics and engineers predominated in three sectors of the British economy: textiles, transportation (road, rails and canals) and precise instruments.
These men, who were active in the industrial revolution, have been called the tweakers-and-implementers. Britain’s advantage derived primarily from its cadres of skilled and creative tweakers.
The dominant route for transferring and acquiring skills in that period was an effective master-apprentice system. Their talent was tacit. That is, it was learned from hands-on instruction and personal experience, not from books.
The demand for such skills was so high across Europe that until 1824 it was illegal for technicians to emigrate. Samuel Slater, English cotton producer, father of the American industrial revolution, pioneer of the factory system was lured by incentives (bounty es) offered by Alexander Hamilton, the first treasury secretary of the United States, for business intelligence on textile manufacturing since the British government forbade, for monopolistic reasons, textile workers from travelling overseas.
Britain lost its first mover advantage in the industrial revolution to Germany and Switzerland. Both have maintained strong manufacturing sectors and they share one thing in common: apprenticeship programmes.
From age 15, children are apprentices. After spending a few years, depending on skill, they can make BMWs. And because they started young and learned from older people German and Swiss products cannot be matched in quality.
Studies conducted by influential individuals noted Germany’s industrial efficiency surpassed that of Britain because the German education system worked closely with industry and gave priority to the application of science in industry.
Our fiscal deficit is nothing compared to our human capital crisis.
Education is a bigger crisis than corruption; electricity can wait, bad roads can wait, but the development of Nigeria’s teeming youth can’t: a day missed is an opportunity lost forever.
Aliko Dangote says that, “As a nation, one of our major challenges to industrial development is not really funding, markets or raw materials, but rather absence of highly trained and experienced human resources to drive growth.” Dangote should know. He is betting $9 billion on a fertiliser, petrochemical and refining complex.
There are obstacles to technical-vocational education. There is an underwhelming appreciation of skill- and work-based education that gives practical knowledge that can be applied to a specific sector of an industry.
Roadblocks to learning the scientific and technical principles that are the foundation of technical-vocational education include: low student morale, funding, examination-oriented curricula, lack of qualified teachers/instructors, weak literacy/numeracy skills of students and negative perception of work-based education.
Attention should be given to technical education not because of unemployment – technical-vocational education is not for dropouts.
Policymakers on their part must show commitment, interest in and knowledge of scientific concepts, and recognition of the strategic importance of science and its application to the economic future of Nigeria.
