Concerned industry professionals in education sector have described the performance of Adamu Adamu, the minister of education, in the last three years as being pedestrian.
They observe that his approach to issues concerning the education sector since his appointment to office leaves much to be desired, as the minister should think deep for solutions to the decay in the sector.
In a interview with BusinessDay they feel the minister should recognise the need to strengthen proactive programmes and activities that enhance quality education and offer knowledge, skill and values for Nigerian citizens to enable them compete with any economy in the world.
Maurice Onyiriuka says the education sector still struggles with policy gaps and implementation backlog, adding that this issue remains unresolved not because the education minister don’t have ideas as to how to approach the outstanding issues, but because there have not been consensus, the realism and even the courage to confront the challenges.
Onyiriuka expects the minister to address the situation in the education sector with gravity instead of the kid gloves he has used to attend to the mountainous problems.
Odion and Omofonwan say in their study, ‘Educational System in Nigeria Problems and Prospects’ that the gross under funding of the educational sector in the country in general and the neglect of the maintenance of the physical facilities and instructional and living conditions have deteriorated in many of these schools, classrooms, libraries and laboratories are nothing to write home about, all leading to decline in academic standards.
It is the view of stakeholders that the minister must begin to look at ways to source for funds to focus attention on these areas if these educational institutions are to get out of the woods.
Comfort Uyo, a university lecturer, is of the opinion that Adamu Adamu can achieve success if he is to implement the correct policies, but doubts the possibility since he is not solely in charge of key decision when it concerns funding.
For example, since the introduction of the Universal Basic Education (UBE), the education sector at primary school is still characterised by poor performance and an increasing number of out-of –school children and one of the major explanations for this is the crisis of funding occasioned by inadequate preparation of the extent to which available resources could last.
Again, widespread cases of arrears of unpaid teachers’ salaries – of up to six months in many cases, frequent industrial disputes and strike actions by university teachers as well as shameful cases of primary and secondary school pupils using tree shades as their classrooms are some of the manifestations of poor funding of Nigeria’s education.
For Babatunde Oguntona, an educationist the greatest investment education the minister can give Nigerians during his term as minister is to encourage human capital development.
According to Oguntona, “I strongly believe that only what is required from government and the minister of education is to make available resources that can be used for the development of human capital so we can have good governance for our citizens.”
Oguntona further called on Adamu to reverse the trend where academias no longer go back to classes or universities, no thanks to poor motivation, a situation that have seen first class brains being lost to other sectors like banks, Oil and gas ,telecom and others.
Chukwuka Okonji, A professor affirms that the ideas of achieving free and quality education lies hugely on government’s ability to acknowledge the role of education in the development, this he believe the current minister of education can buy in order to jump start, the revival of the educational sector in the country.
“Adamu Adamu as the ministries of education should be able to define the problems of the educational sector in relation to the needs of the economy and society and promote innovations and partnerships that will help to fulfil these needs,” he said.
