Stakeholders in Nigeria’s basic education sector last week converged on Abuja for this year’s National Education Summit for constructive national discourse and dialogues to chart the course forward on qualitative, inclusive and adaptive education.
The 2022 National Education Summit which has the theme ‘Building qualitative, inclusive and adaptive education system: meeting modern-day education challenges in Nigeria’, is a follow up to the first Summit held in February, 2021 with the theme: ‘Covid-19 and the future of education in contemporary Nigeria.’
Sanmi Johnson Ibidapo, programme and communications officer, Human Development Initiatives (HDI), said the nationwide lockdown occasioned by the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020 exposed serious gaps in Nigeria’s education system, which was ill-prepared to handle the disruptive effect of a total lockdown with consequent effects on continuous learning.
“Prior to the unfortunate invasion of the global pandemic, our beloved country had for some time been battling the problem of out-of-school children which became exacerbated due to insurgency in the North-East. Without doubt, the dynamics of actualising quality education at all levels at such a time as this makes continuous dialogue of all stakeholders in the education sector an absolute necessity,” Ibidapo said.
He posits that with the recent happenings in the country, particularly insecurity in schools, coupled with infrastructural deficits, moral decay and ethno-religious issues and their effects on the school system, the attainment of SGD Goal-4 by 2030 might remain a mirage, if deliberate steps are not taken.
“It is thus important to ensure concerted efforts of all stakeholders, who through advocacy, initiatives and tech-driven innovations will help create an effective, efficient, inclusive and adaptive education system; a system that continues to function even in the event of future pandemics that may come upon the world,” Ibidapo further said.
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Accordingly, he said such systems can only leverage technology to bridge the gaps in the country’s educational sector for qualitative, inclusive and continuous learning as well as the institutionalisation of transparency, accountability and good governance.
“This National Education Summit is intended to be one of such issue-based and solution-generating programs put together by our organisation Human Development Initiatives (HDI), with the support of MacArthur Foundation,” said Ibidapo, disclosing that the summit addressed issues affecting both government (Supply-side actors), and end-users (Demand-side actors) of education services, majorly parents/guardians and students drawn from across the six geo-political zones in Nigeria.
