Education professionals and concerned students have thrown their weight behind the calls for reform in the education sector by the #endsars protesters in the past two weeks saying that this clamour will reshape this pivotal sector for good.
Reacting to calls for a state of emergency to be declared in education as part of the 5 for 5 demands by the protesters, educationists, university professors and students who shared their views with Businessday say this action is a welcome development as it will help save millions of young Nigerians.
Educationists observe how the education system Nigeria is poorly funded with successive governments proposing less than 10 percent budgetary allocation to education. The sector is bedevilled with poorly equipped laboratories, uninhabitable hostels and unmotivated lecturers. Over 10.5 million young Nigerians are out of school, partly because of insecurity and education affordability.
Considering that millions of candidates yearly sit for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), but only about 500,000 get admitted to university. Over 90 percent apply to public funded institutions, most of which suffer from infrastructural decay.
In addition, young Nigerians are the worst affected by unemployment. There are 21.7 million unemployed Nigerians with the youth accounting for 13.9 million of this number.
In the views of Peter Okebukola, a professor of science education and former executive secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), the challenges bedevilling the education sector in Africa’s largest economy are too numerous, they include the poor quality training with many having low content knowledge of their teaching subjects.
Low level of remuneration leading to low enthusiasm for teaching and discouraging optimal performance on the job. Mismatch of teaching subject with subject assigned to teach in school, lack of interest in teaching as a profession, Weak capacity in using exciting teaching strategies to boost academic performance of students.
Poor attitude to schoolwork as they look forward to cutting corners to pass, Negative mind-set about the value of education owing to employment difficulties after graduation.
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A cross section of students who spoke to Businessday pointed out that the over seven months Academic Staff Union of Universities’ (ASUU) strike is enough reasons for youths to hit the street and demand better education because the strike portend grave danger to their academic aspiration.
They maintained that Education is the most veritable source of knowledge which forms the bedrock of any nation, querying why in Nigeria, the situation is different owing constant sit out by the university lecturers.
Faith Joshua, a student of education, University of Lagos observes that Nigeria’s graduates no more measure up to the standards of both internal and external evaluators which she attributes to the constant disruption of education activities by both the government and academic unions, warning that with the actual level of the deterioration at various levels of the educational systems, the attitude of students will soon change negatively towards education.
Joshua maintains that at a time when the government is trying to check the restiveness of youths, sending students out of school now has very serious security implications.
The aggrieved students insist that the strike action has done more harm than good to university education in the country, because expectedly, students across the country have once again been thrown out of school, while the academic programme has been seriously disrupted.
“If urgent care is not taken the future of the country is bleak as far as any meaningful development is concerned” she added.
On his part, Audu Balogun, a 400 level students of Political Science, University of Lagos opines that the sad reality confronting us now is that learning as a social and a developmental process has virtually been halted all across the nation’s public Universities and polytechnics, a phenomenon he rightly observes has led to the unjustifiable frustration of the yearnings of thousands of our youths for quality education. According to him, “the unending strike action has made parents and guardians, distressed, not to talk about the embarrassment of the academia”
Balogun calls on the government to pay attention to demands of the protesters and yearnings of youth if they are not to be painted as being uncaring and insensitive to the gaping decay in the educational sector.
“It is the role of the government to create the enabling environment for its brightest minds to return to our universities. Unless this government intervenes and begins to fulfill its obligations, it would have missed the opportunity to make a great impact on the Universities” he maintained.
