…Loses best hands to ‘japa’ wave
…Minister laments rot in education system
Education is vital to human capital development, which is the architect of sustainable growth of every nation.
Education is a systematic influence on people’s knowledge, skills, and attitudes. It is the process of transferring attitudes, skills, knowledge, and wisdom from one person to another to better the existing environment.
Unfortunately, education and human capital development in Nigeria have faced lots of challenges which immensely contributed to the under development of the country.
The human capital development index of Nigeria is put at 0.32 percent, which means that a child born in the country has only 30 percent of his/her potential in life.
Nigeria, on a regular basis, is losing its best brains to other countries in the renewed “japa” syndrome.
“While it remains a concern that many of our university products nowadays are not employable due to the poor teaching and learning processes that go on, a few that excel in their academic pursuit here are moving out for greener pastures abroad. Today, we see our best engineers, medical doctors, nurses, technologists, technicians, and others, in other countries, doing great things. There must be a deliberate effort of the part of educational stakeholders in Nigeria to turn things around,” Onyekachi Nnaa, an economist, said.
He further observed that the poor education going on in Nigeria has succeeded in creating an army of “Okada riders; Keke riders, bus drivers and conductors, truck drivers and scavengers many of whom have university degrees.
“We see an army of unemployed youths in many cities, towns and villages across Nigeria. Many of them are going into undignified jobs just to eke out a living. Some have already joined terrible and criminal gangs. We talk about those stealing manhole slabs; electricity cables, and today, we hear that it is the activities of vandals that result in the incessant grid collapse. I am afraid that if things continue the way they are, the future (two, three, four years) may be very dangerous for Nigeria,” Nnaa said.
Tunji Alausa, the minister of education, while addressing stakeholders in Abuja recently, lamented the collusion of teachers, lecturers, and others in the system in promoting academic fraud.
Jessica Osuere, the founder/chief executive officer of RubiesHub, an educational service delivery company, said that human capital development constitutes the wealth of a nation; hence, Nigeria must invest in teachers to achieve the needed quality learning outcome.
“To get human capital development, we must invest in teachers; the welfare of educators must be taken into consideration. The government must encourage teachers.
“No society can grow above its human capital; seven percent allocation to education is grossly inadequate, we’re not ready yet,” she said.
Stanley Oboroh, a lecturer at the Federal University, Otuoke, described the issue of human capital development as serious.
He said that examination malpractice was a problem in the country and holistic in nature; and that the government should fund institutions properly to have a conducive learning environment as this will benefit both teachers and students alike.
Boroh said that if Nigeria wants to increase its human capital index, then, the government should invest in research and development.
“No serious nation leaves the budget for education at six to seven percent for years. The welfare packages for lecturers are small and something should be done about it,” he noted.
Nubi Achebo, director of academic planning at the Nigerian University of Technology and Management, said that the issue of poor human capital development in Nigeria was extremely serious, with far-reaching consequences for the country’s economy and social fabric.
“Nigeria’s education sector faces numerous challenges, including inadequate funding, outdated curriculum, and limited access to quality education.
“The recent lamentation by the minister of education about the collusion of teachers, lecturers, and others in promoting academic fraud highlights the depth of the problem,” he said.
Achebo reiterated that to address issues of human capital, the government must take decisive action to curb the increasing rate of fake results and examination malpractice by implementing robust examination systems that prevent malpractice and ensure the integrity of the education process.
Besides, he said the government should improve teacher training and accountability and increase funding for education.
“To shore up the human capital index in Nigeria, the government must adopt a comprehensive approach that addresses the systemic challenges facing the education sector; such as updating the curriculum to emphasise critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving skills.
“Increase access to quality education, particularly for disadvantaged groups. Encourage partnerships between the government, private sector, and civil society to support education initiatives,” he said.
According to him, by implementing these strategies, Nigeria can begin to address the challenges facing its education sector and develop a more skilled and competitive workforce.
Stanley Alaubi, a senior lecturer at the University of Port Harcourt, said to address academic fraud, the government should empower the teachers.
“I think the government should give a better welfare package if they think teachers and lecturers care were compromised and see the magic. Mental work is more tasking than physical work.
“The government can go ahead and punish any perpetrator of such fraud when things are out in the right perspective,” he said.
Read also: Governments urged to increase investment in human capital development
Today, despite impressive results being announced by some universities in Nigeria, education in the country has nosedived to abysmal levels.
Students increasingly seek other means to get fantastic grades without working for such grades. Papers are leaked before the examinations; teachers allocate scores for reasons other than hard work and merit.
Human capital development is greatly lacking in the Nigeria system owing to the increasing menace of out-of-school children accumulated over the years, and those children who have now grown into fully mature adults are exploiting and ravaging the society that they are supposed to protect and develop.
Human capital is the stock of skills, knowledge, social and personality attributes that influence people’s ability to produce economic value from their labour. Human capital development is the process of improving an organisation’s employee performance, capabilities and resources.
It is vital to the growth and productivity of the organisation because the people that make an organisation run are an asset to be invested in. To ascertain a knowledge-based economy during this period of globalisation and technological advancements, it is pertinent and necessary to increase innovative capacity, competent experts, and transmission of knowledge.
Despite the commitment of the Nigerian government to improve the human capital of its citizens, the performance metrics of the Human Development Index (HDI) suffer a great setback, which led to poverty, insecurity, frustrations, high dropout-out-of-school rate, destitution, untreated illnesses, poor access to education, among others.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria, has quoted that the unemployment rate in Nigeria increased to 33.30 percent in the fourth quarter of 2020 from 27.10 percent in the second quarter of 2020. Too many of the Nigerian graduates are fighting for too few jobs.
A lot of Nigerian energetic youths of working age are wasting away their unutilised strength which could have been channelled to grow the country’s economy if properly guarded and engaged.
This underfunding of education can be seen in virtually all the budgetary allocations to education in both states and federal over the years. Nigeria’s education budget is always below UNESCO’s recommendation of 15 percent to 20 percent till today.
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