With 20m out-of-school children, Nigeria preparing for more B/Haram – Obj

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has warned if Nigeria does address its 20 million out-of-school children who constitute 10 percent of the population, the country was preparing for more Boko Haram insurgency in the future.

Obasanjo said there was a need for holistic development of the education sector in beginning from the primary, secondary the tertiary level; noting that an uneducated citizenry cannot contribute to the progress of the nation.

The former president spoke as a special guest panellist at the national summit on tertiary education organised by the House of Representatives in Abuja on Tuesday.

He said it was not the responsibility of the government alone, but all members of the society, including parents, religious leaders, communities, and corporate organisations.

“Tertiary education is very important but education, particularly, education that has left 20 million of our children out of school is worrying. Those 20 million who have no access to education cannot be effectively part of nation-building because they have not had the opportunity to develop their innate capacity to the extent that they can be useful to themselves, to their families and to their community, let alone their nation, let alone Africa.

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“Those 20 million children that are out of school, we can get them back to school. If we do not get them back to school, we are preparing for Boko Haram tomorrow. It will happen as surely as daylight.

“Who is looking at our population ahead five or ten years from now, and what can we do about it? Apart from food which is very important, who are the people thinking about that and working forward on that. After food and health, the next important aspect of our life is education.

“Now if this is the position and these are rights that we must have, what do we do? We know that if we continue the way we are going, by the year 2030, 2040, 2050 what our population would be.

“Tertiary education requires attention, but also primary and secondary education. I believe to a large extent that this is our problem. Education is not the responsibility of the government alone. It is the responsibility of all. What of parents, religious leaders, community? They all have a responsibility in the education of the child. I believe the starting point is this. Any Nigerian should never be deprived of education,” Obasanjo said.

In their separate submissions, Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, Hillary Edeoga and Hamman Sa’ad, former vice chancellors of University of Lagos, Michael Okpara University of Agriculture in Abia, and Federal University of Technology, Minna, called for collective funding of the tertiary education in Nigeria through partnerships and corporate social responsibility.

Ogundipe for instance said the community, religious institutions, companies and other corporate bodies can go beyond awards of scholarships to some students to funding specific projects in tertiary institutions.

He said: “Like the former president said, it is not only the government that should be involved in the funding of tertiary education and the lower level of education in Nigeria. The community will need to be involved, the mosques, churches and leaders have to be involved.

“It is not only in the issue of awarding scholarship to some of the students that matters, there is a need for them to invest in tertiary education in Nigeria by funding specific projects in Nigerian universities, polytechnics and monotechnics,” Ogundipe said.

Goodluck Opiah, minister of state for education, said funding of tertiary education was the underlined reason for the decline in the sector, stating that it was ideal that stakeholders seek effective and sustainable funding mechanisms for tertiary education.