Obiageli Ezekwesili: Time For Real Action in Education

Obiageli Ezekwesili, a former Federal Minister, former Vice President of the World Bank's Africa division and co-founder of Transparency International was the guest speaker at a forum organized by Apostles in the Market Place, which took place at the Lagos City Hall recently. The theme of discussion was Education: Time for Real Action. Akinbiyi Akinsola was at the forum. Here are excerpts from her speech and pictures from the event:  

“Nigeria is a nation in the making. The process may be taking long but it will surely come to pass. There is an assault on education in Nigeria. If you want to know whether a society has a future, look at its education. Advanced nations today are those nations that invested so much in education. World War 2 decimated Japan and gave them a sense that they had to rebuild. So they focused on human development to recreate a modern society. Human capital was emphasized by Japan. A great investment in education was what Japan used to climb back to relevance and development. You will observe that majority of the top league nations have no minerals but they invested a lot in human development. It is not strategic to depend on natural resources. Natural resources should be translated into developing human capital. It is the human beings that organise all other factors. So human development is key. In the light of this, education and health of the individual are important. Through emphasis on human development, the Chinese have lifted about 600 million of their one billion population out of poverty. Singapore is another example. They were colonized by Great Britain like Nigeria. They developed their human capability. That country went from a small country to global relevance in global economy. In the 1960s there was competition among the regions to give some education to the people but things changed with the oil boom in the 1970s. Easy money came and our elites dropped the most important strategy of development. Everybody is drowned by the oil which has left us with devastation. In 1996 Nigeria had 60% pass in the GCE, in 2006 it came down to 35%. Education funding was increasing but performance was declining because the fundamental reasons for dysfunction were not corrected.

As at 2013 the decline in performance has gone down to 24%. We need to stem the tide of decline. The future of this country does not depend on oil and mineral resources but in human capital development. The business elite to which some of us belong is too complacent. There is contempt for education in this land. Corporate bodies should think about philanthropy in the area of education. It is on record that about 85% of the people are in public schools. Education needs a strong constituency if Nigeria will ever make a detour from this entrapment. No group can stay disconnected from this. Nigeria has one of the highest numbers of adult illiterates in the world today. We have a huge population, which has not been translated into human capital.” Like in Singapore, the former minster said that they came up with the idea of establishing vocational institutions that are private sector driven. “We discovered that certain courses trapped people perpetually. This explains partly why we have huge unemployment rate in Nigeria.” “Everybody has to get involved in education. Real action is to adopt a public school and contribute to the education of the children. In these children lies the golden nugget of our economic development.”