Yosolaoluwa Akinbi is Coordinator, Core Working Group (CWG) on Human Capital Development (HCD) programme in Nigeria. In a recent interview with journalists in Lagos, she speaks on need to build healthy, educated and productive citizenry for Nigeria to unlock its potential as well as be globally competitive nation by 2030. ENE OSHABA brings excerpts.
You are the Coordinator the Human Capital Development (HCD) programme, what is it about?
The recently launched HCD strategy captures where Nigeria needs to be. Government is not living in denial; there is recognition that Nigeria is not where it should be in terms of HCD.
Over the last three years we have been working to have the national vision, which is simply to have a healthy, educated and productive Nigeria for a globally competitive nation by the year 2030. So, we can align with all the other development partners and plans all over the world.
We realised that for transformation in HCD to happen in Nigeria it must happen in the 36 states and so we are working with all the states to make sure we have development and acceleration of our HCD.
Is the programme different from the concluded Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) and the newly launched National Development Plan (NDP)2021-2025?
On the ERGP and the NDP the HCD programme is embedded in this new plan. It has a special section on HCD which is focused on what we need to do. Right now, we have taken HCD to work more on it and also have action plans.
We want to have 24 million additional under five girl-children surviving and not stunted and we want to have productive and educated Nigerians entering the labour market by the year 2030 but we must all contribute to ensure that Nigeria moves forward by the year 2030.
Thirty six per cent is not where we want to be, we want to see Nigeria’s productivity index move to at least 55 per cent – 60 per cent by the year 2030.
Are there pitfalls in the ERGP that the NDP would address?
We don’t want this to just be a programme of government. For us, the HCD should be done in a way that in terms of coordination everybody will be brought onboard.
We are all part of the process from the visioning stage to the identification of the interventions that are necessary to move forward and because we are taking it to the state and local governments making the traditional rulers, religious leaders to be part of this process of accelerating human capital development.
I think we have started that process of setting this up in a way that irrespective of the administration there will be continuation of the programme.
Now we are talking to traditional rulers to ensure that girls in the communities go to school and stay in school.
What are the incentives and things we need to do? We are making them critical stakeholders by making all of us take ownership of the interventions so that we will move Nigeria forward in terms of HCD.
Also, the private sector needs to take the demand from the community to focus on what they need, not just what is convenient for you in your budget.
Private sector social responsibility should be the people’s demand, not what you fashion out to solve but what the people need. We expect the private sector to work with us to move Nigeria forward.
What is your take on World Bank ranking Nigeria 152 out of 157 on Human Capital Index?
Government recognises the fact that we need to move forward and that is why the core working group was set up consisting of different partners, the federal government, the states and other stakeholders, having one purpose of HCD acceleration in Nigeria.
We first of all defined a vision and we have six critical interventions, and outcome areas that we are focusing on.
We also have preliminary interventions which we have identified across the HCD thematic areas. Let me say that for Nigeria we have defined HCD in three major thematic areas that is health, education and labour force participation.
For health, our target for 2030 focuses on maternal, newborn, and child health nutrition, reproductive health and adult survival rates including reducing under five mortality by half, halving malnutrition leading to stunting and reducing maternal mortality.
Key interventions identified in this thematic areas include operationalising the Basic Healthcare Provision Fund(BHCPF), implementing free maternal and reproductive health services, launching effective financing mechanism, working with the National Multi-Sectoral Plan of Action for Food and Nutrition(NMPFAN) 2021-2025 to operationalise the national nutrition programme, recruiting more healthcare workers, and leveraging public-private partnerships.
For education, we recognise that it is important to roll out interventions for both marginalised boys and of course girls. And also pay particular attention to the quality of learning, especially to revamp the Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) and optimise the process of how teachers get certified.
It is also important to revise the curriculum of what is being taught and the methodology of teaching across all schools and to also improve professional development and performance management of teachers.
To improve education prospects, five targets for 2030 were identified: doubling primary school enrolment rates, doubling female enrolment rates, doubling secondary school completion rates, reducing out of school children by 70 per cent and achieving an 80 per cent pass rate at the end of primary school.
For the labour force we recognise that youth inclusion is important and so improvement of the management and strategic improvement of technical education needs more attention across the states.
We also need to improve access to job markets and community employment centres so that it is not just centralised but across all communities in order to improve job markets.
The SME’s support is also one of the things we need to pay attention to by providing financial systems that have very low interest rates and we need to assist them technically.
Nigeria is still considered the poverty capital of the world. How will this plan change this rating?
HCD plays a critical role in improving economic development and that of course translates to making sure the lives of the people are better and that is why the core working group was set up to make sure that we have the process of accelerating health, education and labour force participation, recognising that when we do all these the productivity of the average Nigerian child will improve so that Nigeria is not down the ladder.
In 2019 we were at 34 per cent index and we moved slightly to 36 per cent but we need to move up to 50 per cent or 60 per cent if it is doable.
When we have a productivity level for the Nigerian child to be about 50 per cent, we can say that we are dealing essentially with poverty. It is something we have to do and it is not just about the government but a collective thing and that is why we are working with all the stakeholders including the media.
Government recognises its role and that is why in the state we encourage the launching of community projects so that in the community we make them aware of what they need to do, the basic thing is to make sure that we have children in school because out of children is very high we need to make children go to school and that is why we are encouraging states to launch that programme so that the traditional rulers, chiefs are all be involved. They are the ones that know those out of school children. Let us begin to make the basic primary system work using the people in that community to gain experience and we are having partners working in that position to make sure all the communities work.
We recognise that HCD will not happen overnight, it will take a long process, but we all have to be committed in terms of what we are doing, what we are budgeting and see how we are effectively disbursing the finances in the budget.
We are focusing on HCD in all the states and its time to increase and improve investments in human capital development because at the end of the day we are talking about economic development of all the states in Nigeria and the Nigerian productivity level will definitely increase.
Like you rightly noted 18.5million children are out of school, universities are on strike and the education system is generally poor, how do you hope to raise the human capital index by 2030?
We are focusing on out of school children and in the vision in terms of the target; we said it is important for us to see how to reduce out of school children by at least 70 per cent.
We want to double primary school enrolment from 46 per cent to 90 per cent by the year 2030. We are specifically focusing on doubling female enrolment and secondary school completion rate because we have found out that it is not just about getting into secondary school, women and girls especially don’t complete secondary school and so we think that we need to double that from 40 per cent to 80 per cent.
And of course we know that it is not just about getting to school we want to actually improve the outcome to 80 per cent pass rate for students and that is why we are working on the teachers’ education as well.
It is really something that is a sour point for us in Nigeria, it is really very important for everyone to be part of it.
We must ensure that all children go to school. Children around us should be sent to school and they should be encouraged to stay in school till at least the secondary education.
We want to make sure that the productivity level of the Nigerian child goes up to about 50 per cent to 60 per cent. That is saying we do not want our children to be behind, we want them to go to school, enjoy good health and have the basic things of life so that when they join the labour market they are not backward.
We need to belong to where we are, where Nigeria is in the Sub Sahara is not where we intend to be and that is why we need to work together collectively so we can improve the HCD because that’s what can translate to a better life for the youths of Nigeria.
Would you say the home-grown school feeding has made an impact in terms of increasing school enrolment?
The home-grown feeding programme has helped in sending some kids to school and what is important for us as a government is actually to consolidate on this and make sure the benefits are not lost because we need to ensure children stay in school and learn and make sure they pass. So, it’s not just about going to school, it’s about making them have quality education.
Still on school enrolment and completion, can this be achieved with the security challenges especially in some parts of the country?
There are security challenges and that’s why we have developed working with partners to work on a safe school project to make sure that states with security challenges will be helped. It is a sour point in our nation’s development and we are working with partners to see how to solve this problem and make sure children are safe in school.
It’s difficult to say it is a challenge and we need to solve this collectively and this takes us back to the community involvement I spoke about earlier. We need to carry communities along to ensure that children are safe in school because at the community level we know ourselves.
Students don’t have the same cut off points for national examinations; shouldn’t there be a harmonised standard across the zones?
We are Nigerians and all the 36 states are not the same. We are all on different levels of development; some are really low especially in terms of HCD while some are higher.
Our approach at the core working group is that for Nigeria to move forward we must all work together. It is an average that is done globally and so for us all to move forward we must lift ourselves up.
We want the ones that are down the ladder to move up and we must all work together to ensure that everyone moves forward and that is our stand. That is why we have peer review where states that are not doing well will learn from the states that are doing well so they can aspire to be better.
We are committed to work on the basics which is reduction of out of school children especially at the primary level, having children and productive workforce and once we do that the difference in standards will not be so much.
We need to work together to bring ourselves up so that the productivity level of the Nigerian child can move forward.
So, how do you ensure that some parts of the country don’t negatively affect others parts that are trying to develop?
We recognise what needs to be done, we know what has to be done and we know it is very difficult.
We know that the 36 states are not the same; some are down and need help. The states that are not doing well need more support so they can move up a bit.
For us to move forward in Nigeria all of us must move forward else Nigeria will continue to be down; we should double down on states that are down and that is why we are working with partners to support them to move forward.
It is difficult to get all states to the same level but we need to get them to the level of pushing Nigeria forward.
