Provost of the Federal College of Education Technical Isu Ebonyi state, Prof Okey Okechukwu, has advocated the convocation of an education national conference to deliberate the way out of the many challenges confronting Nigeria’s education system.
According to the professor, a similar conference convoked immediately after the civil war in 1970 had developed education immensely that one of its outcomes was the introduction of the universal primary education.
On the ravaging insecurity plaguing some parts on the north, leading to kidnapping of students in exchange for ransom, Okechukwu who described it as ‘worrisome’ urged the federal government to urgently do something to arrest the ugly trend.
Okey who spoke in Abuja after he was conferred with a professorial award by the Hipdet University and British American Business School, enumerated the problems confronting the education system to include alarming increase in the number of out of school students due to poverty, career imposition on children by parents and government’s misapplication of resources allocated to education. He said poverty has led to prostitution, armed robbery and other vices among some students who in a bid to sustain themselves in school while imposition of courses on students by their parents has led to all sorts of manipulations by the students to excel.
This, according to him, has given rise to half-baked graduates whose output usually raise the doubt as to whether such a person went through the walls of a university.
As a way out of the wood, Prof Okey said Nigerians needed orientation and sensitisation, saying that government and legislations cannot do it alone.
While calling on the governments at all levels to provide environment conducive for learning in schools in the country, he advised parents to allow things to ‘flow naturally’ so that those who are gifted to study science would restrict themselves to science while those gifted in arts would be allowed to go with arts.
“We need a reorientation, recommitment and a redevelopment of the mind to approach the world as it is presently. So the government’s duty is to provide environment for learning to take place. It is also our duty as teachers to condition ourselves to that situation so that teaching/learning could take place in a very favourable atmosphere.
“You know that in the north, the security situation is worrisome. We need to do something about the security situation. The parents also need to encourage their children to return to schools.
“Sometimes these people drop out of school because sometimes not because they don’t have money because sometimes their colleagues or mates in other fields have made it in other areas of life. In the case of Anambra, if your age mate has built a house for the father and he is driving a range rover jeep, you too have to do that. That is the reason for dropout in most cases.
Also the economy has affected educational development,/system in Nigeria. When you cannot feed, you cannot train your children. We all need to come to the drawing board and convoke educational conference where we can discuss ways forward out of the wood.
“If we convoke education conference as they convoked conferences in other areas, we will be able to discuss what actually developed education after the war? It was the education conference they convoked that introduced the universal primary education.
“We also have a bad government, not from the federal alone but from the states. When monies are allocated to education, they do not allow it to be applied in education. This is a major problem,” he said.
