24th April, 2013
GBENRO ADESINA/IBADAN
The former secretary National Universities Commission (NUC), Prof. Peter Okebukola (OFR) has blamed the falling standard of education in Nigeria on the policy inconsistencies and deficiency in policy implementation by its administrators.
Okebukola spoke at the University of Ibadan (UI) in a lecture tagged, “Saving Nigeria from itself: Towards a Redemption Plan for Education” to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Faculty of Education.
The erudite professor noted that it is the responsibility of government to lay down concrete policies for the smooth running of the educational system adding that beyond policy formulation, standard setting and policy implementation were other roles which are lacking in the sector.
“Cross national comparisons confirm that the Nigeria National Policy on Education and policies enacted at the State and Local Government levels are among the best in the world, but when viewed in the light that the system for which these good policies are enacted is among the weakest in the world, we cannot look too far to isolate deficiency in policy implementation as the culprit”.
According to him, most of the policy prescriptions including quality and quantity of infrastructure, quality, and quantity of teachers, quality of the instructional delivery process, all these he said, has all faltered.
” The question that immediately arises is why is the system failing? But we can assert that the system has under-performed for another major reason, which is the inability of government to provide basic infrastructure and teaching facilities for quality education at all levels of the system”.
If Nigeria must get to the promised land in the 21st century, government, he said, must start building schools that will meet international standards, training of new breed of 21st century teachers who are steeped in the use of modern methods of instruction, provision of a curriculum running from basic through higher education that will lead students to develop 21st century skills and make them acquire values of good citizenship, improve educational funding”.
The Vice Chancellor of UI, Prof Isaac Adewole said in order to redeem the image of the education sector, the state government must replicate what the Oyo State Government has done by partnering with the universities for the training and supervision of the public school teacher.
He noted that: “if a student has a poor performance from secondary school before coming down to tertiary institution, he will remain poor forever because lecturers are not magicians”.
Adewole urged the faculty to use the celebration to reposition and prefer lasting solutions to the challenges confronting the sector.
Later awards were presented by the faculty to Prof. Peter Okebukola, the Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary of the State’s Ministry of Education, Mr. Richard Ofuru and the former deputy Governor of Osun State, Senator Iyiola Omisore who was also represented by Alhaji Abdul-Jelili Adesiyan for their contribution to the growth of education in Nigeria.