An educationist and visitor to Caleb University, Imota, Lagos State, Dr. Ola Adebogun, has described the private sector’s involvement in the nation’s education, with the much needed professionalism, integrity and commitment to high standard, as the due diligence that has saved the system from total collapse.
Adebogun stressed that for the nation’s education sector to regain its lost glory, governments at both the local, state and federal levels must give the sector the required quality and structured attention to ensure quality assurance, increased funding and quality control.
He explained that for a turn-around in the nation’s education sector, the government must not only invest in human resource development, curriculum development and alignment, but must also put in place value-based education, policies to encourage innovation, creativity and personal development.
Adebogun stressed that the future of a nation depends largely on the quality of its educational development.
The educationist, who appraised the Tertiary Education Trust Fund’s support for research and development in public universities, charged the agency to extend its funding to the private universities as well, noting that if TETFund supported a private university to achieve break-through research in malaria, lassa fever or ebola research, the outcome would definitely be for the collective use of humanity in general and not for such a private university only.
The visitor to Caleb University expressed dismay at the debate on whether money collected from private business could be used by all those involved in manpower training for the nation.
He noted that the debate was irrelevant if foreign donors and other countries could support universities in Nigeria to develop problem solving skills for issues relevant, and sometimes only to Nigeria.
“All Nigerian institutions are entitled to TETFund inasmuch as we all pay our taxes and there is no reason the government should limit the ETF projects to public institutions alone,” he said.
Adebogun, who attributed the rampant graduate unemployment in the country to unavailability of data on the enrollment pattern and job creation by relevant government agencies, tasked the government to put in place proper national planning as well as quality assurance in the nation’s educational institutions.
This, he said, would enable the country to determine the number of graduates to be produced over a five-year plan period, for instance, and to position the economy to absorb the projected figure.
