The former Nigerian President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has described the current state of education in the country as confusing.
Obasanjo spoke while participating in the 2019 Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF) held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Saturday.
At a session tagged, “Changemaker for Nigeria”, the former president while responding to a question from a member of the audience said, “I think if you ask me specifically about Nigeria, where we are in education today; I will say we are in confusion.
“And I don’t know whether you will feel that way. But that is the way I feel. We are really in confusion.
“Let me take again my own state, Ogun State, where the government of the state has four universities. You go to any of the universities; they are glorified secondary schools. That is what they are. I believe the time has come when we should do a real serious study over our education, including what we really have to do in Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) culture, arts and robotic. If we do not do that, we are not going to make progress.”
While responding to an earlier question from the anchor, Julie Guchuru of the Arimus Media Ltd, Obasanjo said it has become expedient for African leaders to channel efforts on ensuring 10-year compulsory education for the youths, saying there cannot be any progress for individuals and societies without good and qualitative education.
“We need popular education for all. There are still parts of Africa where popular education is still not embraced and let me take my own country for example. For instance, we have six geo-political zones; three in the South and three in the North. The three Southern geo-political zones have general education literacy of above 90 per cent.
“In the North-East, it is only 53 per cent. Can you imagine the gap? And North-East is where you have Boko Haram. So, when you look at education in the North-East and the menace of Boko Haram, you can see that education directly and indirectly has something to do with Boko Haram.
“Then of course, education is very basic to all other things; your employability, life expectancy, how you manage your affairs and even the management of your families. There is no country in Africa today that should not be able to compulsorily put all her children in school for 10 years.
“And once you have that, then of course, most of our children would be able to manage the rest of their lives and then of course, once you deal with popular education, you have to deal with science, technology, skills acquisition and what we now call STEM. And then you cannot move away from the rest of the world education wise. So, you have to have basic popular education,” Obasanjo said.
The former president also called on Africans to adopt what he called self-reliance. He said Africans should produce own materials, provide basic domestic needs.
“I always say to Africans, that don’t let us aspire to go to the moon. Let us leave those going to the moon. We should aspire to feed ourselves. Let us produce what we need and buy from ourselves. Whatever you are doing in your own corner, be a leader but don’t lead alone; lead with others.
“That is the only way that your leadership can be meaningful and have collective impact. The day of single hero is gone; today you have to be heroes together but somebody has to lead. And that is what should be happening in Africa. Our leaders must agree to work together, if we work together, we will go far. If we work alone, we will go fast but we cannot go far,” he said.
