Pro-chancellor and chairman Governing Council of the Federal University Oye-Ekiti (FUOYE), Senator Victor Ndoma-Egba, Thursday, lamented that the rest of the world has left Nigeria behind educationally and that unless urgent and pragmatic steps were taken, the country could suffer for it tomorrow.
In a chat with journalists in Calabar, the former Senate Leader said: “The real wealth of any nation is in its youth. And those youth are a resource only when they are educated or they are skilled and they are empowered. But if they are not educated and they are not skilled or empowered, they are no longer a resource.
“So, if you look at all those countries that have done well, you take a country like Japan, or take Israel, for instance, or take Taiwan, or take South Korea, what natural endowments do they have? Actually, zero.
“But today, they dominate the world. Why? It is because of education. See where China is with technology. This is so because they have developed an educational system and curriculum that trains you to confront the challenges of not just today, but of tomorrow.
“But here we are, still struggling. Today’s world and tomorrow’s world will be technology driven. Today you have AI. It’s a new thing in town, artificial intelligence, you know, it has altered virtually everything.
“And, if we don’t begin now, because we’re already left behind, we could find ourselves in big trouble. Our budgetary provision is not sufficient to even take us to the UN threshold of 15 percent, we are still very far behind.
“You know, so there is a challenge to education today. And while we are struggling with where we are, the world is moving ahead. So, the gap between us and the rest of the world will just keep widening, you know, so we must do something. Education is key, it is the window to our tomorrow,” he stated.