That NESG summit on education

At the 20th Nigerian Economic Summit, which ended recently, addressing fundamental issues affecting the development of Nigeria’s education sector, took the centre stage. AUGUSTINE OKEZIE examines the major highlights of the education summit

The summit, which held between March 18 to 20 at Transcorp Hilton Hotel, Abuja,  had as its theme, “Transforming Education through Partnerships for Global Competitiveness”. The organizers of the summit described the choice of theme,  as deliberate on the role of the Nigerian education sector in the transformation of Nigeria.

The event also projected the drive for  a more significant involvement of the private sector in the education space, whilst gaining the attention and interest of key stakeholders on the centrality of education and learning for economic development and nation-building, while focusing on building national consensus on what is urgently required to rebuild, revamp and reinforce the education sector to secure Nigeria’s future and global competitiveness.

Other aspects of the Summit will include plenary sessions on thematic areas of the education sector such as Quality and standards; ICT, knowledge transfer and relevance; developing an Integrated curriculum that is fit for purpose; access, equity and inclusion in education, early years education; tertiary education and employability, skills, vocational education and leadership in education
President Goodluck Jonathan, who declared the summit open, through vice President Namadi Sambo, who also lead a presidential strategy session with eminent local and international personalities, which focused on key strategic elements required to bring about the desired changes in the education sector, challenged the National Economic Summit Group (NESG), to review the policy foundation of Nigeria’s education sector developed in 1969 to meet current realities.
According to the president “more than forty years after, this policy foundation is ripe for review, to determine its relevance and fine tune its adaptability to national objectives, in this 21st Century,” he stated.

“It is my hope that this Summit will take up this challenge; by applying itself rigorously to the design of an ideal education system that will satisfy our national needs and aspirations,” the President added.
He stressed that his administration holds education in high premium, emphasising that education was key to accelerating national transformation and development, saying that education has changed the destiny of nations, big and small and that his government is determined to change the story for the very best.

The president further noted that  government has identified access, quality and equity as the main strategic goals of Nigerian education, stressing that government had introduced several initiatives to achieve these goals, such as girl and boy-child education, the Almajiri System, teacher training and retraining, increased funding and other far reaching policy reforms at all levels of the education system.

He called for enhanced partnership between the three tiers of government, the private sector and international development partners in designing credible sectoral accountability frameworks that will impact positively on the sector.
“There is an urgent need to develop human capital, by investing and improving the skills of our people to facilitate the actualisation of our national objectives,” President Jonathan noted.
He urged stakeholders in the education sector to come up with practical solutions to surmount challenges of acquiring accurate statistics, especially at the basic and secondary levels particularly on school enrolment and other education indices noting that it is necessary to get the numbers right to aid successful planning and decision-making.

In his remarks at the occasion, the Supervising Minister of Education, Mr. Nyesom Wike stated that the Transformation Agenda of the President Jonathan administration, places premium on education as an instrument par excellence for human capital development and socio-economic emancipation, adding that to this end the Federal Ministry of Education had developed a Road Map aimed at repositioning the sector.
He noted that the Road Map, addresses issues relating to access and equity, such as low enrolment, retention, and transition, as well as low carrying capacity of tertiary education institutions.

Earlier, the Director General, Nigerian Economic Summit Group, Mr Frank Nweke said that the decision to hold the Summit on education was taken to redress the decline in the sector seen as a critical factor in economic development.
Mr Nweke said: “The education sector is in dire straits and requires the intervention of both public and private stakeholders if it is to fulfill its function of preparing Nigeria to compete in the global economy”. He further pointed out that for the development of the Nigerian economy to be sustained, the education sector should be vibrant and able to produce skilled workforce.

Areas considered by participants at the education summit included’  – the needed national consensus on the objective of Nigeria’s education system,  collective realization of the pervasive centrality and importance of education to national development, sustainable structural reforms and changes needed in the education sector that will allow emergence of a 21st century economy and how to build a culture of life-long learning that is critical to ensuring that the Nigerian economy can respond quickly to global changes and global developments.

Stakeholders at the summit were however worried about the resolutions reached at the summit, which to them, may yet be dumped into the archives. Their fear  is that Nigeria’s education have never been in want of remediation but  have been lacking, in   the needed political will to implement agreed resolutions and policy decisions.
Perhaps the NESG summit is another talk shop that has come and gone this year, with the coming year waiting to take its turn. According the famous playwright, Professor Ola Rotimi, it’s all about, holding talks, all talks, with nothing to show for it.