Why varsities certificated, unskilled graduates----Edukugho

By Ikenna Asomba 

^{Prof. Aize Obayan, VC Covenant University presenting the award to Mr. Emmanuel Edukugho}

 For his onerous contributions to the growth and development of the nation’s education sector, through his reportage and analyses of key education issues, Mr. Emmanuel Edukugho, former Head of Education Desk, Vanguard Newspapers, was one of the award recipients celebrated by Covenant University (CU), Otta, Nigeria’s foremost private university, for best Media Practice and Unbiased Reportage of Educational Sector, during its 10th Founder’s Day Celebration.

 Shortly after receiving the award presented to him by Prof. Aize Obayan, CU Vice Chancellor, Mr. Edukugho expressed joy to the university, having deemed it fit to recognize his 11 years contributions to reporting the nation’s education sector. He spoke with Sunday Vanguard briefly.

His words: “I feel elated that a reputable and one of the world’s fastest growing universities could recognize me. I feel honoured that my 11 years of reporting education were not in vain. Even after leaving the education beat for almost a year, it’s an honour that an institution out there deemed it fit to give me an award.”

Poor funding as major problem

Narrating his 11 years experience of analyzing and reporting education, Mr. Edukugho, who was until December 2011, redeployed to Saturday Vanguard described Nigeria’s education sector over the last 52 years of the nation’s independence as a mixed bag. While stating that the sector has had its achievements, he however, noted that its major problem had been poor funding.

He said:  “When we discuss education issues in Nigeria, we must all bear in mind that one major failure of the sector is poor funding. Even the available funds are usually being misapplied, abused and misused. It’s disheartening that large chunk of the funds usually go for recurrent expenditures which involves the payment of staff salaries and allowances.”

Adding, “Monies meant for the system are not usually invested in capital projects, by building schools, provide conducive academic infrastructures with well equipped laboratories, libraries, lecture theatres, the training and retraining of teachers. As about three-quarter of funds disbursed to the education sector annually, go for personnel allowances and emoluments, this spells doom for the growth and development of the sector.”

Saddened that consecutive administrations have paid lip service to meeting the 26 percent UNESCO recommendation to be allotted to education in the nation’s annual budget, the ace Journalist, opined that countries like Ghana, have improved their education sector because they took the development of the sector more seriously.

“Today, you see our elites and leaders sending their children abroad, even to our neighbours, Ghana, Benin and Togo to acquire quality education, at the expense of our public schools.  

The missing link

According to him, the country got it wrong when government decided to take over public missionary schools from missionaries, thereby sending them away. “When the missionaries still operate our public schools, they ensured quality education is provided and that teachers’ welfare are not toyed with. But when government took over, the standards dropped, owing to poor funding, poor supervision and administering of affairs in the schools. As there was no regulatory system to monitor the little funds disbursed to the system amongst other policies, everything went haywire,” he said.

Continuing, he also attributed the drop in standards of tertiary institutions to the proliferation of universities. “With the proliferation of universities in the country today, the standards are bound to come down. Where is the human capacity? We don’t have enough lecturers, so what the newly established tertiary institutions do is poaching. They try to woo academic staff from older higher institutions of learning.

“When you establish new universities without taking into consideration the human capacity, the standards continue to drop. Today, we have over 120 universities in the country. As there is dearth of qualified and experienced teachers, we now record situations where Masters Degree and Bachelors Degree holders teach in the university.

“It’s also heart-shattering that the few erudite Professors and PhD holders we have now leave the country to foreign universities, where they are better paid. These competent academics are out there making waves in foreign lands, in areas like science and technology, agriculture, medicine, arts and humanities. If they are in the country, their hands are usually tied, because they don’t get meaningful allowances, incentives and enabling research environments to make adequate research findings that would have global impacts.”

Way forward

Also bothered by the fact that poor funding results in poor ranking of Nigerian universities globally, he cautioned that “government should stop playing to the gallery in its concerted efforts to improve the education sector. Amongst many other things, the children of those in the country’s helms of affairs must be compelled not to study abroad. When this is done, perhaps they would know where the shoe pinches.

“Moreso, there’s need for a total overhaul of our tertiary institutions’ curricula. When you look at the curricula, these are structured to only produce certificated people that are not practically versed in their fields of study. Today, we produce engineers that can’t even loose the bolts; we produce doctors that can’t prescribe medicines for even headache and produce lawyers that could best be described as ’charge and bail lawyers. So these are the defects of the system. All hands must be on deck to ensure we put our house in order.

In this age of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Edukugho held that the future seems bright for the nation’s education sector, if only ICT is enhanced, there’s adequate funding and proper supervision of the sector, it will record marked improvement soonest.”