Dr. Ogodoro provides a clinical diagnosis of a system that prioritizes outdated credentials over the critical skills needed for national development. His insights are a necessary wake-up call, highlighting the tragic gap between expert advice and actual political implementation.
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Nigeria's Education System: Stuck or Moving?Added:
there and listening to voice of the people 90.3 FM. My name is Nyam Ghoul Aaji and this is how I welcome you to today's edition of the brunch. Now what are we highlighting today? For 20 million Nigerian kids today, the future never even starts because they're not in school. We budget 7% for education.
UNESCO says 20%. Our graduates can't get jobs. Our teachers are on strike. and we keep changing the curriculum faster than we build classrooms. So the question for 200 million of us is Nigeria's education system moving forward or are we just moving in circles? Today on the branch I'm sitting with an education expert who doesn't work for the government. No politics here. No big grammar. Just the truth. What is broken? What is working?
And what will it take to fix this for the child in Oshi and the child in Leki?
Our guest today is Dr. Peter Ogodoro whose career as an educationist, career advisor, HR practitioner, and public relations expert has put smiles on the faces of millions of people around the world. He has done education advocacy for over three decades, encouraging relevant public education agencies to minister to the educational needs of the poor and underserved people, disadvantaged people. He's currently leading a global effort to democratize access to higher uh education in the developing world so that disadvantaged individuals can attain the knowledge and skill threshold that will enable them overcome financial insecurity and contribute optimally to the building of their communities. He is an alumnest of the Institute of Education, University of Reading, England, where he uses the platform of his his doctoral research to develop a career management system that enables people from economically disadvantaged families to acquire the skills they need to become the principal agents in their liberation from financial insecurity. He comes from a versatile background in terms of training and experience. So it is my pleasure today to welcome to the branch Dr. Peter Ogodoro. Good morning and welcome to the brunch sir.
>> Sure. Good morning.
>> Okay. So uh let's start with the big picture. The education system in Nigeria. This is like a report card time. If you had to grade Nigeria's education system A to F today, what grade would you give and why?
>> [laughter] >> I I'll be I'll be a long time to to place place the list on our education system because if I do really most people will find it very depressing. So a better way to look at it is to say that um unfortunately for us the people who lead us politically are yet to understand the indispensable place of education in the building of nations that education remains a bedrock of development at any level of analysis whether as an individual a family a community organization or or countries if you don't get it right first at the level of education there isn't much you're going to accomplish and that's that is how all the societies that have moved forward whether it's China or it's Britain or Canada or or those in the Scandinavian region they first started with education and that's why as you rightly mentioned you know um all the UN agencies whether is UNDP or UNESCO or UNICEF they all emphasize the need for countries to um put their resources first into education and then use whatever education will help them to lay foundation as building blocks for uh accelerating uh national development but that's not the way we have um uh constructed it here. Uh unfortunately for us the people who have given the responsibility to take major decisions uh in the education space are people who are not training their own children here. So they train their children in the west in in North America and Europe and prepare their children to eventually come back and take over from them in terms of running the political space but um run a decrepit system for the ordinary Nigerian who continues to struggle to get a mod of education which at the end of the day really is not education that is that is comp that will make them globally competitive. We it's is common knowledge that Dangote is Africa's you know black man's richest man and he has made great sacrifices over the years to try and build institutions organizations that um have helped to create employment opportunities but as we speak despite the fact that we are complaining of um high graduate unemployment Bangote continues to employ most of his technicians from Asia and other parts of the world and the reason he gives is the fact that he is not able to find uh most of the time competent hands coming out of education system who can help him to run the very sophisticated systems he has put in place and so if he has to trust them to run his refinery or his cement factories that definitely he's not going to be able to impress the world so but we are summary at the very beginning in terms of my remarks I want to say that we haven't done very well as as a people um when it comes to uh running our educational system we don't have we haven't even got a philosophy we are yet to [snorts] even tell ourselves what education should be doing for us.
So in the absence of good you know realistic philosophy of education in the absence of having a vision and clear mission that we have to pursue in the absence of um having the right people running the system in terms of placing you know ramp square pegs in in square in square holes we are not going to be able to get anywhere and that's that's where we are we are we are using the wrong people to run major institutions agencies in the education space and that is a major reason why we are where we So we are not we haven't made much progress but no doubt uh some achievements have come by way of um for example this this year uh if you if you paid attention you would have realized discovered that uh uh we we we had up to 300 more candidates writing jam UTME so that so this year we had over 2.2 2 million candidates, right? It wasn't up to 2 million last year. And so we have more people now aspiring to go to university. It wasn't so last year. And I I think that the major driving major driving factor there is the fact that we now have nail fund which um is willing to give Nigerian young people money by way of loan to go to to go to university uh if they meet all the other required conditions. uh but in the northeast we have continued to grapple with high uh numbers in terms of children who are out of school and as a matter of fact um many parts of even the southern parts of the country are already beginning to also experiencing children who should be in school but who are not in school because the economic circumstances have become very dire. Their parents are beginning to use them as tools to help put food on the table. So instead of them instead of them being in school acquiring knowledge, the right skills and getting the right values to position themselves for uh very important contributions to national development, they are first grappling with helping their families to put food on the table.
So that's a distraction and that means that we are not actually building the capacity that is absolutely necessary for us to become a major competitor especially as we pride ourselves as as Africa's um giant. But we can see that South Africa um is rubbishing us. As a matter of fact, what's going on in South Africa in terms of xenonophobia is also a reflection of the lack of capacity you know back home in Nigeria and lack of opportunities. What should we be doing in in in the country that we help to build really?
>> Okay. Okay. But when as an expert when you talk about out of school children uh are the people that are supposed to be in the university included in this because UNICEF said that we have 62% of the kids about 20 million of the kids out of school right now. So when we're talking about things that will make people go to school, incentives that will make people go to school, if you were the Minister of Education, would you have started with a tertiary institution?
Yeah, certainly not. All countries that are serious, they don't start with tertiary tertiary level of education.
Tertiary level of education is very critical for national development because that's where you you generate um cutting edge ideas. If you want to promote innovation then you have to invest in your universities especially that's how come America continues to be a major uh player uh in the in the global political and and economic space because their universities are doing very well in terms of producing knowledge that is cutting edge you know the Harvards the MITs the Stanfords the etc. So you need that but the truth is that if you don't run uh a good system at the lower levels at the primary and secondary school level you won't be able to build uh uh and get ready the people [clears throat] who can benefit from from from from tertiary education and that's why a country like Finland got this idea very early and so today they run the best education system at the primary and secondary school levels and so uh they have also become a major force at the tertiary level because they are able to uh provide good quality primary school education and as well as good quality, you know, secondary school education. In Finland, you need you need about a master's degree to even, you know, stand in a primary school, you know, to to to to to do your job as a teacher because they understand that um if the foundation is is is is not strong, then you are wasting time trying to build people at the tertiary education level. And if you talk to our professors who run the Nigerian you know tertiary inst Nigerian tertiary institutions they will tell you that they they find it very you know difficult to to understand why a child will score 280 in Jam UTME and come into the classroom and most of the things you you talk you talk to him about which you should have known right from SS1 he appears very ignorant of them but but those of us who do research in the industry we know the reason is simple we have handed over our education system to private school operators who are first and foremost business people. Many of them don't even have any any credentials in education. So they are the ones who are running the system and they see uh their business as strictly business. So education is is first and foremost a public good. And so when you leave the [snorts] education of your children in the hands of private school, you know, operators who are strictly doing business, what you find is that they will just keep looking for a way to do, you know, marketing, you know, give you shiny buildings and they organize events that make parents think that the children are learning. But when you put those children to test, you discover that they don't they are not numerate.
They are not able to communicate. They can't relate. They are not compassionate. They are not empathetic.
they don't have what it takes to make any useful contribution to national development. So uh indeed um to get back to to the to your question the truth is if you don't get it right at the primary and secondary school level everything you're trying to do at the tertiary level you know we we we go to waste and that's that's where we are in Nigeria we are trying to get people into universities but the people you're getting in there don't have most of them don't have what it takes to actually benefit optimally from what processes are giving them and talk to the professor they will tell you that and that's why again brain drain has remained the major challenge afflict icting the high education system in Nigeria because our lecturers are very disappointed in the kind of children they're working with. They're also very disappointed in the kind of you know laboratories that um they have to do their work especially for those of them in STEM. So and then we also know that the major reason why you have what you call post UTM is the fact that they don't trust the people who are coming through UTM which JM conducts because JAM conducts exam and people you [snorts] know young people pretend that they they they have what it takes to benefit from university education but eventually when when professors test them in their classrooms in their lecture rooms they discover that they are not able to understand what professors are talking about. So that's why universities uh have to go through the process again and that becomes very laborious and provoking you know anxiety and traumatic experiences you know to our children and that's why today as as you know we have children who have been picked up on the road going for jam and that is an exam that may not be the end of the road after they have passed the UTM they still have to face another one called post UTM and uh this is you know it's a it's a circle that never ends we haven't really been able to get it right in terms of clear policies, in terms of clear agenda, in terms of funding, in terms of also convincing ourselves that indeed um educating the citizenry is is is an important project for us as political leaders. In educating the citizenry is not a favor done to the people who are receiving that education.
When you get your people truly educated, it becomes easy to lead them. The reason why we are able we we remain where we are in terms of terrorism, you know, kidnapping, all kinds of crimes. A lot of young girls now, what they're doing is just prostitution. They just all over the place, you know, hanging out with with politicians and collecting money without doing anything. These are young people who should go to school and get properly trained and then claim their space and arena of work where they make useful contributions. But we are misusing them. They have become toys in the hands of politicians who instead of creating spaces where these children can get good quality education and become uh women who are respected in society, they're using them for for purposes that are not honorable.
>> Okay. Before we take a pause to call our numbers for the people who would like to send messages to us, let's just uh address this Jagpa that you linked it to this Jaguar syndrome is there. How much of Nigeria's brain drain is caused by the state of our universities and secondary schools? Uh some people feel education now is just a visa pathway.
You get a little bit of education uh you you leave or you want to go to uh to leave abroad, you just say you are going to get educated abroad. So how much of this is linked uh to the state of our universities and secondary schools?
Well, uh the truth we know is that especially at the undergraduate level, the average child who is sent abroad to go and study uh doing first going to get a first degree uh the parents who are undertaking those kinds of projects are generally not parents who are poor. Uh it's from the middle class moving up and they >> we still have a middle class.
>> Yeah, we do. No matter how terrible any society gets, the middle class will always be there. It's just simple static. There will always be people in the middle, you know. We are not we are not all the same. In Lagos, you have, you have Mushi, you have EA, you have Banana Island. Banana Island is at the upper level, you know. You get what I mean? And then maybe you know and phase one and two are those in the middle. So you the middle is always there. And then when you go to A4 A4 Mush, then you start talking about lower class. So they are always there.
Let's not um you know make it look like those things that we hear you know on on air can can be corroborated with evidence. That's that's not true. So that's um that's the that's the challenge we have. The the people who send their children abroad, they're sending them because uh some of them actually run the system. I I I encountered you know somebody who works for one of the states in the ministry of education who uh is saying my child can't the the son is in SS2 now and she says no it won't happen that my child goes through university in Nigeria for first degree and I asked why I said no I'm in the system and I know what they're offering that that is not going to happen to my child because it will be punishment to my child it will be punishment to our family it will be it will amount wast wasting of money. So even the people running it and even at the highest level possible if you go and check the people who who run JAM who run national universities commission at the highest level possible you'll find that they're telling their own children abroad not to talk about the ministers there's hardly any minister who who has a child who is still at university level education who is studying here they all training their children abroad because they run the system they know what they are providing and they know that that education is not good quality education so they send their children abroad to go and get that education And then the ones who are the lower middle class so to speak who managed to finish their first degree here they have experienced it and they said no no no no this is not what I thought I was going to get when I was enrolling for for first degree in Nigeria there's no way I'm going back there to get a first degree to get a master's degree or to do a PhD because it's just not working even the professors themselves are saying so a friend of mine who is a professor of chemistry in one of Nigeria's top you know universities At some point she came and we were discussing I was trying to help her to manage her career and she told me that look one of the challenges that she had that was pushing her away from Nigeria was the fact that she wasn't even getting students to train at at the masters and PhD level that once they finish this degree that she wasn't getting any student who was showing interest in doing masters in chemistry PhD in chemistry because that those students they see them the professors and they they know that they are not happy with the system they know that they are suffering they know that they are poor and so they have not been able to prove um worthy prove themselves as worthy role models and so the younger people are asking the question why should I come and do masters and do PhD and finish and be like you I don't want to go through you know this kind of process and stay here for for for 40 years before I can buy my first car that is not where the world is so that's the truth and brain drain yes there's no doubt that poor education educational provisions in Nigeria um remain a major driving force which is pushing people abroad that's the truth of the matter that that's not the only factor for those in for those in the health industry. One of the reasons where they living is the fact that they don't have the right technology to save lives and they also not managed properly and the remation package is very poor you know compared to where the rest of the world you know has got to. So and here we are not um very um wfairies and very appreciative of of the contributions Nigerians make to national development.
The doctor finishes in the vast after spending about 8 years in the system uh to get the skills and then he comes out to to try and help the system and he ask you to give him you know uh gloves to wear to do his job. He asks you to give him basic equipment and you don't provide them and then he complains and says you are not doing the right thing.
Let's let's do this properly. The lives we are losing in our hospitals are needless and needless lives that we are losing. We can do better. We have got some knowledge that can save lives but you're not helping us to do the right job. And you you pretend that you can easily replace doctors. And we sometimes we hear our ministers say so that you know soldier come you know soldier go soldier come. But that we know is not true. You don't train medical doctor in 3 years. Even the ones you train in 8 years they are not experts. The experts will have to invest another 5 years before they become pediatricians, cardiologists, you know obstetricians etc. And but unfortunately people spend about 15 years to qualify as experts in the health industry and to provide them the enabling environment for them to stay here and do their job. We we pretend we are doing them a favor. No matter how hard they try, you are not going to ever be able to pay a professor adequate remuneration for the contribution he's making to national development. Same for doctors. It doesn't matter how much you pay a doctor. lives that they save, you know, are lives that we we we get back into industry and create organizations, startups that will generate millions of dollars. And in the advanced societies, they understand these things and so they don't joke with health and they don't joke with education. Those two industries are industries that once you get them right then you you all other things become easy. You know there is a book titled the one thing and the major idea there is that you just get your one thing once you get it right every other thing becomes easy or even unnecessary and that's the kind of place that education occupies. It is education that produces the knowledge, the skills, the values that brings you know people into the arena who have the creative capacity, the analytical mind, the critical mindedness that enable them to distinguish right from wrong and also know that the idea of always voting for people from your tribe is not the way to go. That you should always go for meritocracy wherever you can find good people. Give them the opportunity to serve and don't discriminate you know against people on the bas of where they come from or give all the opportunities to your friends and and your your classmates who you know who you attended the same secondary school with if they are not good fit for the opportunities that that that that are that are opening up but because of lack of knowledge ignorance on the part of politicians and of course you know having been in this space as as as a broadcaster for a long time you interact with you know you interact with the professionals you also with with politicians you know how they take their decisions. Most of the ministerial appointments are are not properly handled. You know, you have a square pig, you put him in a round hole.
Why are you expecting that this will perform? But anyway, I'm not a politician. I don't intend to become one really and no matter how because I'm not called to be that. But it's unfortunate that um I tell you most of the people running the fs of of our country are not people who know the meaning of patriotism.
>> Interesting. Okay, let's hold our thoughts now. Let's open the lines for people to send our messages to their messages to. If you want to connect with us, you have a question or you have a contribution to make, go to 08171756338.
Send us a WhatsApp message. No calls, please, just messages. 08171756338.
So, we're still here with Dr. Peter Aguodoro who is an education expert.
He's a researcher and he's been in the industry for decades and so we are picking his brain on what really is wrong with our education system and how we can make it work. Okay, let me come back to you Dr. Agodoro. From 1969 to 2026, our curriculum seemed to have been designed for a civil service economy. So what are the subjects and skills that are missing today that would make the 2026 graduate employable globally that we are not looking at right now?
>> Well, for a start we have to recognize that a major missing link in our education system is the absence of the career management system. So we haven't got professionally trained career managers who can help our children to make appropriate you know selection of courses. That's one two and more critically uh we have been designing courses you know to train people who will wear jackets and put on ties to go to offices to to do to do jobs. Even engineers that you soal engineers mechanical civil the the impression we still give them when we training them is that they are going to supervise projects rather than be the ones who will do the building. And that is a wrong mindset and the reason is simple.
The people who trained them also went through a similar system. And so when you give them you know a chalk and put a board in front of them to also train others they give them similar similar uh you know make them have similar expectations and at the end of the day everything fails. So we are not most of the courses that people are studying in North America and Europe those things are yet to to get to us here and we are also not a people who who take decisions on the basis of evidence. We are not recerting on our problems. We are not saying we should just um you know consume hook client and sinker everything that universities and other tiary levels of education in the advanced societies are using to to to run their system. But the truth is that the there are basics there are basics.
We are not paying attention to numeracy.
Mathematics we are not teaching it well.
Physics we are not teaching it well. The basic sciences we are not teaching them well. And those are the building blocks you know that um all other courses will have to rely on. If you want to be a good medical doctor, you first have to lay a good foundation understanding basic chemistry, physics and biology and to some extent mathematics. That way you'll be able to uh make quick calculations when when you're on duty. And so if you want to be an engineer, you must be very numerate.
You must you must mathematics should be second nature to you. But we find we find even mathematicians not to talk about engineers who struggle with basic calculations. Yeah. I my specialty is not is not mathematics but virtually all the time when I'm interacting with the people who should know better than me in mathematics what I discover is that if you if you generate a mathematical problem I produce the answer much faster than the rest of them and the reason is simple we don't know how to teach maths we are teaching our children you know to crown formulas we are into ro learning and and that's not how to produce a you know a population that will make will make a difference in in modern society and we have still remained stuck in where we were just as you rightly captured it and so even when we want to teach you know what may look like science technology courses we just teach the basic branches of engineering chemical engineering civil mechanical electrical electronic engineering and now that computer science has come all universities are offering computer science but they are not teaching it well because the professors that are teaching these things they themselves have never created an app before they can't code they can't do programming why asking them to produce computer scientists really. So if you if you if you use Uber you know the way I use you know from time to time talk to the average Uber person you're likely to run into a significant fraction of them who will tell you h I studied in XY Z university I did polit I did the computer science there. So why are you driving over? It has little or nothing to do with saying driving over is not a good idea because you can make much more money driving over than any other person who is an engineer can make. The truth is if you train as an engineer we expect you to be fixing the car especially if you did automo or mechanical engineering fix the car that driver uses and then leave business you know in the hands of people who who are probably called to do that but you talk to them they will tell you the reason they are doing it is because they were not properly trained he's the mechanical engineer he will confess to you he never touched any machine because the the laboratories were not there you know I talked to some of our young people who have left here and gone abroad I say why are you at the point they want to leave? Why are you leaving?
He said well some of them actually abandoned their courses in a bad in in so in if in university of Lagos and left for abroad after spending only one year in local university studying engineering and medicine. Why are you leaving? He said well I I thought that when I go to university study engineering I'm going they are going to use cutting edge technology to train me. But what I find is that when we get to the lab, only one or two people are able to, you know, handle the equipment that that that that are available, the rest of us, about 40 other people are just standing around, you know, using our phones and, you know, playing on Instagram. And when that person finishes, he announces the result, we all copy. You still find these young people coming out with first class degrees, but at the end of the day, they're not able to fix anything.
if if their bulb, you know, goes bad in the house where they live, they still have to go and call a technician who didn't even finish secondary school properly to come and fix it for them.
And you don't blame them. It's a system really. So the kind of cursing that people are talking about today, you know, data science properly properly decoded, you know, genetic, you know, engineering, material science, people are paying attention to studying, you know, things that have to do with uh with materials that they use to make the computer. We are not studying those things and we have the raw materials in our soil in many cases but we haven't discovered that we have to first produce the manpower that will enable us to excavate those things from our soil and and refine them and then export them.
That way they bring in the kind of money we are looking for and that's why currency is is is is a feather weight because you keep bringing everything that other people have produced fully you know to come and consume here. We produce we we are a consumer nation. We don't produce anything and we are not likely to get out of that you know consumption level any time in even in the next 20 years because until you get your children to learn properly you get the right skills and become globally competitive and then create enabling condition for them to stay here and use those skills you are not going to be able to compete at a global level.
That's the truth of the matter. and then show interest in in the welfare of people. When you make policies, make those policies to benefit everyone and let the ground be, you know, level, you know, for everyone. That's not what you find here. I I'm I'm a I'm I'm a fan of the Scandinavian, you know, type of education where the child of of a minister is is in the same classroom in the same primary school classroom with the child of of of of a cleaner, with the child of a janitor, with the child of um of of of of a of somebody laboring in the factory, with a child of a supervisor, because they they run an equitable system, which is not what we do here. We don't carry our children. We put them in in places that look like paradise and then we run a system that is not working for ordinary people. But we need everybody's energies. We need everybody's, you know, creativity. Uh uh we need everybody's uh uh intellectual tools and contributions to build a society that that that truly will make Nigeria the kind of place people want to come and spend time in and also al also a place where Nigerians want to stay in and not be in a hurry to go to other other parts of the world. go to the Scandinavian region. They the people of of Scandinavia don't don't aspire to go to anywhere. They they contented people because education there is free at all levels and is good quality education and is available to both the rich and the poor and because they have run that kind of system they actually um working very hard and they have actually attained a significant height in terms of eliminating poverty. So the average person lives in a comfortable accommodation, has access to electricity, has access to uh broadband, internet access, has access to good quality schools for their children. They don't even pay school fees at all at all levels. So when we want to borrow, we should go and borrow from people who know what they're talking about. Let's teach better things. Let's not continue to waste our time chasing courses that when people finish studying civil engineering here, mechanical engineering, they end up teaching only mathematics in classrooms. And even the mathematics, you can't teach it well because they didn't study how to teach it. If you if you run if if you are in the system as I am as a as as as an educationist and of course as a researcher in the industry globally, what you find is that it takes subject mastery and pedagogical mastery to be able to deliver excellently in the classroom. In our country, people just, you know, know formulas, but they are not able to teach other people what they know. So that's what you find in in our schools and that's why children are afraid of mathematics. Go go to schools the average child is is has a phobia for mathematics because the people teaching it have not been trained on how to teach it and so they make it look like you know mathematics is for is for genesis but the mathematics is something that almost everybody can learn if if you follow appropriate procedures and use the right tools to to to to interact with the children who have to learn it.
But that's not where we are because even our professors themselves need to be helped to understand what mathematics is.
>> Okay. Before we continue to interrogate a policy by policy that the government has made, um I'd like to just know what model do you think if Nigeria were to adopt will be good enough for our country? Because as it stands now uh WK and JAM they're still rewarding crimeming as you have said already.
Where in the world does the assessment really and actually work? What can Nigeria copy from where to uh get to that point of education that you might dream for us without necessarily having to form review committees that will spend 10 years to be reviewing what will never happen? So what kind of model if you were to choose uh should Nigeria uh go after?
Yeah, I'm I am I'm I'm very familiar with virtually almost all the models in the world, you know, whether it's Canada or it's America, Britain, uh or or the Scandinavia region. So, as I have moved around, what I can tell you is that the people who have got it right, especially at the primary and secondary school level are people in the Scandinavia and Finland is at the top of that ladder.
And so that model requires that you should move their emphasis away from giving children certificates to to giving children creative ability to giving children the capacity to acquire knowledge, skills and the right values and to making children see school as as a pleasure a pleasurable place to go.
They should you should create a system that makes children look forward to going to school. And for you for children to look forward to going to school, you have to deemphasize examination the way we construct it here. In Finland, for example, the first time you write your first major exam is when you're age 16, when you're finished in high school. Here we start writing exam from the age of 18 months. If some some schools probably even earlier than that and so we we over test, we are testing too much. And when we test too much, we make children see education as as as laborious. We make children see education as punishment. And that's why if you have been paying attention to what happens in secondary schools like we approaching that that that time in July when they will finish their was h on the day they write their last paper the majority write their last paper they destroy a lot of things in their schools because they see the place as as an institution that has you know punished them for for six years whereas in the kind of place I'm discussing they on the day they write their last exam they they they miss their school they they they wonder you why they have to why they have to go but the consolation is in the fact that they moving to a higher level which will also provide them pleasurable pleasurable experiences as tary tiary institutions. So the model of education we should we should adopt is a model that says educ that education is is not to be defined strictly in terms of academic credentials that you can be educated without having without having a certificate. And we should also recognize that the mere fact that you have a certificate is not proof that you are educated. And that's why we have what we are finding at the political arena. At the political arena most of the people running our system if not all of them they have they have got certificates probably minimum of face degree. But can we truly say that these people are educated? Because if they educated, they will understand that all of us deserve to have access to good quality education. That all of us deserve to have food on our table for for breakfast, you know, lunch and dinner. They should stop thinking that, you know, the people who are not able to put food on their table are people who are lazy. The reason why a lot of people are struggling today because we have not constructed a system that makes it easy for people who don't want to cheat to easily earn legitimate income to run their families. And so we construct a very corrupt system. I I talk to these young people you see on the road who are who are you know working for child glo who ride moles and bicycles trying to deliver food here and there. If you sit down with them and they tell you what they go through in the hands of police, LSMA and several other people on the road, you will pity them. So a lot of the money probably up to 30% of the money they make daily goes into the pockets of people who have no business, you know, talking to them on the road.
They are riding branded vehicles. Why are you talking to them? But we have constructed a system that empowers the wrong people to extract money from young innocent you know diligent hardworking people who want to go to school who who who who want to earn a living legitimately. And so when the the challenge becomes too much they drop those motorcycles and bicycles and they go into crime and now we we blame them.
So the model of education you should emphasize is a model that is equitable that gives everybody in the country a chance. when I went to Finland at a certain point to do research, I was talking to the education leaders in that country and I was interrogating them and what came out of that you know interrogation was that the reason why they made education equitable and ensured that the president's uh son and the grandchildren had to study in the same classroom with the janitors with the with the you know classroom teachers with you know lower level you know professionals in in that country is the fact that they want to give a level playing ground to everyone and the way they have constructed it is to ensure that you attend the school in your neighborhood. That's not what we find in Nigeria. We carry the children of the alias in Abuja and we we go and keep them in England. Bing schools in England come here to recruit children. They come here to harvest really. So at the end of the day the politicians don't wear the shoes and they don't know where these shoes pinch and that's why they keep you knowh doing the wrong things. So an equitable education system, education that that that that carries fairness, equity and justice that that makes all all opportunities available to everyone and recognizes that children who come from even r and disadvantaged communities, marginalized communities are not necessarily dull. They are only children who haven't been given enough opportunities and if you give them a fair chance, they are likely to do better than the ones who are in the cities. And when we are making education policies, we should adopt a mindset that recognizes that Nigeria does not begin and end with Legos, Abuja and Potak that every Nigerian child lives in rural communities, lives in places outside of Abuja, Lagos and and and Potacot. And so we should recognize that for example in the case of JAM UTM that that computer is a language. Most of our children are not being trained with that language.
the most of them have never in the schools they attended had the opportunity to sit in front of a computer as a learning tool really. But when we get to the point where they now want to go to university, we insist that the only way we can determine whether they're ready for university or not is if they give us what they know via computer. We are being unfair to them.
Why would you train somebody in Spanish and you want to examine him in German?
computer is a language and we insist as policy makers that we know what we are doing and this is very unfair unfortunately for us even the so-called you know human rights activists I don't see them jumping into this matter children are picked up on the road that they going to write jam UTM some a child who is 15 years old 16 years old is living in in Baragi and you send him to to go and write UTM and you said he has to get get to the center by 6:30 a.m.
and we confront you with why should it be so you say well that's the way it is you have no apologies some we have had cases of people dying in the process even mothers have have died of of exertion and those kinds of things you know some even out of anxiety you know and so we we need to construct a better system the emphasize certificate place value on numeracy we are not teaching mathematics well and that's probably why we are not thinking properly if you don't get it right with respect to mathematics and communication ability The people who are going to be able to survive in a modern society are not necessarily people who have degrees in in civil engineering or even in computer science. They are people who know how to handle fellow human beings.
People who are empathetic, who are compassionate, who can communicate well, people who should listen to individuals like you who teach them how to how to say no, you know, how to tell you somebody to go to hell and make the person look forward to going there.
Those are the people who no matter how tough the society gets, they are able to know how to work with other people through social capital to navigate to the next place. As we speak now, even the computer science of software engineering that the minister I had the other day was saying everybody should go and you know be studying software engineering because he probably does not know that not up to a month ago Microsoft uploaded thousands of software engineers that they employ. matter the same. Those things are not are not at the level we we think they are you know because we are not relating with the rest of the world. The people who are able to pivot navigate to new levels are people who know how to build relationships. So no matter what they are studying, we should teach our children public relation skills. We should teach them communication skills. We should get them to think analytically. The average Nigerian child today even when he has a PhD is not he's not a good thinker because we are not teaching philosophy right from you know no matter what he has studied in the university everybody should go and learn basic philosophy learn how to think learn how to ask questions learn how to listen >> yeah but that brings the question that brings the question to what uh the ministry of education just said that we're trying to discourage universities from continuing with some courses especially the so social sciences and you're mentioning philosophy and other subjects that has to do with relating with each other and they are so bent on talking about science subjects and all that. So where is the balance? Where should we find the balance? Where should we uh draw the line? Uh because if you're trying to change the curriculum towards a a the towards a position that may not work for the country, then it would be detrimental to us. They removed history at one point and returned it. I don't know if the one that they're teaching, the version they're teaching now is honest enough to build nationhood. Maybe you can access uh you can assess what kind of history we are being taught in the schools now that can help us to build a better nation. So our curriculum whether in the tary institution or the primary institution what do you think about it especially with that advice of removing the humanities removing social sciences and concentrating on STEM alone?
>> Yeah definitely the minister was ill advised he I think in some sense we should consider him an unfortunate person. It is. If you listen to him, you will know that he sincerely means well.
He wants a Niger education system that that that flourishes and prepares young people for the roles they going to play in society. But the misfortune that has befallen him is the fact that he's um he he has been surrounded with people who know little or nothing about education.
And so they keep giving the wrong advice. Today they will tell him we should start teaching our children. All children in Nigeria, no matter where they live, they should be taught in English language. and uh you know that our indigenous language should be thrown away and they forget or probably do not know that even in the UK which is the home of English English language in a part of it called Wales in the other part called Northern Northern Ireland and the other part called Scotland people in those places still teach their children in their mother tongue. I went to do research in in Wales on one occasion and I entered their primary school classrooms and that what I saw was that they were all being taught in Welsh even though that is United Kingdom where the English language comes from.
When I went to Finland or or Norway or all the places I have gone to, I discovered that there's no country in Europe that you go to for at all levels that their children are not being taught in their in their in their mother tongue. But we come here and we we say it should be the other way which is very unfortunate for us. So we need to >> but can that work in Nigeria because we have like 400 languages or so. Can that work in Nigeria? A universal uh policy.
Okay. Saying that we we will have to teach in our mother tongue. Will it work in Nigeria?
>> Why why won't it work? You see when we banded those um those statistics we we we fail to recognize the nuances within the figures we are given that we should be paying attention to. When you go to the northern part of the country really there are about 19 states there up to 80 90% of children in the north speak house even when you have up to 200 languages within that within that environment everybody has been brought up in how language the average person living in plateau state speaks even when they are not people same applies to nasawa same applies to even ki same applies to even benway really so it's that is not our problem. Our problem is lack of understanding. We haven't we don't even pay attention.
>> Like this one I just told you now the average child living anywhere in the north is able to speak. Teach him the answer. That's his mother tongue. Mother tongue is not necessarily the language that is associated with your tribe. Your mother tongue is the language you were brought up in.
>> It doesn't have to be the one that can be associated with when you asked on a form what's your tribe say. No, that's not what we mean by mother tongue.
Mother tongue is right from the day you were born. What is the language you have been hearing? That's your mother tongue.
You get what I mean? So the same thing applies to the eastern part of the country. A lot of people who are who are not ethnically able speakable language in Euroba in in the western part the same. A lot of people here including you know even places like who are not even in Lagos if you go to Baragi there a lot of people in Baragree I'm not Euroba people they here maybe ago or something like that but they don't speak Euroba.
So your is their mother tongue. That's what we're talking about. So get out, you know, about three, four, five languages that are dominant in our country and use that to get our children going and we are not going to run into into difficult problems. So there's so much ignorance, you know, floating around and I think that um is is part of the challenges that be devil our country. So let's let's let's get things done better.
>> Okay. Okay. Before we continue with uh what we're talking about, let's let me just take a comment from someone. Mike is commenting from mile 2 um so that I will hear your response to that. We respectfully call for a boycott and urgent review of the joint admission and metriculation board jam. Beyond repeated technical failures and systemic pressure, there have been uh tragic consequences linked to the process, including a student suicide in 2025, the kidnap of jam bites, and a mother who collapsed and died in 2026 while accompanying her daughter to write jam.
Over 2 million candidates sit annually, yet admission remains limited. Schools still conduct their own entry exam, making jam a needless duplication of effort and stress. JAM has increasingly become more of a revenue-driven system than a necessity. We therefore urge the institutions to be allowed to handle admissions independently so Gen Z can be spared this double pressure, unnecessary trauma and tragedies. Okay. This he calls himself a social thinker from mile 12. So what's your response to this?
>> Yeah. uh good observation he has made especially with respect to the challenges that um the experience of our children has has you know has thrown up >> but uh when we have to confront the idea of do we still need jam the answer is yes because if you if you do research like me and you have been in the system for as long as like about four decades that I have been in the industry you will understand that the people running jam we are not the ones who ask that jam be established as a matter of fact universities themselves were the ones who motivated the powers that be to set up JAM because JAM was set up as a clearing house. Prior to the existence of JAM, we had only a few universities under 10 universities and what used to happen was that annually when universities are to recruit students. So you find the very bright ones they will apply to all the universities in the country um and then after some time if they joined and then University of Lagos. So what you find is that the very bright ones about 5% of them will apply to all these universities and get admissions in those places but they need only one. So you secure admission in five places you need only one you can study in only one university but you have blocked four other spaces and so universities we are finding it difficult to know what to do because school resumes and you expecting that John will join your school but John has only joined unilag and has you know ignored the rest of the universities that gave him admission and then you have to start running skill so at the end of the day you discover that you might just you know end up giving the giving giving the spaces available to people who who don't even meet the minimum requirement to to get So the only way to to to solve that problem was to create a set up a clearing house which is what JAM is so that every child gets only one admission and JAM has done that you know creditably to a large extent. The problem we have had with JAM is not it's not whether we need it or not is the fact that the exams have not been valid. The the you know universities are not complaining that they don't need JAM. They are saying that the exam they conduct generally don't have validity because they see candidates who score over 300 who come into classrooms you know to study physics and some of them have never heard about Isaac Newton before. If you mention in the law of gravity they're hearing it for the first time and they say no this cannot be right that so this exam is not revealing what we actually want to reveal. So let's conduct our own to to scream people. So but everything considered they still they are still meeting that dealing with that role and addressing it to to to up to 80 to 90% you know level but the area where we have to work on is the where they conduct the exam and help them to come up with a system that ensures that if you score 200 then that's your ability.
If you score 320 and we put you in in the university you are going to demonstrate brilliance. That's not exactly what we are seeing at the moment. And so I've sympathized with the guy who sent in that that that that that information. I have um you know been in pain myself discovering that our children are being picked up on the road as they're going to write exam and parents are beginning to get forced to let their children daughters who are only 15 years old to live in hotels to be able to write UT since they have to turn up at at 6:30. So all of those things are wrong. And last year we had over 400,000 kids who were going to be denied access to university because the server failed. And the minister had already gone on air and said the reason those children didn't do well was because you know they had plugged the the the the the opportunities that children were using to commit examation malpractice. And so uh and that's why they failed. But eventually when the system was integrated we discovered that it was because the server was not properly you know uploaded. the results were not properly uploaded to the server and that's that's how come you know all of those things happened and I I remember a a very smart young girl that you know I I was mentoring at at that point who who jumped gave 146 as score but we all knew that this is a an above 300 score score person but luckily for her when social activist put pressure on Jamba and the the test was was was redone the child scored 323 more and double what machine allocated to her which had little or nothing to do with um with her with her abilities. So um the summary there is that we still need Jam but Jam has to um elevate it game.
>> Uh by elevate it game what do you mean?
>> Yeah they need to employ better better assessors better uh uh IT people. Uh that technology must work. That technology must work. They need to also bring in better thinkers. They need to enlarge the system and that helps them to take especially policy level decisions. We need to be more you know equitable. We need to think more about the average Nigerian rather than the elites. The current system in place in JAM and most other uh education agencies in our country. They are all systems that are running for that have been you know funded for to serve to serve the elites. Nobody thinks about the the child in farflung bomb or or pleu or or or or KB when when they making decisions really and that's that's very unfortunate for us. Why are we why are we insisting that a child in in a place like Bronu where he has never seen computer not talk about using one.
We asking him, we insisting that he has to use computer to write to write to write the test really to reveal what he knows. He's not going to be able to do that. And we we put up very, you know, illogical arguments. We say but they don't need all the buttons on the computer. They need only you know the the up the up button, the down button, the the two sideways and then A B C D.
That's not true. If you if you don't use computer often, even when you you you you know the button B before you can find it, it takes a while for you to become familiar with where the button B is >> and this is an exam that is time sensitive. You are supposed to finish every the entire four subjects, you have to finish them within 3 hours. So if you are not very familiar with computer and you are competing with somebody who is familiar with computer even when you are more intelligent even when you are better prepared for the exam because you lack the language to review what you know you see you what you find is that the person who is not as knowledgeable as you are will score a high mark and get into university and you're still at home because you happen to be marginalized you know very very unfortunate you know young person who comes from a rural community where computer has never been used to train you. So those are the things we should be looking at. So you're you the the plan by WK to also introduce uh this computer testing um you condemn it. Is that what it is?
>> Yeah. Is it is going to is going to be worse if you insist on CBT for all the subjects in in in in in was which is what I'm hearing. You know I hear NEO and and WK must use CBT to do to do uh uh practicals to do uh theory to do multiple choice. It's how are you going to be able to do that? We don't we are not a society that is not that is that sophisticated even that is they test only four subjects and everything is multiple choice which you finish in 3 hours. We are struggling with it. Why are you asking us to bring in CBT, you know, to to test to test people's knowledge of how to write essays? How are you going to be able to actualize that? Write essay in chemistry, in physics, in biology for children to reveal to you, right? You know, tell you why why the law of gravity is the law of gravity. Why is it that when we throw something up, it comes down? He want the child to use computer to tell you that in Nigeria and that child is living in Yub in in in KB and even in somewhere in state even in even in Lagos in in Badag even in Amushi sometimes even in EA and Ser you find a lot of children who have never used a smartphone. As a matter of fact we are even running campaign as parents and school teachers you know against our children being being digitally uh ready.
We think that uh computers and the internet will spoil our children instead of us to train them on how to use the internet space you know profitably. We just want to exclude them. We don't want them to to operate at that level and these are children you want to be globally competitive tomorrow. So a lot of ignorant people are running the system and we we we are lazy people generally speaking when we say we not just the ordinary man in the street. We are talking about people who are the policy level policy level people who don't who don't want to sit down and do hard thinking. How do we accommodate everyone? And it's possible. There are societies that have always worked hard to accommodate fairly everybody in society. But here we argue against ordinary people. Once we meet the expectations of the elies, we have done our job and that's not the fair system that we should be promoting.
>> Okay, let's let's combine two questions right now. Um the UNESCO benchmark for budgeting to fund education is uh 15 to 20%, Nigeria budgets 5 to 7% uh for republic schools. Eubank and Ted fun billions are sitting on unassessed by uh uh states because the states don't want to pay their counterpart funding. Now who is to blame here? Who is failing here? Is it the federal government, the states or the process itself to assessing these things? Because money will be sitting there and the states will not go because they don't want to give the counterpart funding. Should we blame the federal government? Should we blame the states or should we blame the process to achieving this?
the the policy itself is is um is is most probably wrong because the that issue you're raising now says for a state to get money that Eubck is keeping for them they have to have counterpart funding. In other words, if if UB gives them 50 billion, they should first prove that their own 50 billion is uh is in the bank waiting so that when the two are added up, everything becomes 100 billion. That idea is not going to work.
We we we you know policy should reflect should reflect the characters of the actors in the system. We know that the characters in the system here are not people who know the value of education.
So when they have money at the state level as governors, as commissioners of education, what they want to use it to do is not to train your children in primary school. It is to buy, you know, h SUVs that are bulletproof because they know the kind of society have created and they are all afraid to work, you know, freely in society. So they are not going to be able to provide the counterpart funding, most of them. And so what you should do if you want is if you want the system to work for everyone is pro most probably if you ask me that's what I will do and if you give me the opportunity I will ensure that that money goes straight to where it is needed the primary schools let federal government take over. We should modify our laws to make primary school education a federal government responsibility so that that money leaves UB and go straight to pay teacher salaries in primary schools. He leaves federal government pocket and goes to pay and goes to provide the right technology build schools because if you get it right at primary school level children will have a good foundation.
Then if you up your game a little and give them good quality secondary school education as a matter of fact after that level whether you're a parent or a government you stop other things being a child will be fine and I'm an example of that my parents didn't give me more than secondary school education is the truth of the matter but they worked hard to ensure I got a very good primary education and very good secondary school education all the other things I have done you know two master's degrees over over 10 professional certifications have a PhD travel to se several countries to do research I have done all those things on my It wasn't my parents that that did that for me. So give children good quality primary and secondary school education and they will take care of themselves. That's the way the world works. BUT UNFORTUNATELY we like to beat our hearts from the roof. There's so much emphasis on onu nasu the different kinds of associations at the tiary level when we have not laid the foundation on which we can build on which aso people can build even when you pay as people well so long as they keep getting the wrong students who don't have the capacity to benefit from university education you will not be able to provide the capacity you need to discourage dangote from employing uh technicians and engineers from abroad really so that's that's the thing so we are that policy uh and the laws that enabled it to come in place. I think that there's need for us for us to reveal. The states are never going to be able to do what you expecting them to do. Let that money go straight from Lubec to primary schools, pay the teachers and equip those schools to provide good quality education for our children.
>> Yeah. Because when you go to uh public schools there are no desk and uh it seems as if we are accidentally creating a two-tier citizenship through education and the policies that they have uh the president administration has said that they have brought nail fund like you mentioned also the question is is nail fund reaching that son of a driver that son of a a laborer uh where they it is really needed or is it not reaching them because there are some people who are still complaining that They have tried their best to assess this and they are not able to do that. Federal government has also launched what they call dots and said they'll mop up 10 million kids.
What's actually different from every other back to school campaign since 1999? I wonder. So if you have an insight into what the dots are or what the federal government launched to show that they want to bring out uh children from the streets and into the schools, please help us assess it. Tell us how you feel about that program. Is it working or is it not working?
>> You know, I have been telling you that we like fancy fancy ideas and we like to build our house our house from the roof. Why are children in the streets in the first place? They're in the streets because there is insecurity in the northeast. It doesn't matter the policy you you you you formulate in Abuja. If you don't fix security in the northeast, those children are not going to return to schools and feel safe studying there. And even if the children are willing to return to the classrooms, the teachers who are competent and mindful of the need to give themselves adequate safety and security are not going to go to the northeast to teach.
Virtually all the teachers who who who are rooted in the in the south who much earlier like 15 years ago went to the north to teach, they have all left and returned to the south because nobody wants to die while he's training other people's children as we usually will will express it in Nigeria really. So fix your security every day. We just this was it two or three days ago we still had people were picked up in in quara you know you know they keep going to pick up people kill and and walk away. They're even attacking police stations. They attacking military bases and killing people who who who have guns. Who are you now ordinary teacher who who who has no no no no no no no no no no no implement challenge the terrorist. So their security must get it right. All these things we are discussing on paper, you know, they are all opportunities to create contracts for politicians to make money to to to to to organize the next election campaign and remain in office. That's not the way to go. And then run a better economy. Run an economy that, you know, will empower parents to be able to put food on the table for their children and then be able to pay rent. And some of them should be able to, you know, move towards eventually owning their owning their own owning their own, you know, houses. If you're able to do that then children will no longer carry the burden of having to work with their parents to put food on the table. A major driver of children in the streets is the fact that these children whether they are beggars or they are selling ground not they are they have become breadwinners sell their parents you know the drudgery of walking from morning to night and not being able to provide adequate food for their children. then let's have a population policy that probably regulates how many children we we we we have as as as a couple. I think we haven't really paid attention to that.
The the the the fertility rate for the average for for that for the fertility rate in Cina is over seven. Meaning that average woman in Cina makes a minimum of seven children. Even in Legos that looks enlightening the fertility rate here is is still about five. We are making more children than we can handle. And we argue that it doesn't matter the number of children you know God gives to you.
God will provide the resources. We have seen that's not true. God is a God who is who places value on wisdom. Wisdom he says is the principal thing. Why do we keep putting up arguments that are illogical that are very you know e disadvantageous to us when when we use them to run our lives. So let's provide the right enlightenment and these other things will take care of themselves. You don't need all these fancy policies. You need to do do basic things. Once you once parents are able to take care of their families, then the children will be able will be able to go to school and once you are able to make the northeast and north central and even northwest and in some sense even you know some of the parts in the in the south in the south.
Now if you make them places where people can live safely and not be and not be afraid of who is coming to kill them the the people teachers will stay in those places in rural communities and teach the children and then do positive discrimination. teachers who are willing to go to rural communities. Pay them more than you pay the ones who stay in the cities where you have all the amenities. That's what other societies are responsible do. But we do the opposite in in our country. We pay teachers in the cities better than we pay teachers in rural communities.
That's not a correct thing to do.
There's need for incentives that we keep good teachers in in in rural communities where children need to go to school and then acquire the capacity to be able to make their own useful contribution to national development. So these are basics rather than every day we come up with a new policy. Those those policies that most of these people we call you know education policy makers are annunciating they they are not going to take us to liberation level.
>> Okay. But talking about teachers, apart from the fact that uh EUBEK is saying that um uh 60% of public primary teachers are unqualified, um do we even have the manpower even of the unqualified teachers to do the work that is supposed to be done? Because es especially if you go to the public uh schools, primary schools, secondary schools, the population per class sometimes is 60 70 and there's one teacher that is teaching everything and he she he or she has to assess the whole children and so many things that the person has to do. So, do we even have the manpower, whether qualified or not qualified, but the kind of teachers we have right now in Nigeria, do we have the numbers to have an educational system that will meet the standards you're talking about?
>> You you know, you know the answer to that question. You don't have the numbers. And the reason why you don't have the numbers is because there's no incentive for you to become a teacher.
You know, if you settle if you settle for teaching, what you have told members of your family is that you are you are irresponsible. you you don't want to take take take ownership of your duty to put adequate food on the table for them.
And so you are discouraged by your parents, you are discouraged by your your wife, you're discouraged by your husband to go into teaching. If you go into the education space today, we in a typical primary school, what you find is that nine out of every 10 teachers there, you know, they are all women because the men who have to cater for wife and children and extended family people don't see teaching as a place that can bring in enough money to take care of those responsibilities. And so the reason why women are managing there is because they they they are married to husbands who are able to put food on the table. So it's not the salary they earning that is putting food on the table. And that's not the place to be if you want to run a good education system.
You should run a system where people accept teaching as an honorable job. You also have to respect them in society. So we don't have the numbers, we don't have the quality really. So both at both quality and quantity levels with respect to teaching capacity, we lack it. And uh unfortunately even when we say we are doing teacher training, what do the policy makers do? They bring in their cronies, you know, to to submit proposals who know these are people who know nothing about education, but they are the ones training teachers. They are they themselves are not teachers. They just go and up certain things on the internet and then send them proposal to ministry of education and they put them in front of teachers and they're teaching them. Some of the teachers they talking to are better informed than them. So they even wasting the teachers time. Go to ministry of education. A lot of the school inspectors are not as as informed as the people they are they are whose work they are they are moderating and that's very unfortunate for us some of the people who especially in the high-profile you know international schools in places like Abuja some of the people they go whose work they go to inspect are people who some who trained abroad who trained in England you know and they have come back here and you you have not been anywhere and you are coming to tell him how to run the classroom and they insisting there's So much emphasis on lesson note, lesson note, lesson note, lesson plan. You know the nobody is recognizing that you don't use one lesson plan to run a classroom where you have you know the kind of numbers you have been you have been you know mentioning to me 60 children in the class and you use one lesson lesson plan and node to train them. It's not going to work because these children have different interests they pushing. They in the classroom for different reasons.
Even when we think they are children they are not all there you know to to to earn grades. Some of them are there to play. Some of them are there to make friends and that's okay because at the end of the day if you have paid attention to how the world works. You will know that at the end of the day most of the people who run society actually not the people who made the best grades in school. Most of the people who made the best grades in school remain employees. They work for others. The people who create all these politicians really what were the grades they made while they were in school.
they you know doing politics and carrying their friends about and they made relationship that enable them to get into politics and today they they are running the system and all of us are sitting down at home with our degrees and complaining. So we so we need to run a better system. When we train our teachers, we should spend time in in in seller societies what they do is they do 50% of the time training a teacher is spent on getting him to have a subject mastery while the other 50% is spent getting him to acquire pedagogical skills, learning how to teach. We don't spend enough time here getting teachers to acquire skills on how to run proper classrooms. And you got a typical Nigerian classroom and you see the setting you know all the children are sitting you know facing the teacher the teacher stands in front as as the ominant individual but that's we are no longer running that kind of system in proper societies. Children sit in small in small groups. So because you want to teach them team you know team spirit at the very you know early stages in their in their in their education so that eventually when they get into industry they know that they can no matter how brilliant they are they can't work alone and make it. They need to collaborate with others. You teach them party you take them into the field here even good education it's not good quality education because you you keep them in shiny buildings no trees they don't know we are discussing climate change they don't know what that means everywhere is concrete we are not training our children well they don't know about you know green environments and the value of that so we need to produce better quality teachers and we haven't got the numbers we also haven't got the quality so our our journey is a very long one.
>> When you talk about quality teachers, what comes to my mind is the fact that to even qualify to go and learn how to teach, you are expect you're not expected to have uh grades as good as the person who is going for engineering and all that. So if the cutoff mark for medicine is let's say 300 plus for a teacher, you could get 250 or less than that and all that. So I I don't really know how you are going to get good quality teachers when the cutoff marks for becoming a teacher have been reduced from the onset.
>> Yeah. The reason is simple. Um going back that takes us back to jam. uh jam the for last year um I think even for for colleges of education as low as 100 over over 400 which is just 25% of what of what is at stake you know unless you get into college of education where you learn to uh you know to teach in a primary school which is very unfortunate for us but is that Jan's fault no the reason it's not it's not Jan's fault the reason why is that no is the fact that the not many people want to go to colleges of education. So the the the opportunities jam jam jam UTME is a ranking exam is not an achievement test.
So what constitutes pass mark is not something you set you set up in advance.
The people who compete for available spaces determine what the cutoff mark will be. So those courses that are high in demand like medicine, you know, civil engineering, mechanical engineering always will have cutoff marks that will be as high as 280 in the absence of UTM, post UTM and the quality of your school certificate. But courses that are not in high demand like education really they are the ones who suffer you know this kind of thing we are discussing. But why is that the case? It takes us back to the point I was making to you earlier.
Parents don't want their children to learn education because when you learn education, especially when you're ignorant, you think that you you must end up in the classroom. And we know that teachers are not well paid. We know that teachers are not respected. Parents don't respect. It's not only government that doesn't respect teachers. Parents still don't respect teachers. You find parents who come to the classroom, march into the place, slap a teacher and say call on teacher. And this is the person you are trusting to bring up your child who is eventually going to become a politician or go to America or go to go to Britain and you're calling him a common teacher really out of ignorance because a lot of the people you find in this society are people who actually should go back to school when you you you reconstruct the system and make it truly functional. So that's that's how to explain that issue of you know the 120 or 100 is because the demand for teaching spaces is very low. So anybody who wants to be a teacher can go and be a teacher but that is not very good for us.
>> It's yeah because it's it's really disturbing. The teachers are the reason we have the doctors, we have the engineers, we have everybody else and unfortunately it seems as if you don't need that much uh qualifications, you don't need that much uh uh intelligence to become a teacher. And it worries me all the time. And then you've also said that we don't have the manpower and I don't know uh should this be um put at the table of the federal government or the state governments or local governments whoever it is that is in charge of education? Where do you think the emphasis should come from uh to make this educational system a better one?
>> Leadership is critical. Um and in the context of what we're discussing um that leadership must come from the federal government. Uh because uh you know we run um uh we have we have what they call a concurrent legislative list. That is where education is. So both the federal government and state governments can make laws regarding education. But in the event of a clash between what the federal government wants and what state government want is what federal government wants that that will override. So they they drive policy.
Whatever they determine at the federal level tends to be what the states have to copy. And so you need to um as you [clears throat] ask me that question, I remember one management guru. Um he is late now an American. His name is Peter Dera. He did say that pick up any any any bottle. If you have one in your studio, just look at it now. You see that the place where you have the trouble is at the head of that bottle.
That's where it's narrow. So once you get it right at the top, every other thing falls in place. Any society where the people who run the system at the very top right corruption is not is not a something to be to be discussed and they are public spirited. They are sacrificial. They know that when they die they are not going to carry anything to the grave and they promote that idea from that very top. What you find is that every other person in society falls in line. But if the people at the top are not getting it right at the level of, you know, president, ministers, head of public service agencies, governors and and and commissioners, if they don't get it right, uh there there are no examples, no models that we're going to copy. So all the speeches you make at different places. On children's day, you come and make speech. It's coming soon.
Workers day you make speech. On teachers day, you make speech. But we are not showing uh we are not seeing the the the modeling and those of us in teaching we know those are the two ways by which you may try to you know change people's attitude. One is to preach to them. The other one is to model it.
>> What we have found through research is that modeling is what works. It's not preaching.
>> Okay. Um let me ask you a final question. I'm laughing because you made a comment that you don't intend in any way to become a politician. But I've I've tried to count the number of people that have sent messages here and there are close to a hundred that are saying the same thing that we should make you minister for education. Okay, that will make you a politician Dr. Anyway, but this question is if you were to be minister even if it's for one day, what are the three things that you will you will implement? three policies that you will sign that would show results in 18 months. No budget increase allowed but smarter implementations. What are the things three things that you would uh want to be implemented that will yield results even without um budgetary allocations increasing.
>> The federal government should take responsibility for funding primary education. The our teachers should be paid directly from federal ports. We shouldn't be insisting on counterpart funding for uh states to access the money that UBEC has. That's that's that's critical. Uh in today's world, we should um leverage technology uh to to retrain our teachers so that they acquire both subject mastery and pedagogical mastery. That's equally important. And then we need an education philosophy that insists that all of us are born equal. You remember I have a dream really high. So that kind of go and read that speech. Whatever the man was saying there, let's let it apply to Nigeria. Who our father is or who our mother is should not determine the kind of school we have to go to. We should create schools and fund them, you know, in a way that ensures that um all Nigerian children have access to the same quality of of of classrooms, to the same quality of teachers. It doesn't matter who their parents are, whether their heart euroba or minority. We should all have access to the same, you know, quality of classrooms and teachers. And you see Nigeria beginning [clears throat] to flourish. So let's let's get finally let's get um the right people to run the system at the very top. Minister of education, commissioners of education, inspectors of education. Let's retrain all of them to help them to acquire this level of thinking that we have emphasized in the course of this conversation. And you see Nigeria rise up which this place we should be a net exporter of educational services. I have traveled around the world the people running these places and my my classmates where I was at Cambridge University. [clears throat] I was at I was at Oxford. I was at Sheffield. I was at Reading. I was in Austria. I was in Sweden. The people running these places they didn't beat me in classrooms really. That's the truth of the matter. So if they think that the things they have created in their societies we can create here. And I'm not the only one. There are several Nigerians who are willing to come back here and make this contribution. Some of them are in Canada, in America, in Germany, even in South Africa. If you create an enable environment, we all go back here. Some of us are willing to serve for free. We will we'll be able to make a difference. But for me, not as a politician. I still have to emphasize that because I it's difficult for now to get into the political arena.
>> Okay. So by way of summary and if one word if you if you may um is the education system in Nigeria moving forward or is it stuck or is is it moving backwards? Let's just use that to wrap up.
>> I don't want to uh discourage people from thrusting their country. Uh so um summarizing in the way you want me to summarize might force me to come out with words that will not promote optimism but I know that our God is a good Lord and uh when we trust him he has a way of performing miracles that will turn things around. So let's be hopeful someday we are likely to get the right people in the right places and it won't take long. It just takes one man who is who has the right awareness, the right skills and the right values to get into that space, make the right policy that promotes equity, fairness and justice and Nigeria will start flying.
But definitely at this point in time we are not where we deserve to be.
>> Okay. Thank you very much Dr. Petoro for your time this morning. Have a very wonderful day. Thank you.
>> You too.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. We've been talking with Dr. Peter Agodoro uh on the brunch this morning.
Peter Gdoro, his career as an educationist, career advisor, HR practitioner, and public relations expert has put smiles on the faces of millions of people around the world. And I'm sure from the messages, loads and loads of messages I've heard here today, everybody's just saying, why not make this man a minister of education? He doesn't want to even be a minister of education, but he is passionate about Nigeria and Nigeria's problems. So, whatever it is, let's pray that those that are like him that can help Nigeria will be identified and put in the places that they want, they need to function and Nigeria will get it right. But this is how much we can go on the brunch this morning. Uh, join us tomorrow again for another edition of the brunch. Until we get to that moment, my name is Nyam Gul Aaji. Have a lovely day. Thanks for being there.
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