A University Don, Professor Olugbemiro Jegede has advocated for a comprehensive review of Nigeria’s national education policy in order to make it relevant in addressing current challenges of the Covid-19 global health pandemic.
Jegede, a former Vice Chancellor of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) is of the opinion that the current national education policy which was formulated in 1976 had become largely obsolete and due for a total rewrite, adding that what the country needed at this stage of its development was a modern 21 century education curricular which must be 100% digital and accessible on 24/7 basis.
Appearing as guest recently on an interactive media program monitored in Lagos, the renowned academist observed that the Covid-19 pandemic has brought about great disruption and devastation to Nigeria’s educational system pointing out that for the sector to survive impacts of the global pandemic, urgent steps must be taken to review the nation’s education curricular and render it capable to cope with the pandemic.
According to the former NOUN VC, the current budget allocation by the government to education sector was N706 billion which is just about 10% of the country’s total budget of N10 trillion in the year.
He stated that the education sector’s contribution of less than 24.1 % to GDP amounted to a national embarrassment stressing that government needed to invest massively in education if the country was to meet up with the globally expectations and become competitive in the global arena.
Lamenting upon the huge proportion of damages on schools, colleges, universities and households occasioned by the pandemic, he noted that the education system in the country must be changed urgently and immediately in order to cope with the pandemic.
“Covid- 19 has disrupted and devastated the education sector, it has affected households, students, lecturers, universities, colleges of education, and everywhere else. Covid19 as we know it has affected 24 million people around the world, with about 900,000 deaths. In Nigeria I think the record is that it has affected 54,000 people, and about 1000 people dead, what we must know is that Covid – 19 is never going to go away, it is too widespread and too transmissible, the best case scenario is getting a vaccine and a better treatment making it less dangerous and less destructive”
“Nigeria needs to put together a team of top crack educational strategists, they must be strategists that will work with the heath sector to fashion out what to do, the second is to undertake massive training and re- retraining of pupils and teachers on how to mitigate the damaging effect of Covid 19, and what families should do”
Continuing, he said “If Covid 19 is going to be with us, education must change, it must accept the pandemic or the changes that are been meted out to the Nigerian public and in fact the whole world must accept it as part of our dress code” he stated adding,
“It has to be something we must deal with on a daily basis and that is why we need to move ahead to make sure that our education system together with the economy are able to handle what we have gotten right now through the Covid – 19 pandemic”.
