POLICY DISCONTINUITY, POOR MANAGEMENT BANE OF EDUCATION
- - - KINGIBE
Amidst growing concern over the deplorable state of Nigeria’s tertiary institutions, and the continuous call on government to inject more funds into the education sector, the Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Ambassador Babagana Kingibe [CFR], has urged all-and-sundry to avoid the simplistic assumption that funding is the only limitation of the country’s education system.
Ambassador Babagana Kingibe who said this while delivering a lecture at the just concluded 18th Biennial Convention of Great Ife Alumni Association which held at the prestigious Oduduwa Hall of the University, credibly averred that the nation is investing more in the education sector today than at any other time and yet, the sector’s contribution to real growth and development has not kept pace.
The SGF, in the lecture titled “Education as a Tool for Moving Nigeria to the Next Level,
pointed out that though funding is vital, it is itself a function of the degree to which leadership accepts to commit education as a social and economic priority, adding that it is indeed very germane to secure some basic agreements around the prioritization of education, re-assessment of its basic philosophy and goals, and the mechanisms required to achieve targets.
He cited policy discontinuity, poor management, development of conflicting value-system which de-emphasized the place of education in social mobility and its relevance as the Nigerian economy and society became more complex, as the major problems of education; emphasizing however that it is time Nigerians looked beyond these limitations, and examine the historic opportunities and challenges which the nation must seize and deal with if it is not to be consigned by history as a nation of infinite possibilities and endemic tragic failures.
