“What is more compelling is the prospect of being by 2050, (as we are told repeatedly) the world’s third largest country by population without a sound plan for the education of 70% of the population, which is the young people.
“If you don’t have a sound plan for the education of 70% of the almost 400 million people that we expect, (as we will be the third largest by population of the world,) then that will be a tragedy indeed.”
Professor Osinbajo, who spoke at the40th Anniversary of Reunion Symposium of the University of Ife’s Economic Class of 1979 at Muson centre in Lagos, said that it was in view of such projected tragedy that the government of Muhammadu Buhari is focusing on laying and implementing a relevant and dynamic educational plan for Nigeria.
“When I say relevant, I mean a plan capable of providing jobs and entrepreneurial skills for an increasingly globally competitive job market.”
Vice President Osinbajo said that the challenge will be in the area where the Federal Government’s role in the first nine years of a child’s life is slight.
“It is primarily the constitutional role of States and local governments. But we (Federal Government) consider the matter of basic education a matter of national emergency, consequently it is the role of the Federal Government to guide, to inspire, to coordinate, co-fund and also co-implement the basic education strategy.”
he stressed that improved educational outcomes are crucial to the overall strategy to end extreme poverty, reduce inequality and remain in the path of sustainable growth.
“Everybody talks about poverty. People say oh, Nigeria is now poorer in terms of relative numbers more than India which used to have that large number than ourselves. But the question, of course, is that poverty does not happen overnight, poverty doesn’t appear in a year or two years.
“In 2012, when the last household study on poverty was done, we were earning the highest in our oil earnings and poverty figures at the time stood at 112 million. Nigerians living in extreme poverty because we did not take a holistic approach to dealing with the question of poverty, beginning with education, and the other indices of human capital development. Of course, the situation worsened and it did not improve. And that is exactly what we get if there is no deliberate plan for improving human capital development.
“While the arguments will rage as to just how crucial education is to end extreme poverty, there is no question that illiteracy or lack of access to quality education is very closely associated with poverty.
“The UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report and the Education Commission’s Learning Generation Report provide important evidence on the impact of education on an individual’s earnings and economic growth.
“The Education Commission which some of us are familiar with is the commission that was established to look at the issue of global poverty and education at the same time.
“And some of their findings are quite interesting. The first is that: education reduces poverty and that absolute poverty could be reduced by 30% just by improving learning skills, just by changing the way that we teach, just improving teachers’ education. It could actually reduce poverty by 30%.
“Education they also said increases individual earnings as it increases earnings by as much as 10% for each additional year of schooling. Indeed, they found that just an addition of $1 investment in schooling, earnings can increase by $5 in low-income countries and $2.5 in lower-middle income countries.
“Education reduces economic inequalities generally. It was found that if workers from poor and rich backgrounds received the same education, the disparity between the two in working poverty could decrease by 39%.
Just to give an example of that; we have a school, it’s a voluntary school, funded by contributions from some friends and colleagues in Maiduguri, where orphans in that school were randomly picked and these children are, of course, the victims of the conflict in Borno state, the Boko Haram insurgency, etc.
“They have been in school now for about a year and a half, exposed to the best method of training: they are exposed to technology and all of that. Merely just looking at the results in a few short years, many of these kids have not been to school before, but several of them are able to write (programming) codes today, some of them are able to do basic programming today in barely two years. So, it just tells you that really what this is all about is opportunity. Children anywhere no matter how deprived, if given the right opportunity, can perform as well as children from a much better background.
“The last is that they say education promotes economic growth as educational attainment explained about half of the difference in growth rates between East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa between 1965 and 2010. So, the real difference between us and the so-called Asian tigers is first education. Investment must be made in education.”
Professor Osinbajo said that President Buhari set the tone for the renewed emphasis on human capital development in his speech while inaugurating the National Economic Council on June 20th 2019.
He quoted the President as saying: “On education, I want to stress in particular the need to take very seriously and enforce very rigorously the statutory provisions on free and compulsory basic education. Section 18 (3) of the 1999 Constitution as amended places on us an obligation to eradicate illiteracy and provide free and compulsory education. Section 2 of the Compulsory, Free Universal Basic Education Act provides that every Government in Nigeria shall provide free, compulsory and universal basic education for every child of primary and junior secondary school age. It is indeed a crime for any parent to keep his child out of school and in my view, when a government fails to provide the schools, teachers and teaching materials necessary for basic education, it is actually aiding and abetting that crime.”
The Vice President said that the position of the Federal Government is that “we take free and compulsory education in the first nine years of a child’s life seriously, indeed it is a crime to flout the policy, and we will work with other tiers of government to enforce the policy.
“This is our policy response to the tragedy of over 10 million out-of-school children. And it a phenomenon that occurs all over the country although there are zonal differences. States with highest numbers of out-of-school children are; Kano – 989,234; Akwa Ibom – 581,800; Katsina – 536,122;
“Indeed, the scale of the problem is that it is not only in terms of numbers, but also in terms of geographical access to schools especially, in hamlets and small settlements and funding. But even with children in school, pass rates in WAEC have, although improved, averaged about 40%.
“Another sore point is the education of girls. With some studies today showing that girls are on the average smarter than boys, any nation that does not educate its girls does itself great harm. How do you solve your problems when you lock up your best minds?
“So, we have a threefold plan to improve educational outcomes, but more importantly, to train this generation of students to create and function in a knowledge-driven economy.
“To start with, we will be more focused on achieving the educational outcomes specified in the Sustainable Development Goals, such that we can meet the targets for school enrollment, quality of education, adult literacy, and quality of teaching by 2030. Secondly, as indicated, we have with the collaboration of State governments, undertaken an ambitious programme to get the over 10 million out-of-school children into schools. This will be helped by the President’s June 20 declaration.
“It is a complex process requiring the full cooperation of State governments and religious authorities as well as the resources to build schools, equip them properly and train the required number of teachers. Our school feeding programme is already leading to improved enrollment and the N-Power programme can be a source of the initial requirement for teachers. We found that it is not so difficult to train. The N-Power teachers have a tablet like this, (-shows his hand-held iPad-) they have training materials on it. We also have an open portal where they can go to for training materials. Almost two third of these N-Power teachers are engaged in public primary schools in local governments across the country. Their devices have the materials for teachings, the lessons and all that. In fact, in some local governments, the graduate teachers they have are only N-Power people.”
