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By Funke Busari
“No standard of education in Nigeria has fallen, because in the first instance, there was no standard set.”
Those were the words of Hon. Orji Emmanuel, the National President, Association for Formidable Educational Development, (AFED) at the association’s 4th African Education Conference recently.
With the theme, Reconstructing for Inclusivity and Purpose, the event was to address challenges in the education sector across the country.
Orji explained: “If you talk about standard, you can only measure if there are certain things that are used to measure it. So when you talk about standard of education as we see today, it is such that is not meeting the needs of the Nigerian people. That’s why I have argued that standard of education has not fallen but what we have is education without purpose.”
He said education in the country should be reconstructed in order to achieve progress and prosperity by not leaving anyone behind.
Also speaking at the event, Ronke Soyombo, former Special Adviser on Education to Ogun State Government aligned with that submission.
He said: “There is a need to rebuild and rebrand the country’s education in terms of policies. Look at our tertiary education. What are we using now at the tertiary institution, policies at different levels? What kind of teachers are we bringing into our schools? Because we’ve got to be up and doing for the 21st century children to flourish and thrive.” She also canvassed support for teachers teaching in schools in low-income areas to be actually rebranded for the education of the people living in such low-income areas.
She lauded the efforts of the Ogun State government on out-of-school children but harped on the need that the government should ensure compliance with policies to ensure children are taken off the streets to the classrooms.
Abiodun Oladipo, Head of Programmes, Development Agenda for Western Nigeria Commission (DAWN), spoke about qualification of teachers. He urged proprietors of private schools to support teachers to obtain the necessary qualifications even though the schools are in low-cost areas.
He recommended partnership with the Teachers Registration Council to build the capacity of teachers and certify them so that they would be able to have the required knowledge.
He is of the view that teachers have started well by the formation of AFED in collaborating for development and progress.
Hon. Ismail Umar, Senior Special Assistant to the Kogi State Governor on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) canvassed for the advancement of teachers in achieving human development as a way of also ensuring security and infrastructure development in the country.
According to him, “Government stands on three legs, which are security, infrastructure and human development. If you fail in the third leg, you will discover that you would lose the other two because human beings thrive on both. Education is what everybody needs and education can be gotten from our teachers from the 4Cs. These are Creativity, Critical thinking, Collaboration and Communication. Today, the first way to go about our education is by looking at these four, training our teachers to be computer-literate and training the teachers to impact knowledge.
Also at the event, AFED rewarded some primary school students across Lagos State who excelled during the 2023 AFED National Examination.
Elosie Israel emerged the first winner, Miss Favour Madu came second while Abraham Jeremiah came third.
The first, second and third positions received N150,000, N100,000 and N70,000 respectively.
