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Clifford University, Owerrinta, Abia State, owned by the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, has lately, been in the news for good reasons. First, the Nigerian music star, David Adeleke, popularly known as Davido, formally handed over a female hostel built for the University, in honour of his mother, Veronica Imade Adeleke, for her legacy in philanthropism and teaching profession. Second, Dr. Uche Sampson Ogah, the President of Masters Energy Group, delivered the eminent personality lecture titled, “Holistic Education and Global Competitiveness: Bridging the Gap Between Academia and Industry.” The most interesting thing about Ogah’s intellectually-stimulating intervention is that the University gave him a free hand to choose the topic, and his choice turned out an incisive and a policy-relevant paper.
The uniqueness of the treatise presented in lucid language is its fine sense of balance between his theoretical (a priori) knowledge and his hands-on experience (a posteriori) as an industry player. He began by agitating the minds of the listeners with a rhetorical question around the embarrassing disconnect with the thousands of graduates churned out on annual basis from our tertiary institutions and the huge capacity gaps they parade in the field of work, which he harmlessly quipped as “a gap between what we teach and what the world demands…”
He operationalized the concept of ‘holistic education’ as the development of the whole man – his character, people’s skills, management dexterity, emotional intelligence, and adaptation with the changing times in an interdisciplinary manner, and not treating classroom grades, technical skills, certifications and white-collar credentials in isolation, as according to him, our ancestors “were prepared not just for a livelihood, but for life, for citizenship, for leadership.” He therefore urged the nation to “reclaim this wisdom while embracing the demands of our contemporary moment.” And for him, too, global competitiveness entails acquiring the necessary skills that are not limited by geography but unboundedly engage the status quo, confront conventions with creative solutions, break new grounds, and mainstream local ingenuities and discoveries for addressing universal challenges. In this circumstance, it would not matter whether the person studied in Nigeria, UK, US, Singapore, or other world class universities. In fact, he capped the definition this way: “Global competitiveness means that we are not just consumers of knowledge and technology produced elsewhere, but creators and exporters of intellectual capital, innovation, and solutions.”
At the risk of sounding too critical about the systemic odds that contributed to the country’s dysfunctional education system, he saluted Nigerian universities for providing theoretical foundations through maintenance of research traditions and culture of intellectual rigour. However, the real-world scenario, he noted, is markedly different, as employers of labour are looking out for solution bearers with practical skill sets, part of which are digital literacy and imbibing of entrepreneurial mindset for addressing many-sided challenges at workplace and environment. He decried a situation where companies spend fortunes and quality time, usually between 12 and 18 months, in retraining fresh graduates who had no less than four years in the university. This course of action is inevitable as “Industries are desperately searching for talent.”
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For Ogah, part of the way out of the quagmire in Nigeria’s labour market is for universities to align with the industries from day one, so that brilliant research papers do not just end up in journals read by a few persons but their findings can be applied to industry specificities. Covenant University, Ota, is leading the pack of such innovative education in Nigeria. Stanford University in the United States is a world leader in mutually-rewarding partnerships with companies in the Silicon Valley. This naturally brings about cutting-edge researches and a pipeline of skilled graduates ready for hiring. The immediate impact for a country like Nigeria would be in curbing innovation deficit which is a major driver of brain drain and perhaps, ‘japa’ syndrome.
The paper also harped on the character quotient as an element of leverage in a fast-paced global community. Thus, “In a world where trust is increasingly scarce, the professional known for integrity stands out. In an economy where corruption undermines efficiency, the leader committed to ethical practice creates organisational value. In a society crying out for responsible citizenship, the graduate who understands their obligations beyond personal advancement becomes a multiplier of positive change.” More so, learning-by-doing which was implemented by South Korea in its early technological development phases is one of Ogah’s recommendations. That is the creation of an ecosystem of “student-led ventures and startup incubation” in forms of “simulated work environments on campus, innovation labs where students can fail safely, make spaces where they can prototype ideas, mock trading floors, media studios, or fabrication workshops.” He therefore encouraged universities to establish mechanisms to “support students who want to create businesses, develop innovations, or pursue entrepreneurial projects.”
He did not spare the industry players. They were urged to move beyond charities to making strategic investments in the education sector. In his words, “Industry must move from the sidelines to the centre of this transformation” noting that “Companies that invest seriously in education pipelines gain access to better talent, reduce recruitment and training costs, build employer brand reputation, and contribute to the stable, educated workforce that every business needs to thrive. This is smart business.” And for our education system to feed into industry demands, he opined that industry leaders should be carried along and/or be available for inputs during curriculum redevelopment by the institutional regulators.
In urging the country to reposition for the artificial intelligence disruptions, Ogah called for a balance as “The professional who cannot effectively leverage AI tools will be at a competitive disadvantage” just as he “who relies entirely on AI without developing their own expertise will be equally disadvantaged.” Indeed, Ogah’s education revamp initiatives as contained in the paper should be grabbed with both hands by any nation interested in coming out of the woods. Besides the low hanging fruits, a lasting arrangement would be an institutional adoption of these strategic thoughts. As such, the NUC and TETFUND should not allow the seminal work to rot away in shelves.
