Francis Egbokhare, a renowned Professor of Linguistics and African Languages, at the University of Ibadan, has advocated the need for all stakeholders in the Nigeria’s education sector to begin reshape the existing ‘outdated’ curricula of the nations universities to reflect the realities of the people and be formulated into national philosophy and ideology for sustainable development.
He stated this while delivering the 10th and 11th Convocation Ceremony lecture of Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba Akoko, entitled, “Nature of State, National Ideology and the Modelling of Higher Education for Sustainable Development”.
He said: “An education philosophy that is not ideologically grounded in terms rootedness in the realities of the people, their conceptualisation of society, their aspirations, no matter how well crafted, is just a piece of paper.
“Simply defining a philosophy based on some academic understanding of the purpose of education and on the basis of a conceptual framework based on foreign experience will only lead to dependency and enslavement.”
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He condemned the prevailing establishment of many universities as competitors instead of being collaborators to solve societal problems, adding that if Nigeria could have a right model of universities that would be generated from its national ideology, the nation would have more returns on investment.
“Without philosophical and ideological clarity, the education system simply ignores authentic social and cultural systems, the real needs of the individual and the collective.”
He said, “The most depressing aspect of it is that it has been crafted without a sense of ideological clarity and therefore, the policy does not transcend the semantic interpretation that it affords.
“Second, both the producers and operators bear the burden of colonial infrastructure, having passed through a colonial education system with a fixated view of what education means and how it should be modelled.”
According to him, it was not correct to always believe that Nigerian graduates were not employable, but there have been glut of graduates in the system which has caused collapse of choice while searching for job.
“Once there is a glut, there is a collapse of choice in job search and demand. This radically alters the factors involved in employability. In order for us to understand our perspective on the issue of employability, we need to consider four related issues.
“These are absorptive capacity of the Nigerian economy, the lack of a culture of quality, employment practice that is not supportive of excellence and the incidence of graduate glut due to prolonged unemployment crisis.”
In his welcome address, the Vice Chancellor of the institution, Prof. Olugbenga Ige, explained that the choice of the title for the convocation lecture was informed by the need to seek a better approach to addressing the challenges identified with the nexus between the dynamic nature of our society and our education philosophy.
