In another development, former Minister of Education, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili lamented the decadence in the nation’s education sector, calling for a complete overhaul of the system.
Making the call in Abuja yesterday at the 2016 Nigerian Education Innovation Summit with the theme: “Scaling up Education Interventions in Nigeria: A call to action” organised by the Education Partnership Centre, she said it has become imperative that the sector must be overhauled to avoid its total collapse.
The Imo State Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Andrew Enwerem, a Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), told The Guardian that six of the protesters were arrested and that investigations were continuing. Some of the students who spoke with The Guardian, said they were protesting a number of issues, including alleged increase in school fees from N23,000 to N28,000; insistence by the authorities that the students must pay before writing their examinations; demanding that henceforth, male students should not enter that of the female hotels, and vise-versa. The protesters also demanded that the Students Union Government (SUG), budget be released immediately by the institution’s authority, while some basic facilities in deplorable conditions at the hostels, be repaired.
According to them, until their demands were met, ‘there should be no school fees and no examinations.’As at the time of filing the report, neither the Provost nor the Public Relations Officer, Mr. Tony Ololo could be reached as their phones were switched off.
According to Ezekwesili: “The fact that access to education eludes tens of millions of our children, the fact that the quality and the relevance of the education they get does not match with the needs of the society, therefore, there is a mismatch between their own time in education and the value that is place on that time that should be demanding for their skills, knowledge and competences, that show you whether it is access, value of education, we have systemic failure and we must overhaul.
“Systems are very important; when you have system, then you have a higher probability of good outcomes. If your systems are dysfunctional then you would need to overhaul them, because they can’t give you any good outcome. When we talk about education, you have to look at it as a system that has inputs, outputs, outcome and your measurement of the impact that the outcome really stand for, when you do that, you will realise that we have been in serious trouble since the time that I was even minister of education.”
Ezekwesili said there was need to adopt an inclusive approach in the education system, adding:”Education left in the hands of policy makers is problematic. If we look at education as being the exclusive preserve of the policy makers, they would be so isolated in their place of authority and they would determine what the market and society need and would completely miss it. It is important that we encourage an inclusive approach in thinking about education. In her remarks, the Managing Director, The Education Partnership Centre, Dr. Modupe Adefeso-Olateju, called on stakeholders in education to ensure that every child in Nigeria benefits from successfully tested education Interventions by focusing on efforts to scale up their impacts.
She noted that there is no lack of innovations in Nigeria that demonstrate how education quality and access can be improved.Adefeso-Olateju added that despite efforts to improve the educational system in Nigeria, learning outcomes have shown little progress for the country as a whole.
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