It is encouraging to note that our education ministry officials are fast moving away from needless and controversial policies to more impactful ones that are geared towards revolutionising our archaic education policies and tertiary Institutions’ curricula.
Dr. Tunji Alausa on assumption of office as education minister, quickly announced the reversal of the admission age benchmark for tertiary Institutions in the country from 18 years to 16 years. There were more pressing and important problems or issues to be resolved by the ministry, especially the recently announced release of N50 billion by the federal government to the academic and non-academic staff unions of federal universities for the settlement of earned allowances, as promised by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR.
You can fact-check me but I believe that this is the longest time ASUU has spent in school without a strike after the inauguration of a new government. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR has been in office for nearly two years and there has been no strike by ASUU since 2023. It means we are gaining some stability in the administration of our educational sector.
“You cannot be building mosques alone, you must build mosque goers too”, according to a Hausa proverb, underpinning the importance of not only building classrooms but improving on the welfare and proficiency of the classroom teachers.
The recent furore over a young lady’s viral video about the conditions of service of the NYSC, against the backdrop of hard economic policy reforms, brought to the fore, the debate about the viability, and usefulness of the NYSC. It brought back questions about the aims of establishing the corps in the first place. It also brought to the front burner, the damage done by scrapping history from our education curricula, and the subtle backdoor efforts of smuggling in and embedding alien education materials, aimed at disorienting our children and our youths.
Our cultural heritage has been under attack for many decades, and institutions such as the NYSC meant to foster unity, tolerance, and patriotism amongst us, are under severe attack for the wrong reasons. Unity colleges, and all other tertiary institutions across the country were built to foster unity and tolerance amongst us considering our ethnic diversity. This is in the same vein with the NYSC programme.
Back in the days when I was just graduating from the university, our elders used to lament about the quality of graduates produced from Nigerian higher institutions. They labelled us half-baked. Today, the products are hardly baked at all and are just a pudding of misadventure, hauled up as one piece, meant to be a product of rigorous academic and moral learning.
The industrial training programmes in our tertiary institutions coupled with the NYSC programme, are the hands-on, skill-infused learning segments that translate academic learning to practical workplace schedules. The NYSC and similar institutions must be utilised in driving the skill and entrepreneurial development disposition of the education ministry if it is to succeed in promoting skills acquisition and entrepreneurship.
The almajiri system just like the NYSC, is to be positioned as a skill and entrepreneurship hub. Dr. Tunji Alausa, the education minister, is redefining the ministry’s approach to almajiri education, aiming to integrate it with the formal education system and equipping almajiris with skills for self-sufficiency.
This entails not only bridging the gap between traditional religious learning and western education, which would provide access to basic literacy but also developing the vocational skills of the almajiris at the same time. This new approach seeks the collaboration of religious leaders to ensure the long-term success of the reform. The approach envisions a seamless transition of the almajiri from the almajiri system to the nation’s higher education system. For example, in addition to Islamic studies, students would be taught tailoring, carpentry, plumbing, farming, and IT literacy to mention a few. The new approach by the minister will at the end of the day eliminate the students of the almajiri system from the out-of-school children populace, as the almajiri system would have in place a very robust system of learning and skills acquisition.
Systemic deep reforms are being carried out in the education sector. No wonder ASUU is not “vexing” again. NELFUND is taking care of Nigerian students, both in tuition and stipends/ welfare coverage that makes learning possible and more conducive. Those coveted results are now attainable as students and parents are allowed the necessary breathing space over educational sponsorship.
TETFUND is being repositioned to address the tailored needs of institutions aside from the blanket approach for all institutions with varying needs and demands. Both the public and private sector stakeholders are keying into the systemwide reforms and once these are sustained and pursued vigorously, we will have a better educational eco-system that produces real-time solutions to our unique societal needs, as opposed to churning out more problems onto the myriads of existing ones.
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