Former president of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), Augustine Alegeh, has said the lack of access to quality education is hampering the economic growth of Nigeria.
Alegeh, who stated this at the weekend in Port Harcourt, while presenting a keynote address at the 41st plenary of Unity Schools Old Students Association (USOSA), described the problem of access to education in the country as ‘hard-headed.’
He said issues such as early marriages, subsistence farming, lack of training, and street trading, where kids who are supposed to go to school are in the streets selling pure water, were contributory factors to the lack of access to education in the country.
The former NBA boss also identified poverty, infrastructural deficit, manpower, teaching curriculum and methodology, funding, and what he described as a ‘modern trend’, where parents send their children abroad or to private schools as other key contributing factors to Nigeria’s economic backwardness.
Speaking on the theme: “Education is the key Foundation for Building Legacies and our United Future”, Alegeh emphasised that education is that critical ingredient that drives growth and development.
He said, “For there to be national growth and development, there must be political stability. For there to be political stability, the people must be educated to make educated choices at the elections.
“When illiterates go to vote, they don’t know which party is PDP or APC, so what happens is that the party agents help them to vote, and who will they help them to vote for? Their own party.
“So, without education, you have a voting populace that cannot make informed decisions. If they cannot make those informed decisions, they cannot have good leadership, and if they cannot have good leadership, they can never have growth or development.
“We need to have that sense of a common heritage from education and knowledge. It is that lack of knowledge and education that enables the divisive elements who benefit from tightening our divisions to succeed,” he said.
The former NBA president, who noted that unity schools have produced enduring friendships, recommended, among other things, that governments across Nigeria urgently invest and fund education massively as education is the single most important factor in ensuring growth, development, and unity.
He said, “So without education, we are nothing. Education is everything. For there to be development, education is necessary.”
In his goodwill message, the state commissioner for education, Dr. Ovy Chukwuma, thanked USOSA for their contributions to educational growth in Nigeria.
Chukwuma, who described the event’s theme as appropriate, called for the plenary to produce a policy statement that can drive educational development in Nigeria.
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