Former speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara has called on governments at all levels to focus on improving access to qualitative education in Nigeria rather than infrastructural development if they wish to lift Nigerians out of poverty.
Speaking at the 50th anniversary of Nakam Memorial School, Panyam, Mangu, he explained that education is the engine room for any meaningful development of a nation because only through proper education will the country be lifted out of poverty.
In a statement issued by his media aide, Turaki Hassan, on Monday and made available to journalists in Bauchi, Dogara said, “Recently, I got into an argument about the place of education (human capital) vis-à-vis physical capital such as roads, electricity, bridges and the rest. And my contention was that look, we need more investment in human capital development than physical capital development, and my reason is very simple. Imagine our future without education.’’
According to him, for any government to be termed serious, it must prioritise education.
“If you are educated, even in the absence of infrastructure, the educated mind will produce the infrastructure that is lacking. Those who are educated will build the schools that we don’t have; they will build the roads and generate and distribute the electricity that we never have enough for domestic use and industrial production.
“As a matter of fact, the resources in this country are humongous, especially here on the Plateau. When we are talking about endowment by God, we have a lot of minerals buried beneath our earth’s surface, but the truth is that we need education to bring them out. Where you don’t have qualitative education, both the human beings and the resources that are buried under your ground will decay.
“Unfortunately, that has been the case with Nigeria. But when you train your citizens and empower them with knowledge even in the absence of resources, they can turn their country into a first world. We’ve seen that with South Korea. We’ve seen it in several other countries, especially the Asian Tigers.
“Just as we were making our way here, we were lamenting about the fact that although Kenya doesn’t have our size in terms of population and they don’t have oil and much of the resources that we have here in Nigeria, it is shocking that Kenya’s budget is higher than that of Nigeria. That means Kenya has managed to build more wealth than Nigeria. Just go back home and think about that. Ponder hard as to why it is the case. It may be because the literacy level in Kenya has gone very high up there, while in Nigeria, we are struggling to educate our citizens.’’
Dogara, however, added that he is not opposed to infrastructural development. He said, ‘‘’I am not saying that infrastructure is bad, but the truth is that without education, the infrastructure will decay. We need educated people to maintain the infrastructure and keep it functional. So, honestly, we should prioritise investment in education in this country; otherwise, we are simply wasting our time if we think we can make progress while keeping our people ignorant.
‘’I looked at the needs in my own community and easily saw the shortcomings. I now run a foundation that offers scholarships to indigent students. Right now, we have about 200 students in my network studying at Nigerian universities. That, of course, is a drop in the ocean and not near anywhere enough.’’
While congratulating the students and Old Students Association on the school’s 50th anniversary, he urged the latter to invest more, not only in improving the school’s physical structures but also in improving the quality of the teachers to provide qualitative education to the students. He also suggested setting up a scholarship fund so that students from households that would never have had the benefit of education could be trained there.
“That will open the pathway for the future that we are enjoying instead of locking the door against those that are coming behind us,’’ he said.
