More Learning to More People: How can Nigeria be more innovative in bridging its literacy and skills gap? Part 1

(This essay was written in 2013 )

"Strong investment in skills education is key to national prosperity”

Nelson Mandela once said ‘Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine that a child of farm workers can become the president of a great nation.’

Education as a right it’s so important that it was enshrined in the Universal declaration of Human Rights. The greatest need of young people had always been information and helping to explore such information through their own sharing; when people are helped they find the right solution to their own problems.  The continues pressure and agitation across the country as regard the reality of illiteracy and even literate without employable skills, shows  we are all tired of carry along and non-inclusive policy on all matters that concerns young people. Whereas few people dispute youths’ right to education, few efforts are made to ensure that youths actually benefit from education services. 

I have grown up to know that education does not save you from deception, even at that it is still the only way out of oppression anyway. I know no system is perfect but here at home in Nigeria we must stop using that as an excuse to cut off a generational consciousness, because it is only a generational consciousness powered through skilled education that can bring about the desired impact when young people have opportunity into leadership powers or places of influence.     

I once read it somewhere that we have no future without children; worst of all what kind of future would we have with children without any form of education? I have witnessed a few crises political, tribal and religious here in Nigeria and those that are used as fighters are young people with no education or livelihood.  I see children that are religiously confused both Muslims and Christians and worst of all those that do not belief in anything and they are more in numbers and can be bought over by the highest bidder because they have no means of livelihood. They do not understand how a civilized society works; they wake-up with no life goal; football viewing centre’s is their homes. However all this have to change; I see young people saying youths are more of an asset, not really beneficiary of developmental project, like it seems now.

Statistics of our failed educational sector must cause worry to any good citizen of Nigeria, as I write this essay academic staff union of Nigerian Polytechnics just suspended their industries strike with a promise to go back after three(3) months if their demands are not met, academic staff union of universities are entering the second month of their own industrial action, while there are various tails of closed schools across the Nation with teachers demanding for better working environment and welfare from primary schools to tertiary institutions. The last Joint Admission Matriculation examinations for tertiary institutions across the country saw over 1.7million candidates sit for the said examination with only 10 scoring over 300 marks, while over 50% had less than 200 marks, this raised a lot of concern and questions over this poor performance. What of the situations where our Universities are turning out graduate without employable skills? What of those that do not have access to formal education either due to where they were born, their gender or finance, does that mean they cannot be given required skills that can either make them employable or create their own jobs?. Current statistics from the National Commission for Mass Education as at 2013 estimated 40 million Nigerians to be illiterates, this comprises mostly of out of school children, youths and adults, who have never attended school. A large percentage of whom are girls and young women. At this point I would love to point out that there is nothing wrong with our current educational policy, but the implementation of such policies with prevailing technological growth and demand has been the problem. I will not dwell on a failed system or write on the woe but profess some innovative solutions that will bring on more learning to more people and bridge the literacy and skills gap now befalling our educational system.      

Many young people around the country leave school without the skills they need for work and life. Though Nigeria is not alone in this, other developed and developing countries still experience this, they are deprived of their right to have access to learning opportunities, due to poverty, conflict, disabilities, their social status, their gender, or where they live. However we cannot keep grumbling over the decay of our educational system and failed leadership, it’s time to look for solution on how these deprived citizens, will have access to education and their possibilities in life, such as their future employment opportunities with the right skills and experience the basic right of learning the skills needed for work.

In August 2012, Peace Child International and UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report Team mobilized Task Force of young people aged 15-30 to produce a young people’s summary for the 2012 year's landmark Report on Youth, Skills and Productive Work. It was landmark because the publication was making its 10th year publication without a youth version. They wanted a version of the report that was accessible to young people to make sure that all of them, regardless of their background, have the skills needed for good jobs – and that everyone around the world has the same opportunities as those that would do the report  have had to be able to read and write! It was a call to take action for education because it has a transformative power. The document was a tool to campaign for better skills for youths and everybody to be given opportunity to be literate and numerate. Yours faithfully was privileged to make contributions and my work was used as one of the working materials and one of my interview story conducted in Kaduna Nigeria was used in the final youth summary document titled: Be skilled Be employed Be the Change Generation. Therefore my essay would use majorly as a working material extract from it and share the recommendation in the document that invited UNESCO and its Member States which Nigeria it’s one and holds a signature to the Education for All Monitoring Group to ensure strong investment in skills education it is key to national prosperity.  Would also share from my life experience what skilled education can offer a young person.     

Education for All is a united global movement that was formed in 2000 aimed at providing equality and accessible education to every person on the globe and about 164 countries committed to the movement and together they set the 6 goals to ensure education for all in Dakar, Senegal with a 2015 deadline. The goals are: (i) Expand early childhood care and educate; (ii) Achieve universal primary education; (iii) Promote learning and life skills for young people and adults; iv) Reduce adults illiteracy by 50%; (v) Achieve gender parity and equality; (vi) Improve the quality of education.        

Even as we approach 2015 deadline many Nations are making remarkable progress like south-east Asia countries to achieve almost all goals expect goal 2 achieve universal primary education which currently appears will not be achieved and goal 3 to promote learning and life skills for young people and adults, because as it stands now it looks like the problem with goal 3 is that it has not been well defined. Going through the report (I advice readers to read the two reports that is both the main Education for all Report and Youth version 2012 at http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-agenda/efareport/) Nigeria has not done well, she has room to improve on all indices though there are increased numbers of children in school like every other sub-Saharan countries. For Nations that are just about achieving some of the goals, this was possible through community involvement, increasing numbers of trained teachers, targeting financial support for the indigent’s mostly girls, gender sensitive teaching measures and providing materials and safe, healthy school environment. I think Nigeria can learn from this; Hadiza one of the young people I wrote about featured in the global report collaborate the need that we can learn from the success of the south-eastern Asians and some Arab states; she was brought from her village to live with a family as their house maid; she attends evening Secondary school that fits to her work schedule. She does her chores in the morning, while her employers and their kids are away to work and school, so on their return, she heads to school. The concern is the fatigue and concentration level in school, after such a tedious work, but she feels it is better than no education at all; at least she can read now and is getting to write gradually. She says: ‘Though to be honest afternoon school is not that good because then the environment is not conducive to learn … but for many people like me that cannot wake and get ready for school, unless we finish our house work, it is helping us to at least get a form of education. So I appeal to government to build more schools in our neighbourhood and get us better environment.’ ..... to be continued.