By Kolawole Ojebisi
The Nigerian Academy of Education, NAE, has called on President Bola Tinubu to declare a state of emergency in education sector to help address the rot and decadence in the system holistically.
The Academy also urged the Federal Government to stop running secondary schools, and handover all the 115 Federal Government Colleges to the various states of the federation.
NAE President, Professor Kabiru Isyaku, made the call on Wednesday in his welcome speech at the 38th Annual Congress, 2024, holding in Abuja from 5th to 8th November, with the theme, ‘Nigerian Education System: Past, Present & Future’.
Lamenting the appalling state of education in Nigeria, Isyaku, averred that there is the need to declare an emergency in the sector because it affects all other sectors of the nation’s economy.
While explaining why there is a need for a state of emergency to be declared in the education sector, Isyaku noted that policies are rarely upgraded regularly in the sector.
He revealed that the National Policy on Education was last reviewed over 10 years ago, stressing that the declaration of emergency would allow government to critically address issues such as status of education in the Constitution, structure, funding, and relevance of the current Curriculum.
The professor described as aberration the running of primary and secondary schools by the Federal Government, insisting that this does not happen anywhere in the world.
“The Federal Government, at this stage of the country’s development, should not directly run secondary Schools. Instead, FGN should only be in charge of Policy and Quality Assurance.
“Thus, all Federal Government Colleges should be devolved to the states with comprehensive conditions,” he said.
The Nigerian Academy of Education also condemned what it called proliferation of educational institutions by Federal and State Governments and called for a moratorium on the establishment of new institutions, until the current ones are fully equipped and properly staffed.
Similarly, the keynote speaker, Prof. Alhas Maicibi Nok, of Faculty of Education, Nasarawa State University, Keffi, bemoaned the high level of corruption in management of educational institutions in the country.
He argued that even though education is faced with the problem of poor funding, the major challenge is the misappropriation of the little resources allocated to the institutions.
Nok raised several posers as to the integrity of those who are appointed to head educational institutions in the country, saying even appointment of Vice-chancellors is usually characterised with nepotism and other parochial interests.
While speaking on the decline in quality of teaching and learning in schools, he noted a trend were teachers in most schools teach students for examination purposes only rather than teaching for knowledge.
