By Ben Agande
Abuja — President Goodluck Jonathan, yesterday, reiterated the commitment of his administration to changing  the country’s educational system from the primary school to the tertiary level in order to provide a pool of trained personnel for the transformation of the country.

Jonathan, who spoke  while swearing in members of the presidential committee on award of post graduate scholarship to first class graduates in the State House, noted that  for the country to maintain its position as the leading country in Africa, it must develop its human resources to meet up with modern challenges.

He decried the situation whereby more than 60 per cent of the teaching staff in the country’s tertiary institutions do not have Ph.D, noting: “That is quite embarrassing, it is not good enough.

“I will set up an inter-ministerial department to work with some of you in the academics to come up with policies for robust training for young men and women who are interested in academics to go anywhere in the world. We must reduced that, there is no way that we have up to 60 per cent academic staff without Ph.Ds, it should not be more than 10 per cent.

“We must also select our best brains and expose them properly so that they would form the first core of human tool that would lead to a sustainable transformation.

“Every year we should tap from among our best brains, selecting our best brains. We are starting with 100 because we have not made adequate arrangement for funding but the number will increase when we make budgetary allocation for it in 2013. We select our best brain in the area of science, enginnering and some areas of economics and expose them to the best facilities available in the world.

“The ministry of education and this committee will have to travel to these universities to negotiate for positions in the top 25 universities in the world. The idea is the best brains, for you to benefit, you must have first class, it is based purely on merit, no quota.”

We are giving opportunity for first brains. We are going to spend money , so we need to tap a little of what they get, so in the first five years, they should work as lecturers or researchers.

“This idea is for our best brains to form the core of human tools that would drive the sustainable transition for this country” he said.

He said his government is ready to “  work and see how we can bridge this gap, it is not something that government can solve within the next one or two years but we may come up with a robust programme that over the years we must bridge that gap till we get a team of academic staff that are university materials to be lecturers in our tertiary institutions

Our challenges as a nation are enormous but definitely, I believe with the commitment of Nigerians, this country will be transformed”.