BY GBENGA ARIYIBI

ADO-EKITI-Two renowned  academics, Professors Sam Aluko and Akin Oyebode have decried recent slide in the nation’s educational sector , saying none of the nation’s universities ranked among the first 200 in the world.

According to the eminent scholars, the present education programmes in the country needed to be rejigged and restructured if Nigeria was to make an impact in the areas of scientific and technological development like other advanced countries of the world.

Aluko, a former Professor of Economics at the University of Ife, now Obafemi Awolowo University, OAU, spoke in Ado Ekiti yesterday during a two- day Education Summit convened by Ekiti State government, faulted why the past governments could yield to advice by the international agencies  that  educational sector be outrightly privatized.

The former Economic Adviser to the late  Gen. Sanni Abacha  said it was wrong for the government to have committed a pivotal sector like education in the hands of the private bodies, which he said supposed to rely on stiff competitions from public schools, adding that privatization policy had contributed seriously to the falling standard of the education in the country, the mass failure of students in public examinations in the country.