By Tare Youdeowei

PROFESSOR Jide Owoeye, Chairman, Governing Council, Lead City University, has decried the exodus of Nigerian students abroad based on the erroneous belief that the Nigerian education system is poor and there is limited access to higher education, invariably funding the education system of other countries and depleting the Nigerian education system by at leastN155 billion annually.

Giving the minutiae at a public lecture titled; Challenges of Re-inventing Quality Education in Nigeria, which was one of the events used to celebrate the 85th anniversary of Government College Ibadan and the 2014 annual reunion of its Old Boys recently, the professor of International Relations provided: “There has been significant growth in the demand for international education by Nigerian students.

Thus, we export hard earned foreign exchange to foreign countries which in fact most often engage our own nationals to teach our students in their countries. By so doing we export not just capital but also jobs to those countries. The British Council does no other job in Nigeria than active marketing of British universities. These universities come around and give on-the-spot admission to so called JAMB ‘rejects’ especially via foundation programmes in British universities which are better ranked globally than the Nigerian ones that rejected them. What an irony!

File Photo: Cross section of students writing exam

“Nigeria places third on the list of countries with the highest number of students studying overseas. Every year, the British Embassy records a whopping 36,000 student visa applications. This number is expected to increase with the on-going review of the visa policy. Meanwhile, there are 71,000 Nigerian students in Ghana paying 5,000 dollars (N64m) per year for tuition only.

This adds up to N155 billion while the annual budget for the entire Federal University System is currently N121 billion Naira. We can see how Nigeria now funds the Ghanaian economy. Definitely we do likewise for U.K, U.S, Canada and South-Africa.”

Spaces in universities

Insisting that it is not lack of education opportunities that is causing the exodus but the false belief that the Nigerian education system is poor, the Fellow of International Centre for Asian Studies,said: “Exodus of university aspirants to foreign countries was understandable in the past.  It is definitely no longer the case now that local institutions are very adequate in number. Currently, there are 118 universities in the country with Federal Government controlling 35, State Government 35 and 48 by private organizations.

University system

“JAMB statistics for 2013 indicate that only 42 percent of admission spaces in the university system was filled. Fifty eight percent of the admission opportunities were left yearning for off takers. Out of this, Federal universities only met 60 percent of their admission quota in spite of the free tuition policy of the Federal Government. Stateowned universities which charges meagre tuition admitted 70 percent of their admission quota.  For obvious reasons, the fee paying private universities were able to fill only 28 percent of their quota. In sum, 42 percent of nationally available university spaces were not filled. Yet the general slogan is that Nigeria is lacking in adequate spaces for higher education.”

Employable graduates: Stating that Nigerian graduates are unemployable is one of the latest fads commonplace among those with scant knowledge of the relationship between educational attainment and employability, Owoeye declared that: ”Entrepreneurial ability and capacity to hold a job has not much to do with level of education as it has with innate skills and talents. The purpose of higher education is to expand the horizon of God given innate skills rather than to manufacture them.

“Nigerian graduates have blazed the trail at home and abroad. Features in a recent British newspaper screamed that the Caribbean Hospital system was going to collapse if Nigerian doctors (home trained) decide to leave. There is no Ivy League university in U.K, U.S, Canada and South Africa that does not boast of a Nigerian graduate in its faculty. Shall we talk about those in the American Space Programme? Definitely there is no scientific basis for such an assertion that Nigerian graduates are unemployable.”

Standard of education
Defending Nigeria’s education system the 58 year oldwho served at the Department of Political Science, University of Ibadan, admonished;”The minimum academic standard at each level of education has never been lowered but instead, consistently pushed higher.

In fact, the entrance requirement into the University of Ibadan though stringent when I entered in 1974, is still not as difficult as it is to enter the same institution today.There is thus a good reason for us to accept that there is in place a standard which is not falling but it is the depressed performance of students when rated against the set standard that gives cause for concern.

“The Nigerian Educational System being a microcosm of the environment, is highly undeserving of the periodic bashing it collects from within and without.

It is my suggestion that we decipher the merits of the system and celebrate it while working assiduously towards replacing sloganizing and politicking with realistic analysis of the nature and scope of its problems with a view to rebranding within the context of available resources.”