It was Governor Suswan of Benue state that started it all when he implied that the poor quality of debate in the house of representative was due to the level of education of the members.

He has apologized that he did not plan to insult the house but fact is sacred.

A survey by Thisday newspaper shows that its not only in age and maturity that the senate is the upper house but also in education. It will explain a lot of the house behavior including the fight that we must have 2 chairmen to write a new constitution.

Almost 25 % of the senate have a 2nd degree and none have less than a professional certificate with most having first degree or HND, while the record of 2 cannot be confirmed.

In the house we have a lot of people claiming to have WAEC/SSCE/NECO, we are not even sure they passed and not that it was when they were coming to the house they organized a certificate. A large number also have OND and funny diplomas.

The most funny is the number of not available, which I think might be a mistake. The NA probably means not applicable that education is not applicable to most of them. So the next time you feel the house is misbehaving or not making sense, just know it’s the level of education,

http://naijareports..com/2009/03/senators-representatives-and-academic.html

Some people feel education dodoesn'tatter, what do you feel,

why the apology? chicken he is.

It is Only in Nigeria that u need qualification to do everything. the world has change far away from such ideas. Experience is wat matters now. Go out of the country and c if qaulification is an issue 2 get a job.

education isnt our problem but the flawed system that has allowed defective nigerians to go sit in the various chambers, its like having a leaky sieve,it ll end up allowing all sorts of sediments to mix together with what the sieve is supposed to keep apart,dimeji bankole's personal life for people that were interested should have shown them he wasnt morally qualified to occupy the post,he was educated in the best universities of learning and that hasnt stopped him behaving like a common thug

I wonder why someone like Fegfu will say that education is a waste of time. I am really sure he's got one qualification or the other. Don't in any way compare us with the western world, the fact they u need no qualification to get a job doesn't render education useless.

See it this way, the process of educating yourself opens up your mind to so many things and you are able to, along the way see things from so many perspectives.

Be guided.

guess this makes some reality sense,

fegflu:

It is Only in Nigeria that u need qualification to do everything. the world has change far away from such ideas. Experience is wat matters now. Go out of the country and c if qaulification is an issue 2 get a job.

Is this guy ignorant or what? JEEEEZZZZZ!!!!

For anybody to raise this as a serious argument is shameful. This is why Naija is still in a mess after 48 years of so -called 'independence.'!!!!

It is Only in Nigeria that u need qualification to do everything. the world has change far away from such ideas. Experience is wat matters now. Go out of the country and c if qaulification is an issue 2 get a job.

Sometimes when I hear things like this, I just shake my head in disgust. Did someone really imply that inadequacies and ignorance are the ingredients for development? All over the developed and 'aspiring-to-develop' world, well qualified people who have what it takes to deliver and who are talented are allowed to occupy important and demanding positions.

As much as I agree that experience is important, innate ability to proffer solutions to problems are also required. Even talking about experience, which experience are we talking about here? Some simpletons would think that shouting at political rallies is experience. is it? I am not an advocate of using second degree or PhD as basis for good leadership. But then, there is no country under God's world that people agree that education is a disease. In fact, reverse is the case.

the world has change far away from such ideas

World has changed far away from using educational qualification? Please, stop smearing our collective image in Nigeria. How farther from the truth that can be? We need intelligent people. People who can guide a nation. We are not talking about punnies here, This is a country of over 120 million people! Most of the so called educated people in the senate actually bought their certificates, Many of them got power by soiling their hands with human blood. They simply dont have what it takes to lift a nation. They dont have it. I mean they do not have it at all.

By reading what many people post online and by interacting with a lot of Nigerians from different walks of life, I know that less than 1% of Nigerians have what it takes to make development happen. That is not a bad figure at all. It is the same everywhere. The sad part of it though is that about 99.99% of Nigerians leaders ever actually belong to the unfit 99%.Got my analysis? if anyone finds this a rocket science, I am sorry such person should never aspire to lead at any level. This is not meant to be a joke at all. We have had enough.

Educational qualification should be a serious criteria when screening those wishing to go to both the lower and upper house cos the world is now a global village and they are bound to interact with people from diverse nations of the world and we expect them to give a good account of themselves.

Last month I read that either the senate or house of rep. was passing a law abolishing same sex marriage in Nigeria and I was so disgusted with them all because can any of them give me any statistics worth mentioning of same sex marriage in Nigeria?

That is not our priority.

It's the low level of education among some members that is causing this because at the end of the day they will give themselves a passmark for such rubbish laws while their counterparts in other countries are doing something more worthwhile with taxpayers money.

watch out for the concluding part!!!

thanks guys. i think i am new here. but i would like a survey of this kind on our governors. cause when i think of alao akala and co, i think only of education in thuggery.

What i am saying is that Nigerians believe so much on  paper qualification . They c it as a criteria to get everything beautiful that the society can offer.  It is wrong. The people who introduce the academi curriculim we use today dont c it that way. Go to all American business schools today,MOST of the students there are not Americans( majority of them are foreigners-africans , indians, asians, arabs), it is that way also in england. They KEEP manipulating  the media on how highly regarded the qualifications from these schs are- but there citizens dont attend them. Have u ever ask your self the question why. But yet these same citizens runs wall street, runs hollywoods, manage all those blockbusters movies on Tv. You think steven spieberg hav a PHD.

What the world needs today is originality. Once people c that in you they will embrace u. And that is what has produced the likes of carlos slim, gates,Mittal, in the music industry-jayz,nice,tuface, in politics Obama(not his education- he was original) etc.

Whilst a considerable level of education in life is important- it is not a guarantee that you must achieve the best from the world. If we as nigerians continue to think like that we will never achieve much.

So it is not only about havin paper qualification. You also hav to be street smart,
if it was only about paper qualification - all the banks and multination companies in nigeria would hav absorbed all the nigerian graduates we have in the street. Considering the amount of people with qualification that our thousands of universities push out every year.

fegflu:

It is Only in Nigeria that u need qualification to do everything. the world has change far away from such ideas. Experience is wat matters now. Go out of the country and c if qaulification is an issue 2 get a job.

To those who think that paper qualifications do not matter, i'ld refer you to probably the most successful guy without a paper qualification.
Meet Bill GATES and tell him that you need a job, you are so smart but you have no paper qualification and he will probably tell you to start your own company. You may try to apply for a job with Microsoft and see if there is something this successful dropout knows about paper qualifications.

In my opinion, paper qualification is not everything, experience is not everything either but I'd still prefer that we start with paper qualification.

fegflu:

It is Only in Nigeria that u need qualification to do everything. the world has change far away from such ideas. Experience is wat matters now. Go out of the country and c if qaulification is an issue 2 get a job.

If you want a good job anywhere in the world with good benefits you simply have to have an education. Period. Don't let anybody con you. Sure you can get a good paying job but you are limited to just what you have experience in. I recommend an education any day if you want to go far in life. You do not even have to degree but you have to have one f you plan on working for someone and not yourself

Outstrip,
U ar in d States right? my arguement is this-
What i am saying is that Nigerians believe so much on paper qualification . They c it as a criteria to get everything beautiful that the society can offer. It is wrong. The people who introduce the academi curriculim we use today dont c it that way- and i will say it again -IN BRITAIN-were i liv, QUALIFICATION WITHOUT EXPERIENCE is as good as u never had the qualification in the first place- cus that iswat d system will reduce u to here.
On the otherhand- Go to all American business schools today,MOST of the students there are not Americans( majority of them are foreigners-africans , indians, asians, arabs), it is that way also in england. They KEEP manipulating the media on how highly regarded the qualifications from these schs are- but there citizens dont attend them. Have u ever ask your self the question why. But yet these same citizens runs wall street, runs hollywoods, manage all those blockbusters movies on Tv. You think steven spieberg hav a PHD.

What the world needs today is originality. Once people c that in you they will embrace u. And that is what has produced the likes of carlos slim, gates,Mittal, in the music industry-jayz,nice,tuface, in politics Obama(not his education- he was original) etc.

Whilst a considerable level of education in life is important- it is not a guarantee that you must achieve the best from the world. If we as nigerians continue to think like that we will never achieve much.

where is the survey?

Wat survey,

ask people who hav gone through their educational system before and they will tell u.
but u will never find it on the internet. cus they wont want it to b there cus of the demage it may cus.
but is real.

A survey by Thisday newspaper shows that

I mean the survey by Thisday, one will expect media houses to have access to all these information

jacobs123:


To those who think that paper qualifications do not matter, i'ld refer you to probably the most successful guy without a paper qualification.
Meet Bill GATES and tell him that you need a job, you are so smart but you have no paper qualification and he will probably tell you to start your own company. You may try to apply for a job with Microsoft and see if there is something this successful dropout knows about paper qualifications.

In my opinion, paper qualification is not everything, experience is not everything either but I'd still prefer that we start with paper qualification.

say what? What exactly do you mean ?

I see no reason why the man is apologizing, what he has said is fact, Only in Nigeria would you see someone that used to be a tout, that all of a sudden becomes a Senator, there is no reason why someone should be a senator or house of rep without any qualification and be making decision that will run a nation like Nigeria.
Maybe people don't know the meaning being a senator or even house of Rep, i am sure they have no idea what it means or what they do, and that is why any Tom, Dick and Harriet just wanna be a senator.

Go to all American business schools today,MOST of the students there are not Americans( majority of them are foreigners-africans , indians, asians, arabs), it is that way also in england. They KEEP manipulating  the media on how highly regarded the qualifications from these schs are- but there citizens dont attend them. Have u ever ask your self the question why. But yet these same citizens runs wall street, runs hollywoods, manage all those blockbusters movies on Tv. You think steven spieberg hav a PHD.

fegflu, i would pretend that i didn't just read what you wrote   but are you kidding me? I don't know where to start, but your first statement that in all American business schools most students are not americans is the biggest lie ever. In all the best schools in America over 90% of the students are Americans especially in undergrad where at least over 96% of American students make up the student population so stop talking nonsense. By the way, just to inform you, there are very very few africans in schools in America, statistics back it up that we are less than 1% so stop decieving yourselves. In my school of over 20,000 there is just around 60 africans in the entire school that's less than 0.003% of the population and just 2% of the foreign student population so stop working with conjecture boy.

Also, have you seen Barack Obama's cabinet? Almost everybody there has degrees from an Ivy league schools like MIT, Harvard, Dartmouth, London School of Economics and the university of California, berkeley and not only are this people some of the most intelligent people in america but they are also very very pragmatic (practical) with lots of experience and have a lot of integrity (unlike Bankole). Let me put it simply, there are some jobs that you don't need to have a PhD for (movie director) and there are some jobs that you do need a PhD for (chairman of the federal reserve). Also, most CEO's do have degree's, because guys like warren buffet and bill gates don't does not mean that the remaining 98% do not. Now to answer your question, YOU DO NEED QUALIFICATIONS FOR ANY JOB YOU ARE ABOUT TO EMBARK ON. It might not be academic qualifications but you do need to be qualified for it so as to prevent incompetence.

In America, almost everybody (if not all) in the senate have a law degree, in fact in the last congress, there was only one engineer (john sununu of new hampshire), this is one of the reasons why there govt works so well because who best to legislate things or conduct investigations (which lawyers are good at) than very brilliant lawyers who have a wide knowledge about a lot of things. Also, not only do this guys legislate, but each committee has monthly hearing on certain things. For example, the senate subcomittee on transportation has hearings or investigations on ongoing federal projects are how the projects are going, where the money is going, and what other issues surrounding the projects there are. This prevents people from not only embezzling the money but it also prevents incompetence because the senate has a watchful eye on you.

Davidif,
Thanks a lot for these indepth analysis of the issue. You appears to be well read.Sorry i didnt realise who i was dealing with at first.
Thanks a lot for the info. Pls can i hav ur email- cus there is some info you made known to me now- that baffles me.

thank GOD for poeple like davidif, as i was reading the thread, the trend was getting me scared on hearing the verdict on the importance of education! poeple talk about paying too much importance on paper qualification( a term i think is almost exclusive to nigeria), they fail to realise some things, in the west the basic and minimum level of education someone is believed to have attained is high sch, high school abroad is not high school in nigeria.here in the us, high school kids(even with the so-called high drop out rate) would have recieved an exceptionally high level of "analytical education, the type that helps him analyse, research and solve simple problems around him, a basic tool u need to be a steven spielberg without a phd and a drop out bill gates(pple forget that his SAT scores were one of the highest in the country and that his parents were above middle class-so he could drop out!) and helps u contribute in adult discussios and pple open thier mouths wide, ! can our high schools boast of that!
abroad, education and experience go hand in hand, pple are brought from the industry to teach, successful pple in the industry that do not neccessary have "formal education" are studied and the principles of thier success are incorporated into the next academic syllabuss, all these are done to bring the total graduate,
when all these factors are lacking in the academic system,it is easy for some pple in this forum to scream that paper education is over-rated because they do not even know what they are missing and secondly the leaders who have reduced the educational standing to this abysmall level will never want to attribute quality education to good governance!, if indeed they were proud of thier "degrees" why would dey feel insulted?

Davidiff you know that you are talking off point. The fact is that most MBA students in the UK are from third world countries.The issue is that you don,t need loads of paper qualifications to be employed in the west. What is more important is your experience, your networking, and your ability to think outside the box.

Thanks a lot Tenson777,

Thats the piont i am tryin to make known to Davidiff.
You dont need a lot of paper qualificaton to be employed in the west.

fegflu:

Outstrip,
U ar in d States right? my arguement is this-
What i am saying is that Nigerians believe so much on paper qualification . They c it as a criteria to get everything beautiful that the society can offer. It is wrong. The people who introduce the academi curriculim we use today dont c it that way- and i will say it again -IN BRITAIN-were i liv, QUALIFICATION WITHOUT EXPERIENCE is as good as u never had the qualification in the first place- cus that iswat d system will reduce u to here.
On the otherhand- Go to all American business schools today,MOST of the students there are not Americans( majority of them are foreigners-africans , indians, asians, arabs), it is that way also in england. They KEEP manipulating the media on how highly regarded the qualifications from these schs are- but there citizens dont attend them. Have u ever ask your self the question why. But yet these same citizens runs wall street, runs hollywoods, manage all those blockbusters movies on Tv. You think steven spieberg hav a PHD.

What the world needs today is originality. Once people c that in you they will embrace u. And that is what has produced the likes of carlos slim, gates,Mittal, in the music industry-jayz,nice,tuface, in politics Obama(not his education- he was original) etc.

Whilst a considerable level of education in life is important- it is not a guarantee that you must achieve the best from the world. If we as nigerians continue to think like that we will never achieve much.

You need to learn to think outside the box, especially if the box is Peckham and Hackney.
What the eff are you saying??
How can you come here and compare real jobs to those bank-staff (cashier) jobs y'all are goin for??

Do you know how many Oxford and Cambridge graduates are in the House of Lords??
Do you even know what Eton is??

BTW . . . Bill Gates and Obama were Harvard students
Tony Blair and David Cameron are Oxford Graduates

Nigeria's Former President . . . National Open University

eldee:

You need to learn to think outside the box, especially if the box is Peckham and Hackney.
What the eff are you saying??
How can you come here and compare real jobs to those bank-staff (cashier) jobs y'all are goin for??

Do you know how many Oxford and Cambridge graduates are in the House of Lords??
Do you even know what Eton is??

BTW . . . Bill Gates and Obama were Harvard students
Tony Blair and David Cameron are Oxford Graduates

Nigeria's Former President . . . National Open University

GBAM!

Eldee,
Wat can of job are u doin in london?
is it related 2 ur paper qualification?

lets start from there first.

fegflu:

Outstrip,
U ar in d States right? my arguement is this-
What i am saying is that Nigerians believe so much on paper qualification . They c it as a criteria to get everything beautiful that the society can offer. It is wrong. The people who introduce the academi curriculim we use today dont c it that way- and i will say it again -IN BRITAIN-were i liv, QUALIFICATION WITHOUT EXPERIENCE is as good as u never had the qualification in the first place- cus that iswat d system will reduce u to here.
On the otherhand- Go to all American business schools today,MOST of the students there are not Americans( majority of them are foreigners-africans , indians, asians, arabs), it is that way also in england. They KEEP manipulating the media on how highly regarded the qualifications from these schs are- but there citizens dont attend them. Have u ever ask your self the question why. But yet these same citizens runs wall street, runs hollywoods, manage all those blockbusters movies on Tv. You think steven spieberg hav a PHD.

What the world needs today is originality. Once people c that in you they will embrace u. And that is what has produced the likes of carlos slim, gates,Mittal, in the music industry-jayz,nice,tuface, in politics Obama(not his education- he was original) etc.

Whilst a considerable level of education in life is important- it is not a guarantee that you must achieve the best from the world. If we as nigerians continue to think like that we will never achieve much.

I am so stunned that someone will actually say people are making too much big deal about qualification.
I will like you to point to any drop out in Wall Street in the seat of power, show me an CEO without degrees, show me any Manager is a recognized coy without a degree, BTW, how can someone get an experience without qualification, because, for you to even be given a job, you must have the qualification, afterwards comes experience, so i dont think people are making too much big deal out of qualification.
If you now say that in Nigeria, they dont really confirm the qualification before giving them the job or the office to hold, that is a different ball game, which should be eradicated, but qualification is necessary, for God's sake the Senator and the House of rep are people that ought to know the law and determine how the nation is run and how much money is needed for projects and budget.

Tensor777, you need good education to get top dog jobs.

Now, you guys talk about experience as if people are born with experience. Most of the top dog people without university education did not just become top dogs. A lot of them rose through the ranks and files of organisations and learned valuable lessons in addition to attending multiple courses and seminars.

Regarding the legislation of a country, you need good quality education and sound analytical mind or experience with age and proven track record of personal achievement in a tough terrain. I am not referring to wealth derived from govt contracts that never get executed; as the main requirement for govt contract is "man know man" and not smartness.

A 22 year old fresh graduate will have a lot more to offer than a 22 year old SSCE holder who could not get into university and had no visible means of income, but had the benevolence of a political godfather, who sponsored him/her to the house, whereas a 22 year old who started a business straight after SSCE may be at par with the graduate or even smarter than the graduate and may go on to become a CEO and employ the graduate.

What you do immediately after secondary school shows your character. If you cast uni aside and go into business, community service or specialist training, it demonstrates maturity, focus and ability to make decisions and same can be said for those that go to uni.

Those that sit around after sec sch and do nothing but praise sing and wait for crumbs from big boys and ogas have no clue about self determination, how much more the determination of the fate of others. These are mainly the type of people that resort to thuggery and thievery to achieve their aims and most times they are heavily under the influence of those with vested interests in them. Those type of people have no business in the house.

fegflu:

Eldee,
Wat can of job are u doin in london?
is it related 2 ur paper qualification?

lets start from there first.

you are attempting to preach to the choir.  ignorance they say is bliss.

education is great but very highly over rated in nigeria.

Eldee- has still not answer my question.

I SAID:
Wat can of job are u doin in london?
is it related 2 ur paper qualification?

lets start from there first