RESTRUCTURING THE FOUNDATION OF HUMAN CAPACITY BUILDING IN THE FACE OF ECONOMIC DOWNTURN........By Ofoneme Chukwumaelo Daniel-Scott.

I have come with my long write-ups Again, But this time away from Politics and Government. This is actually longer than a Facebook post, so I'll make it as short as I can and then write a more detailing and printable article on the same topic. But I implore you to read to the end.
Thanks for your calls and encouragement, it spurs me to write more.

What is Capacity Building?

Capacity building often refers to strengthening the skills, competencies and abilities of people and communities in developing societies so they can overcome the causes of their exclusion and suffering. Fundraising, training centres, exposure visit, office and documentation support, on the job training, learning centres and consultants are all some forms of capacity building.

Having known what capacity building is, it's imperative therefore to note that the development of any country is so much reliant on the level of its Human resource development and human capacity building, in the sense that it is not enough to have millions of people populating a Nation. If the millions of people are not trained or developed to contribute where each one can in Nation building, then they become monumental wastes and a disastrous consequence awaits a nation whose populace is totally dependent on the Government for daily survival while contributing little or nothing to the socioeconomic development.

Having established that, let me stress on the over emphasised topic of Diversification, a topic every successive government sang like "a song put on repeat". The discovery of oil in 1956 in Oloibiri and the subsequent dependent on oil revenue killed the very topic of diversification, this is the bitter truth. One can argue about it, but the truth is ,deep in the mind of an average Nigerian no one would prefer even a mechanised farming career to a luxurious oil job. This is because successive governments have directly or indirectly laid so much importance and value to oil that even a child knows that oil money is the way to go.

With that established, let's go back to the unproductive nature of Nigerians. With over 200 million people in Nigeria. We should be able to develop within us , considering the financial resources available also that which can sustain us as a nation. In whatever sector you can imagine. So it becomes a regrettable situation, that even the basic need of man(food, clothing and shelter) is so much dependent on importation. The simple truth is that our population has been a curse rather than a blessing to us. Can we say we are so over populated? No way! . If China with all their population( A staggering 1.375 Billion people) can be self sufficient and export to other countries, then we have failed.

Now to conclude
We have gone deep in this mess , but there is a way out. It is not enough to stop corruption, (corruption is everywhere). It is not enough to go to school(Nigerians are educated). It is not enough to be politically conscious. Our only problem is that we have failed to lay the foundation that will help us harness our human resources and build our individual capacity. So we can talk about diversification from now till forever, you can't tell someone who is not interested in Agriculture to go into it, because he will be frustrated. So we need to train ,build and harness our human resource in line with what the individual desires or loves. In developed countries talents are discovered at a tender age ,it's subsequently built upon, trained harnessed to near perfection and people love whatever they do.

Now that oil is failing us,We need to go back to the scratch, the basis,the foundation of human existence. The nursery and primary schools. Reports have it that children are sharper between the age of 2 -10 years( Nursery and primary school age). Alot of things I learnt in primary school are still in my brains, like a permanent stamp. We need to restructure the primary education system and curriculum to :
1. Accommodate more practicals and less theory.
2. Emphasis on Agriculture and provide environment for pupils to practice agriculture even in school ( own poultry farms, vegetable gardens in a mechanised way so they can naturally grow interest in Agricultural activities.
3. Bring in a lot of practicals in IT and meaningful internet activities in line with global best practice on digitalisation.
4. Putting in place a conducive learning environment in primary schools.
5. Encouraging competitions in sports, essay writing, debate etc so their mental state can be sharp, sporting talents harnessed and developed.
6. Skill acquisition programmes should be brought into primary school system. Learning skills and other local materials production, hair dressing, fashion designing and tailoring , food processing etc,this will help raise an entrepreneurship mindset at even a tender age.
7. Raising international diplomats by introducing foreign languages in Primary schools and other levels of education.
8. Finally, we should tell ourselves the truth and restructure our academic curriculum, courses and subjects. A lot of them are sheer waste of time and energy, contributing nothing to individual development and are almost irrelevant in this century. We should learn to move with the trend and rearrange our courses and subjects to go in line with what is beneficial to both the individual and the nation ,both on the short and long run. If primary education has to be all about practicals and training, then so be it.

I would stop here, but we must all understand that if we fail to do something now, we will all suffer the consequences. I'm ever ready to partner with any NGO, Government at all level and private individuals to make all the above a reality.

""The more time we spend looking at a problem, the less time we have finding a solution"" (Ofoneme Daniel).

Thank you for reading to the end, constructive criticisms are also welcomed.

OFONEME CHUKWUMAELO DANIEL
Writes from Lagos Nigeria
07083468205
Chukwumaeloofoneme@gmail.com