₦airaland Forum

Imagine this for an opposition in 2015:

[size=14pt]Sanusi (President), Utomi (VP) Party: ACN.[/size]

That will be a team to beat.

Can we all agree on one thing first:

THERE ARE MANY THINGS WRONG IN THE NIGERIAN EDUCATION SECTOR (Yes I typed sector not system)

If we agree with the above, I will be happy that at least, we are not yet completely blind. Next, we all should do enough research online and on ground with a view to discovering what those problems are. If you have a friend working in the Ministry of Education, just ask them the same question.

We will also agree that the following are possibly some problems plaguing the sector: Underfunding, Corruption, Indiscipline, Structural problems, Control Problems, Flexibility Problems, Curriculum Problems, etc.

The arguement left will be: DO THESE PROBLEMS EXIST? If yes, WHICH OF THESE ARE SYSTEM ISSUES?

If we can scale this hurdle, I will believe that we are on our way to recovery. I hope we can get to a common ground on this matter.

@ Demdem, It is actually a large document. Try using a download accelerator to download it. Or right-click on the link and select save-as rather than open.

I hope it helps  

I understand this election may have covered some people's eyes, ears, noses and maybe brains. So don't worry, I will resurrect this thread at the right time. When there is no election fever. But before then, I will recommend that we should all go research and learn the meaning of EDUCATION SYSTEM. Then we can argue objectively. (If there will be any need to argue the obvious afterwards)

^^ check my last post, you will find all the answers you desire there.

Trust me, you guys don't want to go down this road with me. UN and UNESCO documents on education in Nigeria are in abundance on the internet. If you are educated enough to know how to use Google.com, you will be tired of reading. I will not do your search for you. But for the benefit of doubt, let me give you this small appetizer:

"Education has been at the top of the priority lists of some previous Nigerian governments
yet the education system is still far from being ready for the challenges of the new
century. Nigeria is not the only country whose education system is unprepared. A closer
examination of many systems, especially in a developing context, indicate that most of
the educational systems in developing countries are not yet ready to prepare students for
the contemporary global world"

Culled from: NIGERIA EDUCATION SECTOR ANALYSIS: AN ANALYTICAL SYNTHESIS OF PERFOMANCE AND MAIN ISSUES  by Teboho Moja
Visiting Professor of Higher Education, New York University, Department of Administration, Leadership and Technology, New York, NY.

THIS DOCUMENT WAS PRODUCED FOR THE WORLD BANK IN JANUARY 2000

Link: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/NIGERIAEXTN/Resources/ed_sec_analysis.pdf

Akainzo, the answers to all your questions are here. Have a nice time reading.

More for your delight:
http://www.krepublishers.com/02-Journals/JSS/JSS-14-0-000-000-2007-Web/JSS-14-1-000-000-2007-Abst-Text/JSS-14-1-081-086-2007-541-Odia-L-O/JSS-14-1-081-086-2007-541-Odia-L-O-Tt.pdf

OP kindly add that we also breed geniuses.

like me

^^^ You should have said efisher, chamber2, Wole Soyinka, UN, UNESCO and every other knowledgeable human being,
Don't make me post what UN and the rest of the world have said. I have facts and references to back up my arguements.

We all know what we are talking about. We can play around the words as much as we like but it doesnt change the facts. 

These Northern Leaders think their people are cattle that they will just tell them who to vote for and they will all vote.

- DELETED -

Al-Qaeda, Somali militants launch massive recruitment drive in Nigeria
By TOYOSI OGUNSEYE
Sunday, 20 Mar 2011

Indications have emerged that a fundamentalist group, Al-Qaeda, and Somali militants have begun a massive recruitment drive of youngsters as suicide bombers in Nigeria. This is coming on the heels of increased fears of more bomb explosions and threats in different parts of the country.

Meanwhile, intelligence reports indicate that more youths like Abdulmutallab abound in Nigeria and they have been contacted to be suicide bombers by the al-Qaeda and the Al-Shabaa- a fundamentalist group in Somalia. Already, these groups reportedly have serious links with the Boko Haram sect in the North and have started spreading the gospel of suicide bombing and convincing the youths of the ‘benefits’ of embracing the act.

The Borno State Commissioner of Police, Alhaji Abubakar Mohammed, had last month said some members of the Boko Haram sect smuggled into the country sophisticated weapons like heavy rocket launchers, AK 47 rifles, grenades and other lethal explosives deployed in the construction of bombs from neighbouring countries.

A top police source who craved anonymity because of its sensitive nature, said security reports indicated that the next stage of terrorism apart from the recent bomb explosions that had rocked the nation would be the issue of suicide bombers.

Again, the Head of the Economic Desk of the Nigerian Embassy in Riyahd, Saudi Arabia and Ambassador designate, Ahmed Magaji, had last week warned that the ongoing crisis in Yemen posed a great danger to the national security of Nigeria. The ambassador told a bewildered Senate that the al-Qaeda had specifically mentioned Nigeria as a country that was ripe for fundamentalists operations and that events in the Middle East and Libya shouldn’t be treated with kid gloves.

Magaji added that the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, during a meeting with Nigeria’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr. Odein Ajumogobia, last October threatened to use Nigeria’s internal weakness to destabilise the country.

Also, a senior official of the Federal Bureau of Investigations Academy, Quantico, US, confirmed the fears of Magaji and other security chiefs. The FBI boss said the message of Osama Bin Laden, the Al-qaeda leader had spread rapidly in the country.
He said, “It is not the al-Qaeda alone that is propagating the gospel of Osama. The Al-Shabaab too is actively involved and they are winning disciples’ every day especially in the northern part of Nigeria.”

The FBI boss further said that the number of people being recruited by the terrorists groups was worrisome and that this had made the increase in the number of direct flights from Nigeria to the US and the United Kingdom more perilous.

Meanwhile, some top officials of the US Transportation Security Administration have arrived in Nigeria to carry out a special security and safety audit of the Murtala Muhammmed International Airport, Lagos and the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja.

Read the full story here: http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art201103206222690

See BBC's view about Nigeria:

After lurching from one military coup to another, Nigeria now has an elected leadership. But it faces the growing challenge of preventing Africa's most populous country from breaking apart along ethnic and religious lines.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/1064557.stm

For those who are willing to learn, read up something here on what an education system is:

[url]https://www.indiana.edu/~tedfrick/edusys.html[/url]

I can go on and on, let me pause briefly with this long one

Tragedy of Nigeria’s education system
By Emma Okah
Sunday, August 29, 2010

Few years ago, there was breaking news concerning two American university students who broke into the US national intelligence computer code and succeeded in deciphering, perhaps, the most guarded secret in the world. The two students recorded the breakthrough in their bid to excel in their graduation project. For their brilliance, the American government rather commended them, and upgraded the university to a federal subvention status. The two students became instant national heroes in academic brilliance and became legends in their alma mater for lifting the university to subvention status. It therefore means that any amount of money given to that university by the US government would invariably be regarded as a donation by the two students to that institution.

Now, few months ago, a group of seventh-graders in California stunned the scientific world once again when they discovered a mysterious cave on Planet Mars. Again, this was part of a research project to study images taken by a NASA spacecraft orbiting the red planet. The 16 students from teacher Dennis Mitchell’s 7th-grade science class at Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, California, according to world news services, found what looks like a Martian skylight — a hole in the roof of a cave on Mars.

The students, now described in the hero-maniac country as courageous were participating in the Mars Student Imaging Program at the Mars Space Flight Facility at Arizona State University. The programme allows students to frame a research question and then commission a Mars-orbiting camera to take an image to answer their question. For years, scientists had wondered what kind of materials or deposits could be stored inside the hole discovered by the students, but the young researchers had initially set out to hunt for lava tubes, a common volcanic feature on Earth and Mars, but ended up solving one of the world’s mysteries.

According to reports, the class did it by commissioning a main photo and a backup image of Mars’ Pavonis Mons volcano, targeted on a region that hadn’t been imaged up close. The pictures were taken by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter using its Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) instrument. Both images showed lava tubes, as the students had hoped. But the backup photo provided another surprise: a small, round black spot. It was a hole on Mars leading into the buried cave, researchers said.

The students have submitted their site to be further imaged by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which could reveal enough detail to see inside the hole in the ground. It is said that the Mars Student Imaging Program is certainly one of the greatest educational programmes ever developed and it gives the students a good understanding of the way research is conducted and how that research can be important for the scientific community.

The two breakthroughs by mere students in the US, and many other such advances represent the true meaning of functional education in any serious country. Agreed, we hear of shooting incidents and unbriddled freedom in American universities but we also hear numerous academic breakthroughs and discoveries. In Nigeria, we hear of sorting, sex inducements, grade-substitution, and total violence. Recent surveys on Nigeria and Ghana have revealed that Ghana hostels are quiet, neat, serene, and durable while their Nigerian counterparts are mere market squares where students import the loudest musical gadgets and home movie machines to thrill themselves. The rest, in order to escape the nearby Armageddon, stage their own “positive” noise through evangelism programmes close to the hostels. The result is a centre of cacophony where nothing good can ever come from.

At best, the students read and cram all thesis and after correctly reproducing them to their nonchalant lecturers, obtain a First Class or some other top grades and walk out the universities to demand the promised job offer to top-graders. This could be when such high-fliers get jobs, and they remain there forever without any invention, and end- up tops in corruption and dubious national leadership struggles.

The truth is that our educational system is not result-oriented. It is also not research-based. Talking about research, many would jump for joy, thinking we mean an indictment on governments for poor funding, but the female nurse who developed a famous method for halting youth violence by detecting early signs did it without a dime, just by writing down figures and later interpreting them. Most social research works that interpret deviations in behaviour do require funds, but we do not embark on any.

Nigeria is still at the level of struggling to adopt a reform model to transform its educational system. At least, this has been the preoccupation of the ruling party since the past decade. This almost came to a head when Dr Oby Ezekwesili used her short tenure in the twilight of the Chief Olussegun Obasanjo era to develop a reform model after series of stakeholders’ summits. But just because the model wanted to hand over the Unity Schools that produce nothing but ethnocentric future leaders and hate exponents to the private sector to manage, entrenched interests fought her and as soon as she left, they mauled the recommendations. Now, the present education minister has started calling for yet another round of stakeholders’ summit. Many Nigerians do not take these things seriously anymore.

The best that can happen is another document that would lie on the shelf.
The truth is that Nigerian education is in tatters. The Federal Government is just pretending. Public schools are just evil classrooms where unfortunate pupils whose parents cannot afford private schools get initiated into evil. They write answers at exams for students on the blackboard. Money is the only grammar that is spoken in such schools. The invigilators, principals, teachers, police, hired mercenaries and other volunteers are all involved in the cheating ring especially in terminal examinations. If anyone doubts the deplorable state of our education system, let an inquiry be conducted to see any government official from level 07 that has a direct child (not maid) in any public primary school, at least in southern Nigeria. Rich men send their children abroad.

Some even send their children to Ghana and South Africa, while others send their wards to top private schools in Nigeria. The rest send their wards to ordinary private schools or “runs centres’ also known as magic centres. The poorest of the poor settle for the abandoned public schools. The tragedy is that those who manage the education system as ministers and commissioners do not know what a public school classroom looks like until they come for “inspection”. Those who manage our roads as Transport Ministers and commissioners do not travel by road.

There is a total disconnect. If the governors who award the contracts to build schools do not send their children there, the commissioners do not send theirs, the contractors do not try it, the school inspectors do not risk it, and even the head teachers do not have their wards in their schools, for whom then are the schools meant ? How can anyone truly monitor the schools? The best monitoring is when a minister’s child comes home to report to the father about what happened in his class. Anything else is rumour or fabricated brief by absentee inspectors to a governor.

Products of such educational system would never discover anything more than early sex, indecent dressing, Nollywood habits, corruption, incestuous inclinations, cultism, exam malpractice and how fast to cheat everyone. Nobody has thought it wise to impose a small levy per child in private schools so that the funds there-from would go to public schools for additional materials. Even if such a system is introduced, be sure that the fund would be diverted by officials to help the government in power contest and win elections, sponsor foreign trips for mistresses of government officials, and all other things except the original purpose, just like the PDTF, the rice fees at the port, the ship building fund at NIMASA, the vehicle fund at the Customs, etc.

This is the tragedy of our education system.

http://www.nigerianbestforum.com/blog/?p=58352

According to the Nigerian National Planning Commission 2004 report, the country’s educational system is “dysfunctional” characterized by crumbling institutions and ill-prepared graduates.

Source: http://www.spainexchange.com/guide/NG-education.htm

The intellectuals who do the planning say there are problems, those who are being planned for say there is none! Who is decieving who. The problem is even bigger than it seems!

Yet another from the maestro himself:

Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka has condemned the state of education in describing the country educational system as a colossal failure.
http://news2.onlinenigeria.com/headlines/70750-Nigerias-education-failure-says-Soyinka.html

If we want to turn this important issue into a war of words, we can bring in the professionals who know how to do it very well.

For those who are educated enough to do their research, here is another one:

Soyinka calls on govt to revive education system
http://dailytimes.com.ng/article/soyinka-calls-govt-revive-education-system

Here are the words of one of the best Nigerian brains:

[size=16pt]Our Educational System Has Collapsed – Soyinka[/size]

Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka has again raised an alarm on the state of education in the country, describing it as a colossal failure.Soyinka who spoke at the opening of a two day Education Summit organized by the Osun State government, noted that the government has failed woefully in the education sector, and thereby, called on the federal government to declare a state of emergency in the education sector.


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Read more for yourself here: [url]http://www.nigeriannewsservice.com/nns-news-archive/news-blocks/our-educational-system-has-collapsed-%E2%80%93-soyinka[/url]

Don't think of a boycott because it will NEVER work in present day Nigeria. A boycott is a free ticket for the Ruling party to carry on.

Chamber, you got it right there. After the election, I believe every one will see clearly to accept the glaring fact.

God bless them plenty plenty. Gadaffi's propaganda is really working on people who are so gullible to think its just about oil. The world has gone beyond that. Everybody benefits when governments are stable. Nobody wants the war apart from Gadaffi himself. Why didn't he agree to any diplomatic solution. He wants to prove to everyone that he is stronger than Mubarak at the cost of lives. Same people supporting him here (NO FENCE POSITION) are the same people that cried out about Abacha's tyranny. It is pure hypocrisy and shortsightedness.

Question for the Gadaffi supporters: WHAT ACTION SHOULD THE UN HAVE TAKEN UNDER THE PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES?

One thing about arguements is that people will hardly change positions when there is an interest involved. Even if you explain from now till next year, people will not agree to the obvious because Buhari made the statement. Wait till after the election or till GEJ makes the same statement. They will forget they ever turned a blind eye to what the heart of the matter is. During the debate, the question asked was simple and everyone including the moderator disagreed sharply with Buhari's answer because he was obviously wrong. Some people are only trying to help him sound right.

As I said, there is no fence position. It's either you are in support of Gadaffi's actions or you are against them.

PDP remains the strongest party in the North. Rememeber it is more than just the man Jonathan. Most governors, senators, etc are PDP members and I dont see them abandoning their daily bread for the "Northern Agenda".

Blazing99:
Us/UK just fired 110 missiles into Libya.
When I told u the west are mothafucking hypocrites, u think im talking no-sense

The missiles were fired at strategic military targets in order to enforce a no-fly zone. Gadaffi is busy slaughtering people with his jets and heavy ammo and you want everyone to keep looking at him. Watch any international news station for 1 hour before you make more comments.

It may sound funny but this is a possibility that cannot be ruled out. That is why we need all the support we can get from the international community right now. Prevention is better than cure. It's best UN throws in its weight behind us for a succesful 2011 election. If the election goes wrong, Nigeria could plummet into chaos. The world doesn't need that right now. This is the wrong time for us to get it wrong!

The only structure that has any hope at all against PDP is the ACN structure. PDP structure is corrupt but strong and CPC has no structure at all. ACN on the other hand has a reputation. ACN has standards. The only challenge is that they are skewed to the South-West. An opposition alliance under the umbrella of ACN would have been a good challenge for the PDP. Although not a guarantee for success.

Again I warn that any party that works towards a run-off has set a target for failure already.

I hope the opposition learns their lessons from this election in preparation for the next. An alliance may work in 2015 but not with a spent man like Buhari running. The alliance has to have a formidable candidate because PDP will shop for their best candidate next time. They may have learnt that GEJ was a very difficult card to play. The party that will carry the day will then be the one with the strongest Northern candidate.

I can't believe this. Some of you sound exactly like Gadaffi. There is no fence you have to be on one side:

Gadaffi's side: Kill civilians and remain in power for life.
UN side: There can be no justification for killing civilians indiscriminately and civilians must be protected.

Only a poll conducted on a platform like facebook over a very long time (say 1 month) can give a fair idea of what the perception is like. Many polls around have serious flaws. Multiple registration, Manipulation of figures, etc. If the starter is a PDP supporter, he will register several accounts and vote for PDP. If the starter is a BB follower, same same. I haven't seen any one properly done yet. If you find anyone done on facebook, it will make more sense because there are more controls and there are more people to sample opinions from.

Let's be careful not to move the goalpost already!

You can have a good car that has a fault and cannot meet all your needs. It doesnt mean it is a bad car but it clearly has a problem.

Nobody said the system is a BAD SYSTEM ^{(Can be argued from some point of view!)}. The issue is something is wrong with the system. It has a problem and it needs to be solved. We all know what we are talking about. Lets stop dancing around the bush. Call it corruption, inefficiency, underfunding, etc. We need a leader that can see properly and fix it. Period.

Oil has covered people's ears so much that they can't even hear the cries of the civilians in Benghazi! Hear it loud and clear: IT IS NOT ABOUT OIL. Ghadaffi has been killing civilians because of his selfish ambition. 40 years in power! Same ideology as our spent Nigerian dictators who do not want to give the youth any chance at leadership.

This is not a US or NATO war. It is a UN issue and the arabs and africans are involved. Please do your research before you make comments online.

Buhari is the choice for those who do not want to see any infrastructural development in Nigeria. Follow the debate and see he had no concrete plan for power, health, education etc. We so desperately need power in Nigeria and all he could offer was a probe of the previous governments.

Watch online: http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/13401163
Start from about the 24th minute

BTW can you imagine how he would fare on BBC hardtalk!

The video is now available online. Check the first post. Watch it yourself and notice the question asked and the answers given. After Buhari`s answer, the anchor asked him again if that was what he meant. He didnt even point a finger at corruption as some are making us believe. He had no clue and no concrete vision.