
The former Executive Secretary of National Universities Commission (NUC), Emeritus Professor Peter Okebukola, has said that if the foundation of Nigeria’s education system was strengthened through better quality primary and secondary schools, many of the quality challenges now being faced at the university level would have ceased and been addressed.
This was as he said that strengthening basic education meant getting all the out-of-school children into school, as well as resourcing the primary and secondary schools to better deliver quality education. To achieve such a goal, Okebukola explained that there was the need to engage better-quality teachers in the right numbers, address teachers’ welfare by paying them well and exposing them to continuing professional development and training.
“It was only when there is assurance of an improved basic education being put in place by such actors as local government councils, UBEC and state government that there can be some guarantee of improved inputs into the university system,” he said. Okebukola, who stated while delivering at the 2023 Convocation Lecture of Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State, however, said that the Nigerian universities are in a position to offer and provide at least 40 per cent of the solutions to the nation’s challenges and attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The former NUC Executive Secretary, in his lecture, titled: “From Tangible to Virtual Reality: Redefining the Nigerian University System,” pointed out that the pathway to achieving the 40 percentage solution is through strengthening research capacities of the universities’ staff through in-country and international training experiences, better resourcing of research laboratories and workshops, as well as provision of sizeable grants for quality research in universities.
“If these enablers are not in place, Nigerians should not turn round to accuse the universities of irresponsibility to the nation’s needs,” Okebukola stated, and explained that while the past and present were the tangible, the future is the virtual reality. According to him, the future of university education in the country needed quick-fix interventions based on a gap analysis conducted over the last two months by his group of scholars. Towards this end, he reiterated that access into university must emphasise more on the primary and secondary schools in order to get better inputs into universities, saying that of what use are weak, very weak primary and secondary school products for the universities.