BREAKING: Cover Hi-Tech IDIGEST Mobile Tech NEWS Technology Telecom Web

Back to School for ICT

With the prevailing economic circumstances in Nigeria, there has been so much talk about diversifying the economy and all attentions are on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as the worthy replacement for oil.

While the idea is right and well placed, considering the huge potentials in ICT for economic development, it is yet to be seen how the country would achieve this with her current approach to education.

Generally, the Nigerian educational system is in dire need of transformation as several indices have indicated a declining fortune for the country in terms of education. Bad enough that education is not advancing as it should be, but worse is the fact that it is rather declining in Nigeria when other nations are deploying digital tools to advance their systems. With very poor educational group performance as seen in our schools in the recent years, we doubt whether Nigeria has acquired the power needed to thrive in this modern time.

Of course, there has been outcry of deplorable academic standards in virtually all developing countries including Nigeria and these are often linked with poor funding and lack of modern tools for teaching.

As such, the 2017 Budget proposal presented by President Muhammadu Buhari provided another opportunity for educationists to be hopeful of improved allocation to the sector, especially, at a time when the country is in dire need of digitally inclined education system to boost human capacity needed to power the nation’s ICT industry.

Alas! Expectations were cut short again when it was revealed that the country would be spending a paltry N448.01 billion on education, which is about 6 per cent of the N7.30 trillion budget. Again, going by the UNESCO recommendation that countries should spend not less than 26 per cent of their budget on education, a benchmark set to enable nations adequately cater for rising education demands, it will be right to say that Nigeria has not even started investing in education as previous years’ budgets had always made provisions in the region of 6 per cent for education. The situation is not different across all the 36 states of the federation; in 2016, 33 states of the federation had allocated N653.53 billion (10.70 per cent) of their combined total budget estimates of N6.1 trillion to education.

Out of the sum earmarked for the sector in the 2017 federal budget, N398.01 billion was allocated to recurrent expenditure and the balance of N50 billion allocated to capital projects. This means that the country would be spending quite insignificant portion of her budget on education projects, in a country where computer students in universities have no access to computers, let alone internet facility.

Recently, the umbrella body of all academic personnel in Nigeria universities, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), went on strike to demand increased budgetary allocation to the education sector. The demand was in reaction to the poor state of facilities in public universities across the country, with some of the institutions even defaulting in salary payment.

A similar protest occurred earlier in the year when most of the federal universities in the South-west of Nigeria were shut down by workers citing decrepit facilities and generally poor learning environment. With all these and the exigencies of diversification of the economy into other potential sectors, one would expect the government to think and act big in funding education, with a target of building capacity and producing more experts in the new focus areas.

Ironically, the country is also talking about developing local content in ICTs. Is it the ill-trained graduates that would become the local ICT experts to boost the local content being promoted? Are the ill-equipped institutions expected to produce world-class graduates that would take over the ICT landscape, which is currently being dominated by expatriates?

In the area of hardware, Nigeria currently has no expertise at all. The best the local OEMs are doing today is to import various parts of hardware and assemble them in the country. And while a number of Nigerians are doing their best in the area of software, there is urgent need for improvement to become competitive in the global space. These are areas the government should be channelling its fund.

We need an education system that will produce ICT experts. Indeed, the country needs to go back to school for ICT. Enough of rhetoric about what ICT can do for our economy; we must demonstrate we are a serious nation by taking the right steps at the right time and that must begin by investing heavily in education—not just feeding the sector with crumbs from the large chunk of budgets.

Related posts

Leaders Converge On Tunisia to Set Global Metrics For Tracking ICT Economic And Social Impacts

Huawei is Dedicated to Development of ICT Talent in Nigeria

Hamadoun Toure Says ICT is the New ‘Oil’ in Nigeria

Taking Nigeria’s Leadership in Africa Beyond MTN

General Electric Contradicts President Buhari on Investment Amount for Nigeria

Beyond rhetoric of growing the economy using ICT

Leave a Comment

Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.