Thursday, October 08, 2020

Financing Education: The Only Channel to National Development?

Nigerian naturally have a sense of entitlement across all department of government and rightly so, it has a lot to do with the inadequacies in governance since time immemorial. We have been a nation of citizens who have been less dependent on government so we have inadvertently made it a point of duty to critique every move of the government, which we are doing effortlessly.

However, there are other criticism which I somewhat feel we over indulge our capacity. The world is a changing dynamic and we have to switch on to the next gear of acceleration else, we can be caught napping or so to say, forever left basking on our past euphoria. The earlier we accept the reality of the present day fact and empirical figures, the better we admit the world is moving at the speed of light from how we left it barely last night before slumber.

Education is not the only solution to modern development and economic growth, there are way other sectors which contributes their respective quota to the growth of an economy. The entertainment industry is a prolific industry on its own, we also have the sports, arts and culture, hospitality, tourism, engineering, advertisement. Though most of these industries stem from primary and secondary education, but they also involve training and capacity building which is beyond the four walls of the educational system. Quite sadly, the proclivity is hinged on training and building oneself to being the best in one's department.

Some popular Nigeria banter is that Ronaldinho would have been a complete failure in the four wall;s of the classroom if there had been nothing called football and consequently, he would have been a failure in life. Needless to say that it did not happen that way, instead, he became one of the greatest footballers of all time. I can say the same thing about successful musical artistes, professional boxers, motivational speakers, even the great Mark Zuckerberg was a Harvard dropout, who just wanted to leave school and embark on his breathtaking project of starting Facebook.

More recently in Nigeria, Gov. Dapo Abiodun awarded a youth ambassadorial role to Laycon, the winner of the BBNaija Lockdown 2020 winner, with #5m and an apartment and as expected the governor has been getting the sticks for not awarding similar gesture to the past winners of the National Jets Competition from Ogun State. I quite align with the sentiment, but pitching Jets Competition side by side with BBNaija is not totally the way to go. All industry, be it Scientific research, Science and Technology and so on, have their economic value and none can be disposed at the expense of the other. We can't have a competition erected where there is none. Michael Jackson never competed with the best Havard graduate, instead they all evolved from their respective niche and build the future therein.

Fighting for the deficiencies in educational financies while also agitating for a decline in other sectors of the economy, even if it is the least important of them all is not the way forward. Education should not serve as a yardstick for comparing other sectors and vice versa, instead, let's agitate for an increase in appreciating educational activities more while not bringing down other department. The sky is big enough for all the birds to fly. Let's work together to make the government spend on educational program as it remains the foundation for career growth and capacity building, but not at the detriment of the other sector.

The entire country needs all sectors and departments excelling to reach a developed international standard. National economic boost is a function of all working sectors in a country, and even though education is the fundamental and basic foundation for all sectors to thrive, it subsequently needs all others very functional to move the entire country forward and functional.

Written By
Oluwatobi Adisa
@deeduke1



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