Septugenarian entrepreneur, consummate community leader, and Statesman, Engineer Chris Okoye, has called for a review of the structure of the educational system in Nigeria, Njenje Media News reports.
Okoye, who recently clocked 70 years old, in an interview with REGINALD FACAH, a public affairs analyst and a postdoctoral scholar, advised governments at all levels to hand over the schools to the board of trustees instead of directly managing it, while they work on a funding system.
In his words:
“The attempt by the federal and state governments to control and manage tertiary education in Nigeria has failed. And I think that the time has come for them to remove their hands from the management of education and concentrate on its funding. The fact that you fund education does not mean that you must manage it. Hand over these schools to a board of trustees and work out a funding system, which every country does from a percentage of their GDP – every country funds education.
“This concept of the President and Governors being visitors to the universities has not worked; it has failed and has to be stopped. Hopefully if they do this, we are going to have a system where schools would now cut their coats according to their size rather than continuing to expand without capacity to sustain what you have in the system. We would then have a system of what I would call easy entry and easy exit, you would find that many institutions would begin to merge and become campuses of one bigger and stronger entity.”
Engineer Okoye believes this would end the incessant strike actions the tertiary institutions are enmeshed with as each school would begin to specialize and cultivate its unique character.
“You don’t have to do it all because no school can be competent in every area. You might decide that you just want to be known for particular subjects and courses. I think this is something that we quickly need to do so that this idea of going on strike against the federal or state government would stop. If you want to go on strike, you do so against the board of trustees of your school and not against the government. I really wish our governments could be wise enough to lay aside this burden as it would go a long way towards restoring the glory of our tertiary institutions”, he said.
