The Education Nigeria Needs

By Chuks OLUIGBO

Since the news broke that 13,000 Nigerian graduates, including masters and PhD holders, applied for Aliko Dangote’s truck driving job, I’ve read several articles on the matter. Virtually all the writers concluded that the standard of education in the country has fallen (some say “is falling”). I might agree with their conclusion, but I totally disagree with their premise. Let me elaborate by quoting briefly from some of the articles.

Here is Uche Ezechukwu writing on his facebook wall: “A PhD holder who applies to become a driver is a loser for life. I can excuse the first degree holder of the current time because many of them cannot write a correct paragraph anyway.”

In an article “Reflections on graduate unemployment in Nigeria”, Suraj Oyewale wrote: “I interact with a number of Nigerian graduates on daily basis and I find appalling the quality of youths that parade themselves as graduates today.... I know many other graduates, including PhD holders, who struggle to write application letters.”

In an earlier article entitled “Whither Nigerian education?” Mohammed Dahiru Aminu had told the story of an economics graduate of a Nigerian university who lost a job offer because he couldn’t write an application letter.

Now, sincerely speaking, what’s the parameter for measuring the quality of education a graduate has obtained? The graduate’s written and spoken English skills? Let’s put it another way: why do people go to the university? To learn how to speak and write English Language? For God’s sake, how can someone spend five years in the university studying a course as practical as Electrical Engineering, and rather than test his knowledge of handling wires and such stuffs, we ask him to write an application letter, and because he can’t write like a professor of English, we conclude that his five years in the university were wasted years? Perhaps we still think we’re training clerks and office boys and girls.

I think our education system lays too much emphasis on theories and too little on practical usable skills. In “Nigeria’s Ball-Point Pen Education”, an article I did many years ago based on my impression on two books I read – Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (particularly the sub-chapter entitled “Education for Underdevelopment”) and Rene Dumont’s False Start in Africa (where Dumont, a French professor of Agronomy who dedicated his life to research on rural development in Third World economies, made a striking remark that “if your sister goes to school, you will have nothing to eat but ball-point pen”), I had suggested that candidates applying for university degrees be made to pass through a one- or two-year skill acquisition scheme before they are admitted to read any course of their choice.

The thing is we tend to underestimate skill acquisition in this country, but I will illustrate the need with just one example. Kemi, a colleague during the one-year NYSC programme, studied English at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife. But in spite of having studied English, Kemi knew what she wanted in life. I don’t know how she started, but what I know is that she came to NYSC with her sewing machine, and throughout the service year, she was busy making money from fellow female corps members who brought materials for her to sew. At the end of the service year, Kemi made one remark that stuck: “At least now I’ve enough money to rent a shop in Lagos and run my business.” With that, you didn’t need to be told she knew where she was headed. Today, her Addurrah House of Creations might not have won international fashion laurels, but it’s putting food on her table, providing livelihoods for many young Nigerians, and she doesn’t have to be threatened with sack each time she makes a human mistake. She’s her own boss, and she’s no less a graduate for that.

But while experts continue to lament the skill gap in Nigeria (The bulk of those involved in the various aspects of building construction – carpentry, iron works, bricklaying, etc – in many construction sites across the country are Ghanaians, Beninois, Togolese and nationals of Nigeria’s other neighbours.), here we are talking about quality of English Language – a second language for that matter – spoken and written by our graduates. I think we need to get more practical and forget this grammar thing. The Chinese, Japanese and Koreans don’t have to speak and write Queens English before they can produce all the stuffs we use so gleefully in our homes.

Back at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, there was this guy in the Department of Mechanical Engineering whom we were told was managing to pass his courses; yet he was a guru in practicals. I didn’t have to be told, I saw it with my own eyes: the guy constructed a ‘car’ that he drove around the campus, a feat that marvelled even his professors. Now if you would judge such a person based on his spoken or written English, or even based on his performance in classroom theories, imagine how wrong you’d be.

There may be some merit in the argument that there is a minimal standard of expression expected of someone who calls himself or herself a graduate of a Nigerian university – after all, is credit pass in English Language not a compulsory criterion for university admission? – yet, it must be stated clearly that benchmarking the quality of education on this sole factor is faulty. If a graduate of English Language is judged based on the quality of grammar he speaks and writes, no qualms. But extending same to other professions is what I think is wrong.

Then there is another point to be made. Speaking or writing good English is not a university thing. Those are skills you actually grow with. The basic foundation, I think, is the primary and secondary school level. If you miss it at that level, you may have missed it forever. It’s not in the university that you’ll start teaching someone that the right thing to say is “I don’t” and not “I doesn’t”. It will simply enter through one ear and exit through the other. I’ve met grownups, fine writers at that, who tell you sincerely that their problem is how to use “have” and “has” correctly. It didn’t start from the university.

In the end, part of the solution to the unemployment situation in Nigeria lies in the acquisition of more practical, usable skills. And when employers say Nigerian graduates are not “employable”, I think they mean that the graduates lack requisite skills – not that they can neither write nor speak good English. I stand to be corrected.