Achieving Global Competitiveness: The Place of Science and Technology

Let us look at the title together: Achieving Global Competitiveness – What does that mean? And for whom is it necessary to be globally competitive? Are we talking of global competitiveness for individuals, companies, institutions, communities, or nations? How do we measure global competiveness? What are the bench-marks? Who determines the bench mark? What are […]

Let us look at the title together: Achieving Global Competitiveness – What does that mean? And for whom is it necessary to be globally competitive? Are we talking of global competitiveness for individuals, companies, institutions, communities, or nations? How do we measure global competiveness? What are the bench-marks? Who determines the bench mark? What are the objective criteria to determine global competiveness – market forces, quality of services or products, peer review, or global acclaim and acceptability?
In a public lecture of only a few minutes, it is impossible to go into the details of these questions, but let us accept that there are elements from all the questions that will help us to define the meaning of ‘global competitiveness.’ The bottom line however, is that global competitiveness is expected to contribute to the job creation,  wealth, and improving the well-being and quality of life of our people – through the production of products and services and the promotion of the human qualities required for such production.
How do we help to create global competitiveness in individuals who eventually contribute to the overall competitiveness of nations, companies, institutions and agencies, and communities?
I would like to approach this question holistically; starting with family upbringing, then pre-school, nursery school, primary school, and finally through secondary schools. Central to the input of these various training settings is the issue of formation of character traits: which can be decomposed into discipline and hard work; problem solving, innovation, and creativity; and also, persistence and perseverance – acknowledged by the OGS through its motto: perseventia vinci (persistence conquers). In addition to these character traits, – there are essential foundation skills that must be acquired by age 7 and built on continuously thereafter; these skills include the ability to read very well and to handle numbers and to enjoy playing games that intelligence-requiring and competitive. These foundation skills are critical for all future learning and skills acquisition.
OGS had a different challenge with respect to building values and character. OGS brought into the boarding school environment boys from Nigeria’s elite, urban middle class and rural villages. Boys from rich homes bought corned beef to ‘smoked’ gari. Boys from middle clas homes ‘smoked’ gari with tinned sardine and those of us from the villages (including me and – where is Lambert Eradiri?) – ‘smoked’ gari with ‘songu’- locally smoke-dried sardines. I believe the village boys gave the elite and middle class boys good competition in school academic work and sports because OGS intentionally and resolutely instilled the character traits of persistence and perseverance, and discipline and fairplay in competition, into these boys. By the way, OGS, was created by the Christian Missionary Society of the Anglican Church for boys by acknowledged the importance of gender equality through establishing nearby, the Elelenwo Girls Secondary School.
Before I leave the issue of family upbringing, primary and secondary schools, I must mention the issue of subject matter. At OGS, I had always had the ambition to have a double degree: BA, BSc! Don’t ask me why. I just felt it was the right thing to do! Time is providing that this apparently irrational ambition was correct for meeting the diverse needs for involvement in technology and innovation.
We must ensure that at primary and secondary level, students  are comfortable and knowledgeable in science, technology, engineering  and mathematics as well as in reading, literature, arts and writing. A tall order is it not? But only with basic core values and character, and armed with the ability to read, handle numbers and innovate, our young boys and girls will be ready to transit – to institutions of higher learning.
I wish to thank OGS on behalf of the old boys and society for getting its students started on this path, for propelling them towards tertiary education and subsequent contributions to global competitiveness.
The importance and features of global competitiveness of tertiary institutions, undergraduates, graduates, staff and their programme is a huge topic to which I cannot do justice to in a few minutes of a public lecture.
However, from my perspective, the main challenges to today’s Nigerian tertiary education system hindering institutions, students and academic staff from being internationally and globally competitive include issues of quality, access, and relevance; and productivity, research and innovation. We need to redefine and then internalize a tertiary educational system which will reward the demonstration of core values, as well as respect the need for frugal and careful economic planning that will serve our purpose within the framework of real academics.
Quality. To be a bit specific, when the University of Ibadan started nearly 67 years ago and it admitted and graduated just a few hundred candidates each year. From their performance, our students were evidently of the highest quality within the commonwealth and many were globally competitive. The University of Ibadan, Legon University in Ghana, and Makerere University in Uganda were classified as world class universities.