‘NHEF set to restore confidence in higher education’
Odinaka Iloh, the Project Lead, National Higher Education Forum (NHEF) says the challenges in the education sector are multi-layered and proffered some means of tackling the issues. What is National Higher Education Forum all about? National Higher Education Forum (NHEF) is a non-governmental, multi-sectoral platform designed to engage all stakeholders in the education sector. […]
Odinaka Iloh, the Project Lead, National Higher Education Forum (NHEF) says the challenges in the education sector are multi-layered and proffered some means of tackling the issues.
What is National Higher Education Forum all about?
National Higher Education Forum (NHEF) is a non-governmental, multi-sectoral platform designed to engage all stakeholders in the education sector. It is also designed to contribute in shaping Nigeria’s higher education policy direction and national innovation ecosystem. The aim is to make Nigeria more productive and prosperous.
The primary purpose of the forum is to enable regular, productive engagements of key higher education stakeholders, policy makers, thought-leaders, innovators, researchers, industry leaders, and entrepreneurs, in search of sustainable solutions to Nigeria’s higher education challenges and to forge greater prosperity for the nation.
What informed your decision to champion this course?
To advance the course of higher education in the country because from the history, and in recent years, there has been so much instability in the education sector and you know that impacts all the sectors of the economy. That has affected the quality of graduates coming out from the university, so the platform was in response to helping solve that problem.
What is your assessment of Nigerian graduates?
It is clear for everybody to see. Some people will want to be defensive but the result is very clear for all to see. In the late 80s, you could hear that someone left a Nigerian university to further his education abroad, you could see that the transition is almost seamless. You see them breaking records in schools aboard but in recent years the story of someone moving from Nigerian universities to other universities abroad and breaking records is not common.
Today, entrepreneurs face problems in finding the right talents and people who come out of the higher institutions to fit into the industry without requiring too much training. The quality of university graduates has really dropped and back in the 80s when people want to further their education, they don’t think too much of going to schools abroad but nowadays everybody, except you don’t have the means, prefer to study abroad. It is because we are looking for higher quality.
What do you think is wrong with Nigeria’s higher education?
I believe it’s a multi-layered issue. But fundamentally, there are structural, funding, infrastructural and oversight issues, especially in terms of adequate governance. Structural issues are the catch-all of the challenges facing Nigeria’s higher education. If we fix the structural issues, the rest become a whole lot easier to deal with. Indeed, most of our issues are linked to the structural weakness of our institutions. Times have changed but institutions have remained largely the same.
For instance on the issue of industrial actions, research showed that between 1993 and 2013, if you add together the number of weeks ASUU went on strike, its four sessions what it means is that Nigeria lost four years in its academic calendar within this period. No nation losses four years within its academic years and remains the same. The current structure of our tertiary institutions does not enable much progress.
So where does NHEF come in?
The NHEF has four critical areas of focus, namely: funding, infrastructure, partnerships and intellectual capital. Our programmes and projects reflect these. In 2009/2010 it occurred to me that despite the unfortunate decay and instability that had bedeviled Nigeria’s tertiary education sector for about two decades, there was no platform to engage higher education stakeholders. And I thought, rather than join the chorus of complaints and murmuring, it would be more productive to set up a platform that enables solutions to dynamic challenges facing the sector. That was how the NHEF was conceived. However, it effectively came to full effect in 2014, when we hosted the inaugural edition.
We do not naively think that all the issues facing our higher education sector today will be solved in one conference. But we believe that effective and continuous engagement of key stakeholders will certainly bring the awareness and attendant transformation needed; even if it happens, one institution at a time.
What were the key highlights of the 2018 higher education forum?
The keynote address was made by the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo, which set the tone for the forum. There was an inter-ministerial dialogue designed for ministers of education, budget and national planning, science and technology, labour and employment and industry, trade and investment. The Director General of the Budget Office, Ben Akabueze, delivered special address on ‘Education Budget: A Donation or an Investment?’, Dr. David Adebimpe, anchored the deans roundtable which focused on the dynamics of taking research out from the lab to the market.
There were keynote panels that involved the chief executives of the National Universities Commission, National Board for Technical Education, National Commission for Colleges of Education and National Teachers Institute.
It may also interest you to know that we are currently working on a documentary entitled ‘Rethinking Nigeria’s Higher Education’.