TheCable

Adetunji Adegbesan, founder of Gidi Mobile, an African curriculum mastery and platform, says the education sector’s failure to instill capacity in citizens is to be blamed for Nigeria’s security challenges.

He was speaking at the 2019 International Youth Day conference which held in Victoria Island, Lagos on Thursday.

Adegbesan also warned of the “danger of leaving millions” of youth “without capacity roaming around”.

According to him, the excessive focus of academic institutions on good grades rather than imparting the skills and knowledge youths need to thrive has made many to fall prey to those who engage in illicit professions.

“Education is not just a human capacity problem. It’s a security problem as well. The number of jobs you can do without skills is dropping and those you can do with skills are dropping too with technology. We need knowledge, skills, and attitude more than ever,” he said.

“It’s dangerous to leave millions without capacity roaming around. We have militants in south-south, bandits in the northwest, terrorists in the northeast, herdsmen in the north central, and kidnappers in the southeast. All are born of same phenomenon.”

Adegbesan also decried the inadequacy of budgetary allocations for education. He spoke on the need to put together the brightest brains and proffer emergency solutions against unemployment.

He also warned that, unless the education sector gives priority to capacity building; livelihoods creation; and educating the teeming number of out-of-school juveniles, the country would always face the terror of insecurity.

“Nigeria is facing survival challenges. We need capacity: Knowledge, skills, values and attitude — not just good grades. We also need to be conscious of the realities of the average citizen, make policies and enlightened friendship with foreign private capital,” he said.

“2.3 million Nigerians are in universities but a pool of 28 million youths are without jobs. We push about 1.6 million into the labour pool annually, create only about 900,000 jobs, and fall behind by 500,000. We need emergency solutions for job creation.

“Training 28 million Nigerians and preparing them for a future that is relatively unpredictable is daunting. We need more jobs faster than the number of graduates entering the labour pool. If we don’t have the brightest brains thinking up solutions, then we’re in a very serious problem.”

As a solution, Adegbesan emphasized the need to leverage on futuristic solutions particularly the use of technology to scale the access of quality education to address this societal need.

He also encouraged the use of alternative learning methods in education to help grow education and ensure the requisite skills required in coming decades are learned today.

Patrick Utomi and Adetunji Adegbesan

On his part, Patrick Utomi, political economy expert and founder of the Centre for Values in Leadership (CVL), charged Nigerian youth to take after the leadership examples of the United States and United Arab Emirates in changing the unemployment narrative in the country.

“In 1981-82, young people in typical American campuses work on their CVs, undergo interviews for jobs that were not there, and felt frustrated. A decade later, they were rather working on their business plans, dreaming of becoming billionaires before 26,” he said.

“These young Americans essentially created a wholly refined industry that eventually saved America. The big question is how we can make that happen in Nigeria. It is the young people who will do that.”

The conference, which proceeded with two sub-themes — ‘Improving Nigerian Youth Education for Leadership’ and ‘Innovation and Sustainability in the Educational System’ — was co-organized by the Nigerian Youth Parliament (NYP) in synergy with the CVL.

A panel session was constituted and moderated by Chioma Aja, deputy speaker of the NYP, and Isioma Utomi, managing director at the CVL.

Among the panelists who spoke during the session are Adegbesan; Alexander Akhigbe, founder of Africa Clean-up Initiative; Henry Anumudu, co-founder of Sharing Life; Ella Iwodoh, director of Learning-Fliplearnkids; and Gideon Olanrewaju, CEO of AREAi.

Others who were present are Mubarak Mijinyawa, speaker of the NYP; Mohammed Alyammahi, UAE deputy consul; advocates of non-profit movements; and foreign diplomats.

A cross-section of the keynote speaker, panelists and members of the CVL and NYP International Youth Day team

ABOUT THE PIONEERS

NYP is a legislative training institution created under the tutelage of the national assembly to “consolidate efforts in empowering young people through meaningful youth representation in driving Nigeria’s development agenda”.

CVL, on the other hand, is a non-profit leadership development institute poised to equip young people with values and skills that will turn them into effective leaders and catalysts of quality of life in the society.