The lecture titled “Open and distance learning an imperative tool for educational and economic development in Nigeria” has come and gone. The event was graced by the distinguished chairmanship of DEACON GAMALIEL O. ONOSODE, OFR, FCIB, FCS in his speech stated that “learning is fundamental to the survival of human kind also emphasizing that learning is an integral part of character formation. The host Prof. (Mrs) O.O Lawal who is the current Director of the Institute also stated that the institute has progressed from the backyard and back-wood stage to a foremost institute that is ready to compete for honours on a global stage. The student body will be enjoying world class library, lecture rooms facilities etc. And Open university of UK have been having a two weeks training concerning e-learning,Research and how to lecture DLI student on the web with DLI lecturer and staff. Appreciation and vote of thanks to the Vice Chancellor University of Lagos Prof. A.B Sofoluwe for his continous support of the institute. In her speech she also spoke of improved facilities of the institute to meet the challenges of the modern day education. Presently two courses have been introduced B.Sc economics and B.Sc Public. Administration. Also,next move will be on courses like (i) computer science (ii) Geography (iii) Mass. Comm (iv) Biology (v) Physical science.
Also our appreciation goes to executive of DLISA for courage and determination for conveying student to the venue of the lecture,also for dissemination of information to the entire student body before the commencement of the lecture .God bless Nigeria, God bless Lagos state, God bless UNILAG, God bless DLI.
OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING: AN IMPERATIVE TOOL FOR EDUCATIONAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN NIGERIA BY PROF. EMERITUS LADIPO AYO BANJO, CON FNAL. Vice-Chancellor, University of Ibadan (1984-1991), Pro-Chancellor, University of Port-Harcourt(2000-2004), Ilorin (2005-2007) and Ajayi Crowther University (2005-Date)
I should like to begin by expressing my gratitude to the Vice-Chancellor of this University, Professor A. B. Sofoluwe, and to Professor Funke Lawal and the Distance Learning Institute of the University of Lagos, for asking me to discuss the significance of Open and Distance Learning for the educational development of this country, and consequently its economic development. A country like Nigeria is eager to develop, and it is a settled fact that there cannot be a national development without education being its precursor as well as its concomitant element.
If you would allow me to begin my address on a further personal note, I recall that one of my earliest memories was finding heaps and heaps of booklets getting brown with age in my father's study, each bearing the inscription of Wolsey Hall, Oxford. 1 kept wondering about this until I was old enough to be told that, long before my birth, my father had studied with Wolsey Hall while preparing, as an external candidate for an Honours degree in Philosophy of the University of London. I believe one of my father's contemporaries who took a similar route to an external degree of the University of London was Mr Alvan Ikoku, a notable educationist of his time. Many more Nigerians may have since then benefited from the unique services of Wolsey College, and I suspect they have all cumulatively played significant parts in nudging the country forward developmentally. Wolsey Hall has indeed made its salutary presence felt in different parts of the world; and today, it proudly claims that one of its’ most outstanding products is Nelson Mandela, no less. He had studied with Wolsey Hall for his external degree in Law of the University of London while he was a prisoner on Robben Island.
It is possible that Wolsey Hall lost its attraction for Nigerians wishing through their own personal initiative to improve their level of education, and consequently their social and economic standing, with the arrival of university education in Nigeria in 1948, when University College Ibadan was established. Thereafter, the number of universities grew, slowly at first, but later in torrents from the 1970's onwards. The last ten years in particular have witnessed diversification of proprietorship of universities, with the addition of privately owned universities to the publicly owned ones by the federal and State governments. The result is that the total number of universities in the country today stands at one hundred and eighteen.
Meanwhile, other developments have been taking place in other parts of the world, particularly the developed countries. As an example, the number of universities in the United Kingdom has shot up dramatically as former polytechnics were turned into universities. It is alleged that Britain was playing catch-up with the United States of America in this respect. Whether this is so or not, London alone is now home to several universities, while the other large cities in Britain can now boast of two or more universities each.
This means that currently, there is, on the one hand, a strong attraction for the university system of education among the citizens of the world generally and, on the other, a determination by governments throughout the world to give a more central place to university education. Meanwhile, the university itself, as an institution, has been undergoing a redefinition down the ages. From the classical idea of the university symbolized by Oxford and Cambridge in England, and latterly by University College Ibadan in its early years, universities are now seen, no more as ivory towers, but as veritable engines of development; and large enrolments have become the order of the day.
THE UNIVERSITY IDEA
We may pause briefly to take a peep into the history of the university institution since inception, in order to put the present situation in perspective. The origins of the Western European idea of a university are traced to the establishment of the university at Bologna in the eleventh century. Other universities sprang up in medieval times in France, Oxford, Cambridge, St. Andrews and Glasgow, to name a few. Some of the universities were run by the Masters, whom the students followed from one university to another; and others by the students themselves. The Humanities, particularly Philosophy, dominated the curriculum, although it has to be remembered that philosophy was much wider in scope then than it is now. Indeed, it covered much of what today are mathematics and physics. There is still at least one of the older universities in Britain where Physics is referred to as 'Natural Philosophy'. Law made an early appearance, and Medicine came later. The emphasis was on developing the mind and character of the student. That was the classical idea of a university, which is still echoed today when universities in Nigeria declare, perhaps not very truthfully, that they are awarding their degrees for 'character and learning1. This was largely knowledge for its own sake, which earned the universities the sobriquet of 'ivory tower1'
All this was appropriate for the medieval age which, however, very definitely came to an end with the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century. The physical sciences had already begun to assert themselves, and the purpose of the university had had to undergo a modification. Societies in Europe became increasingly preoccupied with the creation and accumulation of wealth, for which the physical and social sciences became very important. More subjects therefore entered the university curriculum, and the utilitarian value of university education became increasingly stressed. Municipal universities soon sprang up all over Britain, for example, all aimed principally at promoting the economic development of the cities The growth was even brisker in the United States of America. By the time universities spread throughout that country in the nineteenth century, the developmental role of universities had become not only accepted but strongly emphasized. Through the establishment of Land Grant Colleges and Universities, the Federal Government of the United States ensured that funds-were made available to each state to establish at least one college or university in the state. Some of them strongly emphasized agriculture, thus laying the foundation for today's food sufficiency in the country. Others, such as California and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, emphasized disciplines which could boost economic development in other areas and have today become some of the world's leading universities. Thus it was ensured that the universities were relevant from the very beginning in the United States.
THE NIGERIA UNIVERSITY SYSTEM
The development of the university system has been different in Nigeria.. At the beginning, the Regions (West, East, North and later, Midwest) took advantage of education being on the concurrent list and established their own universities. But the Federal Government later thought it should exclusively run the universities, and so took over the University of Ife, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and Ahmadu Bello University. It then went further in the 1970's and 1980's to create more federal universities in other parts of the country. This policy of establishing one university in each of the States has been pursued up till the present time. As more States have been created, federal universities have been sited in them,
. But this policy would appear to have been complicated by two developments. The first is that the States have woken up once again to their rights under the country's constitution to establish their own universities. To the extent that any justification has been offered for this development, it has been presented as the need for each State to boost manpower development in its own part of the country. As will be indicated later, this appears to be manpower development for its own sake, which is by no means an undesirable idea, but it is unfortunately not properly linked with specific areas of economic development, with the result, today, that there are armies of unemployed graduates in the country. Of particular note is the fact that industrial development has been almost completely neglected as the raison d'etre for creating modern universities.
From the position in the 1960's when the federal government aimed at running all the universities in the country, the country now has to cope, as we have seen, with the re-introduction of State universities and the vigorous growth of privately owned universities.
In spite of these developments, there is still a large wastage among the products of secondary schools; but it is necessary to examine the cause of that wastage. The results of the School Certificate examinations in recent years have indicated an appalling level of performance by the candidates. Even among those who have prima facie obtained the required number of credits for university admission, many fail to scale through the JAMB examination. And finally, those who apparently did do well in JME do not all perform well after admission in the universities. This, as we know, has led to the introduction of the so-called 'post JME tests' performed by each university itself, and which have surprisingly sparked off controversy even in high places.If the quality of the majority of secondary school leavers leaves much to be desired, a great deal of worry is also currently being expressed about the quality of the universities themselves. One may say that part of the reason for this is that, until recently, perhaps a sizeable number of undeserving students have gained admission; but the universities themselves cannot be entirely absolved of responsibility as funding and staffing have become increasingly difficult in the institutions. One now commonly hears the universities being accused of producing graduates who are unemployable.
To cope with access, however, a number of universities, like the University of Lagos, are making university education possible through distance learning. One can in fact trace the origins of distance learning to the extra-mural departments which used to be very strong and effective in the 'first generation1 universities. At a time when Ibadan was the only university college, and later university, its extra-mural department sustained a network which covered the entire country, though almost all the courses offered were at the sub-degree level. Also, to the extent that tutors went out to the various centres to teach, it could be a misnomer to describe this as an example of distance learning. The important point is that the university college/university did make its servicesavailable to students of varying ages and situations in life who did not have to come physically to the institution to pursue their courses.
The modern distance learning institutes add to the efforts of the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) in tackling the problem of access, and it is expected that the institutes are in close contact with NOUN in fine-tuning the channels of communication with their students.
Given a population of about 160 million, the country obviously still needs more universities, or more correctly, more access to university education. Meanwhile, there is the urgent necessity to develop the country in a world which is increasingly hostile to developing countries, a world in which, in spite of the much-trumpeted global village, every country has to look after its own interests, as contemporary events are making very clear. Speaking impressionistically, and without having to check our position in the economic league of nations, Nigeria is a very poor country. It is also an inequitable country, in which mind-boggling opulence among a very tiny proportion of the population exists cheek by jowl with unbelievable poverty among the great majority. The history of the developed countries of the world shows however that national development is driven by the growth of the middle class. The growth of the middle class, in turn, is propelled by the spread of a sound educational system.
Part of the reason for the country's present very slow rate of development is that, at a time, about thirty years ago, when the country was becoming increasingly wealthy as a result of the exploitation of mineral oil, it was advised by international organizations that the money should be invested in primary, and possibly secondary, education, rather than in university or tertiary education. Of course, it was clear that this was very bad advice, for how can you develop primary and secondary education without a robust university system? Unfortunately, the government of the time bought this advice, and so we are today where we are. In any case, there is very little to show for the huge sums of money that have purportedly been spent of primary and secondary education, and this is due in large measure to the poor quality of personnel running these tiers of education.
The idea of graduates teaching in primary schools would seem strange to many Nigerians; yet in other countries there are graduates specially trained for this tier of education. It s the duty of the universities to ensure good quality in the personnel at the lower rungs. The task is so enormous in this sector alone that even the 118 universities cannot be expected to cope effectively. They require the participation of the Open University and the distance learning institutes. The great advantage of the distance learning mode is that in many, perhaps even most cases, the beneficiaries are already in jobs, so that university education is bound to improve their efficiency rather than making tern prospective job-seekers.
With the distance learning institutes complementing the efforts of the conventional universities, we can expect not only a rise in efficiency in jobs across the country, including the business of governance itself, but also a general rise in enlightenment (and may one dare add, morality) in the country. We would do well to recall that development started in earnest in Europe form the period of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, when the middle class began to expand apace and creativity was boosted. If we need a population that can competently think through the problems of the country, and who through their training are sufficiently creative in exploiting the many potentials of the country, we need a very large body of graduates, as has been found, for example, in Europe and America. It has to be admitted that the quality of the workforce in the country at present is generally dismally below expectation, and we must recognize that an incompetent workforce provides a fertile ground for corruption, the demon that currently holds the country captive.University education aims at training the intellect and refining L character. The larger the number of persons in a country that have had the benefit of this kind of training, the better for the country's efficiency and morality.
In the Nigerian context where the demand for a minimum wage of N18,000.00 (the equivalent of about four dollars a day) is strangely controversial, it may be asked how the country will manage to pay the wages of the very large number of graduates required to turn the country around and make it work efficiently. One obvious answer is that, with that number of graduates and other high-Level manpower, the country's gross domestic product (GDP) is bound to rise phenomenally, ensuring a decent standard of living for all. The GDP for the country as recorded for 2010 was 202,576 million American dollars. This placed the country in the 44th position among the 190 countries of the world. This compares with 14,528,550 million for the United States, 5,468,797 million for Japan and 2,250,209 for the United Kingdom. This shows that Nigeria still has a long way to go to catch up with the richest countries of the world. The resources, however, are there. What is required is a well-educated, well-motivated work force to turn the potentials into reality.
EDUCATION AND THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS
Having discussed the importance of a highly enlightened citizenry for the development of a nation, we may now examine the goals of development which the Nigerian government has set out for itself, and this can be found in the millennium development goals which, along with other nations of the world, the country has signed up to.
There are, in all, 8 goals incorporating 18 targets. Leaving aside the targets, these goals are as fellows:
Goal 1 Eradicating extreme poverty and hungry
Goal 2 Achieve universal primary education
Goal 3 Promote gender equality and empower woman
Goal 4 Reduce child mortality
Goal 5 Improve maternal health
Goal 6 Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Goal 7 Ensure environmental sustainability
Goal 8 Development a global partnership for development
It is instructive that Nigeria undertook to achieve all these goals by 2015. It is even more instructive that from various reports, the country is not likely to meet that deadline. But this is hardly surprising. Looking at the goals themselves, one can say that they express only pious hopes, which some may argue is in the nature of resolutions at international conferences. The goals do not constitute a working agenda for development. For anything concrete to be done about those goals, Nigeria should have designed a process of development with verifiable milestones.
For example, what is the effect of saying, as Goal 1 does, that poverty and hunger should be eradicated? Any meaningful response to this would require a quantification of the problem. What really, apart from intelligent guesses, is the extent of hunger and poverty in the country? Surely, they are all pervading. But there is a difference even between 95% and 80%. After quantifying the problem, we can then meaningfully think of solutions. If the problem has to be overcome, shall we say, in twenty years, then we set up verifiable milestones. Those milestones may be the years 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015. It has to be seen that something is being done, and the media would be rendering a good service to the country by making it its business to verify all claims that are made.
We may begin by asking whether the country actually need be as poverty-stricken as it is. Many would argue that it need not. For one thing, there is outrageous inequality of distribution of the country's resources, with a small segment of people, mostly in political positions and in the new El Dorado of oil and banking businesses, enjoying an inordinate share of the country's wealth. To make matters worse, it is not at all clear that those who enjoy these advantages even pay adequate tax.* Redistribution of resources can start from there, and then more money can be devoted to education, which is the only sure avenue for social mobility. The argument is not that those who work very hard should not be fully compensated for their efforts; but that there is a difference between adequate compensation and extravagant compensation, as is currently realized even in the most developed countries of the world.
A sterile argument has been going on for some time now in the country as to whether the country should devote 26% of its revenue, as purportedly advised by UNESCO, to education. But the country does not really need UNESCO's advice on this matter. The government of Western Region in the 1950's did not seek any external body's advice before spending more than that percentage on education, nor did General Raw-lings in Ghana more recently.
The bottom line for national development is the development of the human capital. And no development of the human capital is possible without a vibrant university and higher education system.
Goal 2 is obviously relevant in this connection. The country has been fighting an epic battle with universal primary education which started in the 1950's in Western Region with very hopeful signs. But it seems thereafter that the more money is thrown at the problem, the less returns the country has obtained. The provision of this Goal is therefore only a reminder of the problem which for various reasons has defeated the country for a long time. This is, in an important sense, an organizational problem. It is difficult to justify the federal government seeking to control free primary education. If this had been the case in the 1950's Western Region would not have been able to register the success that it did with the programme. The presence of gigantic sums of money in Abuja would seem to have attracted the wrong kinds of people who were given contracts but nether bothered to deliver. To run a successful programme of universal education, we need a virile local government system, not a system in the pockets of the state governments. All we now get are accusations and counter-accusations as to how the huge sums of money allocated to education has disappeared. Competent and well-educated citizens must take an interest in the running of the local governments because this is where the lot of the ordinary people can be improved. Appropriate legislation may be called for here to ensure the right kind of personnel at the helm of affairs at the local government level.
We can then quantify the problem. For example, each local government will decide how many more classrooms and teachers are required to achieve Goal 2. Then milestones are set up: how many more classrooms and teachers are required on a yearly basis between now and 2020, which is our own chosen year of destiny. Again, the media should agree to be the watchdog of the population, making sure that the agreed goals are met.
The development of a virile tertiary education system would ensure, on the one hand, that the kind of personnel required for running the local government are readily available, and at the same time that the staff to run colleges in which teachers are produced for this level of education are also readily available. Once again, attention to university education would pay off.
Goals 3 to 5 have to do with the welfare of women, which predictably suffers in every poor and underdeveloped country. What is required in Goal 3 is that there must be a way of measuring the progress being made in the admission of girls at all tiers of education. Admittedly, without reliable census figures it will be difficult to measure exactly what progress is being made in this area. It does seem, impressjonistically, however, that the record of admission of women to the nation's universities is satisfactory. Indeed, in course of time, there may well be more female than male undergraduates, which would probably reflect the proportions of the sexes within the population. The long-term effect of this is already becoming evident, with more and more women distinguishing themselves in prominent positions in government and business. With regard to Goal 4, the expectation is that, with continuous improvement in the educational status of women, child mortality will be drastically reduced. Women would know how to take good care of themselves in pregnancy and would pay due attention to their nutritional needs. It is necessary to remind ourselves that a better educated society is a more prosperous society able to provide the basic necessities of life. This also goes for Goal 5, which deals with maternal health. A society of well educated, well-informed citizens is inevitably a healthier country than a society of poor and ignorant citizens.
It is right for attention to be called to maternal health, but an opportunity should also be taken of stressing the need to improve health services generally in the country. This means building more hospitals and making services in them affordable. If the millennium goals were a serious programmed for development, we
should know by now the rate at which the number of hospitals in the country has been increasing in preparation for the arrival of 2020, since the 2015 envisaged in the millennium goals document is clearly out of the question. It is not too late to start serious planning.
With Goal 6 we come to some of the burning issues of the day. It cannot be said that nothing is being done in the country to combat HIV/AIDS and malaria, thanks very largely to external funding. But we would do well to reflect that HIV/AIDS and malaria thrive most virulently in countries where there is acute poverty and a very low level of education. Without adequate education, people cannot understand the real nature of the disease and must therefore rely on popular, sometimes misguided, beliefs about the condition. At the same time, acute poverty makes it difficult, if not impossible, for people to look after themselves without massive assistance from inside and outside the country. There is, it is true, considerable activity, but the planning underlying those activities, if there is any, is not made clear to" the public. We need to see a 'clear road-map to the eradication of these scourges, and an attentive media to report exactly what progress is being made.
It is obvious that not enough basic research is being done in the country about these and other health conditions; but rather, we seem happy to adopt the research done in other countries and eagerly apply them here. The reason for this is obvious. No country, it is true, can be completely self-sufficient in research, but there is a certain minimum that every country should aim at, if only for security reasons. Unfortunately, the research capacity of Nigerian universities has dwindled with the years. We know very little about the people who inhabit this country, how many they are, and how many languages they speak, in precise terms; about the nutritional value of what they eat; about simple inventions from the raw materials that we have that can make life more tolerable and more productive for us. A specific example is malaria, on which the most basic research is done outside this
country, and even in countries which do not suffer from the disease. If the millennium goal is to be met, we need to see the way in which the research capacity in the country is to be boosted, with verifiable milestones. Funding is always a constraint, but misplaced priorities are also a significant problem. The implications of this for a robust tertiary system of education are obvious.
A clear plan to meet Goal 7 does not seem to be in place. Sustainability of the environment is one of the big worries of this age, with national self interests standing in the way of a joint global action. Nigeria also needs to articulate its own national interests, and a clear plan should be put in place to ensure that we preserve our own corner of the world for posterity. Obviously, the country has to watch out for "stronger countries which seek to preserve the sustainability of their own environment at the expense of the weaker nations.
Goal 8 is one which deserves careful examination, for it harbours the possibility, as does Goal 7, of stronger nations taking advantage of weaker ones. What sort of partnership can we have between very weak nations and very strong ones? Partnership is best based on equality, rather than on altruism, and so Nigeria's first responsibility is to reduce the yawning gap separating it from its stronger would-be partners. For this purpose, the country has to look more inwards than it has done thus far, for it cannot be safely assumed that Nigeria's development is necessarily compatible with the development of other countries. The country has to decide exactly what sort of partnership it requires and on what terms.
This really brings us to the crux of the matter. The kind of goals that Nigeria needs is one which clearly signposts the country's determined march from a weak, raw material producing nation to a strong manufacturing one. If such a set of goals can be successfully executed, everything else will fall in place There will be more money to spend on education, as a result of which the latent mental energies of Nigerians throughout the country will be released, making development an on-going, endless process. This is a very large area which cannot be dealt with here, but we need the most efficient phasing and sequencing of projects designed to raise the country's GDP on a continuous basis - how the mineral resources of the country can be maximally exploited with Nigerians in the driving seat; the order in which industries are to be established with a view to improving, again on a continuous basis, the standard of living in the depressed rural areas, so that all Nigerians can make their own contributions to the nation's development process. There are enough experts in the country to see to the design of this grand plan, and it may not be the same as what passes for national planning at the moment.
EDUCATION: THE OVERRIDING GOAL
In case it is not clear from what has been said so far, let me repeat that no meaningful or lasting development is possible without close attention to education. This is a fact clearly realized in every part. of the world, with the result that even highly developed nations are seeking to spend ever more money on education and improve their human capital. It is now commonplace to hear people remark that this is the knowledge age. If the possession of a secondary school education currently defines the educated man in many parts of the world, countries which are alert to their responsibilities now aim at giving . practically all their citizens tertiary education.
The same spirit is abroad in Nigeria, where the founding of universities has been liberalized, so that the country now has, at the last count, 118 universities, 45 of which are privately-owned; and the number is growing. This number is still comparatively small, given the population of the country which is now estimated to be about 160 million. Given appropriate reforms at the primary and secondary levels, and a more reliable system of selection and admission, the country should be able to support 300 universities which would give value for money.
Meanwhile, we have the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN) and the Distance Learning Institutes or Centres of the universities to cover the existing large areas of need, with resultant increase in self-esteem and productivity on the part of the beneficiaries. Many Nigerians have been given a second chance of acquiring university education through the same institutions, which are able to offer admission to large numbers of students who- , are able to follow their courses at a more leisurely pace than the conventional students in the universities. These institutions are by no means a temporary measure, but should be part of the university system catering for the special needs of their clientele.
The Distance Learning Institute of the University of Lagos clearly illustrates the point. It was part of the original concept of the university itself and came into being in the same year that the university was established, in 1962., Lagos was already the commercial centre of 'Nigeria and, with an eye strictly on relevance, the mandate of the establishment which was ultimately to be christened Distance Learning Institute of the University of Lagos, was clear, as stated in the Institute's Prospectus:The provision of facilities for part-time studies in such fields as Business Studies, Accounting, Law and Education through correspondence and distance learning techniques.That makes this Institute unique among similar establishments in the other universities in the country. I have every reason to believe that it has been discharging its mandate most creditably, thus contributing to the educational development in the country, and ultimately to the development of the country itself.
Report prepared by Iheoma Thompson
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