Truly, quality education is a must for any serious nation that wants proper growth and development. Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) always claims the only language the Federal Government understands is strike, and has ceaselessly used this weapon to get national attention for its demands.
Quite unfortunately, our government has been confirming that assertion. I could also remember our time as undergraduates in University of Lagos some years back, we ended up spending 6years for a 4year course as a result of strike actions.
At the end of the day, we eventually graduated and had to stay at home for months before going for service. Quite unfortunate! The intellectual loss during any strike action cannot be quantified with various antisocial activities like kidnapping, prostitution, internet fraud, thuggery, armed robbery and many others, perpetuated by idle students.
Ironically, many of Nigerian employers will be requesting for lower entry age into the job market when our children will not finish from school on time. Most time, they are older than what employers are looking for with poor communication and career skills. This brings me to the issue of technological and economic growth of our dear country.
How do we develop when there is a slanted stereotype belief and opinion regarding university degree and technical certificates? It has been noted in several quarters that we will not be fulfilled as a nation, if special attention is not paid to the development of technical education. We cannot simply develop without wellequipped manpower in vocational trainings.
Who says that our numerous students from secondary schools struggling to gain admission into the few available spaces in our university on a yearly basis cannot be channeled through attaining their best in the area of vocational and technical competence?
It is high time we stop the attitude of the wrong perception that it is only those who attend universities or polytechnics that matter in the society. Parents, employers, students and even government perceived technical education as less important to the university education. As a result, its products are being treated as inferior. We need everybody for industrial and technological development of our dear country. As it is now, Nigeria lacks skilled technicians like plumbers, bricklayers, tillers, carpenters, painters, auto mechanics, among others.
Those who are car owners and cannot afford to service their cars at manufacturers' designated areas will have a lot of tales to tell. A lot of the poorly-trained roadside mechanics in our surroundings caused more harm to vehicles when contacted to service vehicles, not to talk of house builders, plumbers, painters and the rest.
Our failure to pay the required attention to vocational and technical education had made competent technicians from neighbouring countries like Ghana, Togo and others to take over many plum jobs in the real estate sub-sector.
Another unfortunate aspect is that most of the so-called expatriate engineers who are heavily paid in our construction sites and companies in Nigeria are graduates of technical and vocational colleges in their various countries, yet Nigeria failed to take technical institutions seriously while we "worship" them because they are foreigners.
The main point here is the fact that not everyone needs a university education. This has made most of our graduates to lack skills which are expected to be acquired from technical and vocational institutions.
Our leaders must wake up from slumber and give the needed importance to technically-oriented personnel who are to be the initiators, facilitators and implementers of technological development of our nation by adequately training our citizenry leading to self-reliance and sustainability.
Metalwork technology, mechanical/ automobile technology, electrical and electronic technology, building and woodwork technology etc., can serve as change agents. Until we begin to change our attitude towards technical programme, our country will continue to remain a technologically backward and dependent nation.
Adequate resources should be allocated to the programme in order to achieve positive outcomes. A comprehensive reform toward technical education and a deliberate attempt to uplift technical know-how by ensuring that Nigerians begin to respect and accord the same regard to technicians as they have doing to university degrees. As parents, we must stop seeing something odd in our children opting for technical education if they will surely excel in their chosen field. Enough of mere paper qualifications.
