UNILORIN Vice-Chancellor Advocates Creative Curriculum Reform

The Vice Chancellor of University of Ilorin, Prof. Wahab Olasupo Egbewole has called on the Federal Government and other strategic stakeholders in the educational sector as well as end-users of the system, to embark on an urgent surgical and creative review of the country’s educational curriculum as a decisive step to halting the nation-wide crisis rocking the system which had rendered graduands from our school-system incapable of practical application of the knowledge and skills they purportedly acquired from the school system.
Prof. Egbewole also posited that the curriculum review should be part of a reform that would totally overhaul the bed-rock of the country’s entire educational system with a view to transforming it to a substance that could truly meet her multi-faceted strategic needs and aspirations as well as catering for future generations.
The professor of Law, who is also a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, made the clarion call as the Guest-Lecturer at this year’s Seventh Convocation Lecture of the Federal University Oye Ekiti (FUOYE), held yesterday at the university’s main campus, Oye, where he dispassionately undertook a historical interrogation, with the aid of empirical references and analytical tool, of where, when and how the country got her educational familiar wrong, juxtaposing it with the sorrowful realities on ground today and using it to fore-warn of a looming doom ahead, if an urgent reform was not embarked upon.
The astute scholar gave credence to his finding when he successfully and incontrovertibly drew apt correlation between the country’s current poverty index which had earned her the unenviable position of the world’s poverty capital and the dysfunctional educational system which consciously placed emphasis on certificate of merit in place of practicals, creativity and capacity to deliver after graduation.
In his view, what is currently obtainable in Nigeria today was at variance with global best practices, especially in Europe and America where emphases are now placed on practical proficiency and productivity as against certificate and admonished that it was time the country did a re-think and fall on line.
In his bid to identify some of the areas the country got her educational priorities wrong, the Guest-Lecturer discovered with concern the culture of giving more priorities to quantity in certification as opposed to quality that is based on worthiness, and capability, this he noted remained one of the banes for our underdevelopment.
The erudite scholar while distinguishing between schooling, learning and education, observed that another problem facing the country’s educational system was emphasis on schooling, which tended to de-emphasise learning and inclusiveness and concluded that only inclusive education, which he termed “schooling-plus”, could take the country out of the present cocoon.
With curiosity and nostalgia, the iconic scholar recalled that even without modern technology, pre-colonial Nigerian communities were able to devise and practise a comprehensive educational system that was able to serve their needs and also in retrospect, he recalled that both the missionaries and European colonialists who dominated the affairs of the country before independence in 1960, succeeded in formulating the kind of educational policy that suited their administrations.
The senior lawyer concluded his clarion call with this words on the marble, “Nigeria is in deep throes today as virtually every aspect of our national life is in crisis and not a few are hopeless that a solution could be found. Experience all over the world shows that education takes the lead in naational rebirth…”
The event which was chaired by FUOYE’s Deputy Vice Chancellor (Administration), Prof. Jeremiah Sola Omotola, representing the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Sunday Abayomi Fasina, who was un-avoidably absent, had in attendance all the unuversity’s Principal Officers and was also graced by the Vice Chancellors of Landmark and Tolubosun unversities, both in Kwara State.