 Welcome back, it's the Ballads 2023, coming to you from PLOS TV Africa. We are taking a conversation next to education and we have two guests joining us. Joining us by a service, Burlau Oyele, an educator and professor, Louis Anzegwer, professor of Business School and former Director of International Business Resource Center. Many thanks for joining us, lady and gentleman. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Let's start with ladies first. We'll try to. Let's talk with Mrs Oyele. It's important that we understand the deaths of education in Nigeria. First things first, we have over 10 plus million out-of-school children. We're hoping that in 2024 and the years beyond we would be able to reduce that number and we haven't even begun to scratch the surface when it comes to the SDG goals in terms of education. Why do you think that Nigeria is continuously lagged behind in this regard? Well, let me get something out of the way because I noticed that there's a bit of a hesitation in knowing what to call me. I am Dr Oyele. So yeah, let's get out of the way. But here is the thing. The question I have for all of us as Nigerians is this. Why is it election years that we start to wonder about the things that happen in our country? It's usually because we think that someone who's going to get in position and do something miraculous. But there is no such magic bullet. This is an everyday thing. You quoted a number. The question is what has led to this number of children being out of school, being uneducated. We don't speak about those, but we want on this day to start addressing those things. So my view is that we continue to lag behind because we wait for one person to come fix things, whereas these problems are everyday problems. The education system in Nigeria is not the purview, really, for the most part, of the federal government. They have the unity schools and those. But the education in Nigeria is the purview of the local government who are not having an election today, and the state government who are not having an election today. So the problem, if we're going to fix it, cannot be a one-day thing when we're waiting for someone to come fix things. Our policies are set for the most part. Whoever comes in today, we can only hope, provides a vision that catalyzes the other systems of education that we have to move forward. But let's stop this one-day discussion. Every single day is a day we must wonder why we keep lagging behind. To say that these conversations are not being had is not being fair to the people who are in the forefront of fighting or advocating for good education. Now, let me show you where I'm going to. Every single year we celebrate World Education Day or Day of the Girl Child or something, and we always pivot in the direction of education. I'm not in any way saying that we should not have these conversations every day. But when I was younger, we had the directorate of education. Those people who monitored schools, primary education was a beautiful thing. I went to public school. But today, can we say that you can send your child to public education, to public schools? These people who are in charge of the education, whether it be at local government or state levels, how accessible are they? They come out and give us these very bogus figures and tell us that they're doing this and that. But if we go and look at it, nothing's been done. So again, should we say that we're not doing our jobs or are we not pushing as much as we should? Let me go to a thing that I think a previous speaker talked about. Understanding our democracy is important. If I know that the person that's supposed to put a school in my neighborhood is a local government, and everybody pays attention to that. When they're running for election, we know what they did. We know what they didn't do. We know what each sector of government is supposed to provide. And we focus on that. Rather than is my king's man there, is my sister's mother's son there. And how much of the national cake or the state cake or the local government cake can come to me personally. If we know, if our education is geared towards the system that we run, and our children know who's responsible for what, and our secondary school kids know who's responsible for what, then we know where to go. But at this point, we have no idea what the thing is anymore. You spoke about the inspectors of education. I remember them too. Except my younger brothers went to a school that was called Local Authority One and Local Authority Two. And we know who was in charge of that. But then we adopted this new thing we have, and we don't understand it. And we're not teaching our kids history. And we're not teaching them enough social studies. So we will never be able to know where the problem is. And we treat our political roles like Cheap Tency Titles. So once I get it, everybody's afraid to challenge me because they think it's something I should hold forever. It's really more than we pick a problem here, we pick a problem there. It is fundamental to who we are as Nigerians, that we understand the system that we run, that we hold people accountable, that we see what's going on around us. When I say what's going on around us, I don't mean the Western countries. I mean what's going on in African countries. We're smaller than us. Less and doubt than us. All right, let's bring Professor Anzego into the conversation right now. Yeah, Maryanne talked about going to public school. I also attended a public school. But right now, the issue right now is that most parents are taking their children to private school because of the disaster we have in public education in Nigeria, except for maybe a state like Lagos, where the state government actually is accessing the UBE. There's a UBE fund, and various states government are supposed to provide some sort of equity contribution before they can actually access the funds. Maryanne talked about out of school children. One of the reasons why people might not even stay in school is because they don't even have the facility to take care of this infrastructure and all of that. Some states, if you go to some state, what you see there are students having their classes under the trees. Some are just sitting on bare floors. Their funds are provided by the Universal Budget Education, the UBEC. But these states are not accessing the fund because the state governments are not channeling funds into their own contribution to getting those funds from the federal government. How do we resolve all of that? Thank you so much. I went to public school anyway. We all did. The biggest problem is that I will look at, for example, when ministers like Egu and ministers like Sir Abahabed, we are in power, they have a good leadership and those leadership, for example, built on experience. So I think one of the biggest challenges we have in here in terms of even though we have the funding, we don't have enough funding in education today. We have not actually made the UN United Nations goal. We had about 7.5 percent of this goal whereby, for example, the United States say 15 to 30 percent. So that's a part. And then when these funds are given, just like you mentioned, it's corrupt. So leaders, for example, those people, for example, that are giving these funds are not channeling in the own way. Even though, for example, you went to public schools, I know for sure, during that particular time there was free education. At the same time, there was food for people in that particular period. But right now, when you look at people who are going to private schools, they are going there. We are getting that not enough Nigeria can afford that, the private schools. And so the only way now we can be able to solve this particular problem is the leadership in terms of whoever is going to handle that particular funds. How do I mean by leadership, for example? I mean, it starts from the head. It starts from the minister of education. It starts also from the programs that we are going to be able to develop. Correclon is also very, very important. More important, just like Bola mentioned, about Correclon, we need to teach our students liberal arts. When you look at Nigeria, Nigeria is on the last, on the bottom of the list, in the world. We are on the bottom of the list in terms of children that are out of school. And then that means, for example, if we are in the bottom of that particular list, it all means that policies are not being implemented the way they are supposed to be implemented. About 27 million Nigerians, children, for example, are polyeducated. They are polyeducated. Because they are polyeducated, they mean, for example, the curriculum they have been developed are not being enhanced. So teachers, for example, need to be trained. We need to train our teachers so that they can be able to implement those policies that have been spent, because it is hard to implement those policies at the key issue here. Talking about the fact that these policies are not being implemented or teachers are not being trained, etc. There are people who, the pundits who would say that these strategies are not hard to implement or these policies are not hard to be implemented, but it's a calculated attempt by those in power to keep Nigerians on a southern level. So things like what we've seen today, which continue to happen, which will be beneficial to the political class. I don't know how true that is. I think the problem now is what is dressing today. Remember again that the education is for the human rights of human beings in every country. We are not about it. Education, for example, gives you the knowledge, gives you the skill, gives you all you need. What we see today basically are not the true aspects of education. We see the different, you know, bargain of what education can provide. And so until we are able to enhance that particular curriculum, teach people the knowledge, teach people the skill they need, then we're going to be still having this problem we're having today, you know, this talk that we see around, you know, especially in places like Lagos. All right, okay, let's get Dr. Abola Oile. You seem to be nodding your head. I don't know if it was in agreement or if you're not agreeing to what we're saying. Let's just get to your input right now, Dr. Oile. I agree with what he said a lot. The part that I want to bring into it is this. We keep using the word leadership. And when we use leadership, it sort of absolves us of our responsibilities. But where does leadership come from? Our leadership, they rise from among us. So when a government creates a system, who runs the system? The average Nigeria. The average Nigerian is the one who decides whether they're going to open your file or not. The average Nigerian is the one who decides if they're going to teach that thing that the curriculum said. I mean, I have a lot to say about the curriculum, not today. But what I am hoping we also take from this conversation is this, to build the Nigeria that we want. Each of us must recognize that we need to change something. The government creates a train. The average Nigerian decides they're going to have extra ways to teach people out of the train fairs. I'm saying that he's right. The curriculum is not right. The people who put in charge don't have a love for this country. We still think our country is a cake to be shared. All of those things are correct, but the average Nigerian must recognize we must change. We want things to change, but we like all our perks. We want to continue to do the things we want to do. So I agree with him a lot. But then I say, it's you, it's me. It's me not buying exam papers. It's me not siphoning the money. It's me doing the job Monday through Friday that I am hired to do. It's me inspecting those schools without asking them for money ahead of time. It's us, every one of us. The curriculum, the people in school, the infrastructure, it doesn't matter really what any government does. The average Nigerian can get there and dismantle it. And so far a lot of what we're seeing is each of us saying, let me get my own. Let me get my own. Let me get my own. And then the people on the bottom have nothing. How many leaders do we have? Are they up to a million? But there's 200 million of the rest of us. A handful of them. 200 million. I'm sorry. It's a handful of them. Exactly. So if the rest of us are the ones that work in the ministry, the ones that work in the banks, the ones that work in the schools, if we're doing everything that we're supposed to do, our own good deeds will overpower their own bad deeds. We have to go for a very quick break. Please stay with us. We're also being joined by Akir Kikbalu. He's a principal consultant of Edu Hub. When we come back after the news break, we're still going to be talking about education. Stay with us, please. Hello. Hope you enjoyed the news. Please do subscribe to our YouTube channel and don't forget to hit the notification button so you get notified about fresh news updates.