 It's still the ballot 2023 and we are live at Plus TV Africa Studios here in Victoria Island Lagos. Now we have been talking education and just some in some way trying to set the pace for the new government that will be sworn in come later this year but the most important thing is before we went on the break we were talking about the reasons why we're still having to have these conversations these kinds of conversations in 2023 and I still have in the studio with me a professor, Professor Luis De Guji is of the Lagos Business School and he's a professor of business and we still have of course joining us from the United States Dr. Yelaye and we are also being joined by Aki Aking Pelu and he's also joining us via Zoom. Aki, let's start with you because you join the conversation pretty late. I have had a conversation with you before about education and we talked mostly about what's happening in Lagos and how the government has keyed in but I'll ask you a question that I asked the professor earlier on. There seems to be a growing narrative that the average Nigerian politician wants to keep the average Nigerian down ill-educated, ill-equipped with the necessary information about good governance and leadership, hence the level of education that we have. Is this something that you agree to or disagree to? All right, thank you very much Mariam. So if I got a question where you said every average politician is trying to make it ill-equipped, right? Yes. I guess that's the flow of the question. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Okay, fantastic. So I would say that when it's at political level, there are many ways to be able to judge and that's why I always talk about intention, then after intention we'll begin to look at actionable plans that come out of it. So the idea is anybody can promise you anything, anybody can tell you this is what I want to do, this is the impact I want to make, and these are the directions that we are looking at as beautiful as that sounds, that is still a promise and is still an intention. Then you begin to look at the actionable plans that come out of it. Now you check, but the plans that the person is rolling out and the actions that are being taken, you can tell whether the person is in the direction of the promises that has been made or not. So I think that these things are very simple to understand, but it's just that it's tricky because at the level of intention, you may not be able to say exactly whether this person can bring out what he has planned or not. But one of the things that I think you can use to judge are things like number one, use metrics like track record. So if you look at the track record of the person and you are able to say okay before now, what were the things that this person did, what were the things that were ruled out, what were the things that they filled in those times. You can tell whether there is, I mean that's like an integrity test, that's like a competency text that you can tell about the person. You know, so ideally every human being have their intentions, but you cannot tell. But the moment the actions begin to come out and you see the direction they go, you can almost tell that okay by the integrity test and commitment test, you could almost tell whether this person is in this direction or in that direction. So if somebody is trying to render maybe a particular administration or a sector in a quift, particularly if we talk about education, we can tell. They have track record that we can see and their face we can tell. You know, not just to look at oh the person has good promises for us and all of that. So I think that that should be the flow of the conversation around it. So trying to look at a track record then you can see the integrity test for that and commitment test for that. I hope that helps, Mary. Many have said that some of these people who have been our leaders right from when they were military administrators onto the you know the democratic dispensation had been beneficiaries of a rich education sector. But then these people are now leading us, these people who have asked us for our votes and then we have voted them into office, have refused to you know invest in that sector, grow it. And many of their children, many would say are schooling abroad and benefiting from a thriving education sector. So just as I asked Professor Bola Yele, are we part of the problem and how do we dig ourselves out of this pits that we've put ourselves in? Sir Miriam, the audio is, it breaks up. So I didn't quite, can you repeat the question? Okay Professor, I was asking Aki this question. I don't know if he also heard me. Aki did you hear me? It was breaking so I quickly tried to decide for what you were saying. Okay so I said, as just as I said to Professor Bola Yele about these so-called this politicians, I'm saying that our politicians and our leaders have been beneficiary of a great education, whether it be when it was free and some of those who have been our military administrators, our military presidents, even those who are now our leaders in the democratic dispensation, they have benefited from good education. Their children are in schools in better clients where education is prioritized. And so I'm asking, these people have led us, when they were, before they devoted them into office, they gave us a very beautiful manifesto, making promises just as you said. And none of those promises have been kept. And I'm saying, should the blame be with us, the people, and how do we get ourselves out of this quagmire? Okay is that question to me or to Dr Aki Boon? Both of you can attempt. Okay, the first question that you asked him, and I think you didn't quite hear it, is the one about the average politician wanting to keep the average Nigerian down. I disagree with that statement. The average politician in Nigeria has no thought whatsoever for the Nigeria enough to say, let me keep them down. Wow. The average Nigerian politician wants to get there and enrich him by himself. So let's just say that there's a group of people sitting somewhere planning how to keep the other people down. No. Each person is looking for, when I get there, I'm going to get what is mine. And so whatever happens to the rest of you, they don't care. Let's not make ourselves more important than in their minds. They don't care. Now, how do we get ourselves out of this quagmire? I am glad you asked. You have said that we benefited from a great education. And I always used to put that because we could really, we could write. At least my generation, we could write and which is not what we have now. But what I didn't find out over the years is that that was pretty much all we could do. The education that is designed for our environment was non-existent. We did not just let the government we were running, we did not, many people don't know how we got into military rule. They don't know how we got into democratic rule. They don't know who is in charge of what. So it's the same education we were getting that we're still getting that's not applicable to where we live. The thing that's better for my generation and maybe a little after is that we can read, we can write, we can memorize the thing, I'll put it down and move on. Well, the world has changed. So we must, we design the education to where it is applicable. We are still memorizing things and we're still writing them down in examples with the professor. And some of the professors are still using notes from when they know I came out of the oven. That's got to change. That's how to get as cross-abundance. Who are we, design education that works for the 21st century? From the ground up, from the ground up. And I mean fresh, prep aid, we must start from there. We need a new proper criterion, but it has to be curriculum that fits so that they can understand what's going on around them. We have to revamp education. We have to address it. In other words, we probably have to overhaul it. But I always ask this question because you see today we're voting in not just the president but members of the National Assembly but the lower chamber and the higher chamber. And these are the people who are still responsible in making sure that these issues are addressed and implemented at a federal level. At the state level, we also have state houses of assembly and the governors and the commissioners, the executive council. These are still politicians. And she has said something that's very interesting to me that they don't have the capacity to want to hold us down because they're not thinkers. I don't know if that's something that we can totally agree on. But if it's anything to go by, if they're not thinkers, who's to say that they're going to even consider this overhauling of the education sector? Well, I still boil down on that particular key question and talk about leadership. The reason why I talk about leadership is because of the fact that if you look at the educational systems and the way we've been handling it before, we have good leaders before. But right now, the leadership have shifted. And with the leadership for example we see, for example, when you're a leader, it depends on also who and who you are pointing to, the minister of education. We live by examples. If you have good examples, for example, those leaders, for example, that can be in a position to be addressing this issue, for example, like curriculum, this issue, for example, infrastructure, this issue, for example, compensation. That's going to be what's going to happen to help people out. We are benefited from Nigeria because we are correct. Most of the people have their children abroad. The reason why they have their children abroad is because the educational system in Nigeria is bad. So they do understand. Yes. They do recognize that the situation is bad. So why not address it instead of sending out your children out of the country with taxpayers' money? The only way to address it, the key to your address is what is happening right now. Make a change. Because if you make a change, it changes your systems. If it doesn't affect me, why would I want to make a change? Why should it affect you? But then as we try to profile solutions to all of this, I want to bring our king into this discussion because we've talked about the issue of infrastructure. We've talked about the issue of out-of-school children. Let's talk about the teachers themselves, which seems to be another major problem we have in the education sector. Over time, we've heard reports of tests being conducted for teachers and they have failed those tests and they are expected to teach our children to be better people in the society. What more can be done to salvage education sector vis-à-vis having the right crop of teachers teach in the classrooms? Akin. Thank you very much. I hope you can hear me well now. Yes, we can. So the problem of the educational system in Nigeria is quite, it's been of age and it's quite a difficult one because listening to the conversations and the intelligent contribution of other people. I mean, I've had leadership a lot. I've had the redesign of curriculum, which is very, very true. Now, let me add to that quote there that we have this generation of teachers and educators that need a conversion program. And I will tell you this, there is a lot. I mean, the people who came into education as teachers. Now, these people came either they are teachers by circumstances or teachers without passion. When I come into, because I've been to the classroom before and because I've been to the classroom, I have the knowledge of the classroom and the policy making and all of that. If I have no passion for what I am doing, how am I going to help the students out? Where is the patient's level? Now, the times before now when people learn in the classroom, everybody are audio learners. Your teachers come into the class, they write in the classroom, you listen to them, you write what they are saying, and then they give you a test. You try to regurgitate exactly what they said to you and they mark you. Now, things have changed. Our curriculums are quite obsolete. The teachers and the executors of both things are also quite obsolete. I think Professor Ilea was saying that the professors that we have, when last did they profess? I mean, you are a professor because you are writing something. You are writing a paper daily, you are getting very high knowledge because this thing gets, it increases, it changes almost every minute or every second. Now, nobody's developing themselves again. The same knowledge you use in your pedagogy application like 20 years ago, 25 years ago, what I call the typewriter generation is the same thing you want to bring to teach. So, number one, you came into the teaching sector or education sector with the wrong motivation. Maybe you were not motivated so you were a teacher by circumstance. You wanted to do a course. That's why they gave you this and they gave you education maybe because you didn't do well. Some because you thought there's nothing else you can do with your life, then you just go into education. When you come with that same energy, you come with that same demotivated spirit into the classroom. You are not getting better. You are not understanding the students. You don't get to understand them because a teacher in the classroom is not just a teacher. You are serving as a coach, as an advisor, as a leader, as a temporary parent, as a mentor. I mean, you're wearing about eight caps. It takes a lot to be able to help them. Let me give you an example. Many years ago, when I was in the classroom, there used to be a lady, let me call her Jane. Now, Jane was a girl in the classroom that just wanted to be expelled from school. So she would do anything to ensure that we see her publicly so that she can be expelled. So she would misbehave. And everybody kept telling me that, come, there's a problem with this child. Don't go near this child. This child is going to be rude. At the end of the day, you think which teacher's here before you? You think that we are stupid, but the time you get your own part of the insult, then you will know that you didn't respect yourself enough. And I took my time and I said, I need to study this girl. There's something wrong with this girl. What is the root cause? Because every emotional outburst has an emotional root cause. So it takes patience, sitting down with the child, understanding the child, then calling the child, speaking the language the child can understand. Listen, it takes a lot to be a teacher. So bringing it to the national level and the educational sector, we need a new generation of teachers. We need teachers who can be trained, retrained. We need some teachers to lead the sector, not because they can't teach, but because they have used, they have refused to be adaptable. They don't want to adapt to the things that are needed to help the children. We always say that the wiser the teacher, the better the student and the better the teacher, the greater the students in the future. So I think that we need to remove some set of teachers. I think that a lot of training needs to go into it and to the first century learning training and where the teachers can understand that what you are doing is by passion. And of course, there are lots of things that the government is going to do in their own path in terms of providing resources, providing an atmosphere for the train and ensuring that the students are reaching the bar, that the teachers are learning what they are doing on a daily basis. All right, thank you so much. I think we could just go on the next one. But we have to do it. Yes, we have to. We want to say thank you to all our guests who have been a part of the conversation. I want to say thank you very much to Professor Luis Nzeogu. He is a professor of business at the Lagos Business School, Dr. Bala Yelie, who is an educationist who joined us from the United States. And Akinfeilu, who is the principal consultant at Rudio Hope. Thank you so much, gentlemen and lady, for being part of the conversation. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, it's till the ballot 2023 where we'll take a break. And of course the conversations continue. We will be bringing you more and more updates from the field. Stay with us. 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.