UTOMI: Mixed Factors Dwarf Performance In Nigeria’s Education System

Poor performance of Nigeria’s tertiary education system resulted from an ideological rush to expand access to school facilities, without a matching funding to build teacher quality, good curriculum and facilities. This was the position of Prof. Pat Utomi, Founder of the Centre for Values in Leadership (CVL) and Chairman of the Editorial Board of Prime Business Africa, a continental media platform focusing on business and political economy.

Utomi, alongside former Editor of The Guardian on Sunday, Mr Jahman Anikulapo, moderated Prime Business Africa’s Socio-economic and Entrepreneurship Development Series programme on Funding Tertiary Education in Nigeria on Tuesday. Tuesday’s SEEDS event, the second in its series, featured seven panelists.
Utomi, a professor of Political Economy noted that funding tertiary education system in Nigeria should take cognisance of teacher quality, scope of access, curriculum and facilities, factors which he said were central to having an effective education system.

On curriculum, he observed that it should be tailored  to drive entrepreneurship. This, he said, “has “pushed the system towards crisis that need more entrepreneurial universities.”