By Anthonia Soyingbe - Senior Reporter, Lagos.
There is no doubt that the Nigerian educational system is in chaos and if one is to judge by recent happenings, it is obvious that there are many factors responsible for the crises bedevilling the sector and these are unfortunately having adverse effects on the average Nigerian child.
Some team members at the conference
However, in a bid to conceive positive changes that would sanitise the system, a group of concerned individuals under the umbrella of Incubator Africa Development Team (IADT) recently launched a collaborative platform that may possibly help identify innovative and sustainable solutions to these problems.
The platform is expected to among other things provide the right leadership that would help maintain the on-going momentum in the transformation of Nigeria’s education sector as stakeholders across Africa will soon converge to brainstorm on how to curb dwindling standard of education on the Continent.
Addressing newsmen ahead of the Summit, a founding member of the group, Mrs Bolaji Osime said, “This is not a talk shop but a solution providers and implementation workshop. We believe we have talked enough about the problems in the sector. It is now time to walk the talk. Our children can no longer wait, parents are anxious; we need now to focus on transformation of the sector.
“We are all interested in transformation; we all came together hoping that we can help to transform the education sector in Nigeria. The key is working together and collaborating in strategic unity on game-changing projects.
“With our combined strength, through high impact context-relevant programmes, projects, events, and policy leadership, together, we will do all we know that is required to transform Nigeria’s education system.
“We intend to focus on transformation initiatives in Nursery, Primary and Secondary Schools; State and Federal Government Institutions, individuals among others”, said Osime.
She noted that the various teams on the Platform will be intervening in the areas of leadership, teaching and learning, quality assurance, information technology, special needs, school transformation and Improvement programmes.
The Partnership forum, Osime explained, is the first opportunity for IADT to convene a meeting of change makers in the education sphere to explore how, by working in partnership to establish the basis for collaborating on projects and programmes that will serve to enhance the capacity of member organisations and people, individually and collectively to transform Nigeria’s education system, through existing and new interventions.
Another member of the Platform, Ms Bola Kehinde, described education as an innovative way of life adding that there are now new strategies for both teaching and learning that help the children in Private Education sector to do a lot better than the children who are merely in the Public Education sector.
According to Kehinde, “For this group, it is about our passion for education; and to see that the Nigerian child is moved forward by being well taught and given all the tools needed and to also help with teachers’ training so that the teachers themselves will know what to do with children. And we have talked about it long enough, what we are passionate about at the moment is moving forward” she asserted.
The IADT Platform according to the members is formed having in mind those in the public schools who do not have the opportunity for good education or cannot afford good education like their counterparts in the private schools.
For Kehinde, “In all ramifications, education is expensive. For education to be innovative and for you to be able to reach the child, you have to have some equipment. Education cannot be free and the government too as well as individuals who want to touch the Nigerian children must know that education cannot be free even in government schools, there got to be some investments.
“ I think the government has started realizing this and it has started investing in the nation’s education but more can be done”, Kehinde noted.
She thinks “Government has to learn to invest right by investing in the education sector as it is the most important sector in the nation. When there is insufficient funding of the sector and those in there do not have enough tools to work with, it can account for failure.
“if teacher do not have enough tools to works with and the learners do not also have what to work with it can account for failure, which is why we are saying that government has to invest just like the Private sector is investing and that is when the collaboration of both the teaching faculties and the children can bring out the expected result”, Kehinde added.
Explaining how the Platform came into existence, Mrs Oyinda Sonola another member said, “Incubator Africa Nigeria is the brainchild of Mrs Alero Ayinda Otobo, who saw it as a God-given vision to raise a platform whereby technocrats and other people who have their strength in different areas of education and who are passionate and are not just seeing education as a means of earning income but as a ministry, can come together and reform the already sliding education system of the nation”.
Speaking further, Sonola observed, “And as the name indicates, we are already moving beyond the shores of Nigeria. We are having some programmes, which we believe will come up very soon with other African countries and we already have some structures in place, whereby we also bring people who are interested outside the shores of Africa to other countries where we identify their system of education as being one of the best. So it goes much more than Nigeria.”
Another founder of the Platform, Lara Cookey said that for the forthcoming programme, Incubator Africa has identified stakeholders, “the first thing that we want to do is to bring these people together and get them talking about solutions because there have been so many seminars and talk shops and yet no solution.”
“We are have different skills and we realized that there is so much power in us in collaborating than each of us doing things separately. And we really think that is one of the things that is not helping us in Nigeria. There are people highly skilled with the hunger for things to improve and all they need is a platform like this to transform things in Nigeria and in this case, education”, Cookey added.
On whether Incubator Africa was a political platform or had the potential of becoming one, Mr Gori Olusina-Daniels one of the arrowheads of the group, said, “Education is everybody’s business and it should not be politicized in any way. So the Incubator Africa is a neutral platform and here we come from different background, skills and professions united with one goal, which is to see the education system in Nigeria transformed.
“And we believe that government with whatever political affiliation can buy into that because education is the foundation on which we can build the fabric of the society. And we have made ourselves available to actually assist whatever the political affiliation and even non-political organisation and any one that is committed to transforming education at any level.
“So the partnership forum that we are holding soon is to discuss ideas, which, must be executed, and this requires partnership with variable organisations, including government departments. But this is a private sector initiative and we are guided by one thing, execution and not talking”, she pointed out.
The Summit Organising Executive, Mrs. Folasade Adefisayo said over 50 different partners in different areas are expected to meet and brainstorm and proffer solutions to the myriads of crises rocking the sector “all with the aim to finding lasting solutions to the various challenges bedevilling the sector”.
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