The UK government says Nigeria has a significant opportunity to surmount its challenges through cutting-edge research and innovation.
UK Senior Country Education Adviser in Nigeria, Ian Attfield said this in Abuja during a training programme organised by the British Council on Going Global Partnerships for National Universities Commission and the Federal Ministry of Education on Effective National System of Innovation in Nigeria.
Attfield said that “the workshop was organised basically for knowledge transfer to discuss potentials and exploit innovations that come out of Nigeria.”
He identified flooding, Demographic pressure, and Energy amongst other challenges affecting Nigeria, stressing that “they are not peculiar to the country but also have a global impact.”
According to him, “It is about spreading knowledge of how countries like the UK have developed technologies over several decades, Nigeria has tremendous people and talents. These skills need to be applied to some of the challenges affecting Nigeria.”
“The UK believes the best of Nigerian people who scale the talent and we know that the problems can be solved,” Attfield added.
The Director, of Higher Education British Council, Professor Temitayo Shenkoya said the Partnership Workshop was held to bridge the gap between the universities and the industry.
Professor Shenkoya said that Nigeria’s current University curriculum can only fit into the 2nd industrial revolution.
He called on the National Universities Commission and other key stakeholders to consistently keep up with the pace of development in curriculum development and in imbibing the concept of entrepreneurship that will enhance innovation within the nation’s higher education sub-sector.
Professor Shenkoya said; “We that stakeholders are not communicating with each other and that is why curriculum are been rejected sometimes by the industry so we saw that disconnect and we thought of bridging the gap, the curriculum is a living entity and it needs to be consistently upgraded.
“That is why we brought in stakeholders to network and bridge the gap. In the end, we expect the workshop to come up with key relevant policies.”
Delivering his keynote address, the Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Education, Andrew Adejo, said Nigeria would always improve and engage new methods of solving its problems.
Adejo said that Federal Ministry of Education has been able to input innovations into the system via automation of the Authentication and Evaluation process of Certificates.
“This has led to the generation of data of students pursuing their courses of studies outside the shores of Nigeria.
Also, the process of admission into the Federal Unity Colleges has been automated,” he explained.
Adejo reeled out the success story of the National Universities Commission in Curriculum Re-engineering.
According to the Permanent Secretary, “This makes the new curriculum more innovative and accentuates entrepreneurship and 21st-century skills as well as stimulates blended learning in its delivery.”
The Secretary General of the Committee of Vice Chancellors of Nigeria Universities, Professor Yakubu Ochefu said Nigeria needed a federated Repository of Research.
Professor Ochefu said; “Right now, we don’t have a federated Repository of Research. It is only been addressed by the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, we know that very soon this will be launched and we believe that with the innovation, financiers and industry experts can be involved.
“This is a key gap Nigeria needs to bridge.”
Akinwande Pearse who also participated in the workshop, said that major partners considered the intersection between the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, MSME financing and entrepreneurship curriculum.
Mercy Chukwudiebere
