Nigeria Overhauling Tertiary institutions for global competitiveness – Minister

The Minister of Education, Professor Mamman Tahir has said that Nigeria is overhauling the higher education sector of the nation to further meet global competitiveness.

The Minister stated this at the opening ceremony of the two-day 8th edition of the Libsense Open Science Symposium being held in Abuja, the nation’s capital with the theme: ”Advancing Open Science and Collaboration: The role of Stakeholders”.

According to him, the ministry is aware that Nigeria’s educational sector, designed to produce manpower for the social, economic and technological development of the country is facing some challenges, which includes: inadequate funding, inadequate infrastructural facilities, shortage of academic staff, strike actions and brain-drain.

In this regard, Professor Mamman said an eight-man committee, headed by Dr. Nuhu Yakubu was recently inaugurated to provide a roadmap for the education sector, stressing that Nigeria’s higher education landscape requires total overhaul for global competition, which president Bola Tinubu is ready to confront headlong as he has promised 25 percent budget allocation to the sector.

“You will agree with me that the higher education landscape in Nigeria requires a total overhaul so that it can effectively put Nigeria universities and other levels of tertiary institutions at par with others around the globe. And the President is ready to confront it headlong,” he said.

The minister commended the Committee of the Vice-Chancellor of Nigerian Universities and other stakeholders for organizing the symposium, describing it as apt, while appealing to them to make contributions to the reforms in the education sector.

“I passionately appeal to the roadmap committee of the Vice-Chancellor of Nigerian Universities to provide the committee with a quality memorandum of how our education sub-sector can be competitive in all ramifications,” he appealed.

The minister was represented at the event by the Director of University Education of the Ministry, Mrs. Rakiya Ilyasu.

The Development Director at the British High Commission in Nigeria, Susan Mshama in a remark said the British government through its development agencies was committed to creating a suitable research environment in Nigeria including the open science initiative as well as strengthening of regulatory environment for things to flourish in the country.

“We are committed to ways of increasing acceptability that obtains in scientific evidence through open science education, create collaborations and multi partnership for local ownership of means to achieve sustainable and transformative goals,” she said

The Chief Strategy Officer, WACREN, Omo Oaiya said that the symposium would be of immense benefit to the Nigeria academy space as it would enhance collaborations and increase the visibility of research in the education sector.

“Nigeria can benefit from this open science in the production of research by the different groups. It will also create conversation towards resolving shared challenges associated with research programmes and create roadmap towards producing community driven infrastructure by the education community with support from WACREN, NGREN among others,” said Oaiya.

A participant, Ahaji Aliyu Abubakar from the only Police University in West Africa, the Nigeria Police Academy, Wudil, Kano state north western Nigeria, said the open Science symposium has always been of immense benefit and will continue to be as it has created opportunities for digital output of academicians and student to be available across the globe.

“It is very educative and welcoming for the tertiary education in Nigeria, the entire country and Africa as a whole. It enables publications and researches conducted by our students as well as our faculty staff to be visible, unlike before when researches end up in book shelves in higher instruction libraries or in one’s library at home,” Abubakar said.