Mr. Samuel
Odunsi is a businessman, investor and social entrepreneur who founded
Human Rethink, a think-tank for implementing the remedy for
underdevelopment presented in his book: “The Failure of University
Education for Development and What to Teach Instead.”
He spoke The Education Reports on the
many challenges of the education system in Nigeria and how it has
affected the country’s pace of development.
How do you view development?
Development means that Nigeria will rise
to meet the West and other developed countries as an economic equal,
like China has recently done. This is also what development means for
other former colonies of the West that are now politically independent.
So, why has Nigeria not developed over 50 years after independence?
The single cause of underdevelopment in
Nigeria is the failure of higher education (universities and technical
institutions) to train graduates to operate their western economy.
Expatriates consist of people from the West and the developed countries
of Asia who make things work in Nigeria. We know that the companies and
organizations operated by expatriates perform the best in the country.
For instance, in oil and gas industry, construction industry, telecom
need such expertise to work. If a large operation is running well in
Nigeria, the chance is great that expatriates are the managers behind
it, even if it’s owned by Nigerians.
Without the managerial leadership of
expatriates, the facility will deteriorate or collapse over time, as we
have seen with the systems inherited from colonialism, such as utility
services, e.g., electricity, water, mail; transportation system –
railways, social services, agriculture industry and many others. The
failure of higher education to equalize the managerial performance of
Nigerian graduates with those of expatriates has been the unspoken cause
of underdevelopment since independence.
Can Nigeria hire expatriates it needs to develop the country?
It’s possible in theory for Nigeria to
hire enough expatriates to develop the country. But it’s not possible in
reality because Nigeria can’t afford the financial cost. Hundreds of
billions of dollars a year, if not trillions, will be required to pay
the salaries of expatriates that can develop the country as defined.
Do you think higher education in Nigeria has been effective?
When economic development is the goal,
the practical purpose of higher education is to train people to perform
as well as expatriates in the role of managers or entrepreneurs in the
public and private sectors so that Nigerian graduates can lead and
supervise the rapid and continuous development of their country. If
higher education in Nigeria could supply a steady stream of graduates
that are as effective as expatriates, the country will quickly develop
for real. In numerical terms, Nigeria already has more than enough
graduates to make development happen. But higher education has not been
effective in that way. All that higher education has done is provide
technical training, which benefits only the individual that might get a
job in Nigeria or overseas. Technical training has proven useless for
development when the managerial leadership of expatriates is not
present. Higher education will not meet its purpose until every new
graduate can reliably do what expatriates do. That will begin to happen
only when the type of curriculum change we recommend is implemented.
What do you think are the symptoms of the failure of higher education in Nigeria?
The symptoms of the failure of higher
education include persistent poverty, persistent dependence, persistent
corruption, persistent instability, persistently bad governance, the
lawless violence of terrorism, and other problems exclusive to the
former colonies of the West. We’ve been led to believe that these
symptoms are the causes of underdevelopment. That is wrong. Expatriates
are in Nigeria with Nigerians, yet they do what Nigerian graduates
generally cannot do. The symptoms don’t affect the performance of
expatriates. The symptoms are incurable until Nigerians begin to perform
as well as expatriates in increasing numbers. The most ethical and
corruption-free leadership from elections or revolution, or from
so-called uprisings do not address the failure of higher education.
Measures such as anti-corruption laws, or protests, civil unrest, and
finger pointing do not address the failure of higher education. Revenues
from the export of oil and gas and other raw materials, or from
globalization and foreign aid do not address the failure of higher
education. Such revenue may provide tenuous prosperity or modernization
and give a false impression that development is taking place. However,
the symptoms of the failure of higher education don’t go away.
If diversification is the way, why can’t we do it?
For a country like Nigeria,
diversification means import substitution – that is, producing at home
most or all of the products that are currently imported. A small but
important part of diversification is refining locally all the raw
materials that are extracted in Nigeria instead of overseas refinement.
The majority of diversification is building and maintaining the
infrastructure, supply chains, and institutions that will support import
substitution over the long term with Nigerian managerial leadership. In
addition, the goal of diversification is to offer products and services
at a standard that is good enough for overseas export. Successful
diversification is the only means for rising to meet the developed
countries as an equal. A country that can supply much of the nation’s
demand for food, electronics, machinery, automobiles and other items
will be a prosperous country, a truly developing country. But efforts to
diversify the economy have failed because of the shortage of effective
managerial leadership. The only system in place to systematically fill
the shortage and which claims to already do so (according to speeches
made at graduation ceremonies) is higher education. But higher education
has never done that. Hence, without the leadership of expatriates in
numbers that Nigeria can’t afford, five-year or ten-year development
plans, Vision 2020, Vision 2030, knowledge economy, large scale
agriculture projects, and other plans for industrialization or
development, will not meet their goals. Previous development and
diversification plans have not worked because of ineffective higher
education. For the same reason, future plans will not work either. As a
result, attempts at economic diversification in a persistently
underdeveloped country like Nigeria is largely a futile exercise.
Why is higher education effective in the developed countries and not in Nigeria?
Higher education works in the developed
countries. So, if it doesn’t work for the underdeveloped, then it’s
automatically assumed that something is wrong with the people of these
countries. We reject this notion. Nothing is wrong with the people.
Instead, something is wrong with the education. Our view is that
culture, not education, is what is “working” for the developed
countries. The curriculum of western education that is in effect
everywhere in the world, including Nigeria, does not contain the
elements that will equalize the performance of graduates with those of
expatriates in the course of acquiring higher education. Western
education does not contain the necessary elements because recognizing
and including these elements in the curriculum was never a requirement
for education to be “effective” in the developed countries. The western
economic model, which was imposed on Nigeria by colonialism, is an
extension of Western culture. The West never had to deliberately connect
its culture with an economic model that was imposed by a different
culture, and still doesn’t know how to do so. As a result, academia has
never been able to explain how culture makes development happen in the
developed country in a manner that is teachable to others. The
conceptual tools required for a teachable explanation, therefore, do not
exist—until now. In addition to providing the missing tools, we have
also devised the curriculum that will connect with the native culture of
the individual student the western economic model that higher education
represents.
Why are China, Japan, and South Korea developed, since their cultures are not Western?
The short answer is that these countries
have cultural elements in common with the west. So, nothing extra is
needed in the higher education curriculum to connect the western
economic model to their culture. For the first time, we have identified
these elements of culture that have been universally misunderstood and
completely overlooked. We’ve also devised the means to systematically
impart and nurture these elements to full strength in the educational
setting within the 3-4 year duration of higher education.
Will development happen in Nigeria if the quality of education is improved?
The answer is no! Improving the quality
of education will not make development happen because it does not
address what is wrong with higher education. The quality of education in
Nigeria was arguably at its highest immediately after independence from
colonialism and has steadily deteriorated ever since. Better quality
western education did not make development happen back then because the
quality is not the problem. The problem is the academic curriculum
itself. Specifically, what the curriculum is lacking. The content of the
academic curriculum is largely the product of western culture. The
perceived effectiveness of this curriculum in the developed countries
and among expatriates is built on top of that culture. In a country
where the western economic and social model was imposed by colonialism,
such as Nigeria, the underlying culture remains different and the higher
education curriculum has nothing to build upon. Instead, what is
learned in higher education is segregated in the mind of the graduate as
a series of protocols or technical skill. What is learned has a
superficial connection to the native culture of the individual and
cannot be consistently applied contingently or instinctively to
practical challenges as the expatriate does. This obvious problem has
remained unsolved because the assumption behind the academic curriculum,
which originated in western culture for the people of that culture, is
that the connection is already present in the student. The West did not
have to deliberately make such a connection in its people. As a result,
their curriculum offers no provision for bridging the gap.
Improving the quality of this type of
education will not make up for what is missing in the curriculum, to
begin with. Stated bluntly, our graduates will not perform as well as
expatriates even if every Nigerian institution had the quality of
Harvard in America or Oxford in England. This is why overseas graduates
who return home have been just as ineffective as local graduates. By the
same token, there is no magic number of graduates that will suddenly
make development begin in Nigeria at some unknown future date. Higher
education that does not equalize the performance of the graduate with
the performance of expatriates upon graduation will not suddenly do so
in the future. Increasing the number of such graduates in society will
not make equalization happen either.
Can development happen in a unique Nigerian way?
Again, the answer is no. The suggestion
that Nigeria or any former colony of the West may have an alternative
path to development is wishful thinking. The economy of Nigeria has to
be managed like the western economy that it is. Nigeria is a western
economy that is malfunctioning. Colonialism remade the economy of
Nigeria in the image of the West, and there is no turning back. On
Independence Day, the British handed over to Nigerians a working western
economic and social model, complete with institutions, a civil service,
a legal system, military system, education system, healthcare system,
monetary system, commercial industries, and so on. Nigeria did not
abandon any of the systems imposed by colonialism. But to operate
properly, these systems require the foundation of self-sustaining
economic diversification and increasing productivity led by the
competent management of tens of thousands of Nigerians with higher
education in both the public and private sectors. The continual failed
efforts to operate these systems without the required foundation,
without the required managerial leadership, is what makes under
development persistent and permanent. This is a problem that has
resisted all attempts to solve. Yet, the traditional methods of old
can’t support a much larger population and the contemporary aspirations
of the Nigerians of today. So, like most other former colonies of the
West, Nigeria is stuck with a social and economic system it cannot
properly operate with no way out. This trap is what we call the Pain of
Underdevelopment. The only way out of this frustration is for Nigerians
to make their western economy work as it’s supposed to. Nigerians have
to perform as well as expatriates and manage their economy as well as
the developed countries. There’s a system in place for training young
Nigerians to do exactly that. It is the elaborate system of higher
education. But higher education has never met that goal. The only unique
aspect of making development happen in Nigeria or in the other former
colonies of the West is the new ideas needed for doing so. We possess
the ideas.
No comments: