The Lagos Chamber of Commerce of Industry (LCCI) says Public-Private Partnership (PPP) remains the best option for tackling national challenges on funding.
It believes that PPP is a way out of the prevailing challenges of the nation’s education sector, which has led to incessant strike actions by workers’ unions.
Dr Michael Olawale -Cole , President , LCCI said these at the opening of the 2022 Lagos Education Fair with the theme : Transforming Education ; Enhancing Access To Qualitative Tertiary Education.
Olawale-Cole noted that funding was at the heart of the regular rift between the Federal Government and the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU).
According to him, the frequency of strikes by the union calls for more funding and more attention to the terms and conditions of the teaching profession in Nigeria.
He urged government at both the Federal and State levels to vote more resources and attention to education.
“PPP remains the best option for tackling national issues on funding, including the prevailing challenges of the nation’s education sector.
“LCCI is very much interested in collaborating with the government within our jurisdiction to enhance education delivery in Nigeria, ” he said.
The Chamber’s president said that the importance of a transformed education sector to the nation’s economic growth and development could not be overemphasised.
He said that adequate access to reliable and affordable education is the catalyst for productivity enhancement, industrialisation and revenue optimisation to make the economy globally competitive.
Olawale-Cole said: ” Nigeria and indeed Africa can only join the league of developed economies if education enjoys deserved focus and transformation, especially with emerging realities in the deployment of technology for digital learning and artificial intelligence.”
He lauded UNICEF for supporting Nigeria to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4, which is on quality education by 2030.
The LCCI president commended President Muhammadu Buhari for fulfilling his pledge to increase the allocation to the education sector this year by 50 per cent .
“Indeed, the increase from N742.5 billion in 2021 to N1.29 trillion this year is more than 50%.
“However, this is less than 10% of the 2022 budget and far from the 15-20% benchmark recommended by UNESCO, ” he said.
Olawale-Cole also hailed the vision of Lagos State through its READYSETWORK initiative.
The initiative is aimed at ensuring that every graduating student from tertiary institutions in Lagos acquires the requisite knowledge, skills, and attitude required to gain meaningful employment or be self-employed.
He promised that the chamber would continue to introduce innovative programmes by leveraging its experience and capacity, using technology and other platforms to deliver value to its stakeholders.
According to him, the chamber is delighted to create platforms such as the Education Fair, as part of its contributions to the desired repositioning of the nation’s education sector.
“We are of the firm belief that this fair will help to proffer not just solutions to the challenges our education sector currently faces, but also offer recommendations that could fast track the transformation of the sector, ” he said.
In his keynote address , Prof .Samuel Bandele , Vice -Chancellor, Anchor University Ayobo, Lagos said that quality education would lead to its transformation.
Bandele recommended that Higher School Certificate (HSC) should be re- introduced and modified to be a qualitative ‘pre-tertiary ‘ education access into the degree programmes.
“The National University Commission (NUC) should also move from policy to policing, accreditation to actualisation, benchmark to bench warrant and decision to directiveness,” he said.
(NAN)
