By Ayo Olowu
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World acclaimed historian Professor Toyin Falola has offered a recipe for ending Nigeria’s cycle of poverty and insecurity now threatening her survival.
He told a crowded audience in Ondo yesterday that education must be accorded its rightful place.
Since education holds a certain transformative property literally altering the course of individual lives, government must deliberately make use of it if a better future is to be guaranteed for Nigerians.
Falola a lecturer at the University of Texas, Austin in the United States of America (U.S.A.) canvassed this position while delivering a lecture at the convocation of Adeyemi College of Education Ondo.
In the lecture titled “Educational Wealth averred that though education’s benefits manifest differently in different groups, it undoubtedly aids advancement of individuals.
He said, “education at any level is regarded as pathway to a better future, or a better life, which entails different things for different people. When it is well- planned and offered effectively, education can end cycles of poverty, abuse, and desolation”.
Falola was of the opinion that when education is accessible to the masses, it is transformative for personal development and for the societys development as a whole.
According to the Don, expansion and diversification of Africa’s economy begins by providing the majority of her workforce with a solid set of basic skills.
He enumerated these basic skills to include literacy, numeracy, communication, management and basic technological skills.
Falola also advocated a consistent education system while noting that the sub Saharan African countries seldom change their education policies, a development he opined has met the needs of students who come from different social classes.
While stressing that education opens the doors to many possibilities.
Falola averred that individuals that are not properly educated cannot perform at their highest potential.
His words: “Education shapes, reshapes and reforms society in ways that are unparalleled by anything else. It creates, innovates and keeps us moving as a society towards a better tomorrow.
Education is substantial wealth for its recipients. As education is put to good use, it generates wealth for communities and nations and nations subsequently reap the rewards of their investments. Falola affirmed that ACE has blessed Nigeria with some of the best teachers ever produced in every field since its establishment.
He therefore charged the institution to continue to play that role of nation building. Earlier in his welcome address, the Provost of ACE, Professor Olukoya Ogen described the lecture as a key component of the institution’s 34th Convocation Ceremony.
Ogen noted that over the years, ACE has evolved as a veritable intellectual centre where issues that affect national educational policies are thoroughly distilled, richly debated and vigorously analysed adding that it is the institution’s way of contributing to Nigeria’s socio-economic and educational development.
