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Delivering a key note address at the 4th NIPR Stakeholders' Conference in Lagos with the theme: "Media, Communication and the Challenge of Quality Education for National Development”, held in Lagos on Tuesday August 29, 2017, Murray-Bruce said privatisation of university in the country will help address the challenges of low capacity of institutions to admit young high school graduates in Nigeria. He said with over one million students writing UTME every year, very few were able to gain admission due to limited capacity of the institutions to take more students. He noted that most of the students always ended up schooling in neighboring countries' such as Mali, Ghana, Cameroon etc.
According to the Senator, "the entire education sector should be privatised. Let government give scholarship to those that need it. Government has no business in running university."
Speaking further on the need for privatisation of the university education, he said an institution such as the University of Lagos should be privatised for it to establish campuses in other part of the country to admit more young Nigerians who are seriously in need of quality university education.
He called on the media to stop running the nation down with fake stories which he said was not helping the image of the country.
He said Nigerian media must project the country positively to enhance its reputation outside the country.
"Almost every media organization has an agenda. For example, when something negative happens in Nigeria, CNN, BBC, RFI and SABC will cover it. But when something positive happens, they will either not cover it or they will cover it in such a way that you will hardly notice," Senator Murray-Bruse stated.
The Chairman and Founder, Chrisland Group of Schools, High Chief Winifred Awosika who described education as the bedrock for any nation's development said no nation paying lip service to quality education will survive in the 21st century.
The Chrisland boss said the level of education in the country was disheartened in spite of the advancement in technology all around the world. She identified inadequate funding, lack professional and quality educators, inadequate teaching facilities and remuneration and poor working conditions as some of the challenges facing the development of sector.
According to her, "I want to emphasize on the importance of quality assurance, where efforts must be made to ensure quality in every aspects: the environment, facilities, curriculum and manpower."
She urged government to encourage owners of private schools by coming up with policies that can assist and not stifle them.
The minister of education on his part commended the initiative, while speaking on strategies for Revamping Nigeria's Educational Sysytem for National Development, that It is a suitable topic for me because the 2017 (the 62nd) National Council on Education Meeting which held in Kano precisely a mo9onth age, took far reaching decisions towards strengthening our educational sector for an enduring future'
According to the Minster who was represented by the Mrs Chinenye Priscillia Ihuoma, Director of Press Relations, Ministry of Information, the reason for the continue fall in the standard of education in the country is non-prioritazation of education by different levels of government.'This regrettably has led to poor funding of education'.
The minister spoke on the government agenda, a plan built on 10 pillars and woven around three result areas namely; access, quality and system strengthening.
The minister highlighted the 10 pillar to include; addressing the out-of-school children phenomenon; adult education and special needs education; technical and vocational education and training; strengthening basic and secondary school education; teacher education, capacity building and professional development; curriculum and policy matters at basic and secondary education; quality and access in higher education; education data and planning; information communication technology (ICT) in education; and library services in education.
On her part, Prof. Abigail Odozi Ogwezzy-Ndisika, Department Of Mass Communication, University Of Lagos while Speaking on the Role of Media in Promoting Reading Culture in Nigeria, explained that 'The theme of this fourth Lagos NIPR Stakeholders Conference is therefore not just apt, but timely considering the deteriorating state of the educational system in Nigeria.
According to her, ”these roles of media in any change process geared towards improving society lie in their capacity to teach, manipulate and mobilize people through information dissemination. It lie in the capacity of the media to disseminate consciously packaged communication that can persuade, encourage or convince the receiver or target audience to adopt an attitude and participate in actualizing a specific development plan or goal, which for our purpose is the reading culture.”
She added that there was so much that could have been achieved with the �'Bring Back Our Books�' campaign of the last administration if there was enough promotion of that laudable initiative by the media.
Among others she suggested that there should be a sustained media advocacy that would promote reading and writing culture.
This post appeared on WorldStage Newsonline.
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