Education in Nigeria needs paradigm shift, by Bakare

By Vivian Onyebukwa

Nigerian government has been advised to make a paradigm shift in education in other to improve the academic state of its citizens.

The managing director of Success Learning Centre, Kolawole Bakare, stated this during the opening of the study centre in Ikeja, Lagos.

According to Bakare, education in Nigeria needs a lot more change and shape from the paradigm of “you-must-read -a-full-four-year-degree.”

He further said that nowadays in some other countries, people are doing micro credential, skills acquisitions and stuffs that can help them to learn what can take them out into the market straight away without having to do that for a whole four years.

He said: “For Nigeria, the paradigm has to shift from that four years academic study where you remain in one place and then when you come out you can’t even get a job.  So, if you go to school and come out and you don’t use that thing that you learnt, it is useless.

“The idea is, education should make you change from where you started to a different person. That’s where Nigeria should be making impact on our people.”

He blamed it on lack of information, saying people are ignorant of what to do, which is why they keep on crying about the government.

“Government will not do everything for you. It is when you do it for yourself, then you find the way through. Most times people want to study but they don’t know what to study. That is why we opened Success Learning Centre to help guide people for them to come and study and also take some business certification and ICT course,” he further said.

On the category of people that are expected at the learning centre, Bakare stated that it is about students who are just about to finish their West African Examination Council (WAEC) and have not decided on what kind of profession they want to go in to, course or training. Or those also that have challenges with pains going to the university.

The idea, according to him, is to help them to get on to online and physical learning, adding that online learning is cheaper than physical learning. 

“I was fortunate enough to go back to school at the age of 46 to get my first degree. Between that time and now, which is just 13 years, I have two masters degrees. I have been promoted more than five times in my place of work because of these academic qualifications I have been getting.

“I know that it is something that people need. You need to develop yourself either in skills or academics. That is why we are trying to help people to get into the academic line.”

To improve the quality of education in Nigeria, Bakare said that first and foremost, the government has to look at their curriculum, which has to change. He applauded the growth of technology which he said is making this world so simple.

“AI is making things easy, but we are still in the old age,” he added.

He equally noted that a lot of regulations are making things difficult.

“It’s not that it is a bad idea, regulation is good because if you don’t regulate, people just do anything anyhow without thinking properly. But when you are regulating, look at the people that you are regulating.

“Look at the bureaucracy you put that is going to stop good education coming in to Nigeria”, he said.

Speaking about his inspiration to establish the centre, he went back to 1977 when he established a Computer Training School in Lagos. “I was fortunate to have learnt computer as far back as 1992-1993 and I found out that it was a novel idea that people were wondering how do you operate a computer, what are the magic things that happen in the computer?

“Then, I decided that it was better to help other people learn it. So in 1997, I opened a computer training school, which over the years continue to grow and eventually metamorphosed into what we have today,” he said.

On his business challenges, he blamed it on the epileptic light supply which makes him to always fall back on generating set, especially as they are doing a lot of online courses and need the internet.

“Sometimes the internet goes down and you have to start running around trying to put things together. We are working on that and hopefully when we install solar, things will be better,” Bakare stated.