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I consider my invitation to the Enugu University of Science and Technology, distinguished personality Lecture Series a huge honour. An event such as this, is an opportunity to outline a vision for the future, and if you will to carry out some reality checks, university, after all, exist for such intellectual engagements.
The title of this lecture is ” Experiential Learning; Building the Wealth of the nation. This title has been carefully chosen and was largely inspired by the strong correlation between education and development. It is fitting also that a lot of the people here gathered are students, and so we would begin with some questions, what future do our young people dream of? It is probable that the desire to emigrate is a priority dream for most of them.
The word ‘Japa’ is a major part of Nigerian reality. It has come to define the aspiration of our youth. The reason, of course, are fairly predictable. Let’s just say there haven’t been so much economic opportunities or jobs as there are people in desperate need of gainful employment.
You may be familiar with my elaborate story of two young men, Emeka and Ikechukwu. Buffeted by life harsh realities, Emeka opted for the familiar but perilous Exodus by the Mediterranean in search of presumptive, presumably greener pastures for him. His degree offered little hope, but the zeal is never predictable, especially not in a crowded Boat. His quest ended tragically, like many others, contrast this with the case of Ikechukwu, for whom life was just as cruel. Even with his university degree, he rather chose to apply his event to meet the necessities around him, a digital application that he developed was a passport to the good life he dreamt. These anecdotes calls attention to the social debacle that japa represents and the expediency to view it as a challenge for Nigeria to press the inventive button, our young people must not merely think outside the box. They have to blow up the box and imagine new possibilities. So they have to dismantle the box. It doesn’t exist. Rather than wait for jobs, our youth must create jobs. This begs the question, how skilled, how innovative and globally competitive our university graduates?. Why do Nigerian universities seldom feature on the global ranking list of world’s best universities? Why have they been perennially unable to become the ideas factory? Which universities ought to be? Why are our universities not producing inventive graduates like Ikechukwu. The answers to these questions lie in many inconvenient truths, amongst which is the fact that the learning in our schools, from basic to tertiary has for years, not imbued our young people with productive skills and competencies. This is the root cause of our under development. All through history, knowledge has always been the prime lever for progress, from the Stone Age to the Industrial Revolution, and it will be no less so as the world gets in reap of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. What role will Enugu youth play in the story of this emerging fourth revolution? What role will Enugu state universities play in preparing our youth to be part of the narrative of the New World Order? Edward this warns us in his book that Sub Saharan Africa is generating the greatest proportion of youth in the world, even as the population of other continents are shrinking. Our present task is to turn our young and populous demography into advantageous human capital. That way we can create new narratives. And I’m happy to tell you that we’re already doing that. Let me share a true story about precious. Precious, a 13 year old girl from owo, like many children in our communities, Precious has dreams that stretch far beyond the walls of her father’s house and her traditional classroom, but for years, her potential was locked behind that thought, behind the system that taught her to memorize rather than to innovate, to repeat, rather than to question, like millions of children in Nigeria, precious was in school, but had limited chance to acquire quality and transformative education. The Smart Green School changed precious story today, precious is no longer bound by the limitations of a conventional education system. As a student at the Enugu Smart Green School, precious learns by solving real world problems that matter to our community. Our classroom is not just a place for learning, it is a hub of creativity, innovation and action. At the Enugu Smart Green School, precious worked with our peers and teachers to develop a water purification system that now supplies drinking water to the school. At the Enugu Smart Green School, precious again, working with her peers and her teachers, they developed a model for a smart farm that now supplies to 846 school children three days a week. They developed a smart farm that now supplies eggs to 846 school children three days a week. So what in real terms, this means is that by employing experiential learning, the free school meals we provide to our children at the Smart Green School, 35% of that food, the cost of feed, is produced by them. Our hope is that by next year, we’re going to see that rising to 65 to 70% which means that they would be self reliant. It would become sustainable because we will not have to be looking for funds to provide them free school meals. This transformation is part of a larger vision to create an experiential learning ecosystem that connects every level of education, from primary schools to vocational schools and universities to a dynamic pipeline of workforce, development, innovation. Schools and universities to a dynamic pipeline of workforce development, innovation and sustainability in a globalized world, competition is by no means local, and the meritocracy of ideas is the underlying philosophy that holds sway to produce globally competitive youth who can remain here in Enugu And yet their skills globally our education ecosystem must immediately shift from road learning to experiential learning. Education must be tailored to meet the exigency of present needs and aspire to solve future Challenges. Education is fundamentally the cornerstone of our program. You the bedrock upon which our future stands, history is replete with many compelling cases for the embrace of innovation many years ago, making phone calls for the harrowing experience that usually until waiting in a long queue. Of course, getting to the front of the queue is no guarantee of a successful phone call. There might be no diving tone. Despite the long wage. But with emergence of GSM technology. Those stories. Now, as. The point is that innovation is the fuel of development, but development is never wished into existence. It thrives in an atmosphere of deep respect for learning and pursuit of knowledge to improve the human condition. It is no coincidence the countries that invest the most in building a qualitative and experiential education ecosystem, are the world’s leading economies, United States of America, the European Union, countries like Germany and The Netherlands, and are well known countries for this. So why are we not fully leveraging the solution that a wholesome Education offers to launch our society onto a new trajectory that fosters growth and in critical sectors, education has long been seen as a pathway to job opportunities, but today, it must also be for us, a pathway to innovation and economic leapfrog for this to happen. Enugu must lead in experiential learning in Africa, our students, our students at all levels, from any childhood to tertiary education, must be equipped with the tools to not only adapt to the future, but shape it. Experiential learning ensures that education is deeply connected to the challenges and opportunities of the real world. It fosters critical thinking, creativity and collaboration. It empowers students to see themselves, not as passive learners, but as active problem solvers, as an ecosystem, a flexible and scalable model that can be applied across wide ranging contexts, from Smart Green Schools and vocational schools to universities. Experiential learning is bigger than an educational model. It is a strategy for a workforce development, innovation and sustainability. We should think of education learning as an engine that will enable our education system to drive workforce development and productivity. We should see it as a missing link between education industrialization and our GDP growth. By embedding experientially into our education ecosystem, from basic to tertiary education, we are creating a seamless pipeline where students progress from foundational learning to practical innovation. Imagine a university student working on a project to design renewable energy solution for rural communities. Imagine a student in a science and technical vocational school developing skills in precision agriculture to boost food security. These are not hypothetical scenarios. They are the outcomes of experiential learning ecosystem that we’re already building here in Enugu state. If kids like precious could achieve experiential learning in our Smart Green School, why would our universities not deliver experiential learning to our youth. Our experiential learning model aligns education with sustainable development goals, equipping students with skills to tackle critical challenges such as energy, training students to innovate in renewable energy technologies, agriculture, equipping them with The skills for sustainable farming practices, ICT and Technology building capacity in robotics, AI and digital entrepreneurship. Moreover, we have been very intentional and bold in our commitment to experiential learning. As you may already have noticed, we have commenced construction of our pilot center for experiential learning and innovation at the Enugu State College of Education technical it is our vision that every tertiary institution in Enugu state will possess such Center, which, in addition to equipping teachers and professors with the pedagogical skills to deliver experiential education to our children will also thank you, will also serve as a bridge between education and industry, the Center for experiential learning and innovation connects students and teachers to the Tools and partnership that they need to develop technological competencies innovate and pilot real world solutions and drive economic growth and sustainable development. For us, it is a no brainer. Our universities must adapt and harness experiential learning to change our story. We owe this much to our young people. Give them a chance. It is time to change the development narrative. For too long, we have looked atward for solution to our challenges, but the truth is clear, those who are closest to the challenges are best poised to provide solutions, and truth be told, experiential learning is our oldest traditional system of education, much akin To the apprenticeship system established by our forefathers, whereby knowledge is transmitted through practice, and knowledge does gain foster innovation and growth. As a former colony, this country inherited a design of education rooted in rot learning and mimicry, we gained political independence. The time is overdue to emancipate our education system. The like the sankofa, we must look to our cherished heritage to forge a formidable future of innovation, progress and prosperity. This is not an impossible task. We have proof our smart teachers like OBU esta, who specializes in robotics at the Enugu Smart Green School are already demonstrating the type of leadership we need by guiding students to address local needs. Our students, like precious are proving that age is no barrier to innovation and our communities are showing that with the right support, they can be powerful agents of change. We’re not just talking about improving education. This is about empowering people to lead their development. It is about moving away from a narrative of dependency towards a future of self reliance and innovation. It is about the soul and success of any state, I dare say, any nation, which relies on knowledge rather than assets. And this is what experiential learning speaks to. This is, of course, a challenge to the government and the universities, as much as it is to our students and our youth for whom Japan constitutes the single most compelling aspiration. We must prepare our youth for changing tides, lest they be lost in a guide. Japa may be a consequence of long standing sociological stagnation and the quest for social mobility is a natural human trait. Yet all the great inventions the world has seen over the years has arisen not from a sense of sufficiency, but to feel an abject want, necessity, it is said, Does be the mother of human as a State, we have necessities, and we have human capital. Developing our human capital has been the highest preoccupation of the present government. The degree to which we meet this task is measurable by our investment in ensuring access to quality education and healthcare, as I have always emphasized, nations seldom rise above the standard of their public education, and the wealth of a nation depends upon the health of his people. Both education and health define the quality of human capital, The truest measure of every nation’s wealth. So why the Thank you. Thank you very much. So why is it that development, infrastructural development, often tends to be implemented at a pace that is disproportionate to investment in intangible resources such as education, the reason is fairly easy to infer. The shape means that they yield outcomes that are instant, whereas the results arising from investment in education are not immediately discernible. The plunders are thus immediate. So government, not all I dare stay invest in quick fixes like fiscal infrastructure to the detriment of sectors such as education and health? And maybe I should also, at this point, challenge you the followers or the followership, because most time the investment you make in education, it’s not it is not like one that you would immediately see, like roads, or maybe ICC that were doing presidential hotel, the roads were built across the state. I mean, I, I know the number of times that I get commendations calls for, you know, the roads we have built, the revamping of our industries, but little or nothing gets to be said about what we have done in the education space. Meanwhile, education is basically what we have invested the more or the most in and so I challenge you as a followers to also begin to hold your leaders accountable to those intangible sectors. Right? Because sometimes this is a marathon. It is sometimes a 10 to 20 years plan, which you have to consistently invest in. So if you talk about investment, where we begin to be the index child at age three, and put them through a pipeline of learning, you know that that child that is three, before you begin to see the manifest of the quality of investment you have paid. It might be when that child is 21 or there about so if you look at other clients, you are most likely going to lose election if there is a drop or a decline in your education standard or in your healthcare space. So it becomes a major discourse. It becomes a major issue when you interrogate your leaders and those you give your mandate to lead you so to the extent the extent that you hold those people accountable in those sectors would also inform the level of investment they make in this intangible sectors,