Sola Adeyeye, senator representing Osun Central Senatorial District in the National Assembly, says the nation should consider scrapping its polytechnics and colleges of education if it must develop.
“Honestly, give me a chance, I would have an education system where, in less than 10 years, we will phase out all the polytechnics and colleges of education and we strengthen our universities,” Adeyeye said on Tuesday at a stakeholders’ meeting on the 2108 Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), organised by the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB).
Adeyeye, who also said he does not believe God will solve Nigeria’s problems, argued that the weakest brains are those who are pushed to the other two tiers of tertiary education after the best have been admitted into universities.
“My own greatest sorrow, and I have said it to the Registrar of JAMB before, is that the best students want to study maybe Medicine, Engineering, and Law. The next set wants to study science and by the time you finish, your worst students are pushed to education,” he said.
“There cannot be a serious future for a society that makes its weakest students to be their teachers. What we need is a reward system where teachers are paid so well that a brilliant boy will know that there is no higher reward for an engineer than being a teacher. When we begin to pay our teachers well, this apartheid system that we have now will be demolished.”
Describing the system as ‘apartheid’, he stressed that the countries that introduced the system of education with polytechnics and colleges of education have since phased them out.
“I’m an eternal optimist. There are problems. I was on television preaching nationhood before Adeboye. I don’t believe God will solve Nigeria’s problems. If Nigerians problems will be solved because they were created by Nigerians, they will be solved by Nigerians.
“And I thank you, Professor Oloyede, for showing us that it doesn’t matter how big a problem is if we are determined; we can’t solve it alone but together. We can summon the courage and the wisdom to solve them. He would succeed so well in JAMB.
“If you want to see the future of a nation or of any society, what you ought to do is to go to their schools. If you want to see the future of your universities, go to your secondary and primary schools.
“As you drive through much of Nigeria, when you see the public schools, it should not allow that given the saying ‘rubbish in, rubbish out’ that our universities are having the products that they have.
“My primary school in 1955, my teacher was a Standard 6 graduate; eventually, Standard 6 could not teach again. You have to go to Grade III, eventually Grade III couldn’t teach again; you have to have Grade II, and eventually Grade II could not teach again; you have to have Grade I.
“The ‘ogas’ at the Colleges of Education claim they are the best teachers; they forgot that they were first taught by universities graduates. And across the world, this apartheid system of three tiers of tertiary education is being phased out.”