CHAPTER ONE

1.0 INTRODUCTION

The role of education in the development of a society has been vastly documented in academic journals, and we do not intend to revisit it here. This section will concentrate on the need for Nigerian leaders to pay close attention to the needs of the educational sector, and treat it as a public-health issue, because the sociopolitical and economic development of a nation and (or her health) is, in many ways, determined by the quality and level of educational attainment of the population. Political leaders should take politics out of education, as the continued neglect of this sector would lead to social paralysis.

The youth should be given the appropriate quality academic training and an environment that would enable them to reach their full potential.Nigeria has toilet with some educational programs, which have only served as conduits to transfer money to the corrupt political leaders and their cronies. For instance, the nation launched the Universal Primary Education (UPE) in 1976, but as noted, the program failed due to lack of fund necessitated by corruption, among other factors. Nigeria has again launched another mass-oriented education program, this time branding it the Universal Basic Education (UBE).

The President, Olusegun Obasanjo, declared during the launching of the program in Sokoto that the nation ‘cannot afford to fail this time around.” However, not long after that, the federal government reported that the falling standard of education in Nigeria is caused by “acute shortage of qualified teachers in the primary school level.” It is reported that about 23 percent of the over 400,000 teachers employed in the nation’s primary schools do is the minimum educational requirement one should posses to teach in the nation’s primary schools (Ogbeifum and Olisa; The Vanguard Online, July 1, 2001.