CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

The utmost aim of education is to produce a well-rounded individual that would be useful to himself and the society at large having been found worthy in learning and in character as well as a change in behavior. Adult education as a field of study promotes this aim of education as it provides the adult learners with the necessary material, human, cultural and economic skills in order for them to be useful to themselves and the society at large. Omolewa (1981) quoted the Director-General of UNESCO who holds the view that ‘… it is not the children of today who hold the present destiny of Africa in their hands, it is the adults. So it is only by establishing effective communication with the adult population, by helping them to adjust to a rapidly challenging world, that an immediate impact can be made on the urgent problems of society and essential progress be brought about.’

In 1959 the Ashby Commission was set up to determine Nigeria’s human resource needs vis-à-vis the country’s secondary and higher levels of education for a period of twenty years, 1960-1980 (Nwadiani, 2011). Thirty-four years down the ladder, Nigeria as a nation still remains one of the developing countries of the world due to social, economic and political factors like unemployment, overpopulation, illiteracy, starvation, corruption, gender inequality, etc which have become great impediments to the overall achievement of the aim of education in general and adult education in particular which is seen in most of the Third World to serve another purpose. J. T. Okedara, et al, (2001), note that whether narrowly conceived as adult literacy (functional or not), the extension of elementary schooling to the masses, or whether more widely as incorporating extension is based on nationally identified needs rather than an individual wants.

Since these social, economic and political factors still militate against the aim of education in developing countries like Nigeria, adult education graduates ought to master the content of adult education as put forward by UNESCO in The Nairobi Conference of November, 1976 which adopted a broad categorization of adult education which it defined as the entire body of organized educational processes whatever the content, level and method, whether formal or otherwise, whether they prolong or replace initial education in schools, colleges and universities as well as in apprenticeship, whereby persons regarded as adults by the society to which they belong develop their abilities, enrich their knowledge, improve their technical or professional qualifications, or turn them in a new direction and bring about changes in their attitudes or behavior in the two-fold perspective of full personal development and participation in balanced and independent social economic and cultural development (Omolewa, 1981).

Given the above definition, it is clear that adult education is an organized educational process which equips the adult learners with the necessary apprenticeship skills, develop their abilities, enrich their knowledge, improve their technical or professional qualifications as well as turn them in a new direction in order to bring about changes in their attitudes. Therefore, it can be perceived that there are career opportunities for adult education graduates considering the fact that every society especially developing societies like Nigeria requires an organized educational processes that would impact meaningfully on the learners in order to be self-reliant. In a book entitle ‘Educational administration’ four major categories of pressure for change or adaptation in the education system can be identified; viz: political, professional, demographic and changes in related services. Adult education gainfully enables or equips adult learners in all these nationally identified needs in order for them to free their minds from factors or agents militating against the growth of a nation.