Can
Nigeria Leapfrog into
the Information Age?
Similarly, the flight plan for Nigeria should be to land us in the Information Age in the least amount of time. This is important because 60 percent of the wealth of many countries is presently derived from knowledge-based goods and services. In contrast, Vision 2010’s goal is for Nigeria to derive its entire wealth from agriculture and industry. Vision 2010 will make Nigerians the hewers of wood and fetchers of water for those nations that have arrived in the Information Age. My recommendation is that we should not put all our eggs in two baskets, namely agriculture and industry. Since, it is not necessary to become fully industrialized before entering the Information Age, Nigeria should use a multi-pronged attack strategy to enter the Information Age. Therefore, I propose a Vision 2020 for Nigeria in which a greater emphasis is placed on education and technology. Vision 2020 should be a supplement to Vision 2010 and should: (1) be formulated by the year 2000 to help improve the standard of living of Nigerians by the year 2020; (2) enable Nigeria to catch up with Taiwan, Malaysia and South Africa in 50 years; and (3) enable Nigeria to catch up with European countries in 100 years.
Night view of the Abuja Technology Village conceived by Philip Emeagwali in a speech that was widely hailed as visionary.
How can Nigeria take a quantum leap into the Information Age and catch up with the four Asian tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan)? We must realize that we do not have the resources to do everything we desire. Therefore, we must specialize and focus on doing a few things well.
The 1996 defence budget of Nigeria was greater than its education budget. Fifteen billion naira was spent to maintain an 80,000-man army. Less than fifteen billion naira was spent to educate 60 million Nigerian school children. Money can be saved and military coups discouraged by replacing our career soldiers with an all-volunteer citizen-soldiers or elite part-time National Guards. We should direct 40 percent of our budget to education and 10 percent to technology development.
After the United States defeated Japan in the Second World War, it forced Japan to redirect its resources to non-military areas. The result: Japan became one of the wealthiest nations on earth. Nigeria should never have built a massive army after its independence in 1960 and should have reduced its military strength, as soon as possible, at the end of the Nigerian Civil War (1967-70). Germany, Costa Rica and many other nations have done well without a sizable army. Imagine where Nigeria will be today if all the military budgets since independence had been spent to educate our children.
Our students are taught how to read and write by uninspired teachers who are porly paid. Nigeria’s one million unemployed graduates should be retrained and offered attractive salaries to become primary- and secondary-school teachers.
Night view of the Technology Boulevard
of Abuja Technology Village.
Education at the primary school level may be considered more important than university education for the simple reason that “Learning Builds on Learning” or “One Thing Leads to Another." A child who did not learn much in primary school cannot learn much in secondary school or at the university level. This is why the developed nations invest heavily in their children’s primary school education.
Since it is unquestionably a better investment to educate a great number of young students rather than a few elite university students, Nigeria should invest more in pre-university education. Adopting a compulsory period of 12 years of formal education will reduce the internal education gap between northern and southern Nigeria and make each one of us more useful and productive to our society.
Where can we find the good leaders for tomorrow? Where can we find the medical doctors to care for us tomorrow? Where can we find the civil engineers to repair our roads?
Education is a life-long process and Nigerians must continue their education at the public libraries. Most Nigerian students can only afford to buy books required to pass their examinations. Nigerians who do not read widely will not be politically aware nor concerned about reducing the moral decay, corruption and injustices in the country and in the world. They will not understand that it is a crime for a police officer to request bribes and a crime to offer bribes to a police officer.
Our 21st century vision should plan for every community to have a well-stocked public library so that our children can expand their mental and geographical horizons. Every library should be equipped with computers and have access to the Internet.
Our 21st century vision should recognize that technology is the engine that drives a nation’s economic growth and that science should be compulsory in Nigerian schools.
Although we live in the Information Age, most of our high school graduates do not understand how dinosaurs lived, how atoms are split, how microchips are built, the importance of DNA, and the pros and cons of exploring outer space. How can we compete in a Information Age when our students cannot differentiate between a television and a computer monitor?
Click on emeagwali.com for more information.
