The managing director/CEO of Sterling Bank Plc, Mr Abubakar Suleiman, has called for a review of Nigeria’s educational system so as to make it relevant to current and future human capital requirements in the country.
Suleiman made the call while speaking as a panelist in a session on “Roadmap To Shared Prosperity – Ensuring Inclusive Human Capital Development” at the just concluded 8th Lagos Economic Summit, Ehingbeti 2021.
He observed that Nigeria’s current educational system will continue to fail in its role of delivering the human resources needed by industry now and in the future unless the federal government redefines its commitment to the system.
According to him, “The educational system that is operational in the country today appears to be only suitable for academia and not for inclusive human resources development in other sectors of the economy.”
He said, the number of qualified people is insufficient because it takes too much time to turn people into a teacher. We need to rethink who a teacher is and where teaching goes on,” he added.
The CEO noted that education should be the most important reason why the government should borrow money, saying, all other reasons combined cannot be more critical than lending money for educating children in
the country. He explained that the repayment of any borrowings in future is likely to be by the children undergoing training today.
