Obafemi on Nigerian university education in constant transition – Part 3

Our needs versus our new world
We are witnesses to the transformation of the global economy gradually from the traditional format to those controlled by machines, through computers, the Internet, World Wide Web, and blockchain technologies. This new transformation is presently estimated at US$11.5 trillion. How do we fit into this economy considering our diverse resources, against the background of our desire for growth? We are no doubt presented with an opportunity to harness our riches in agriculture, solid minerals and steel, amongst others, if we embrace modern solutions. These solutions are evident in new technologies in agriculture, healthcare delivery, logistics and industry.

A focus on industries represents an opportunity for both local and foreign entrepreneurs, going by the attraction we have, in the last five years, offers start-ups from across the continent and even beyond. It is instructive to emphasise that three (3) of the continent’s most recognised companies with valuations exceeding $1 billion are from Nigeria. https://en.wikipedia.org>wiki reveals that Flutterwave founded in 2016 by Nigerians, valued at over $3million, has a positive influence on 1 billion lives.

Equally inspiring is that most technological innovations have focused on the financial services industries, now regarded as Financial Technology (FINTECH). It includes aspects of personal banking, payments, wealth management, and consumer lending. Through this, they have boosted access. From statistics, Financial Innovation and Access (EFInA), is also highlighted, showing that 39.7% of Nigeria’s 99m adults had a bank account in 2018 and 1.3m of adults have access to credit from formal lenders.

This suggests that there are still opportunities to provide basic financial services to Nigerians and improve access to existing products and services. Implicated in all this is that we still have sustainable paths to growth, given untapped potentials, opportunities, and material and human resources. If we add Nigeria’s sizable population and its projected growth to four hundred million (400,000,000.00) in 2050, our labour and market potentials become more obvious.

It is important to make these critical investments required today to create valuable jobs in the future, and then improve economic prosperity. The place of education, training, capacity building and the contexts in which we do them matter greatly. It is probably the reason we are examining the subject matter today, and why it has featured amongst stakeholders.

For instance, the Nigeria Economic Summit Group (NESG) and the National Universities Commission (NUC) interactive session on the ‘Revitalisation of Higher Education in Nigeria’ focused on ‘The Future of Education in 2050 and the Role of University-Industry-Government Nexus’. The summit was instructive in espousing the role of the University-Industry-Government Nexus by 2050.

Its conclusions on the need to be compliant with evolving realities as driven by technology and the understanding of its changing ecosystem are unmistakable.

Former NUC Executive Secretary, Professor Abubakar Rasheed spoke on how Nigerian Universities can become entrepreneurial, stressing that “The changing dynamics in the global economy over the last three decades has shaped and dictated the pace of development in universities”

He added that “Commercialisation and commodification of knowledge in universities emphasise the utilitarian value rather than the epistemological values of universities; that assistance of the American model help increasing justification of the relevance of education as drivers of useful knowledge and innovators; and that innovative thought from the universities will be of immense value to the industries; just as industries will turn IT to products that will create value for society, enriching the universities, researchers and industries – a circle of creativity and its application. Again, these reflect the vision of the university directing the character of nations, as proposed by Prof. Aboyade.

In a similar vein, Professor Doyin Salami stressed that the thing to do is to know what an entrepreneurial university is. That way, the university understands the environment in which it operates and establishes a current and continuing relevance to that environment.

He argued that universities need to accept the challenge of being relevant now and project to the future about their environment; aside from the fact that competency gaps in important sectors like the Agriculture sector have to be appreciated.

According to him, we also have to be concerned about reshaping the curriculum of the universities to enhance a change of mindset fundamental to institutional change; openness and compulsion to face work in the environment, while TETFund should de-emphasise physical structure and look at human capital development.

I am delighted to note that TETFund is already doing this with its recent paradigm shift, which focuses on research, and innovation, in addition to structures. It followed the case that the former Executive Secretary of the Fund, Professor Suleiman Bogoro, made for research and development to form the basis for increased funding in all tertiary institutions in Nigeria, adding that our research should look at our environment and its challenges, to deal with the challenges of the community, society and nation.

The present Executive Secretary, Architect Sunny Echono, also noted that Nigeria has one of the lowest levels of Agricultural productivity in Africa, and to improve this we need to increase the capacities of our Universities of Agriculture, while also developing the use of simple tools for planting and trenching within the agricultural value chain, leaving governments to provide the enabling environment to boost the ecosystem.

In a laudable addition, Echono, through the Technical Advisory Group of over 700 eminent Professors, has fulfilled the promise of enhancing the knowledge content of TETFund mediation in tertiary education by producing 50 indigenous books in diverse disciplines for the Nigerian Universities. I am privileged to have a coordinator of the Literature-in-English volume

Ayobami Abunsanago of Siemens also added his voice in what demonstrates a widespread concern for the relevance of training in change management. He posited that the challenge is to bring down the unemployment rate in the country in a sustainable manner before 2050. The private sector is concerned about the employability of the workforce, requiring a deliberate effort by government, industry and academia to make this happen.

Reflecting (on) the importance of his field, anyway, he called for the integration of more engineering courses into the Nigerian university curriculum, to build manpower for critical sectors like power, energy and technology. In his case, Tope Togun gave insights into how to create a valuable exchange between the universities, industry and government, emphasising the place of shifting mindsets through the integration of field knowledge with theories.

I have shared these thoughts to boost the case for the relevance of training compliant with our changing times, our shifting needs and the importance of reviews in pedagogy, because of new technologies. These technologies are multi-dimensional.

They are in medicine as they are in sports, in engineering, as they are in law, just as they are in governance. They are in the humanities, through performance, film, literature, music and the media.

The technologies are also crisscrossing, sweeping through the sectors of life in manners that humanity is ever trying to unravel. The irony is still that technologies are a creation of humanity with technology and humanity in mutual and symbiotic impact, such that we cannot, in this age, separate technology from human life because of what has been aptly defined as the “cyclical co-dependence of technology and society”. As argued elsewhere (Obafemi; 2022), technology must not, should not and indeed, cannot completely subsume humanity.

This is because technologies are products of humanity’s age-old desire to simplify existence, ease processes and perhaps conquer the impediments of nature. Critical in the circumstance is the continuing growth of technologies of communication.

The rise is frenetic, changing patterns and applications by the day, and making a new model today almost obsolete by tomorrow. This has been the outcome of the deep-seated competition. I mean the endeavour to think and to innovate, just to be better than the other.

While progress can be regarded as central to it, reality, truth and knowledge are also being confused. We can say this much about Artificial Intelligence (Al), which tries to replicate human aptitude. Machines are configured to mimic the human sense and reasoning and simulated to limit his effort.

Eliezer Yudkowsky helps us to understand Al as “Anything that could give rise to smarter-than-human intelligence the form of Artificial Intelligence, brain-computer interfaces, or neuroscience-based human intelligence enhancement-wins hands down beyond contest as doing the most to change the world. Nothing else is even in the same league.”

Brouwer (2015) refers to the related ‘Big Data’ as being available to the world in monumental proportion, through data sets that are now available to the world over the Internet and effectively playing roles in human interaction. He cites the example of Youtube which receives over 500 videos every hour. The harnessing of these Data sets by Al is what is changing the narrative of learning.

AI could outperform human effort and increase the temptation to ignore labours. It dares to alter and transform. It is a good signpost of human possibilities, evidence of potential and the fulfilment of the promise of yesterday. Larry Page noted that “Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google: The ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing. We’re nowhere near doing that now. However, we can get incrementally closer to that, and that is basically what we work on.”
To be continued.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.