STUDYING IN NIGERIA VS STUDYING ABROAD

We have a serious educational problem that needs to be addressed to avoid total collapse of the system.There are so many universities around us in Nigeria yet we don't seem to feel the impact. That is a major problem. Education is the major driving force of every successful economy in the world today. People who invested in education in the past are getting the rewards and people who are investing in education today will definitely get the reward in future.

In Europe and the Americas, education is a priority and it has a cascading effect on their reality today. Here in Nigeria we go in incessant strikes without remorse and rethink. Currently in Nigeria all the federal government owned universities have been on strike for over 3 months. Do you know the shocking thing? This is campaign period for elections and as such politicians are traveling around the country to make consultation as regards thier political ambitions. They couldn't care less about the students. The students deserve better.

There are universities in Nigeria but unfortunately they are underfunded and uncared for. For that reason they are unproductive and therefore can't give back to the economy and society.This is very bad. There is the technology industry, there is agriculture, there pharmaceuticals, there is aerospace and military industry. They are all understaffed- that is if some of them are still in existence. We have students who are leaving in numbers to study abroad, far from the country. The unfortunate thing is that they don't come back home ever again. This is effectively brain drain and nothing short of that.

If we had a better system, we would have made provisions for exceptional students to get scholarships to go study abroad and in return come back to the country as lecturers to help people back home learn and develop themselves. We are clearly no match for the developed world and we must accept that and get our acts together for our common good as a nation. The best investment we can make is to invest in the over 80 million people who are under the age of 30 in our country, they are effectively the powerhouse of the economy.