More private, digital universities should get operational licenses – Accord candidate, Imumolen

Accord Party (AP) presidential candidate, Professor Christopher Imumolen has unveiled his blueprint for the total revolution of Nigeria’s seemingly comatose educational system.

The successful entrepreneur laid out his plans during the convocation ceremony of the JPTS Institute in Lagos.

Imumolen, founder and president of the school, noted that learning in tertiary institutions could be less cumbersome for students.

The flagbearer said in an era where schools have either been shut for several months due to lecturers’ strike, his model would keep schools in session.

“That we have been able to graduate students at a period when a great number of others have been at home owing to the ASUU strike is a testimony that education can thrive if the appropriate policies and safeguards are put in place.

“Our educational system needs to be digitalised. We are in the digital age, and must start moving away from the concept of classroom learning alone to studying from anywhere through technology.

“Again, we need to properly fund the sector. We are spending a meagre 6.4% of the budget on education, that’s not good enough. It embarrassingly falls short of what the United Nations recommends that a country spends on education.

“When I become president, I’ll ensure that 20% of our annual budget goes into funding education.

“Another thing I’d do is vigorously push and execute policies that would liberalise the sector to open it up for more investors, thereby encouraging a healthy competition that would drive down the cost of education.

“The sector has been stifled by unfriendly legislation and endemic corruption that sees that only a pittance of allocated sums of money trickles down to fund education.

“I think it is old-fashioned for the President to sit first before a license is approved for a university to be established. These are the bureaucratic bottlenecks that are gradually killing tertiary education.

“In my time as president, I’ll see to it that the system is opened up for more players to make it easy for more students to get access to university education.

“Also, we shall encourage schools in Nigeria to adopt the mini-campuses, as well as small and cluster educational systems with digital enhancement.

“For instance, in a state like Zamfara where schools have been shut down now for about three years because of security issues, students can be trained to use tablets as a means to access learning online.

“It is not something that is impossible. It’s just to make budgetary provisions for it. And once the students get used to using phones, studying would become easy and they miss learning when schools are shut.

“My government will work assiduously to ensure that these plans are implemented once we get into power next year”, Imumolen added.