A presentation by HE Nsima U. Ekere, Managing Director, Niger Delta Development Commission, NDDC, on the occasion of the 30th Anniversary of Akwa Ibom Association of Nigeria, AKISAN, in the United States
Salutations
Let me start by congratulating the leadership and members of Akwa Ibom Association in the United States on your 30th Anniversary. Thank you for coming together these past 30 years to promote the best interest of Akwa Ibom State.
Thank you for the honour, responsibility and trust placed on me by your invitation to speak at this august event. Responsibility demands that I look back at the road we have travelled as a people and propose a radical pathway to a new destination: Greatness. Inviting me to stand here, in the assembly of some of Akwa Ibom’s best, is a statement that I have earned your trust. I will not betray that trust. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not in the days to follow...
I have been asked to speak on Revamping our Schools; Educating our Future. But I will ask your permission to tweak this significantly. At the Business Session yesterday, you had the opportunity to hear about investment opportunities in the Nigeria Delta in our strategic presentation titled, Niger Delta of Opportunities.
The World We Live
We live in rapidly changing times where the definition of schools and learning has shifted radically; where brick and mortar schools are being challenged by borderless learning, and educational curricula must change rapidly in response to the current dynamics. The Internet has become the world’s number one classroom, without walls and boundaries; an internet-enabled device is a school of incomparable value. Today, we live amongst people who carry degrees and certificates from schools and institutions in geographies they are yet to step on.
So permit me to title this Strategic Disruption: Raising Innovation Champions.
A few years ago, I came across a short but very interesting video, Did You Know 2014. It was an eye opener: Among other things, it said the top 10 in-demand jobs of 2010 did not exist at all in 2004; that the United States was currently preparing students for jobs that yet don’t exist, using technologies that haven’t yet been invented in order to solve problems they don’t know yet are problems.
It got me thinking. What exactly are we preparing our children for? The information age we live in today requires us to prepare our children more effectively to compete against others from all corners of the planet. We owe them that duty. Global boundaries are shrinking and the world is now a truly global village. In business, we no longer compete against our neighbours and countrymen but against unknown entities in some remote parts of the globe. The hunt for skills and talents traverses national boundaries. Our children will have to compete against other children from China, India, Ghana, the United States, South Africa and a whole lot of others for jobs and opportunities.
Everyday, as I move around and see our young people go in and out of schools – some too dilapidated and bare to be identified as such - I ask myself, can these children compete favourably against their peers from outside our borders? Are we equipping them with decent skills and competency to flourish in a dynamic world of change and disruptions? Or are we handicapping them with perfunctory and outdated education lacking in grit?
Sadly, I often answer in the negative. Which fuels my conviction that we need to revisit and overhaul our learning system. I recall a conversation I had recently with a young lad who shared his dream of going to the university to study computer science so he can become the next Mark Zukerberg. Powerful ambition! But are we feeding this ambition and the ambitions of millions of our youths and young people with the right fuel? It is not just enough for them to dream. We must help them to live their dreams. So if what you call revamping our schools is to create a new learning culture, increase our investments in education, review our curriculum and equip our children with real world problem-solving capacities, then we are on the same page. This is the road we should be on. This is the road we are yet to travel.
The Way Forward:
Going forward, we need a people-centred vision for the state and the people. We need to properly articulate and agree what kind of communities and society we need to live in the next five, ten, twenty and fifty years. What human, financial and material resources do we require to build our vision? Where do we want to see our people? What role do we want them to play in the emerging local, national and global space? What skills and competencies do we want to equip them with? What programmes and systems do we need to effectively train and raise our young to stardom?
Akwa Ibom is rich today because of the strategic vision of our forefathers. Recall the pioneering work of our founding fathers who saw education and skill development as the only way to build prosperity, fight injustice, develop long term solutions to social problems and promote the total development of our human resources. It was through this vision that the Oron Development Union was born as the first community development association in Nigeria to champion self help and community progress. This same vision propelled the Ibibio State Union to sponsor some of its brightest young men for higher learning outside our shores.
It was therefore not an accident that the first indigenous governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, the first officer of the Nigerian Army, the first Inspector General of the Nigerian Police Force, the first Nigerian to hold a Masters degree in Agriculture and various other fields, were all from the same geographical area known today as Akwa Ibom State.
There is no better testimony of the impact of that vision than that Obong Victor Attah, son of one of the beneficiaries of that scholarship, became the champion in the fight for fiscal equality and resource control and won for Akwa Ibom State, the wealth and resources that we now enjoy.
Recall also that when the late Dr. Clement Isong became the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, he could draw upon a rich crop of Akwa Ibom people in the banking sector. They were just everywhere.
We need to review our educational curriculum to favour skills and competencies demanded by the modern world. The call of leadership is to inspire, to rally the troops and to fire them for higher ideals. We need to raise leaders in technology, innovation, energy, power, agriculture, genetic engineering, banking and finance, environmental management, climatology, machine intelligence, medicine, sports, entertainment and the arts amongst other areas.
Education and The Next Wave of Growth:
Oil has saved us but it is on its way out. The next wave of growth will be fuelled by the higher mental capacity of our people; what they can see; what they can create and what they can give to the world. That is why we must invest aggressively in 21st century education. A computer is not a toy; every child in school today should have access to one. The internet is not just for Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Snapchat; it is the platform for exponential knowledge and information that will help our young people to develop real world problem-solving skills.
We must teach our children to code and write programmes from a very early age so they can develop technology solutions for the challenges that are specific to our environment and beyond. This means emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, STEM. Why is this important? First, if technology is the core resource of the information age, programming and coding literacy becomes the currency of trade in that world.
STEM will teach students how to perform proper scientific research using real-world problems, improve their thinking processes when solving challenges; develop a rigorous methodology for communicating research work and prepare students to compete against some of the smartest kids on the planet
STEM graduates have a 500 percent chance of being employed than a non-STEM graduate. Growth in STEM jobs is three times faster than job growth in non-STEM industries. They will also earn more
Our young ones need the right mindset. They must be ready to dream and step out to grab the wings that give flight to their dreams.
As a starting point and as a matter of urgency let us introduce the History of Akwa Ibom into our curriculum. Our kids ought to know and celebrate the indomitable spirit of the true Akwa Ibom person. They must hear about the visionary leadership of our forebears that brought us this far; about the fight of the Ikot Abasi women against oppression to know that the forces of evil cannot prevail against a determined people. We must tell them about Obong Victor Attah’s dogged fight for economic emancipation that has brought trillions of Naira to Akwa Ibom.
Akwa Ibom must accelerate its drive to create world-class stars outstanding for their creativity, innovativeness and can-do spirit. We must value and grow the talents of our children whether in music, sports, arts, design and other creative endeavours. A 25 year – old Brazillian footballer has just commanded a $263 million transfer fee and an annual pay of N10.8billion! In five to ten years, the next most expensive footballer in the world can be an Akwa Ibom boy. It is doable. With the right investment, we can do it.
That is why I want to publicly applaud here the landmark work of one of your members, Victor Ekpuk. He is one of the greatest artists Nigeria has ever produced. I always feel a sense of home-grown pride reading about his works and exploits and his very tangible artistic footprints which celebrate the creativity and innovativeness of the Akwa Ibom spirit. Victor, I hope you will find time to return to Akwa Ibom and inspire a new generation of creative people to follow in your footstep. NDDC will like to partner with you to run creative workshops for budding artists in Akwa Ibom and across the Niger Delta.
Our children need true role models. They need to follow after people whose lives demonstrate clearly and unambiguously that the future prosperity and growth we seek will not be dropped on our laps but earned by competitive hardwork and deployment of creativity, ingenuity and innovation.
New Territories to Conquer:
Akwa Ibom State budgeted N371.292 billion for 2017. This translates to about $1billion which is averagely posted by many mid-size companies here in your cities. But it is also less than the 2016 turnover of any of the five top banks in Nigeria: Access Bank (N381.3billion); UBA (N384bn); GT Bank ((N414.62bn); Zenith (N507.99bn) and FirstBank (N581.89bn). These banks are the product of the creative thinking of young men and women who saw opportunities and went after them.
There are new opportunities out there and they present to our young ones new territories to conquer: Renewable energy sources; high efficiency solar systems; high density energy storage; nano science, neuroscience and machine intelligence; biosciences and biophysics (protein folding leading to cheaper drugs) and affordable public health systems; biomedical engineering and medicine (engineered body parts); climate and biosphere management; quantum computing; fundamental nature of matter: dark energy and dark matter; space travel and sports and sports medicine. Properly prepared, they can step into these arena and become undisputed stars, impacting our economic and social fabrics in ways we never could imagine.
NDDC and Education in Akwa Ibom State
Our government must create the right learning environment for this to happen. Right environment implies increased funding for education; computers in the classroom; comfortable learning spaces. At NDDC, we emphasize on the environment, content and quality of learning. Since inception, we have rehabilitated more than 120 school blocks in Akwa Ibom State and in 2016/2017 school year alone, we have supplied 9,600 desks and benches to schools across the state. Our signature hostel project at the University of Uyo has helped to resolve legacy accommodation challenges at the university. And we have sponsored 230 indigenes of the state to various universities abroad for post-graduate programmes in high-skill areas. This year, we are budgeting more than N4bilion for renovation and upgrade of learning environments across the Niger Delta.
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