The Director, Comfort Eduserve Limited, Babatunde Olawore, lives in both Nigeria and the United Kingdom. A teacher at the University of Portsmouth until he resigned some months ago, he supports students in Nigeria through his Comfort Eduserve Limited to study in the United Kingdom, Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand. In this interview with GBENGA ADERANTI, he talks about living and studying outside Nigeria, his fears about the standard of education in the country, and why the ‘japa’ syndrome may not abate any time soon. Excerpts.
It has become a fad for many Nigerian parents to send their children abroad to study. What could be responsible for this?
I don’t want to say that there are factors responsible for sending people abroad. We know the state of education in Nigeria.
One of the reasons I went to study abroad was to have an international exposure. I wanted to see how things were done differently in other climes. I wanted to meet different people from different countries, which is part of learning.
For most people, it is because of the quality of education. For example in the UK, it is called experience-based teaching and learning.
In Nigeria, you just go to school, cram, write exams, pour, and get your degree. In the UK for example, they teach you what you will be doing in life. If you are a nurse, they teach you how to be a good nurse. If you are an engineer, you have a lot of equipment; they teach you how to use them. You use them while studying.
You are not only focusing on give me the theory perspective, let me cram it. Let me write the exam and I have to write what the lecturers copy out or give to me. No! You are there to build experience. They call it capability- knowledge, skill, and experience. There, it is more of experience-based teaching and learning than the lectures we do in Nigeria.
People want their children to have that experience. I have seen many parents who have businesses here and they want their children to have the experience of learning abroad. So whatever they can gain to do whatever they want them to do, to have competence in it, they will be able to do it better.
In Nigeria most of the time, we are more concerned about the qualifications. We do not have the requisite skills, experience, and knowledge that add value to any person who wants to employ them. That is one of the factors.
Some might want to do it because of the number of years people use to study. For example, you can get enrolled in any university in Nigeria and you might say a five-year programme, but you don’t know when you will finish because of lecturers’ strikes or other problems in the society. In the UK for example, they will tell you when you will start and when you will complete your studies, and it will not change. Their three years are three years. I have done that and I have many students who have done that too.
Some people want their children to go abroad, finish within a possible short time, and then get into work. Some people like to live abroad; they want to see what is happening elsewhere. They have heard a lot of stories about the so-called paradise, though on many occasions it is not always like that. But some see it as a class thing, and when they finish, they get a good job.
Organisations in Nigeria tend to value foreign certificates. If someone is coming from Portsmouth, Oxford or Cambridge, organisations in Nigeria prefer to give them a job not only because they can do it better, they have the skill, but because they believe they have exposure and they can add value to them.
Talking about Nigerian employers preferring graduates with foreign degrees, do you think this is a good development?
All over the world, including developed countries like Canada, the US, and Australia, for example, I studied in the UK. Many Canadian citizens are studying in the UK, and most universities in the UK have what you call a study abroad programme. You study for one year in the UK, you study for another two years in Canada, and they call it Erasmus. Many Americans are studying in the UK. Many UK students are studying in America. It all depends on individuals’ choices.
They give opportunities to people to decide where they want to study, where they want to live, and what they want to study. Sometimes courses take people to study elsewhere. For me, it is not a bad thing. Since the formation of Nigeria, people have studied abroad, and they have come back and added value to Nigeria. Even now, when a student is completing an application form to study in the UK, they would ask you, what would you do after you finish your studies? What they want to hear is that “I would go back to my country and add value to the society.”
But it is just that some people feel after their studies they want to stay in the UK. That is where the problems are now. This is a result of many factors, including insecurity, lack of social amenities, and also lack of good jobs. If you finish in a UK university, you can get an offer of 6,000 pounds per year, and when you get to Nigeria you get N200,000, definitely, there will be a difference in what you can afford.
Though that is not straightforward, there is what they call purchasing power parity, which is what a pound can buy in the UK, and what it can buy in Nigeria. If I want to eat breakfast in the UK, I will spend 10 pounds. That is about N9,500 here but, I have taken five people to a top eatery in Ibadan, we did not spend up to that and we had good meals. There are lots of things that can make people go and study abroad. But I can see a lot of people have a passion for the country and after their studies, they want to come back to Nigeria and work.
Most of the time the jobs are not there. But with the way you are talking, degrees in Nigeria would in the near future be worth nothing. Nigerian graduates won’t be able to compete. Most multinational companies prefer graduates with foreign degrees…
Even now, 99 per cent of Nigerian graduates cannot compete with international qualifications. I have vast experience in education. I studied here. I did OND, HND, PGD, Masters1, Masters 2. In my set, I had the best Master’s project while at a Nigerian university. I applied to another university in Ontario, Canada for another Master’s and they asked me for a sample of what I did before. I said with excitement that in my thesis, I scored 75 per cent from the University of Ibadan. They assessed everything and they got back to me that it was substandard. They said when they assessed my thesis it was below expectations.
Even now, Nigerian graduates are struggling with foreign qualifications. I’m not talking about Ukrainian certificates; I’m not talking about Russian certificates. I’m talking about studying in Germany, in the Netherlands, in Irelands, in the UK, in Canada, in Australia, in New Zealand, and in the US and other Western countries. You cannot equate what they have there with what we have. They focus more on employability; they focus more on the theoretical aspect.
A computer scientist or somebody who has a degree in Computer Science here does not even know how to do some things related to computers. But when they go abroad, they are exposed to a lot of things.
What makes that so is there is a lot of support from the academia. If you taught me in class and I’m not clear with what you said, I can book an appointment with the lecturer. You are allowed to do that. If you give me an assignment that I will submit at the end of the month, I can get a draft and say, “Please help me check this. Am I in line?” The lecturer will comment and say “look at this area, look at that area.” They want you to learn through that. And mostly, they don’t write exams; they do coursework. They give you a lot of support.
One thing I know is that if you go to the University of Ibadan library, you will still see 1959 textbooks there. In my own university (University of Portsmouth), every five years, they turn out books from the library and get new ones there, and you have access to millions of academic papers, quality papers with high impact factor. As a student in the corner of your room, just google and put University of Portsmouth library. Every book will be assigned to you, and you can read them online.
Talking about not being able to compete, most Nigerian graduates, especially those in the medical fields, excel when they go abroad.
I will disagree with you. I’ve been staying abroad since 2011. They accept Ghanaian nurses more than Nigerian nurses. They prefer Zimbabwean qualifications to Nigerians’. Ask anybody who is living abroad.
There, the Nursing and Midwifery Council has a standard. Many Nigerians are struggling to pass the IELTS. Many organisations in the UK go to the Philippines, India, and Bangladesh to go bring in nurses than Nigeria. I can tell you anywhere; you can verify it. And they accept more Ghanaian qualifications than Nigerian qualifications when it comes to medical practitioners.
All over the world, especially in the developed world, they need medical personnel because, Britons, for example, most of them love management and finance. They don’t normally like medical areas, which is why they take people who are medically inclined all over the world. If you count the number of nurses from Nigeria in the UK to the number of nurses from Zimbabwe, it is half.
We are not saying we are doing badly, but there are lots of things our government should put in place to shore up our academic qualifications. It is better to have experience in Nigeria and try elsewhere. I have done that.
What is the way out?
The way out is a bit complex.
One, universities need to do a lot of things. Parents, government and students have a lot of roles to play. I will take it from my parents. When I was growing up I remember reading a Yoruba book written by J.F. Odunjo where I read about the virtue of hard work. In the book I read, ‘Ise ni ogun ise, mura si ise ore mi…’ In summary, what that means is that hard work is a virtue. Unfortunately, the virtue of hard work has been eroded in our society. People are cheating even at the common entrance now. Go to unity schools, whenever they want to do the exams, parents drive their children to the exam centre to cheat; likewise in secondary schools. Imagine students will have an exam in an hour’s time, they will be playing football.
When I was growing up, churches in my village would advise us not to read too much so that we wouldn’t run mad. This is because people spent time preparing ahead. They wanted to read and become something in life. But now in Nigeria, the majority wants to cheat, and teachers are also involved.
Cheating has reduced the value placed on our education. If you see people with As and Bs, less than one per cent of that population did it themselves. The value of hard work has been eroded. I was in UI sometimes, and the slogan among the students was ‘Education is a scam’. They will tell you that after this education what will you get? Yahoo Yahoo (Internet fraud) is more viable. What they are telling you is why are you investing in studying hard? At the end of the day, it doesn’t determine who you are in the future. It is only in Nigeria I hear that.
