Education and Economic Development in Nigeria: Issues and Challenges

Abstract

This paper focuses on education and economic development in Nigeria. One of the essences of education is to produce human resources that are skillful and knowledgeable; positioning man to be a critical resource upon which national economies, especially that of a developing nation like Nigeria hinge upon. In this paper, an attempt was made to correlate Nigeria’s investment in education since independence and economic development so far attained, analyze the issues and challenges of economic development, the current state of education in Nigeria and the way forward. The paper contended in the light of overwhelming literature that education is the greatest investment that the nation can make for quick development of its economic, political and sociological development. Basically, the paper was discussed under the following broad headings; Nigeria’s philosophy of education, economic development in Nigeria, issues and challenges amongst which the challenges of funding, responsibility and control, and the problem of relating the curricula to national manpower needs were identified as underlying factors for the deplorable standard of education in Nigeria and ridiculous pace of human development in spite of the much touted annual economic growth rate of 6%. To attain economic development through education in Nigeria, there should be serious commitment of government at all levels to effective educational policies from pre-planning stage through planning stage to post-planning stage (implementation) in realization of the fact that Nigeria is a developing country and it cannot afford to neglect the educational sector that is most crucial in the provision of the needed manpower for growth and development. The need for such commitment has become so palpable given that education is a tool for human capital development, and how well and fast a nation develops is dependent on its literacy level. It was on this note that the paper was concluded.