Enugu State Governor Peter Mbah has explained that his administration is spending 33 percent of the state’s 2024 budget on education because nothing transforms lives and paves a path to a promising future like quality education.
He spoke Tuesday while delivering the first Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT)’s Distinguished Personalities Lecture Series entitled ‘Experiential Learning: Building the Wealth of the Nation.’
Mbah stated: “It is the reason why one-third of Enugu State’s total annual budget went into funding education. This translates to roughly twice UNESCO’s recommended benchmark of 15–20. What this means is that for every N100 spent, N33 goes to the education budget.
“This funding has enabled us to implement both infrastructural and pedagogical overhaul of our education system.
“Our will has enabled us to begin a transition from a system where pupils seemed, to all intents and purposes, to be merely going through the motions of learning, to an ecosystem of experiential learning.”
The governor also said that human capital is the real wealth of any nation.
He called for a paradigm shift in Nigeria’s current education model, saying it could not deliver the much-needed speedy development and economic transformation.
Advocating for a shift from rote or memorisation to experiential learning, which he described as the missing link between education, industrialisation, and GDP growth, he asked: “Why do Nigerian universities seldom feature on the global ranking list of world’s best universities? Why have they seemed perennially unable to become the ideas factory which universities ought to be? Why are our universities not producing inventive graduates?”
He said the answers to these questions “lie in many inconvenient truths, amongst which is the fact that the learning in our schools, from basic to tertiary, has for years not imbued our young people with productive skills and competencies. This is the root cause of our underdevelopment.”
Mbah noted that his government is currently building 260 smart green schools to power experiential learning in the 260 wards of the state.
He said by embedding the model from the basic to tertiary levels of education, Enugu was creating a seamless pipeline where students progress from foundational learning to practical innovation.
He directed all state-owned tertiary institutions to deliver experiential learning going forward.
The governor said his administration was constructing eight Science, Technical and Vocational (STV) schools across Enugu State, starting from the Government Technical College (GTC), Enugu.