EDUCATION: THE PATH TO ECONOMIC RECOVERY AND DEVELOPMENT

This paper outlines the background which culminated to the morass of economic recession. The phenomenon of recession are discussed briefly with the various attempts which governments have made to address the frightening situation of economic recession. Then the role of education as an institution in the process of economic recovery are highlighted, drawing heavily from educational and economic developmental theories. Long before the advent of the present administration and all through the Muhammadu Buhari’s eight years disaster from which we need an economic recovery blueprint, the signs were ominous that the Nigerian economy was not in any healthy state. Not with all the humongous loans and the indebtedness of the federal government to the Paris Club, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other major foreign financial institutions with the decline in foreign reserves. The embarrassing disclosures by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) of the individual financial and choice property holdings corruptly acquired by government officials are mind boggling. And so, in the last quarter of 2016, when it was announced that the Nigerian economy had inevitably slid into recession, with all the developmental implications, it was not any surprise to any discerning observer who had been following the profligacy and the very primitive accumulation of wealth by a band of uneducated and corrupt Nigerian political elite. However, to our greatest relief, by the first week of September, 2017, the National Bureau of Statistics announced that Nigeria had exited the economic recession with a recorded economic growth rate of 0.55 percent. Even as this development had been pooh-poohed by pessimists as mere statistics and insignificant, it was nevertheless an obvious sign that the economy was picking up and is now on the right path with visible diversification of the productive developmental efforts. However, the entire episode was like a flash in the pan, because the proclaimed economic recovery was yet to show its face in the “common market” of the ordinary Nigerian where the biting effects of the recession had taken their very heavy toll. Nevertheless, the rear position of Nigeria in the global economy has never been in doubt. This is in spite of the fact that Nigeria has always been very wonderfully endowed in all spheres of human, material and even economic potentialities. Indeed, Nigeria was rightly set on the path of very rapid economic development in her early years of nationhood. For example, at independence in 1960, the Nigerian economic development indices stood very firmly on the very buoyant economic tripod of coca, groundnuts and oil palm. At the same time, Nigeria paraded very strong economic development fundamental indices which made it a very attractive destination for private sector investments, with a vast expanse of natural resources, and expansive ready market in the Lagos area, Kano, Kaduna and other coastal cities. She also had a very young and vibrant population which could provide very cheap labour for any investor.