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Adult Education In Nigeria And Its Importance

Adult Education In Nigeria - Most times the concept of adult Education could be misleading. Some persons view it as waste of time. But the main purpose of the programme is to update adults of the latest development in the society thereby making them useful to themselves and to the community at large.
Hence, the prevailing armed robbery incidents, bribery and corruption, prostitution, abortion are mostly among the educated groups.
It might interest you to no that the situation we find ourselves could be traced to the high level of illiteracy ion the country. According to the United Nations report in 1976, any Nation that seek to develop should have about 80 percent of her populations educated. But the situation we found ourselves in this country is contrary, since we don’t even have up to 40 percent of our population educated.
All the fears and superstitious beliefs cannot be eradicated without sound educational background for our adults who should be better placed to check and direct the young ones along the lines of full realization for true political, social and economic progress of our country.

We are going to be looking at various scholarly works by renowned scholars in this field
This was clearly seen by Nwakpa (1986) when he summed up the situation in Ezza.
According to his observation, the missionaries had promised to bring good news to the people of Ezza through the introduction of schools where both the old and young would learn how to read and write which would usher in peace and good living if the people embraced them.
So it was when the missionaries came into Nigeria that they introduced  the types of education that helped to remove superstitious belief among people of  Africa and Nigeria in particular, therefore the missionaries hailed from  West.
Furthermore Ezigbo (1985) noted that this Igbo phenomenon became pronounced from about 1910, when the new forces of British rule began to sharpen the people’s perception of the advantages of Western oriented education.
It was purposely introduced in Africa especially in Nigeria in order to have changes in many areas of human lives mostly the aspect of ill-cultural practices. Furthermore, to educate people in the society so that they will be enabled to face the challenges of their own time and forge ahead to promote the economic, social, political status or position of their states.
According to Fafunwa (   ) quoting Awolowo, to educate the children and enlighten the illiterate adult is to lay a solid foundation not only for the future social and economic progress but also for  political stability. A truly educated citizenry is, in my view one of the most powerful deterrent to dictatorship and oligarchy, he concluded.
Molewa (1985) said it is clear that the adult population of this country is badly in need of education for the acquisition of skill, technological take-off, social regeneration and political redemption.
According to Nwankwo (1988), “the greatest thing that you can do for the people is giving them education. Education rightly given liberates the people mentally appreciate life, take interest and pride in one’s culture, recognize the importance of economic recovery.” Therefore at this stage, our national economic recovery”.
Therefore, at this stage our national economic recovery, acquisition of formal education is seen by some people as an avenue for securing paid job with government establishment and private organisations.
According to Eya Ugwu, Alu, (2001:16) disclose that adult education a part for providing functional literacy  is also  a source of employment for the recipient of adult education that the adult learner on graduation can get employed to work as a messenger, cleaner, etc.
They can also work as machine operators having learnt to read instruction on machines and manuals. These recipients of adult education can through these means get their daily bread and live more comfortable lives.
They also said that adult education enables people to be self-reliant, having  acquired knowledge and vocational skill through  which the learner can establish small scale business on their own.
Rather it should be appreciated as aiding the development of character and mental power which liberate one from ignorance and mobilizes him towards self-employment and they conclude by saying that adult education liberates the minds of the learners that these graduates of adult education classes and programmes will be able to see clearer, think meaningful and act wisely in their civic right and responsible on their everyday life and living. By so doing, they will understand and appreciate their environment more better, which makes them fit and productive in their operation in terms of effort for entire development of their country. Education for development as we can point out, that education is an important instrument for development.
According to Okafor et al (1987), the principal institutional mechanism for developing human skills and knowledge is the formal education system. It has also been pointed out that the development  of material resources is enhanced by human resources because, it is the individual uses skills, knowledge and capabilities an capabilities to  exploit an reform material resources for development.
The ability of man to effectively and efficiently apply his skills, knowledge and capabilities is determined to a large extent by education. The majority of the Nigerian population is found in the rural areas where they are mostly self employed. But over seventy percent of Nigerian adult never had the benefit of formal education and these people are called upon everyday to participate in national development. Adult education is therefore  the answer.
In the words of Ifebigh  in Okafor et al (1987:79), without adult education, all levels of citizens of this country, the objectives of our national development plans cannot be fully  achieved because the majority of the productive manpower in our country will not be effectively mobilized for  participation n the development plan.
He went further to state that Adult education for men and women   is very essential for nation building because  all educated men and women (people) will appreciate the introduction of new technology and use it to improve his or her agricultural and food production.
In food producing areas like Abakaliki, more food will be produced for the experts if all farmers are  educated.

This post was written by: Franklin Manuel

Franklin Manuel is a professional blogger, web designer and front end web developer. Follow him on Twitter