For Nigeria to get functional education system, deliberate policy must be made to compel political leaders and stakeholders in the sector to send their children and wards to public schools in the country.

An educationist in the country, Mr. Peter Ogudoro who advocated this, said that such policy is the only road map to ensure active participation of the leaders towards the development and delivery of the system.

Speaking in Silverbird Television interview programme monitored by The Tide in Port Harcourt, Mr. Ogudoro lamented that Nigeria is a country where people who run education system do not have their children and wards in public schools pointing out that they loose nothing if the system does not deliver.

Mr. Ogudoro who was reacting to the Federal government’s plan to revert back to the 6:5:4 system of education instead of the current 6:3:3:4 system, argued that the problem of education sector is not on the operational system.

According to him, the problem is traceable to inadequate funding, lack of technology to make it function and unavailability of quality manpower to sustain the system and make it achieve the purpose for which it was created.

He reasoned that for government to acknowledged that the system has failed was not a bad idea but said that the thinking that throwing away the system would solve the problem of the sector would amount to chasing of shadow.

The educationist insisted that the country cannot even go back to 6:5:4 system because it has a system that had already jettisoned the 6:3:3:4 system.

“What we have now operational and internationally acceptable is the 9:3:4 system which requires students to go through nine years of basic education because every body needs to be empowered and literate for you to be able to participate as a useful citizen in the society that you find yourself”, he maintained.

According to him, the nine years are compulsory to enable the average person who came out as a graduate of such system to basic literacy skill to be able to function in the society and recognise his roles responsibilities, stressing that for Nigeria to revert back to 6:5:4 system means destroying the entire project called Universal Basic Education which has a commission.

Isaac Nwankwo