by Dipo Awojide

We are not doing enough to make us more competitive as a nation. It is important that we continually increase investment in education, research and development, and training. 

Contrasting the British and the Nigerian education system reveals how much work we need to do in Nigeria before we can measure up. Those of us who have been fortunate enough to experience both systems will agree that the difference is very clear. Those who were fortunate enough to get into private universities in Nigeria may have had a different experience from those of us who went to Federal or State Universities, but even that cannot be compared to what the West offers. The difference is the investment which these superior systems have benefited from.

Also, contrasting the human capital development index for 2014 which ranks Nigeria 152nd out of 187 countries means that we need to upgrade. “Human capital is the stock of competencies, knowledge, habits, social and personality attributes, including creativity, cognitive abilities, embodied in the ability to perform labour so as to produce economic value.” While some countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and Canada are described as having very high human development other countries such as Malaysia and Brazil are graded as having high human development index. Medium human development countries such as Botswana and Egypt are rated higher than Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe which have low human development index.

We are not doing enough to make us more competitive as a nation. It is important that we continually increase investment in education, research and development, and training. We are the giant of Africa and with our resources, we should be investing much more in education, research and development such that we don’t have to wait for the west to find cures for diseases which are only prevalent in Africa. The impact of globalisation for example means that our students will not only be competing within the borders of Nigeria but across the globe. This is not any different from our local companies and business start-ups.

I recognise that we need home grown solutions to most of our challenges, but we need some brushing up from those who have ‘been there and done that’ as well. I mean brushing up as per training, competency and capability improvement. We need more learning and development consulting firms to bridge the gap between western expertise and local knowledge to make our companies more competitive globally. A business that is really serious about being competitive globally will not say no to training and development. So training, the right kind of training and development should be welcomed. Through trainings, organisations can ensured that the skills of their employees are updated thus allowing them to work towards making the organisation even more competitive. This is the same for Nigeria as a nation, we need to become more competitive globally.A country that is serious about being competitive globally will also not say no to investment in education, research and development.

Moving forward, I urge Nigerian companies to show a real commitment in terms of developing the skills of their employees by increasing their training budgets. I also urge the Federal and State Governments of Nigeria to increase the investment and the budget for education, research and development. Slowly but surely, we will get there.

God bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

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Dipo Awojide is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Ambidextrous Consult Nig Ltd. He obtained a BSc in Accounting from the University of Abuja and an MSc in International Business with distinction from Coventry University, UK.

He joined Loughborough University as a PhD Doctoral Researcher in 2011 and lectures part time at Nottingham Trent University.

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.