Nigeria: Redirecting The Lost Giant

By Fashogbon Moyinoluwa

“When we innovate, we create millions of jobs, we build the companies that lead the world, we are healthier, and we make our lives more productive”, this was written by Bill Gates on accelerating innovation with leadership. Moving Nigeria to the status of a First World nation is a challenge any willing leader should love to take on. Blessed with natural resources and a large population, Nigeria has the potential to compete with other nations of the world in any sector, but we need first to put our home in order by diversifying our economy, and restructuring our institutions to cover up the loopholes that allow for corruption.

To move Nigeria from being a third world country to a first world nation, a leader should in no particular order, invest in education, increase the manufacturing capacity of the nation, remove the hurdles facing entrepreneurs, provide basic infrastructure that propel a nation’s growth, be dedicated to providing statistics and information, promote mining and agriculture, make the environment tourist-friendly, promote the numerous traditions we have in Nigeria and most importantly, invest in and support innovation.

Every sector in present day Nigeria has decayed and the most delicate of all, which is the education sector has suffered the most. Investing in education should be top priority in moving Nigeria to the status of a first world nation. Taking a cue from first world nations like Luxembourg, Singapore, and Switzerland which have 59.6%, 54.7% and 51.3% respectively of people in high-skilled employment, according to the Human Capital Index 2015.

A leader should educate the population to the extent of attaining at least 99% literacy rate and 80% of high-skilled citizens. This can be done by revamping the educational system of the country. Firstly, all the syllabuses in Nigerian schools should be reviewed, especially in the universities, in such a way that they should meet up with the current international standards and subsequently set the standards for syllabuses around the world. Also by improving the researching capacity of our universities and making them more practical oriented than they currently are. Then go ahead to remove the numerous hurdles students face while trying to get into the universities by creating a system whereby students can apply to as many universities as they wish in other to give them more options and reduce the number of high school graduates lurking the streets. An educated population can propel innovation and turn out good leaders, and this combination is what is needed to move Nigeria to the status of a first world country. Innovation makes a country competitive in the global market.